Nothing to say, yet
Transcription
The speaker is discussing the Book of Ephesians, one of the prison epistles written by the Apostle Paul. Paul wrote this letter while he was in house arrest in Rome, where he had been for a couple of years. He had been preaching and sharing the gospel with the Roman soldiers who were guarding him, and the gospel had even reached the household of Caesar. The Book of Ephesians is unique because Paul had pastored in the city of Ephesus for three years and two months. He had to leave Ephesus due to an uprising led by an idol maker named Demetrius. Paul wrote this letter to the Ephesians to remind them of the teachings he had shared with them during his time as their pastor. The letter is divided into three parts: the omniscience of God, practical application of Christian living, and standing against the devil. The speaker plans to read and analyze the first chapter of Ephesians. Good morning to you all. If you have your Bible, open them to the Book of Ephesians, one of the four prison epistles that the Apostle Paul wrote from the city of Rome when he was in house arrest the first time after the fourth missionary journey on his way to Rome, and was there in house arrest for a couple of years, during which time he wrote in the Book of Romans, as we set it out many weeks ago, the gospel has even gotten into the house of Caesar, which meant that all of the Roman soldiers who had been chained to him 24-7 who were billeted in the praetorium, which was the home of the armed guard for the Caesar, always the praetorium was the place where the soldiers stayed who guarded Caesar, and these were coming out of the praetorium and they were being chained to Paul 24-7 on three different shifts, and Paul was talking to them, of course, and sharing with them Christ, and winning all of them to the Lord to such an extent that the gospel was getting into the household of Caesar, and he reported that in the Book of Romans. Now, the interesting thing about the Book of Ephesians is you've got to remember that Paul pastored in the city of Ephesus for three years and two months. He would have stayed longer had it not been for an uprising that was led by an idol maker by the name of Demetrius who was building idols of Diana, our archivist, the goddess of hunting, and the goddess of the city of Ephesians, and he was building these beautiful silver idols of them, and of course, Paul was leading many, many, many people to the Lord in the city of Ephesus, and when they were won to the Lord, they stopped buying idols. Isn't that interesting? And now all of a sudden, the business of this idol maker started going down the tube, and he got the whole city in an uproar and brought the entire city to that beautiful theater that would hold 125,000 people, and had it not been for that uproar, and had it not been for that particular activity, Paul may have stayed in Ephesus longer, but because of that, the leaders of the church in Ephesus would not allow him to come to the theater, because they knew, and this is all in the book of Acts, by the way, if you want to read the story about it, it's in the book of Acts, and they wouldn't let him come to the theater for fear that if he came to the theater, they would have killed him, and they would have, and in fact, one of the city fathers who came to the theater who had been won to the Lord, even he was beat up by the crowd, being one of the city fathers, and so you can imagine what would have happened to Paul if he had come to the theater, so they kept him from coming, and because of that, they encouraged him to leave the city of Ephesus, and so he left the city of Ephesus and started what we know to be the third missionary journey, going backwards, getting back to Jerusalem in time for, he had a very important situation that he had to be there in the city of Jerusalem, so he made his way back to the city of Jerusalem, and it was there in the city of Jerusalem then when he was arrested, and that's when he appealed to Caesar later on, on the fourth missionary journey, he was sent to Rome, he went to Rome not as he thought he'd go to Rome, he went to Rome as a prisoner, and yet he was in the city of Rome, and while he was there, he wrote to four churches, he wrote to this church in Ephesus, he wrote to the church at Colossae, he wrote to the church in Philippi, and he also wrote to a man by the name of Philemon, who was in the church at Colossae, and so he wrote four letters, or four epistles, from house arrest in the city of Rome, three to churches and one to this gentleman by the name of Philemon. Now, the interesting thing about Paul's writing to the Ephesians, this letter does not start like any of his other letters, because he knows these people, he had been their pastor for three years and two months, he had preached to them, he had shared with them, he had lived with them, he had been in the city of Ephesus, so when he's writing back to them, he doesn't start the letter as he writes to the people in Philippi, and as we come to study the letter to the Philippians in four or five weeks, you'll see how he starts that letter, nor does he start this letter like he starts the book to Colossae, because he has not seen the