Cosmic Gospel

Good morning.

Today's reading is from Ephesians 3, verses 1 through 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 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 to 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.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Thanks for joining us this morning.

My name is James Rathman.

I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church Denver.

We are moving through Ephesians and took a break last week, and we're back in uh chapter three for the first 13 verses.

This is so dense and so incredibly packed with wonderful news.

Uh so we'll need to get started and get in quickly.

But first, an announcement before I pray.

Uh our book club that we're doing for the month of July is beginning uh Wednesday.

Uh so that's this Wednesday from six to eight, and we're reading a book called Gentle and Lowly by Dane Ortland, and it's a wonderful look at the heart of Jesus.

So I really recommend this book.

It's been one of my favorite books that I've read uh definitely in the past couple of years.

And so it's one of those books that you read and it's like, I think this book's gonna last forever in its impact.

It's so, so excellent.

So uh the last book that we read was this like tome on Western culture.

Uh this book is not like that.

Um, it's uh much more accessible.

So for some of you, the last book was fun.

For all who the last book was not fun, this book will probably be fun.

Uh also, we uh uh w when when COVID happened, do you guys remember COVID?

We uh uh stopped having readers because we needed to limit the amount of people here, but we'd like to get back to having scripture readers um so that I'm not working double time up here.

Uh so in order to sign up to be a scripture reader on a Sunday morning, uh just go into the app, uh download the Redemption Church Denver app in your app store of choice, search the whole name Redemption Church Denver, and then uh tap connect and then tap serve.

Then you'll be able to sign up to be a scripture reader.

Uh we'd love to get that rolling again.

Uh let's pray and then we'll get into our text for today.

Holy Father, your rule is total.

And Lord, the implications of your gospel are for all of your creation, the entire cosmos.

Lord, we pray that you would give us eyes to see that so that we would be able to interpret our lives in the light of this grand story in the same way that Paul was able to interpret his life in the light of this grand story, that we as a church, by the power of your gospel, might shine forth in glory in all of our weakness, in your glory, so that you might be more glorified among the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.

Lord, by your spirit, would you give us an imagination to be able to see what you have in this text today?

It is too high for us, too wonderful.

We pray that you would show it to us because of your graciousness.

In Jesus' name, amen.

Paul is a prisoner when he is writing this text.

Uh, he's a prisoner of Rome, and uh he's uh he's under the control of the most powerful empire, one of the most powerful empires in all of history.

And he's able, he, in the midst of this imprisonment, he has this heart where he desires for his imprisonment to not cause the Christians in Ephesus, some of which he knew, most of which he didn't, to lose heart.

You know, they could look and see like the this uh beacon uh of the gospel who's moving around the empire, spreading this great news of whom we as a church have benefited from.

Well, he's been snuffed out now.

He's been captured by the empire, and it's over.

And the uh but Paul maintains this heart saying, don't be discouraged by his imprisonment.

And he's this type of person who is able to encounter and be in the midst of this extreme suffering and not lose heart.

That's an incredible thing.

And especially for I think a culture like ours, where we view suffering as something has gone wrong.

And if we're suffering, then we need to find the new tool, the new technique, or the new therapeutic solution to eliminate that suffering from our lives.

Otherwise, the suffering will come in and corrupt our hearts and it will cause and it will cause us to dissolve as people.

But Paul instead, in the midst of this suffering, is able to maintain a coherent picture of his life, one that is resilient and has fortitude, and one in which even when he is imprisoned, it sees the highest purpose of his life, not threatened.

So, how do we do that?

There's one way.

And that way is we because all of our lives have suffering.

The way that you're told is, well, just avoid suffering, and then life won't destroy you.

But all of our lives have suffering.

Someone's just selling you something if they think that life doesn't have suffering.

All of our lives have suffering, so how do we deal with it?

We must be able to connect these tiny sufferings in the small stories of our lives into this grand narrative.

In that grand narrative, the only one that is grand enough to fill up the whole frame of our lives, so that when we connect our lives to that story, it actually provides a real meaning.

The only story that is able to accomplish that is the story of Christ.

That's a big claim.

But hopefully by the end of this, we'll see that's true.

The only story is the story of Christ.

Okay, so let's jump in to this text and we'll see how that can be the case.

First, we'll look at this mystery of the Gentiles that was shown to Paul.

In Ephesians 3, verses 1 through 2, Paul begins.

Ephesians 3:1–2

He says, 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, says, what we're getting here, and so it can be kind of difficult to follow.

This is a long parentheses.

