The Unfathomable Riches of Christ, Eph, 3:8-10
Ephesians 3:8-10 · Vern Peterman · Jan 2, 2005
Ephesians & Colossians, No. 51
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/48262211346445

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

All right, now into our passage here, Ephesians 3 through 10. We've been going through Ephesians and Colossians in parallel. And in order not to get too terribly confused, not too often at the same time. If you're just joining us for the first time here this morning, this is the page number on your handout. So you'll see that page number at the bottom of the page. And you can track with us. Pretty much what you'll see on your handout corresponds with what's the slide up front. occasionally slides up front that aren't on your handout. In that case, if you want to keep the information, write furiously. Okay, last week's passage had a couple of patterns in the last couple of verses, and this passage here also has a pattern, and so we want to take a look at that. The pattern goes like this, and it also shows up on your handout.

Paul starts off here, to me, the very least of all saints, and I put the brackets in there, the parentheses, because it's kind of a parenthetical statement to explain me, not me, Vern, me, Paul, the author. To the very least of all saints, this grace was given, and then follows a couple of points. One, to preach to the Gentiles the unfathomable riches of Christ, and two, to bring to light that which is the administration of the mystery Then the parenthetical statement, which for ages has been hidden in God who created all things. And then the final outcome from that, so that the result being the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.

All right. There's the quick intro. There's the pattern. Now let's look at the detail. In order to do that, we're going to do as we did last week, and look at each verse one at a time, keeping in mind the pattern, right? All right. So to me, this me that he's talking about is Paul, of course. He's referring to himself. And we get the idea from the next phrase that this isn't an egotistical thing at all.

He just wants to be clear. Earlier, he'd made reference to the foundation of the church being the apostles and the channel of revelation, the apostles and prophets here. Here he specifies himself, because he's going to do a little bit of a qualification, he's going to call himself the very least of all saints, and he didn't want to include the rest of the apostles in that description. Now, as he says the very least of all saints, perhaps you're wondering, why does he write that in there?

Why would Paul describe himself in this way? Is this, oh, heaven forbid, is this false humility? Is Paul complaining about his circumstances in prison? Oh, woe is me! Is that his situation? Is Paul trying to pump up sympathy for his dire straits? Is that what's going on? Is Paul just singing the blues here? Is that what's happening? Not really.

You see, there's a background to what Paul is writing, and that's this. As Paul says in Acts, and there's several places where Paul gets to speak before dignitaries and groups of officials, and he confesses openly before them. He says, here I am coming to you because I supported the faith that was passed along through Christ. And he says, I persecuted that faith the way, as he calls it, to the death. He says, I didn't want to just irritate these people. I didn't want to just harass and harangue them. I persecuted them, if necessary, to the point of death.

Get them out of the picture. That was me. I did it. I'm Paul. He continues on in another testimony where he gives more detail, even saying, and we have here in the middle, when they were being put to death, I cast my vote against them. Is it time to put him to death? He says, I've cast my vote against him. And it's almost like this is maximum Paul.

Okay. He said, I was one who persecuted the church. I am, am I a saint? Yes. But I certainly am the least worthy. I once persecuted the church to the point of death. Paul writes to his good friend and the apostolic delegate, Timothy. And he confesses openly to his friend Timothy, I was a blasphemer. I railed against God. And a persecutor. And a violent aggressor. And yet he was shown mercy. Paul makes no bones about the fact that he was guilty of persecuting the church. And that he stood against the very things that God was seeking to accomplish.

And so he summarizes that in this Ephesians 3.8 passage here, the very least of all the saints.

Now he says, this grace was given. That's the phrase that he comes up with here. The key word in this is grace, charis. I think somebody named a baby after that, right? Just recently here. This grace, and remember this word charis was a word that was used in the culture, but never in quite this way. The difference being in the culture, it was a word used for something you did for a friend or a relative, whereas this grace that he makes mention of was for those who were even enemies, those who were opposed. Something else here.

Notice, here he says, this ministry that the Lord has given him, as I have put it here in repetition, it's not a chore, a bore, or a snore, but a grace-given gift. He calls it that after having gone through immense troubles in the process of passing along the gospel. He says it's still, with all the troubles I've been through, the fact that he has been for several years now chained up to a Praetorian guard and under house arrest. In spite of that, he says it's a grace-given gift. This is God's gift. Grace-given. He's preaching to the Gentiles, and I assume that probably includes a good number of us here. He's preaching to the Gentiles, and this word that he uses, it's interesting.