people in Colossae, in fact, as far as we can tell, the Apostle Paul never went to the city of Colossae, like he had never gone to the city of Rome until he went there as a prisoner, and so many of these churches to which Paul was writing, many of the times he had never seen the people in these churches, and so he would write them a little different way than he would write to a group of people that he had pastored for two years and three months, and so what you're seeing here is, you're seeing a letter coming to these people from the city of Rome, letting them know that their pastor, their former pastor, is okay, he's all right, he's not being abused, he is under house arrest, and he does have a Roman soldier with him 24-7, but he's okay, and he has missionary friends there with him, and people can bring him food, and they can bring him sustenance, they can bring him money if they need it, and so Paul is being cared for, and he's writing back to the church in Ephesus basically to give them a lesson on what he had taught them so wonderfully well when he was there as pastor, and that is, he's going to write them a lesson again on the omniscience of eternal God, and he's going to tell them again what he preached to them, and sort of like the pastor who, they asked him one day, Jim, they said, how do you preach? He said, well, here's the way I preach, I tell them what I want to tell them, then I tell them, then I tell them what I told them, and so he said, this is what Paul's getting ready to do, he said, now I told you this before, and I'm going to tell you again, and then I'm going to tell you again what I told you, and so he's getting ready to tell them again what he told them about the omniscience of God when he was the pastor in the city of Ephesus, and now when I talk about the omniscience of God, as I said last week, this book is divided into three parts. Chapter one through three is on the omniscience of eternal God. Chapter four and five is on how practical application that the apostle Paul again reminds the people in the city of Ephesus how they are to walk, and that word, by the way, anytime you see the word walk in scriptural text, you can put lifestyle or manner of living. Anytime you see the word walk, this is how we live, our manner of living, it's our walk, and so anytime the apostle Paul mentions the word walk, he's talking about your manner of living, how you're living, how are you living this out, and so in chapter four and five, he's going to tell them about how to live out what he's taught them in chapters one through three, the omniscience of God. How do you live out the omniscience of God? Well, he's going to tell them. You do it not as Gentiles, you walk in love, you walk in light, you walk circumspectly, and that's the way you live, and so he's going to tell them in chapter four and five how they are to live it out, and then chapter six, he's going to tell them how to stand, how to stand against the wiles of the devil, and he has taught them all of this when he was the pastor here, and now he's coming back to tell them again what he told them so he could tell them what he told them again, and so that's the way we talk to people. I want to read this passage totally today. I want you to hear it because it looks like I'm going to start this. By the way, this little passage, chapter one has about 24, 25 verses, I think. Yeah, it has 22, and I'm going to try to do 14 today if I can get that far, and then we'll have a hiatus next week when we have the transgender study, and then I'll pick up the next time, and I'll finish chapter one, and then probably Brother Jim will pick up chapter two after I finish with chapter one, after we finish the transgender study next week, so I'll do this one beginning today, and since I have two Sundays to do it in, I don't have to hurry, so I can take my time, and I can tell you what I want to tell you, okay, so I can tell you what I want to tell you, so the Apostle Paul says in the first verse, Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God. Now, that's an interesting statement. The Apostle Paul was not chosen by Christ when Christ was here on the earth. He was not an apostle chosen by Christ. All the rest of them were. Peter, James, John, Bartholomew, Andrew, Matthew, they were all called in person by Christ, but Paul says in the book of Romans and in other places, I was an apostle chosen out of due time, and so what he's saying is, I was chosen by Christ, but I was not chosen as the other apostles were here on earth. I met Christ on the road to Damascus, and I was chosen in a vision on the road to Damascus by the Lord Christ who was standing up there looking at me and saying to me, Paul, why do you want to kick against the goats? Why do you want to persecute me? And at that moment, Paul made a confession of faith. He said, who are you, Lord? Now, you cannot say that word to eternal Christ unless you are saying who he is, and Paul here is identifying in his first statement on the road to Damascus that Jesus Christ is Lord, and so he says, Lord, who are you, Lord? And Jesus said, I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. Don't you know that it is difficult for you to kick against the