Harbor Presbyterian Church: Carlsbad

 

Harbor Presbyterian Church, Carlsbad (PCA)

Sunday, July 13, 2008

Rev. Darin M. Stone

Ephesians 3:1-13 (ESV) – “The Centrality of the Church”

 

I want to invite you to turn with me in your Bibles to Ephesians 3 and verses 1-13.  We've been making our way through Paul's letter to the church in Ephesus over the past few weeks, and you'll remember that last week, we discovered that in the gospel, Christ has broken down the wall of hostility that existed between himself and the Gentiles.  By grace, through faith, he has done away with the mutual animosity between himself and those were previously without God, without Christ, without his promises, without hope.  But not only has he become reconciled with the Gentiles who receive him through faith.  He has also brought about reconciliation between Jews and Gentiles.  He has reconciled people who were once at odds with one another in every manifestation, and brought them together to be one family, one body, one household, one temple, under Christ. 

 

And so today, Paul is continuing that theme of the centrality of the church in the gospel message and he is going to unpack the implications of that for us in this passage today.  So with that said, let's turn our attention now to the reading of God's word from Galatians 3:1-13:

3:1 For this reason I, Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles— 2 assuming that you have heard of the stewardship of God's grace that was given to me for you, 3 how the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I have written briefly. 4 When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, 5 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. 6 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.

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. 8 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, 9 and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things, 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. 11 This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, 12 in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him. 13 So I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory.

Amen.  The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever.

 

I'm sure many of you are aware of the deep-seated hatred that exists between New York Yankee and Boston Red Sox fans.  Maybe some of you have already heard about this, but at the new Yankee Stadium that's being built, there was a construction worker from the Bronx who was a die-hard Boston Red Sox fan.  And after all the years of Yankee dominance over the Red Sox, he was fully determined to curse the Yankees.  So he went out and purchased a Red Sox jersey and as he was pouring concrete at the ballpark, he added the jersey into the concrete mix so that the Yankees would have the Red Sox curse upon them whenever they played in that new stadium.  But somehow this became public, so another set of construction workers had to jackhammer through the concrete to retrieve the jersey.  And that jersey recently sold at an auction for $175,000! 

 

Folks, it seems to me if a rivalry involves casting a curse and jack hammering through concrete, then there is some serious hatred involved.  

 

Political rivalries, sibling rivalries, rivalries between athletic teams, rivalries in the corporate world are part of the day-to-day experience of our lives.  And if you would have been alive in first century Ephesus, you would have been keenly aware of the rivalry that existed between Jews and Gentiles.  Paul has been talking about something new going on – something unprecedented going on in Ephesus.  Jews and Gentiles – who had been enemies and bitter rivals for generations – were coming together, loving one another, serving one another, worshipping together.  And maybe you're thinking "big deal," but I'm telling you it was huge!  If you've studied politics you know that the only way anything gets done when there is political conflict, at least in this country, is through political compromise.  At the end of the day, no one gets everything they want, but everyone gets something they want.  It's a watered down form of reconciliation, but Paul is saying here that Jews and Gentiles are becoming reconciled with one another and reconciled to God through the work of Christ and the promises of the gospel received through faith.  He says that through the gospel, the two groups have not merely put aside their differences for the time being, but through faith in Christ, they have actually taken on a whole new set of values that have directed both Jew and Gentile in the same direction, toward Christ.  Yes, cultures remained different.  Yes, customs remained different.  Yes, languages remained different, but all of those things were secondary to their union with one another that was brought about because of their union with Christ.

 

So as Paul teasing out several implications of this new community that Christ has created, but I think they can all be summed up under two headings, both of which are in your outline.  One thing Paul is going to zero in on is the mystery of the Christ.  In particular, he is going to show us that one of the main components of this mystery was to remove the double alienation that these Gentiles experienced; that alienation between themselves and the Jews, and between themselves and Christ.  And then secondly, Paul is going to tease out the implications of that mystery for us.  He's going to show us the centrality of the church in accomplishing God's plan.

 

So first, let's take a look at the mystery that Paul has been talking about here.  Now when we think of a mystery, we're probably thinking about something kind of obscure and secretive, right?  We call something mysterious if we can't explain it or can't comprehend it.  And usually the way you figure out a mystery is by unraveling a series of clues along the way.  It's almost like you have to be initiated into the story or into the society and the longer you are there, the more and more clues you are given to unravel the mystery. 

 

This type of thing was common in Paul's day.  Many of the Gentiles in the first century were caught up in what we now call the "mystery religions."  If you adhered to a mystery religion, more and more secrets and clues were revealed along the way.  (Greek system with secret greetings, rituals, etc.)  So the only way you could ever know anything meaningful about the religion is if you were initiated into it.  If you were involved in the religion, you had to be careful about what you revealed to outsiders.  Even if you were inside the religion, you had to be careful about what you revealed to those lower on the religious hierarchy.