We use the word evangelize, and that's probably a close approximation. The gospel was the noun that he would use. This is the verb form. So one way to bring it across is, he says, to gospelize, okay? Or to be good newsing, okay? It's the gospel in action. It's the verb form. It's bringing it across to people in the action of doing so. Bringing the gospel, preaching the good news to people.

That's what he's spelling out here. For me, he says, to communicate the good news of Jesus Christ to all those, and especially in this case, to the Gentiles. That was his assignment. What is he communicating to them? It goes far beyond, believe and you'll be saved. Is it true, believe and you'll be saved? Certainly, absolutely. It's as simple as that. But he doesn't stop there. Look at what he does. He goes from there to the unfathomable riches of Christ. As we look at that, that's a phrase that we don't want to pass over quickly. The phrase puts its focus upon Christ, but the description is substantial.

Paul has talked, as we've gone through the earlier chapters of Ephesians and Colossians, about riches, and actually the Greek here is better, wealth. It's singular. Wealth. We saw it in the first chapter of Ephesians, the second chapter. Here we're now seeing it in the third, and we're not done. It also shows up in passages we've looked at twice already in Colossians.

These riches, this wealth of Christ, is something that he puts great focus on in both of these books. And one of the things that stands out here, important for us to take a look at, is what is wealth? Wealth is something valuable, isn't it? It's a great quantity of something that's valuable. And that's what he describes Christ as having.

Now, did Christ have all kinds of neat and earthly things? No. He didn't have all kinds of fancy things. He didn't say, hey, the guy with the most toys wins. He didn't collect a lot of them. When the Roman soldiers were parting out his goods, they said, well, he's got a toga or a robe that we can make some use of here, but that's about it.

And so it's not physical and earthly things. Spiritually speaking, the wealth of Christ is immense. And Paul uses this word that comes across in the English as unfathomable, unfathomable riches. Now, think about fathoms, okay? It's usually used in shipping or nautical terms.

And they would often, in those days, they didn't have sonar and things of that sort. So they would oftentimes use rope with knots tied in them. And they'd have soundings to go down and see how deep is the water here. And they would drop the rope down.

What he's saying is, there's no way to measure this. We've got no way. We can't even touch the measurement of this. The unfathomable riches of Christ. And that's the point here. riches, the wealth of Christ, spiritually speaking, is immense. It's beyond human ability to measure it. We have no instrument, we have no way to measure the wealth, the depth of the riches of Christ.

There's no way for us to touch it. How do we know about it then? It's revealed. We're told about it. Now, how long is it going to take us to find out about the magnitude of the wealth of Christ, the spiritual wealth. Ten years? We can stick around for a while, right? No. It's going to take God, who is a far better communicator than me, eternity to communicate that wealth.

As we've said when we were going through Ephesians 2.7, it will be an eternal gasp We will be, and then the next moment, because we will constantly be astounded at the unfathomable riches of Christ.

Now, the focus here is, it's of Christ. It pertains to Him. It's beyond human measurement, but it relates to Him. It's not just, when you get to heaven, we've got a lot of gold bricks for you. It's not, when you get to heaven, the gold streets are really, really wide. No, it pertains to Christ, to Him.

It is all surrounding Him. It is all in relationship to Him. That's where the wealth is. That's where it is. You see, there isn't any other relationship, person, organization, feeling, anything else that pertains to that spiritual wealth. It's of Christ. We are in this world told, hey, you want wealth? It's over here.

It looks like this. Even a number of, I'll call them religious groups, will say, look, we've got the right organization over here. I mean, this is the one. See, here's all our genealogy. Here's all the right connections. We've got the right group. Or, if you come to our place, we'll give you the right feeling.

You're being sold on all kinds of things. At least people out there are. But Paul puts the focus where it counts. And that focus is Christ. That's where it is. It's not in being in the right organization. It's not owning the right things. There is no feeling that you can get that will get you there. It has to do with the very person of Christ, and occupation with Him, of Christ.

Then we get into verse 9, and he says, to bring to light, that is, the King James has, to make see. And you know we use this same term here in our own culture to bring something to light as something that was unknown, kind of dark and obscure, secret maybe. Now it's to bring it out. The Greek word fotizo sounds familiar, like photo, right? The idea is the action of bringing to light. It's not just light, it's bringing something to light where you can see it. where you can understand it.

You say, ah, now I know what that is. Have you ever looked for something and looked and looked and looked and looked and you found it? And you say, ah, now I see it. Now I know where it is. That's what he's talking about here. Bring it out where you know it, you see it. That's what it is, you recognize it. To bring to light is what he's about to describe here. Now, this word administration, or the King James, has the word fellowship there. It's a word we've talked about before, oikonomia. We have our English word economy that is derived from the same word.