goats? Now, that's an old agricultural statement. I'm not going to mess with that one right now, and so he said, then Paul says to him, Lord, again, what will you have me to do? So in this statement, Paul identifies Jesus Christ as his Lord twice, and so he says, I am an apostle out of due time. I was not chosen while Christ was here on the earth. I was chosen out of due time. So he says, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God. I was made an apostle by the will of God, not here on earth when Christ was here. The saints who are in Ephesus and faithful in Christ Jesus, grace be unto you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. By the way, this salutation is Paul's salutation. In every one of his letters, in the first verses, either first four or five or six verses, you're going to see these two words, grace and peace. By the way, grace is karees, peace is eirene. We get two ladies' names from it. Karees, we get the name Grace, and we name a number of young ladies Grace. We also, from peace, we get the name Eirene, and we have girls who are named Irene. If you know anybody who's named Irene, then that name comes from Eirene, which means that she is a peaceful woman or has a temperament and a characteristic of peace. So they named her Irene, and we get that from the word Eirene. Paul says that every time, grace and peace be unto you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Now right here, the apostle Paul is getting ready to go into three magnificent standards of the omniscience of God. Stanzas. Did you hear that word? Do you know what a stanza is? A stanza is a verse of a psalm. A stanza is a verse of a poem. A stanza is a verse of something somewhere, and you're getting ready to hear three magnificent stanzas that Paul's going to write these people. Now, there are some theologians who are outstandingly skilled in musicology and in hymnology. And of course, having been in music, I have read a lot of hymnology, and I have read a lot of musicology. And most all of these outstanding theologians who have written commentaries, most of them, in fact the majority of them, agree that these three stanzas at one time in the church could have been a first century gospel song. They agree. Now, I said the word gospel song or gospel message. There are three kinds of music that the Apostle Paul identifies in the book of Ephesians. He identifies it in the fifth chapter of the 19th verse. And in the fifth chapter of the 19th verse, he says, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, making melody in your heart unto God. Now, Paul uses those three on more than one occasion. He uses it here in the book of Ephesians, chapter 5, verse 19. And so there were in his day three kinds of music evidently that was being used in the church. Of course, they would continue to sing the psalms. That was a Hebrew background, and these were beautiful poetic pieces of music. And by the way, all the psalms are pieces of music. In fact, if you read through the psalms, you'll run into a little word every now and then that says for you to pause. And that means to stop and take a breath and start singing the song again. And so the psalms are music. So he says psalms, and then we understand hymns. A hymn is a piece of music that does not have a chorus. All hail the power of Jesus' name. Let angels prostrate fall. It does not have a chorus. Holy, holy, holy Lord God Almighty. It does not have a chorus. A Christian song that does not have a chorus is a hymn. A psalm is different from a hymn, and a gospel song is different from a hymn. A gospel song has a chorus. Would you be free from your burden of sin? There's power in the blood. And then you get to the end, you say, there is power, power, wonder-working power, you know? And you've got a chorus. So anytime you're singing a song with a chorus, you're singing a gospel song, or you could call it a gospel tune. And so the Apostle Paul here has put in basically enough information in these three standards to make them a gospel hymn, a gospel song. Because at the end of each, you have a chorus. I'll show you in a minute. And that chorus simply says, to the praise of the glory of his grace. And then later on, before you get to the middle of chapter two, he says again, to the praise of his glory. And as you get to the end of verse 14, he says to the praise of the glory. Three times he repeats a chorus. And it looks like maybe this was a gospel song that they used in the church based on Paul's great teaching of the omniscience of God. Now I'm going to read this, and I want you to listen. Paul is first of all going to talk about God the Father. He's going to do a Trinitarian. And then he's going to talk about God the Son. And then he's going to talk about God the Holy Spirit. And he, in each of these three, will remind these Ephesian Christians about the omniscience of eternal God, the omniscience of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the omniscience of the Holy Spirit of God. Each of whom are three in one, each of whom are separate, each of whom have all the same qualities, each of these three are omniscient. They're omnipresent. They're omnipodevolent. They're omnipotent. They're all the same. They're three in one. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. And now you will hear the three in this particular statement when he starts off with eternal God. Beginning in verse three, listen to what he says about God. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places, just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace. End of stanza. Now look at verse seven. Now he starts talking about the omniscience of Jesus Christ. He has just told you about the omniscience of God the Father. Now he's getting ready to talk, and we're going to go back and look at all of these, because we too need to go back and look at them. And so in verse seven he says, in him, Jesus Christ, in him we have redemption through his blood. Now you make that assumption here. If this him is Jesus Christ, it is his blood in whom we have redemption. So we know that he's talking about Christ here. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace, according to unmerited favor, which he made abound to us in all wisdom and intelligence and understanding, having made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in himself, that in the dispensation of the fullness of times, he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are in earth, in him and in whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of him, who works all things according to the counsel of his will, that we who first trusted in him should be to the praise of his glory. End of chapter two. Now he starts talking about the Holy Spirit. Watch what he says about the omniscience of the Holy Spirit. Now he starts off and says, in him you also trusted after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, whom also having believed you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the guarantee, the arroban, the down payment, the surety, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, and the end of verse three, to the praise of his glory. Now isn't it interesting that at the end of each of these three statements of the omniscience of God, the omniscience of Christ, and the omniscience of the Holy Spirit, he says at the end of each of them, to the praise of the glory, to the praise of the glory of his grace, to the praise of his glory. Now, whether or not it was a New Testament hymn, I don't know. But it certainly has all the characteristics of New Testament hymnology, and it certainly has all of the necessities that would make it a hymn, being both verse and chorus. And so it has the looks of a first century hymn. By the way, there are a couple of first century hymns in the New Testament. There's one in Timothy, and one day, in fact, next week when I come back again, I'll show you the hymn in Timothy. There is a hymn in the book of Timothy as well, when they wrote a hymn and sang it in the church. Now let's begin to look at what God the Father did. The interesting thing that we begin to understand about what he says about the Blessed Father, God the Father, God the Holy Spirit, is that he has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places. Now, this word, heavenly places, will appear four times in this letter. You will see that word, in heavenly places, four times in the letter. I will show it to you as Dr. Kim and I go through. We'll show it to you. It does not appear anywhere else in the entire Bible. This is the only place that it appears. And Paul is wanting us to understand that God isn't waiting for you to die, or for you to be resurrected, or for you to be raptured. God isn't waiting to put you in heavenly places until you are no longer here. The truth of the matter is, what God has done here is, he has blessed us right now, in this dispensation, in this present world, in this present part of eternity. We are in eternity present. Are you with me? We were saved in eternity past. We were identified, we were chosen, we were elected by God in eternity past. We are living today, with the Lord Christ, in heavenly places. Now, watch. You know what's interesting about the human mind? You can be sitting here, in this class, listening to me, and your mind can be zooming across the universe, out into the eons of eons, and it can just go zooming out there, picking up anything you want to pick up about eternal God. That's a gift. That's a gift of eternal life through Jesus Christ the Lord, which was given to you, not for you to wait until you die to get it. The gift of eternal life, and the gift of the knowledge of Jesus Christ, and the Father, and the Holy Spirit, was given to you on the day you were saved, and on the day you were saved, he put you in heavenly places. And you are now, as his children, sitting in heavenly places with all of the other saints of eternity, and we are presently today sitting in heavenly places with Christ Jesus, ladies and gentlemen. You're not waiting to sit there. You're already sitting there. Now, it's kind of interesting. The Bible is very astute about positions, physical positions. And if you read the Bible carefully, and if you read history carefully, you will come to understand, as we have in the Bible, and also in history, that royalty, and those who are of royal blood, and those who are of kingly nature, when they're with their