Ephesians 1 through 13, Paul is the king of tangents, and it's this long parentheses where he says, for this reason, I, and he's introducing a prayer, but he won't get back to the prayer until verse 14.

So we've got 13 verses where he's like, for this reason, I, Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus.

Then he's like, Look, uh, this my imprisonment is on behalf of you Gentiles, insofar as you've heard of the stewardship that I have for you.

Then he's like, ah, the stewardship that I have for the Gentiles.

I should explain what I mean.

And then here's these 13 verses explaining that.

So it's this glorious parentheses.

And in this glorious parentheses, uh, we see how Paul's story is so intertwined with the shape of the gospel, that in order to understand how the gospel has moved out to the Gentiles, Paul has to explain his own story in his own relationship to it.

Okay, so what we're gonna see is how Paul's story relates to it.

And in order to see that, we have to see the provenance, it's called, that's this, that's where this was written.

And this was written when Paul is in prison, as I mentioned before, but look at how he describes his imprisonment.

Says, for this reason, I, Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus, on behalf of you Gentiles.

He's appealed to Caesar.

He's he's go he's being moved through the bureaucracy of Rome up to the highest court in the land.

And do you think when he as he's being you know cuffed by a Roman centurion, he's like, Yeah, I'm a prisoner of Christ Jesus.

The Roman centurion's like, yeah, good luck, buddy.

But look at how he views the shape of his life.

He's so confident in Christ as Lord, that while he's captive of the highest authority that had ever been demonstrated in the world, he is saying, I'm not a prisoner of Caesar, I'm a prisoner of Christ.

Even in my imprisonment, it is Christ who has me.

Christ is the one who is guiding my story.

See how if he didn't connect his life to the story of Christ, that the suffering that he was involved with would obviously trounce him.

But instead, while he's prisoner of Caesar, I'm prisoner of Christ.

And what for?

For you Gentiles, the people who he's writing to.

I am a prisoner of Christ on behalf of you Gentiles.

There is a glorious picture of who is imprisoning him in Christ, and there is a personal effect of his imprisonment.

You see, there's purpose in the midst of it.

Okay, so we see that this imprisonment on behalf of the Gentiles is because of a particular stewardship that was given to Paul.

And this stewardship is a message, but it's more than a message, it's it's a mystery that's been revealed.

Paul is like this cosmic whistleblower.

And we don't treat whistleblowers well.

So he's imprisoned.

And as this cosmic whistleblower, he has to turn to talk about this mystery, which is the stewardship.

So here's how he describes it.

In verses three through five, he says, 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.

Okay, so we're talking about the mystery that Paul holds, and he'll state explicitly what it is.

But until then, we need to get the shape of the mystery that he's talking about.

And he describes it in three factors.

These three are the revelation, the knowability, and the newness of the mystery.

So the revelation of the mystery, that how the mystery was made known to me by revelation.

This means that the mystery that Paul is revealing is not something that he has deduced.

This is not something that he has observed and then discovered of his own accord, nor is this something that has arisen from him out of his own sort of inspiration or creativity.

That's not the type of mystery that Paul is describing.

This mystery was revealed.

That means it was shown by God to Paul.

There's an authoritativeness to this, and there's a humility to this in Paul's disclosing.

He's saying, This is not something that I made, but this is something that God has shown to me.

It is a mystery that is revealed.

Next, it's knowability.

Okay, so he says, this is an insane verse.

This is one of the best verses to inspire you to read your Bible.

When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ.

How do you perceive the insights that Paul had?

Look, what did Paul just say?

This was given to me by revelation.

When he describes these events in Galatians, and he's called up into the highest heaven, and he's shown this glorious revelation where he starts speaking in the third person, like Bob Dole, and this strangeness happens that he's unwilling to even disclose that is his own.

That revelation, that revelation that Paul gets can be yours.

Do you get that?

How?

You just read it.

When you read this, you can have that same revelation.

He's like, this revelation, known to me by revelation, as I have written briefly.

The things that he's written briefly are like, I spoke to the Lord, and I asked him three times to remove this uh burden from me, and he said no, and then he gave me this unreal revelation of the highest heavens and the glories that I'm not even able to speak of.

They're incredible, you know, that's his as I've written briefly.

That's what he wrote.

It's low-key.

And he it and then how do you know it?

When you read it.

Look, there's no secret knowledge in Christianity.

Mystery is a word that surrounded the religions of ancient Greece that he's writing in.

There's uh const there they were uh uh each city would have its own mystery religions.