We saw it in Ephesians 1.10 and 3.2, just verses before here.

We also saw it as we were in Colossians 1.25. So it's not a word that we've not seen before. It's used in a slightly different way.

And so I want to address that here shortly. The idea in this context is the idea of an ages-long strategy, an approach to management, an approach to dealing with things. God says, here's the whole universe and all the things that I've created and the beings in it. Here's how we're going to deal with those. This is his approach to everything that he's created here.

And one of the points that comes out of this God isn't just randomly spilling the beans. God doesn't say, oops, they found that one out. God doesn't come along and say, well, gee, maybe I ought to let them know about this. God has a strategy in mind for what He is letting us know. What we have in Scripture is not just some sort of a random scrambling of things that just happen to spill out of heaven.

It is explicitly what God has laid out in orderly sequence, according to God's plan. Things are being revealed at the right time. In Galatians 4, Paul lays out, at the right time, as we just observed here a week ago, at the right time, God sent forth His Son. Things have a right timing. Things are done by God's management and administration. He has a strategy for what He's doing.

Now, here's the way the word is used here in Ephesians 1, 10, 3, 2, and now 3, 9. In the first one, it conveys God's management of the old creation, this present physical and spiritual universe. And then in 3, 2, we saw that this word conveys Paul having been given a position of stewardship. So the word has different facets and different contexts.

He's been given a stewardship of the gospel for the sake of the Gentiles. Now, in this context, it's God's ages-long strategy, God's ages-long management of the revealing of spiritual truth. Why? Because you and I need to know what He's revealed. There's a purpose in it. God doesn't just wake up one morning and say, Boy, maybe I ought to tell these folks this. He has a deliberate reason for telling you which you need to know.

One of the questions that I understand came up some weeks back in the position condition class is, in order to, and I might paraphrase it a little differently, but in order to grow, do you need to know? And the answer is yes. And this is exactly what Paul's spelling out.

We need to know this not just to be saved, Being saved is simply a matter of believing the gospel. Do you believe that Jesus Christ died for your sins and was resurrected? Do you believe he's the Son of God? It's as simple as that. That's for salvation.

The rest is for growth. If the Bible were only to get you saved, one page probably ought to do it. But it's not just getting us saved. It's growing. That's the need for knowing. We need to know where we need to grow, and that's what's being spelled out here.

Now we've got this word musterion, and it's a word that's developed almost a mythology around here. I don't understand it. Anyway, don't let that get your attention. Musterion here, this word for mystery, Paul often does, he adapts a word, and we mentioned before, this word musterion is a word that was used in the pagan culture for something that was revealed only to a select group. Paul says, hey, this is something that now is revealed, previously unknown, and we just preach it to everybody. Anybody will listen, okay? So he adapted the word from the culture, but defined it differently. And so what does he do in this context? He spells out the meaning. So they understand his different use of the word.

To bring to light that which for ages has been hidden in God who created all things. That's being now spelled out. That's being laid out before people. Previously unknown, now revealed. All ages have been hidden in God. No hidden moose. For ages has been hidden in God. The phrase in the King James comes across as from the beginning of the world.

You see, there are many things which God could say, you know, they need to know this, they need to know that. Here's all sorts of things that God knows that he could reveal. God knows everything. But God doesn't just say, here, here's all the information about everything. He says, here is what needs to be revealed for these people at this appointed time. That's what you've got. You have in scripture laid out before you, this is what God has revealed at this point in time.

That's why the folks who have been meeting on Saturday night going over the Greek have been doing so. Why? Because it spells out. It helps them to see clearly what has God revealed here in these New Testament documents. It lays out great truths. So that's the reason, not just to study Greek, not just to be Greek geeks, okay? but to learn more deeply what does God's word say.

Then he makes the point it is the God who created all things. He wants to make it abundantly clear. This is the God of the universe, nobody's secondary. This is the one who made everything. That's the one who says, I love that person. sitting next to you in the pew. And I not only will pay the price for his sin, but I want to make him somebody quite different from what he was before, a new creation. And I want him to grow into that position. So we're going to spell that out to them. We're going to let them know.

It's that God who created everything and had a purpose in what he created. This last week there's been a progression of bad news coming out of Asia due to the tsunami and earthquake. It's a horror that seems to get worse by the day as the news rolls out and things progress. It's horrible and yet you look at that, this was not something that God was ignorant of in eternity past. This thing didn't happen and God's looking at the TV screen and saying, my heavens, look at what just took place. God has a purpose in all that takes place in our lives, particularly as we look at what's happening.