 

But Paul here is saying that although the mystery wasn't fully understood in the days of the Old Testament, it's now openly, and clearly, and publicly proclaimed.  It's not a mystery for the spiritual elite.  It's publicly revealed.

 

So what is the mystery of Christ?  Paul tells us in verse six.   He says, "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."  It's the union of these two people – alienated from one another, hostile toward one another – in Christ.  And just to understand what an offensive message this was to Jews who rejected Jesus, you have to understand that Paul was very rarely harassed for preaching that Jesus was the Messiah.  The Jews didn't bother him much for that.  They started to run him out of town, and threaten his life, and throw him in prison for teaching that because Jesus is the Messiah for Jews and Gentiles alike, the Gentiles did not have to become Jews in order to fellowship with God.  They didn't have to become Jews to fellowship with believing Jews.  They didn't have to become circumcised.  They didn't have to obey the ceremonial law because those laws all pointed to and were fulfilled by Christ.  They didn't have to adopt the civil law in Ephesus because God's people were no longer to be united together under a theocracy with an earthly king.  They were now, by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, to be an international, multi-lingual, multi-cultural community with the same hope, the same promises, the same blessings regardless of whether they were Jews or Gentiles, all united under the reign and rule of God. 

 

That's the message that Paul was suffering for.  Paul is suffering for the gospel message that Jew and Gentile have been reconciled to God and to one another, in Christ.  And it shows us just how central the church is in the redemptive plan of God. 

 

Now we live in a time where people, by in large, have a very low view of the church.  This is true of Christians and those who would not consider themselves to be Christians.  We are coming out of the greatest scandal in the history of any church in America with the sex abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church.  But I don't say that to pick on our Catholic friends because abuse and hypocrisy have been apparent in churches of every stripe.  It’s repulsive to people when they see Hilary Clinton espousing a political message from the pulpit on Sunday morning.  It’s repulsive to people when they step into a church and feel as if they had showed up at a right-wing political rally.  Some churches are so awash in commercialism and entertainment that there is little offered there that is different from the shopping mall, the rock concert, and the self-help book section at Barnes and Noble, and that repulses people.  We see people confessing a message on Sunday that they don't even seem to attempt to live during the other six days of the week, and that repulses people.  I could go on, but the point is that there are many who claim Christ and who reject him who do not have a particularly high view of the church.

 

Now, there is no excuse for those things, but one thing you need to keep in mind is that it is a standing Christian doctrine that there is no perfect church out there.  Jesus himself said that the church would struggle with unbelief and hypocrisy until he returns.  Rebecca’s mom always likes to quote Edith Schaffer, the wife of the great theologian, Francis Schaffer, who said, "Those who demand perfection or nothing get nothing."  Folks, the message of the gospel is not that the church is full of all the good people, of all the healthy people, of all the people who have it together.  In fact, the gospel demands that you own your own hypocrisy before you can even know your need for Christ.  The church is the hospital for the broken, the hypocritical, the struggling, the sick, to get well.  Neither Harbor, nor any legitimate Christian church makes any claim at all to be perfect in the way we live our lives.  So don't let what you see as the church's failures keep you from joining.  The only way we are to be declared perfect is not by our merits, but by Christ's merits credited to his people.  And the only way we are to begin to live lives of integrity and godliness is by that same grace.  But we're going to be stumbling all the way to the finish line.  Don't let the church's failures keep you from the church.

 

But here's another thing that needs to be pointed out.  Paul is showing us in this passage that the church is absolutely central to the gospel, it's central to history, and it's central to Christian living.  Paul Kim said this last week, that you are not saved by being in the church, but you are saved into the church, and that is absolutely correct.  Listen.  You cannot be a growing, thriving, Christian if you are not tied into the church.  Period.  That may sound a little radical for our day and age, but that would have been a no brainer for about 1,950 years of church history.  The church is God's discipleship program.  The ordinary means that God causes us to grow occur within the context of the local church.  To withdraw from the church, to make optional not only worship together on the Lord's Day with the Lord's people, but engagement in the life of the church, and to neglect the needs of those within the body of Christ, is to push to the periphery what Christ has placed at the center. 

 

For Paul the church was at the center.  He knew that while he was yet a sinner, Christ died for him, and that because that was true, he was not only saved into Christ, but that he was saved into Christ's people.  He knew that Christ not only died for people.  He died for his people!  For his church.  For his body.  Paul knew that the gospel not only created a new life, but a new society. 