And they're called mystery religions because you don't get to know what the religion is really about until you join up on the inside of it, and then you start giving to it and start participating in it, and then the strangeness of their secrets is revealed to you.

And that's the shape of the religion, that's the shape of almost every other religion, because every other religion is a path or a way or an experience.

And so you need to incorporate this practice of meditation.

And then once you achieve this, you know, Siddhartha-like experience of sitting by a river and you're able to see the wholeness of the river all at one time by your meditation of it, then you will get to know the secret.

How do you know the secret of Christianity?

How do you know the mystery of Christianity?

Just read it.

This isn't come come inside and then we'll tell you what this is really about.

It's we're gonna tell you what it's really about, even when you aren't inside.

And just by knowing it, you'll be brought in.

You see the the openness of the shape of this mystery, it can be known.

Known just by reading it.

I'll say this a little more so we can see it maybe in a more tangible way, because you're probably not being encountered by like a mystery religion on your way home.

Except for Scientology.

You know, all right, one tangent.

Paul does it, so I can do it.

You know how uh the billboards that say, have you wondered why so many people are asking about Scientology?

No, no one's asking.

Like, no, see that billboard, and it's like I ha no.

I haven't wondered.

Like, we saw the HBO documentary, we're done.

Asking questions about it.

So we won't encounter a mystery religion like that, but what we will encounter is you'll be sold a product.

And what is the shape of being sold a product?

It's there's a glory in this thing.

And you'll be able to have this glory, but first you need to trade me for it.

Then you'll be on the inside and it will be yours, and you'll be able to participate in this glory.

See, it's it's the shape of the whole world is the mystery religion.

And what is the shape of the gospel?

Look, this is freely given.

You can know the whole thing, just read it.

The great news about our story, it's written down.

You can just read it.

It's an amazing thing.

Okay, and finally the newness.

Paul says, 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.

You can't go back to your synagogue and ask your rabbi, what is this mystery of Christ?

It can't be revealed there.

It was shown in the event, in time and space by the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ.

In his life, in his death, in his resurrection, in his ascension to the throne, this historical moment brought into the world this new revelation of God that disclosed this grand mystery of who God is and how it is that we his creatures can relate to him.

It is new.

It broke into the world.

And it can only be seen in Christ.

Now, Paul, just as he freely received this mystery, he just says it.

He just he just explicitly says, Well, I'll read it to you.

Ephesians 3, verse 6.

Ephesians 3:6

This mystery is that.

I mean, you should be a terrible mystery novelist.

But it's freely received, and so he freely gives it to us.

What's the mystery?

This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.

Paul's already written about this in this letter.

The last half of chapter two was about the inclusion of the Gentiles.

And here he makes it plain, but in the context of this mystery, which is his stewardship, which says, look, the Gentiles, those people who were outside the promises of God by Christ Jesus, have been brought in.

This is the power of the gospel.

They are united in the same body, they are co-heirs along with the chosen people that we knew explicitly before.

They are drawn in through Christ by the power of the gospel.

Now, in order to understand this, because Gentile inclusion is something that doesn't intuitively resonate with us, so we need to be able to grasp what why this would be this incredibly grand mystery, particularly to Paul.

And we see it in the shape of Paul's life story.

So Paul continues on and he writes in verse 7 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.

So Paul is made a minister of this gospel.

What is the gospel?

That Jesus Christ died for our sins, was raised, that we are united to him by faith.

Of this gospel, Paul is made a minister, particularly to the Gentiles.

Then he goes on, and he describes himself further in verses eight and nine, and he says, 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.

So Paul describes himself, he says, To me, this particular ministry is given, although I am the very least of all saints, this grace was given to preach to the Gentiles.

Now we have to understand Paul's story in order to grasp why this mystery is so revolutionary for him.

And Paul elsewhere states that he is the least of all the saints.

In 1 Corinthians 15, 9, he says that he is the least of all the saints.

Then he adds this caveat, because I was a persecutor of the church, there's a particular reason that he counts himself as least of all the saints.

It's because in his own history, he was a persecutor of the church.

And then he had a Damascus road experience on the road to Damascus.

They didn't use that term before.

So he's going from Jerusalem to Damascus.

And why does he why does he do that?

Why is he walking there?

Does anybody know?

To persecute the church.

What does he have with him?

What's sending him to Damascus?

It's similar.

He gets, he get, he's able to get some things through some authorities.

They're letters.

They're letters that the church in Jerusalem was sending to the church in Damascus.