A great many of the people who are impacted by this recent earthquake and tsunami are Muslim, are Hindu, are Buddhist, If they're Muslim, then they'll say it's Allah's will. Many of the people in Indonesia are Muslim. In India, Hindu. And in some of the other places around Thailand, Buddhist. To them, they would say, quite likely, well, it's just karma. Reincarnation will fix this over multiple reincarnations. And it's just karma.

Ultimately, There is no real sense in what took place. You cannot know. The believer, however, is told in Scripture. This is why things happen. Not explicitly every particular thing, but we know that God has a purpose for it. We know that we are being conformed to the image of Christ. There is a purpose that God has in everything taking place in our lives. That conformity is not an incidental purpose.

It is the God who created everything, who is aware of all these things that happen. That's the one who had this plan for the ages, and you're in it. And you're included. You personally are in it. Now, God is the one who brought everything about, as we saw in Colossians chapter 1, and you can also read in John 1-3, everything about through Jesus Christ. Created heaven and earth. God has brought everything about into existence and he has a strategy for it all. He has a strategy for us to understand what he's doing.

Now, this next verse, I'm going to warn you, this next verse could blow your circuits. Your mental circuitry just could be over the top. So if you get any hot circuits, we'll just try to keep it cooled off or whatever and deal with it. But I just want to warn you, because this is kind of a mind-boggling verse. It's not that it's technically difficult. No, that's not the point. Spiritually, from a spiritual perspective, however, it's really something. Let's take a look at it.

He's told us in verses 8 and 9 what his big strategy is, and now he's going to tell us a so-that. This is the outcome and the result. And this is the part that might be a tad puzzling. This verse tells us the outcome of the prior two verses. It's a description of a revelation not being made to us as the end result, but being made through us.

Now, Scripture is done being written. It was done when John let the ink dry on the book of Revelation. But God is still revealing something through you. If you're a believer here today, you are a part of the Church, and you are an instrument of God for His purpose we're going to take a look at. Not to us as an end result, but through us. God has told us through Paul up to this point what He's done, but now He tells us this possibly unexpected outcome. Now, you've got the manifold wisdom of God is the next phrase that pops up here.

Now, you see that? Isn't that cool? I think that's cool. That's pretty cool, too, but the other one was kind of neat. You're probably asking, why is Bernice showing all these polka dots? Okay, well, good question. I'm glad you thought of it. Alright, the reason is, here's this word that he uses, polypoikilos is the combination word, okay? Paulou Poikilas, that word Poikilas is the source of our word polka dots. And you've also run across that.

James gets through writing, you start in the book of James and he gets through writing the first verse. He says, Hi, I'm James. Okay. And the next verse, what does he say? Rejoice when you encounter various, Poikilas. Okay. Various. That's the same root there. Many and varied is the idea. And we use it also in our language poly, to mean many. So this is many and varied.

God's wisdom is not simplistic. God's wisdom includes all the different aspects of things. God does not look at things from a simplistic, simplified understanding. Ever seen these books that are such and such for complete dummies? I knew one fellow that said, I don't know anything about cars, but he went and overhauled his Volkswagen because he had one of those booked for complete dummies. Well, that might be all right for Volkswagens. God's not running things that way. God has many varied wisdom. God has a multiplicity of understandings.

He fully understands things. Have you ever been through something and you did something and then afterwards you'd wish you'd known something else? Ever had that happen? Boy, I wish I had known. God doesn't do that. God has knowledge and wisdom, not just the knowledge itself. Computers have all sorts of knowledge. But wisdom, insight, understanding. And God's insight and understanding is not simplistic. God doesn't say, you know, how to save the universe for dummies. He doesn't operate with that book. that it might be made known.

We're now in a time in which things that are revealed were previously unknown. We have things made known to us. Scripture is laid out. We have the whole of Scripture and so we have a great number of things laid out for us. We're told truths that God is determined to reveal. God is the one who makes things known.

It was based on his strategy. This is the strategy I had at the outset. This is exactly what I had in mind. He says, I determined long ago to have these people at Holly Hills hear these truths. I determined long ago to lay these things out in scripture so that these people could know, not just to know, not just to be eggheads, but to grow. This has a really amazing direction. Let's take a look at that. This last phrase, and I just decided to go ahead and underline the last half of the verse there. Through the church to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.

Now, here is, and I call this the hyper-cosmic revelation. Don't let that blow your circuits, that's not the intent. The idea is here is a revelation that goes beyond just Here's the universe, and it gives three examples. This is a revelation that includes everything that we see and everything we don't see.