particular king in his place, they never stand, they always sit. Let me give you a for instance. Paul was in prison down in Caesarea Maritima, the Caesarea by the sea. And the governor, Felix, had a buddy, and his buddy was a king, and his buddy was King Herod Agrippa. And his buddy was living with his half-sister-in-sin, Bernice, and there was a lot of trouble in that in that family. And one day, Paul told Felix, I appeal to Caesar. Now, Paul was a Roman citizen, which meant that he had the privilege and opportunity to appeal to Caesar if he chose to. But if you ever appeal to Caesar, it cannot be turned around. It cannot be reversed. It's sort of like the law of the Medes and the Persians. You remember the law of the Medes and the Persians? You remember in the book of Esther, when King Arxerxes made the law that on a given day, all the Jews were going to die, because he had a black hat guy who caused him to do it? And Esther said to her Uncle Mordecai, I'll go in and talk to him, and if I die, I die. You remember that great scripture? And she went in and talked to the king, and he could not, he said, Esther, you understand the law of the Medes and the Persians. Once you make a law, you can't reverse it. It's the same thing here. Once you make a law, you can't reverse it. And so the same thing is true about what's happening here, is that law is taking place here. And so what happened was Paul appealed to Caesar. And once having appealed to Caesar, he could not reverse it. He had to go to Rome. Of course, he thought he'd be going to Rome on a pleasure boat, but he went to Rome on a galley, a slave galley. But anyway, he made that decision to go see Caesar. So he appealed to Caesar. And he told him, he said, I'm going to appeal to Caesar. I want to appeal to him, and could not reverse it, ever. And so what Paul is saying here is the same kind of thing. Now, when the king came to visit Felix in Caesarea, they met in a building that had, I think it appeared to have like balcony stands, or it may have had field seats. It was some kind of a building. And when Felix and King Herod Agrippa and Bernice came in, everybody stood up. And all of the royalty came in and they sat down and everybody sat down who were royalty. Everyone else stood. And they brought Paul in front of King Herod Agrippa in his chains. And Paul had an opportunity to share Christ with King Herod Agrippa. And you remember what he said to King Herod Agrippa at the end of his testimony. He said, King Herod Agrippa, I know you understand what I've told you. To which King Herod Agrippa said to him, Paul, do you think in one session you are going to convince me to be like you? Now, you remember King Herod Agrippa sitting down, Paul is standing. He's royalty, Paul is not. And Paul looks at King Herod Agrippa and I love what he says. He says, King Herod Agrippa, whether soon or late, yes, I would like for you to be like me except for these chains. You remember? Now they were sitting. Now, here we're back to where we are here. He has caused us to sit in heavenly places in Christ. If he has caused you in your eternity present to understand something that we need to understand and know, and that understanding is, we need to be sure that we understand that we have royal blood flowing through us. That we have the royalty of Jesus Christ flowing through us. How was that royalty given to us? It was given to us later on, which will be mentioned in here when we talk about Christ, when it talks about God the Father adopted us. And when you adopt someone, although they may not have the same blood running through their veins, that adoption makes them of the same nature of the person who adopted them. And so what he's talking about here, sitting in heavenly places, ladies and gentlemen, we are in heavenly places every moment of every day, everywhere we are. We are sitting in the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ, the redeemer of all the world, and God the Father, the eternal creator, and the Holy Spirit, who is our Holy One, and we are in his presence, and we are sitting in heavenly places. Now, that'll be said four times about us sitting in heavenly places. Because why are we sitting in heavenly places? Because he has chosen you. He has elected you. It says he chose us in him, in God. He chose us in himself. And God chose you in himself, before the foundation of the world, in order that we might be the following, holy, without blame, before him, in love. And so we are in heavenly places in Christ Jesus because God the Father chose us and put us in that place. You did not choose him, he chose you. You did not ask for redemption, God offered redemption. God is the chooser, we are the receiver. And he has chosen us because he did predestine that choice for all of us to become sons, to be adopted. And in fact, it says in verse 5, having predestined us to adoption by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the pleasure of his will. So all of the heavenly places are given to us because we have been adopted. You cannot reverse adoption. In fact, do you know that in the state of Texas, if you have children who are adopted and there's a legal child in the family, if you want to unadopt one of