And Paul is looking through these letters and he's seeing if anyone is writing about the Christ.

So he's saying, is anyone in the Jewish community in Jerusalem writing to other people in the Jewish community in Damascus about Christ?

And then by sifting through these letters, he's saying, oh, this person is.

And then he's going there in route with names in hand from the letters that he's discovered to kill those people.

He's a Soviet.

Right?

He's reading your letters, seeing if you're writing about something, and then by that writing about it, he's maintaining the purity of the group that he's a part of by making sure he kills you out of it.

Do you see what Paul is doing?

So he's walking to Damascus with names in hand, a part of the Jewish community looking to maintain the purity of the Jewish community by getting rid of those parts of it that are starting to dabble in this Christ thing.

So that's why Paul is walking to Damascus.

And then on that road to Damascus, the Lord intervenes and says, Paul, why are you persecuting me?

And Paul says, Lord, who are you?

Why are you persecuting me?

Why can Jesus say me?

Well, the church is his body.

And it is here that the gospel begins to transform Paul's life.

And this one who was zealous for the purity of the community.

This is the shape that I'm trying to communicate without a whiteboard.

You can picture that the community that Paul is a part of, the Jewish community who has the promises of the Lord, right?

They're like this circle with a boundary.

And outside of it is the Gentiles, and they're the unclean.

And he's Paul is seeing this Christ thing is this impurity that's moving into our circle of purity.

And my job is to maintain it.

And so I'm going to go cut out of this all that is impure, and I'm going to push it away.

Now it's that apostle, zealous for this purity, who now realizes the gospel of Jesus Christ means the inclusion of the Gentiles.

And so what does his life then switch to?

He is now outside of this circle of purity, in amongst the Gentiles, calling them into the freely given holiness of God.

And so how why is he imprisoned, do you remember?

Imprisoned by Jesus Christ on behalf of you Gentiles.

The one who is the persecutor of the church, because it looked like a Gentile encroachment into the holiness of God, is now saying the holiness that we longed for is described entirely in Christ.

And this is available to Jew and Gentile only by Christ alone.

So where do we belong?

What is the shape of Paul's story now going to be?

It is bearing suffering so that more might be brought in.

How a purity based on personal holiness meant we have to cut the impure out, but a purity that is based on faith in Christ alone means I will go amongst the impure to draw them in.

It is a total inversion in Paul's life.

And I think that for us, we can't grasp what the inclusion of the Gentiles means without really seeing it through Paul's life story.

It is glorious.

And so he becomes the self-proclaimed, he is the apostle to the Gentiles, suffering on their behalf.

His life takes on the very shape of the gospel.

I mean, it's a it's a it's a perfect picture of it.

Because what does Christ do?

Christ is in the real position of actual holiness with the Godhead, with the Father, Son.

He is the Son, with the Father and the Holy Spirit in perfect holiness.

And what does he do?

He steps into where the sinners are, takes on the sinfulness of people like us.

And in bearing it, he brings us in by faith alone into the holiness of the Trinity, so that we might behold the glory of God.

Paul's life takes on that same shape.

So, how is Paul able to make sense of the suffering that he is a part of?

Well, his whole life is connected to this glorious story of the one who left his holiness, his peaceful lack of suffering to take on suffering out of love to draw others in.

And so Paul's life takes on that very shape.

And this becomes a picture of the ministry of the church.

This is one of those crazy, Paul zooms out to just a huge scale, and he says, So what is the purpose of all of this?

In verse 10, so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.

What does this all demonstrate?

This community that's created.

It's so that through the church, look around.

For real.

In case you're wondering, like what does the church look like?

It just looks like this.

Moderately impressive.

Through the church, the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.

So here's an image.

The church is like film on a projector.

And it's got all these different stories in it, and it's got all these different colors and images and dynamics and flourishes and a soundtrack, you know, that goes along with it.

And the glory of God is like this white light that is shining forth.

And the audience is angels and rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.

It's like Gabriel, who's like, yeah, I talked to Mary, and Michael, who's like, I'm the archangel in charge of all these things.

I don't know what angels do.

And they, but they one thing we know that they do is they behold the glory of God.

Think of Revelation.

And they're what are they shouting forth towards the Lord over and over again?

Holy, holy, holy.

It's happening right now in the heavenly court.

They are beholding the glory of God.

That's one thing we know that angels do.

And they're beholding it as this bright white light that's undifferentiated.

But the film goes in front of that white light and projected onto the walls of the throne room of God.

These angels are seeing these little details of God's glory.