And it goes this way. There's a revelation to the church consisting of Jews and Gentiles through the apostles, to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. That's the sequence. We saw the us, the church, earlier in Ephesians, the last part of chapter 2 and the beginning of chapter 3, what we've seen up until now. And then the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places, you might be thinking, well, what are those? And those are angelic creatures, spelled out as we've seen in Ephesians already a few times, and we'll see again. So these are angelic creatures.

This is the sequence. There is revelation to the church and then through the church to these beings. So here's the sequence, the way it comes out. God reveals, as we've seen in the first part of chapter 3, to the apostles and prophets. That revelation then is carried from them to the church, and then, in this verse, to angelic beings. That's God's revelation sequence. Now that, we've got to put some thought to here.

The sequence of revelation has the outcome that these angelic beings are learning by what they see God doing in the church. How about that? They're learning by what they see God doing in the church. What are they learning about? Not just facts and figures and information. They're learning about the character of God.

Now, 1 Peter gives us a clue. The ladies who are studying this, what was that last year? Noted in verse 12 of 1 Peter chapter 1, There are things which the angels long to look into. The angels are not just disinterested and occasionally told, hey, go down and do this on earth, and they do it and then come back to heaven and say, okay, what's next? They have an interest in what is going on here through us, in us.

God is doing unique things in the church. Can you imagine? Angels do not see among angels salvation. We are the ones who show the grace of God in our lives. We teach the angels by the way God has dealt with us. We teach the angels about the character of God. Amazing. The revelation to us is through the person of Jesus Christ and the scriptures. The revelation to the angels is through us. That is amazing. Think about it.

What kinds of things do angels like to learn about? When you go to angel college, what classes do you take? What do you sign up for? Let's think about this a minute here. The angels, when they go to angel college, do they take flying 101? How about brightness 1A? Or perhaps a specialty course, once you've gotten beyond the core courses, you know what I mean. how to angelically scare the daylights out of people at night, or how to announce really big events to very lowly shepherds. That would be the sort of thing angels might take classes in. They might need special classes for that sort of thing. Now, look at what's on the screen here. What do they see? Us. As they're looking here on planet Earth, They're saying, what do we study?

What does God have us looking at? God has us looking at these people in the church, bats. Those are the people God hasn't studied. God has them looking at us. We have God's Word. We have Jesus Christ as a revelation to us. We don't have any information that the angels have quite that same story. What do we have here? The angels are looking to us to learn about God. Amazing, amazing thought.

We think that we're just going through life doing what we're doing, and we come to church and we sing some songs and what not, and God's all the while saying, angels, I want you to look very carefully Because what can be known about me, you're going to see in those people. God's marvelous grace.

You're going to see my holiness. You're going to see my justice. You're going to see the character of me through those people walking on planet earth, but seated in the heavenlies. We think we're just gathering here, you know, we come into the building and we leave and things of that sort. But the reality is that the things that we're doing here are all things that the Lord is saying, that's exactly what I want you angels to look at. I want you angels to study this carefully, because as you look at these people whom I have saved, you're going to learn far more than any other approach I could give you. So these little gatherings that we have, these interactions that we have here, are not simply just human-level interactions that end here. The impact is not just on us. The people sitting here this morning that have put their trust in Jesus Christ, and are part of the body of Christ, and are seated with him in the heavenlies, are the people that they're told to look at.

You're the revelation. Isn't that amazing? Phenomenal to think of. Yes. Okay, so as we look at this sequence, what's happening is we see that we're not the end deposit for the truth that's been laid out. We are indeed given the truth on a purpose, and it is indeed for our benefit, but God has a far bigger picture in mind. It is all to the glory of God. It is all to the glory of God. And God has determined from eternity past that the best way to show these angelic creatures, because God doesn't choose anything but optimum here, the best way to show these angelic creatures God's character, spelled out, is through you and me. And that is amazing. I don't know about you, but that gets close to blowing my circuits. That's pretty phenomenal stuff to think about. You are a walking, talking, living lesson. You're angel 101. And also the advanced courses too. Let's pray.

Lord, as we look at these marvelous truths here, how amazing to see that though you have done everything that we might be saved, that we might be in your new creation, in you. You have done everything, Lord, that we might grow and that you might spend eternity revealing the riches in Christ. How mind-boggling for us to realize that we are the textbook of your character to the angelic creatures. creatures without number, that we will one day be called to judge how phenomenal a truth. Thank you for it. In Jesus' name, amen.