the adopted children, you have to also unadopt the legal child. That was also true in the Roman Empire, is also true during this particular time. When a person was adopted, that person was legally theirs and to be unadopted, you had to unadopt. What I'm saying is that if God was going to unadopt you as his beloved believer, he would first have to unadopt Jesus Christ. I don't think he would do that. I don't think he would unadopt Jesus Christ. I think he would keep us in our adoption. So God the Father, in his omniscience, not only chose us, but he adopted us in Christ Jesus. That's what makes it so wonderfully real that we are adopted in Christ Jesus. And all of it is to the praise of his glory. And so we pause for a moment. It's like the psalm, Selah. It means stop and take a breath and think for a minute. Selah. Just think what I just said. Right here. Ladies and gentlemen, does it ever dawn on you? Does it ever really come into your heart and mind that you are every moment of every day, every instant of every minute, every molecule of your body is sitting every moment in the presence of Jesus Christ? He's here. Either Christ is here or this book is a lie. And we know the book's not a lie. Because it says where two or three of you are gathered in my name, what did Jesus say? There I am also. I mean, I'm not telling you that he's here. He said he's here. So if two or three of us are gathered in his name, guess who is here? And guess where we're sitting if he's here? You see how that word works back? So if we are in his presence and we are every moment of every day, and if two or three are gathered in his name, he is there. If we are in his presence, we are in the omniscience of God and we are with him in heavenly places. In Christ Jesus. See? Now that's what God did for you. He chose you. He predestined you. He adopted you in Christ. That's very important. You are adopted in Christ to the praise of his glory. All of that to the praise of his glory. Now look what it says in verse seven. In him. Now we're going to start talking about Christ. It says in him, we have redemption through his blood. Who is the pronoun him? In him. Who's the pronoun? Jesus Christ. So we can just as easily said in Jesus Christ, we have redemption through his blood. The forgiveness of our sins, according to the unmerited favor of his love. As we often say, ladies and gentlemen, there's only one thing that any of us deserve. And that's hell. That's the only thing that any of us deserve. If God lifted us and said, what makes you qualified to come in here? There would be nothing. The only thing that qualifies us to come into his house is that we're a brother to his kid. And when we become a brother to his kid, Jesus Christ, who in John 316 said, for God so loved the world that he gave his only one of a kind, his only begotten son. He gave Jesus Christ the only one of a kind so that anybody believing in him would never, ever, ever perish, including throughout all eternity. Now that doesn't mean you're not going to die. Yeah, you're going to die, but you're not going to perish. Your life is in Christ. We are sitting with him in heavenly places. We're with him in heavenly places. We are going with him to heavenly places and we shall abide with him in heavenly places. We're always with him in heavenly places. And so since we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sin, according to the riches of his unmerited favor, grace, which he made, now watch this word, to be overflowing to you, abounding. In fact, every moment of every day, the Lord God and our brother Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, who is our infiller, our enabler, our encourager, are constantly abounding to us in love. He never stops at loving us. He's always abounding. It's that kind of thing. It's a spigot that you can't turn off. It's a spigot that keeps running all the time. It abounds. So he is abounding toward us in wisdom and in intelligence. Now, this wisdom is the word sophia. That's the word for wisdom. Philosophia, which we say philosophy. Philosophia is, philo is love. Remember phileo, agape, phileo, and eros. Phileo is love. Phileo is love. Sophia, the love of wisdom. Philosophia, the love of wisdom. And so he says he has filled us with the love of wisdom. He's filled us with his love and with all of the intelligence, and he has done something that was never done before. He has shown us the mystery of his will. Now, folks, I love to read mysteries. Barbara's shaking her head back here. My library is full of mysteries. I have a favorite reader. He wrote mysteries back in the 30s and the 40s, and all of his mysteries are war mysteries. I love war mysteries. You know, a mystery is not something that's not known. A mystery is known. It's just that you may have to wait to get to the place where you know what it is. But, I mean, you know, somebody that's writing knows the mystery, right? Because eventually they're going to tell you what the mystery is. So if a mystery is out there, you can't say, well, it's not known, because it is known. Somebody's going to tell you what it is. And so in the mystery of a book, we always wait and we get to the end and say, I knew the butler did it. You