And how are they seeing it?

They're seeing it through the church.

They're beholding the wisdom of God through all these tiny little details that are taking place in the church.

This church.

Not exclusively, just so that you know you're included.

This church, even.

Now look around again.

Where is it, right?

Well, it it looks it looks like this.

It's it's stories it's stories of people who are poor.

And then the angels gaze in and they see they inherit the earth.

It's stories of those who are mourning.

It's stories of the meek.

It's stories of those who are hungry and thirsty for righteousness.

It's stories of those who are merciful.

It's stories of peacemakers.

It's stories of those who are persecuted and reviled for righteousness' sake.

It's stories of husbands who decided to love their wives.

It's stories of children who were raised up to obey the Lord.

It's stories of friends that instead of falling apart reconciled to one another.

It's stories of honesty that came forth into the world even though it was born at great cost.

It's stories of repentance and confession where we agree with what God has done and we agree with our lack of holiness before Him.

All these glorious little stories are there so that God's wondrous wisdom might be shown to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.

A stronger God.

No.

A lesser God.

A lesser God would have said, you know, I'll take all of these broken people and I'll redeem them.

And I'll gather them up into a church.

And it will be a church of these, these, you know, like an like a superman or like a Nietzschean ubermensch, you know, an overman, these wonderful transhumanist people that have all the powers and wonders of the world, and then they will set forth redeeming all of creation, these wonderful people.

But God, the real God, says to this lesser God, what you can do with the strong, I will do with the weak.

You will know my strength because what the joy that you bring with those who can't stop laughing, I will bring into the world by those who mourn.

The goodness that you show in the world by the righteous and the just, I will show by those who merely hunger and thirst for it.

The wisdom of God is shown, and that all the glory He brings is brought by grace alone.

And so Paul's life becomes this incredible part of that story of God's wisdom that the angels look into and say, God is more wondrous than we even knew.

Yes, up here we saw God's incredible justice as he cast out of heaven those who betrayed him.

But here in the story of humanity, we see this, we see this other picture of his unthinkable grace.

As these humans, he becomes one of them, and then in that dies on their behalf so that they might be rescued and spend an eternity in a place like we enjoy.

God is more wonderful than we had possibly imagined.

And what does it result in?

What do the angels say over and over again?

Remember?

Holy, holy, holy.

Why all this gospel thing?

Why Paul bearing up this suffering on behalf of his former enemies?

It's so that the angels might sing louder.

It's so that God might be glorified more.

Why would we bear up suffering in our lives?

Where could we gain the fortitude to do that?

It's by seeing that in this God might be glorified more.

And that the only purpose of all of this suffering might be the demonstration of his wisdom forever.

Now he says, 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.

And we are very unacquainted with the angelic realm, you know, with the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.

But they're there and they're they're real, and we can imagine, and it's it's set up hierarchically.

You know, the Psalms describe that we are made a little bit lower than the angels.

That means there's this hierarchy of existence.

And anyway, we could go.

I was about to talk about Plato, and then I'd be talking to four people.

There's this hierarchy of existence, and we can think of it as this bureaucracy that comes between us and the Lord.

And some faiths become so interested in the hierarchy that they start to treat it like a bureaucracy that comes between them and the Lord.

Uh, some of our Orthodox, uh Eastern Orthodox brothers and sisters treat it that that same way, where it's uh we need a saint who can intercede for us because they can get one step closer up the hierarchy.

We need to appeal to an angel over our city who can move in a particular way for us.

But look at the way that Paul, where's where when we start to understand the hierarchy that we actually exist in as people and realize that we aren't at the top of it, where do we start to see the glory of the gospel shine forth in that?

It's that this was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we were not angels, were not in his court, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him.

We walk past the angelic court, and we walk straight to the throne room, straight to the throne of God because of Christ, and we speak to him, and we pray with these intimate terms, our Father in heaven, and the angels look on and say, What unfettered access they have to the Lord of creation.

How could they possibly, these creatures, weren't they the one, weren't they the sinners?

Weren't they the ones cursed with death?

And yet they walk past with this unfettered access.

He speaks to, they speak to him, and his ear is always open.

This is nothing other than a demonstration of the highest grace of the Lord we could imagine.

That same gospel inversion that took place in the Godhead when Jesus identified with us that we might be brought in to demonstrate his love, that same inversion that took place in Paul's life, where he says, I will embrace the suffering on behalf of my former enemies because of the love with which I am seen.

It's a cosmic inversion.