 

He understood that because of grace, God brought him from being the single greatest threat to the spread of Christianity in the first century to giving up his own life to preach what he calls "the unsearchable riches of Christ."  Those riches – which are at the very least, about Christ reconciling sinners to himself and to one another – had weaved their way so deeply in to the fabric of Paul's mind and heart that he was willing to forgo basic comforts in order that the church would be as saturated with that gospel as well.  His satisfaction was in Christ.  His contentment was in Christ.  His peace was in Christ.  His perspective on his own life and future was informed by Christ.  His delight was in Christ.  He could sing, "let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also, the body they may kill, God's truth abideth still, his kingdom is forever," – he could sing that because he knew at least something of the unsearchable riches of Christ, and cared more about Christ, and his gospel, and the implications of that gospel for the sake of the church than anything else in the world.

 

The mystery of Christ, which is now out in the open, is that Jesus came to reconcile his people into himself and into one another.  And that's the message that Paul took delight in proclaiming wand was willing to suffer for.

 

Grace compelled Paul to do that, and at the very least, grace should compel us to delight in the church's worship, to serve her, to care for her, to know her as the dwelling place of God, to invest in her mission.   And folks, I use that word delight on purpose because the whole purpose for which we have been created is to delight in God!  To glorify him by enjoying him.  And on the final day, individuals who have been reconciled to Christ by grace through faith will enjoy him forever without any of the hindrances of brokenness and evil and oppression that we experience in this life.  But guess who those individuals will enjoy him with?  The church.  God's people.  And the church on earth is to be a picture of that.

 

So the church is central to the mystery of Christ in the gospel, but there is a second point that Paul zeros in on here.  Paul wants to show us the plan for the church, and that plan is spelled out in verse 10.  The plan is that the church would display God's wisdom to the heavenly powers.  Now let me take a stab at trying to explain this.

 

Paul is saying that the church's purpose is to not only have their affections stirred up toward God because of what he has accomplished and applied to her in the gospel and to have those affections manifest themselves as light in a dark world and preservative in a decaying world.  He's also saying that the church's purpose is to display this to who he calls the "rulers and authorities in the heavenly places." The church is "Plan A" to bear witness to the beauty of Christ and his gospel to the world and to those rulers and authorities.  There is no "Plan B."

 

Now who are these "rulers and authorities"?  Peter hints that they are angels, and Paul, in Ephesians 6, claims that rulers and authorities can be aligned with the devil.  Now before you pass that off as pre-scientific mythology, you need to ask yourself whether or not all of the advances we've made in science, in medicine, in engineering, in business, in government, have really given us greater control or less control over evil in the world.  Wouldn't you agree that despite all the advances we've made, that evil somehow manages to get its grip on every single human invention?

 

Technology, for instance – cell phones, the internet, e-mail, iPods, text messaging – have in ways made work more simple and efficient.  But they have also caused us tune out of relationships, to have our work with us wherever we are (even if we're on vacation, and now you have work at your fingertips), to cause us to work more, not less, to become even more engrossed in things of short-term value. 

 

Isn't it true that the discovery and use of oil has increased the quality of life of billions across the world and has at the same time become the currency of international blackmail? 

 

Pharmaceutical advancements to relieve nasal congestion have now led to us having to sign our life away to purchase anything containing pseudoephedrine.  It's crazy!  It seems like the advancements we've made give us greater reason to believe in the powers of evil.  

 

And Paul is saying here that the church is to display not only to the world, but even to the celestial powers – whether they be good or evil – we are to display to them just what happens when the gospel takes hold of the hearts of God's people.  Folks, God has put the angels and demons in a graduate school to learn from us what God is like through the way in which people, who may have nothing in the world in common other than Christ, show forth the God's wisdom, his love, his salvation, his grace, his beauty. 

 

And we put those things on display by living with one another as if the dividing wall of hostility had been removed not only between us and Christ, but between one another.  The church is to display that in reflecting the unity that Paul calls for in chapter four and that we'll explore in a couple of weeks.  It is to display what Jesus prayed would be characteristic of the church in John 17.  The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit – the three persons of the Trinity in all of their diversity – dwell with one another in face-to-face communion, and fellowship, and love, and that ought to be reflected in the redeemed community.  It ought to cause Christians from different ethnicities, young and old, Republican and Democrat, rich, middle class, and poor, single and married, high school educated or adorned with a Ph.D.  – it ought to cause all of us to stop defining ourselves primarily by those things – as important as they are – and to start defining ourselves as covered in the kind of grace that reconciles us people together.