know, that's what everybody says. I knew the butler did it, you know. I knew it was him all the time. No, it wasn't the butler. It was his friend. But anyway, he's shown us the mystery. What is the mystery? The mystery is what he purposed in himself, and the mystery is in verse 10. The mystery is that in the dispensation of the fullness of times, he would gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth in him. The mystery is the Jews had the information, but they never figured out the mystery. The Gentiles have been shown the mystery, and they are finding it out in Jesus Christ. Every Jew is lacking one thing to be complete. Now, you will never meet a Jew who will be saved. Jewish people are never saved. They use a different word. Jewish people are completed, and the only thing that a Jewish person needs today to be complete is something that is called Messiah. That's the only thing they need to be complete. And the Jews had this mystery. They knew that there is a Messiah. They knew that there was coming a Messiah. If you don't believe that, go back and read all the prophets. A Jewish person cannot say, I didn't know about the Messiah. If they say that, then they're also saying, I never read the law. I never read the prophets. The law and the prophets is full of the Messiah. They knew the mystery. The Jews had the mystery. We did not have the mystery. The Gentiles were given the mystery through our Lord Jesus Christ. And the mystery was that in the dispensation of the fullness of time, that he might gather all things together in himself, which is him. And everything will be gathered together in him. And the mystery of godliness. By the way, your redemption was a mystery. You knew about it. You read about it. But you didn't have it. And it was a mystery out here that you would like to have. And one day someone shared with you the end of that mystery, and you got it. And you were brought into the kingdom of God, faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so he's going to bring everything in through him. Because since we have received that mystery, look what else we have in verse 11. In whom we also have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, that we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of his glory. And there's that chorus again. And so the mystery is the fact that we have obtained an inheritance. And we have obtained a mystery of godliness. And the mystery of godliness dwells in us through the power of the Lord Jesus Christ. And because he indwells us in eternity present, every moment of every day, we are sitting in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a phenomenon. It's a flat phenomenon. That we are able to sit in heavenly places. You don't have to wait to die. You already are. Now, in the little book by Watchman Neve, Sit, Walk, Stand. I shared that little book with you last week, showed you what it was. In that book, in the very first chapter, Watchman Neve makes a very interesting statement. He says, when a Christian becomes a believer, when a person becomes a believer, the first thing they want to do is go out and do something. They're so excited they want to do something. They either want to share something or they want to read something. They want to do something. And Watchman Neve in the little book Sit, Walk, Stand says, no, that's not what you need to do. You need to understand that you don't have to do anything. It's already, he said, done. Everything you and I need for Godliness, for any indwelling of the Spirit, for the love of Jesus Christ, for the redemption through his blood, any of that we need, we don't have to work for it, ladies and gentlemen. It's already done. So quit trying to get it done and just sit down, be quiet, and let the Spirit of God take you into the presence of the heavenly city. We don't stay quiet enough. We don't meditate enough. I don't. You don't. We don't stop and think about heavenly things enough. But we need to because we are sitting together in heavenly places. We're going to do that for eternity. If you don't like it here, you don't like it here, you may not like it there. Because right now, he's right here. He's walking up and down these halls and he's saying to you, my children, please come join me in heavenly places, in me, in Christ Jesus. Come join me. And we shall have a wonderful, spiritual eternity. In eternity present, in eternity past, and in eternity future. We are sitting together in heavenly places. Lord God, forget us for being so irrational about what you've done for us. For being so helter-skelter and busy-busy that we forget simply to sit down and say, Lord God, thank you for letting me just get my breath and let me just breathe celestial air and understand where I'm sitting. I'm royalty in your kingdom. And I need to quit acting like I'm not. And I need to sit with you and the Father and the powerful Holy Spirit in heavenly places with all of you. So, Father, slow us down. Give us time. Let us be careful how we use it. And help us to live and to love with our Lord Jesus Christ, with the Father and the Holy Spirit in heavenly places. And that is our prayer in the name of Christ who loved us. Amen. Thank you all. See you all next week.