As the angels are longing to see what takes place in the lives of us creatures from the dirt.

A lesser God would have said, I can do it with the strong.

The true God says, I will show my glory in these sinners.

In churches, like you know, this.

And then when you get it in the story that he's living in, the story of Christ, which is taking place in his life, which is taking place in the angelic realm, how it's transformed what suffering means, how it's brought meaning, eternally significant, demonstrating the glory of God type of meaning.

I don't think we have words that could articulate a meaning higher than demonstrating the glory of God.

This is an ultimate expression.

I'd be open to hear if you would like to postulate something else.

My life could demonstrate, participate in the demonstration of the glory of God in the heavenlies.

This is why Christ's story is the ultimate story.

It is the only thing that takes up that whole frame.

So here's the question.

Are you living in this story as Paul is?

How do you witness your suffering?

Are you enslaved to your terrible boss or are you a prisoner of Christ first?

Which one?

Are you owned by your by your debt or are you owned by the Lord first?

Are you a prisoner of this marriage that never lived up to what you hoped it would?

Or are you prisoner of the Lord first?

This is how we will know what story is it that you're living in?

How do you connect with a story so wonderful as Christ's?

How could you bring a mystery like this into Your life, you can just read it.

It's freely available to you.

This type of glory is made yours by faith alone.

Christ's work is what makes your life meaningful.

It is not a work that you bring to it, it is Christ's work.

So come to him.

Come to him.

All right.

Are there any questions?

Should we be skeptical of persons who claim to have received the same type of new revelation that Paul did?

Yes.

Don't listen to them.

So Paul, and I can prove it from the text.

He says, Oh, 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.

That's a technical term that Paul is using to describe the first century recipients of this revelation of God.

And in those days, God made a particular, God laid a foundation of these apostles and prophets by giving them this revelation.

And then that foundation was given to, was passed down through the generations, not by a replication of the of new personal apostles, but by it being written down and cemented in history.

It's important that Paul says, not by finding your local Christian shaman, you'll be able to perceive the mystery that I'm sharing to you, that I'm sharing with you.

He says, by reading this.

Because Paul is, you know, if you were to walk up to Paul and be like, uh, you're an apostle, he wouldn't be like, no, no, look, we're all the same.

I'm not.

Don't even call me that.

No, Paul is self-consciously an apostle.

And he understands him serving a particular historical role for the establishment of this news of God, which interprets for the church going forward from then on the Christ event, so that we might understand what took place when Jesus came to the world, died, and was resurrected.

What does that mean for us?

So he spends a lot of time defending his apostolic authority.

So in some churches like to use the word apostles, like we're, you know, like an apostolic church.

It's like, you're not.

We haven't had an apostolic church for like 1900 years.

The apostles were a foundation, and foundations are laid ones.

So yes, you should be very skeptical.

In fact, you you don't even really need to be skeptical, you can just know.

You can just be like when someone's like, uh, I have a new revelation, uh, different from what Paul did, then you can say, no, you don't.

So that'll save you some time.

You have an opportunity to participate.

Look, one of the best things that you can do, one of the most countercultural, one of the best things one of the best things that you can do is come to church.

Because you are participating in this glorious picture that is being celebrated by the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.

If you want a life that's formed, begin participating with this story.

Practice once a week, come in fellowship with a body that you Gentiles are included in.

And take and eat this meal of fellowship with the Lord.

You can almost get this image, I don't want to get too weird, but we'll get a little weird.

When you're walking up, right, to feast on what Christ describes as his body and blood, to have an intimate feast, invited to the same table as the Lord, like the disciples were.

I've never eaten dinner.

Can you believe the holiness, the glory of these people?

Weren't these the sinners?

Where every time we show up, we're not even as glorious as him, but every time we show up in the world, they totally freak out.

And there they go, eating with him.

Repent of the sin in your life.

Trust in Christ for your salvation.

Come, partake.

If you are a Christian, come and eat.

If you're not, wait and think.

What story are you using to connect the suffering of your life to meaning?

I promise you it's insufficient if it isn't Christ.

Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians, For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

In the same way also he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

Holy Father, we pray that you would bless this meal, that you would teach our hearts and train our imaginations to receive this glory that you have given to us of table fellowship with the Lord, that your body was broken and that's symbolized in the bread, that your blood was poured out that we might be cleansed, which is shown in the wine.

Lord, that as we participate with this as a community together, we might be proclaiming to the angels in the heavenly places our inclusion into your body by your grace alone.

Lord, make us into a people worthy of that designation.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.