 

Now most of us probably agree that we ought to live with one another in this way.  But let me ask you this:  Do you live with others both within this congregation and outside of it in ways that show that you are in need of at least as much grace as the other people need?  In other words, are you humbled by the fact that you are in need of at least as much grace as other believers who are of a different ethnicity than you, or who have different political leanings, or different parenting philosophies, or even different theological viewpoints?  That's not to say that you can't have discussion about these issues – sometimes "lively" discussion – and still disagree.  But it does mean that, especially within the church, you and I are to treat those who differ from us in ways that reflect the character of Christ in us.  It means that we engage with people in love, in humility, in meekness, in gentleness, with grace, with truth, with forgiveness, with mercy.   

 

Folks, isn't that a great thing about the gospel that is so lost on the modern world?  I was at a meeting with a number of other pastors a couple months ago and one of the pastors there was talking about how there are certain issues in the city where he used to minister that are so heated, you can't even talk about those issues with people.  The cultural value of "tolerance" is so intolerant that if you have any measure of disagreement with the "tolerance" folks, you are immediately labeled a bigot, or intolerant.  There's no discussion.

 

But what if we had a church that wasn't about tolerance?  I don't know about you, but I don't want to just be tolerated.  Go home to your family tonight and say, "Family, I just want you to know how much I tolerate you.  In fact, I tolerate you more than anyone in the world.  There is no one I tolerate more than you."  Do that and let me know how that works out for you!  What if we were a church that did not just tolerate one another, but loved one another despite our differences? 

 

What if Asian-American Christians, and Caucasian Christians, and Latino Christians all began to love, and serve, and encourage, and fellowship with one another like family?  

 

What if members of this body could really forgive other members of this body who have wronged them? 

 

What if those who have done others wrong could seek forgiveness? 

 

What about this?  Do you remember that when a child is baptized here at Harbor, those of you who are members of this church are asked to take a vow to assist the parents in the Christian nurture of that child?  What if we were a church that took that vow seriously?  I'm convinced that the message of grace compels us to live with one another in this way.

 

But grace not only compels us to live lives of unity in the midst of all our diversity, but also to live lives of holiness.  The passage we explored last week said that the church is the "household of God" and the "body of Christ" and a "dwelling place for God by the Spirit."  In the next three chapters of this letter, Paul is going to spell out specifically the way grace ought to manifest itself within the church.  We display before the world and before the angelic powers that the Holy Spirit does in fact dwell in Christ's church when we live lives of holiness.  When we live lives that are against the world, yet for the world.  When we conduct business with honesty and integrity.  When we take proactive measures to seek forgiveness from one another and are quick to offer it to those who have wronged us.  When husbands are laying down their lives for their wives – leading them, serving them, loving them like Christ loves his church.  When wives are honoring, and respecting, and submitting to their husbands' headship.  When our sexual lives are brought under the reign and rule of God.  When how you spend your time, how you spend your money, what you value shows that it is God that you supremely value and not your own pleasure pursuits.  

 

And when those things – particularly unity and holiness – are characterizing the life of the local church, the angels will be dumfounded at the power of what God has created.  The demons will have to stop their posturing and shut their mouths at the fact that Jesus, in the cross, has conquered them all and the fruit of that conquest is the church.

 Now you may think that's pie in the sky kind of stuff.  And you may think that a church that looks like that is nowhere to be found, and that all of this sounds great on paper, but it's really just unrealistic.  But my question is, Why does that have to be the case?  Of course we all have our issues, of course we're all a bunch of hypocrites, of course we all have our insecurities and differences, and of course none of this will ever come close to being perfectly expressed, but where does it say that we can't live lives of corporate unity and holiness that surpass our prior experiences? 

 

Folks, I firmly believe that this congregation – Harbor Presbyterian Church in Carlsbad – will display these things not only before the world, but before the heavenly powers, only to the degree that Christ and his gospel takes root in our souls.  We will be a congregation of people that crosses the aisle to love and serve one another only to the degree that you and I understand what Jesus did in crossing the sin barrier for us. 

 

Let me ask you this.  Is there more to be overcome in you loving, and serving, and forgiving one another in the church, or was there more to be overcome in Christ loving, and serving, and forgiving you?  I think you know the answer to the question.  If the good news of the gospel, that "while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us," if that is actually penetrating the membranes of your soul, then it will show in the way in which you and I live our lives and in the bonds of unity that are forged in this congregation.  And it will display before the world and before the angels the beauty and the power of God.

 

And folks, that's important because that message of double reconciliation – with God and with one another – by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, is the only message that any true minister and any true church has to offer.  And if we grasp that message, it will change the way in which we relate to God, it will change the way in which we engage with one another, and it will spill over into our interactions with the world, to his praise.  May God grant that it would be so.  Amen.

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