The Mystery of God - Ephesians 1:1

we apologize for the poor sound quality during the following sermon by dr. Martin lloyd-jones this was due to a deterioration of the original recording and although it's been digitally restored to improve audibility we trust that he will not spoil your enjoyment of this sermon by dr. Martin lloyd-jones the Epistle to the Ephesians the first chapter and the first verse though an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God to the Saints which are at Ephesus and to the faithful in Christ Jesus ie call your attention to this vast matter under because it is the

first lesson just listen to the Ephesians but I'll serve because it enables me to say that I propose that willing to deal with this great epistle to study it with you and to consider together it's mighty message I never believed in planning these methods and therefore I'm not going to announce that I propose to work right through the Epistle from beginning to end but at any rate we are certainly starting upon it and we're going to try to Dylan into its riches as God will bless us and lead us and guide us now as we

approach this epistle I am free to confess that I do sir with the a sense of considerable temerity this is an episode which it's very difficult to speak of in a controlled manner but because of its greatness and because of its sublimity many have tried to describe the secrecy it's called forth efforts and the parts of large numbers of Christian people throughout the centuries some have described it like this Velma said that it is the travel and the climate of Pauline theology and never I said that it is the distilled essence of the Christian religion

the most authority the most consummate companion a very holy Christian faith that language and I'll suggest to you that it's not exaggerated language there shall be it for me to try to compete with those who have described this epistle in that way and when it seems to me that any adequate general description of this epistle I must pay attention and must take motor than the include certain words which also characteristic of the epistle in which the Apostle uses in this epistle were frequently perhaps than in any other epistle so we're all to attend to definition

I should say something like this that in this epistle the Apostle exerts in morgan's that the glory and the mystery and the riches of God's Way of redemption in Christ those are the words as I hope to show you that he uses so frequently the glory of it all the mystery and the riches of God's Way of redemption in Christ Jesus or another way in which I think the truths about this great epistle can be stated is best that it is a letter in which the Epistle looks at the Christian salvation from the vantage point

of the heavenly places now in every cases indeed in all his epistles he's always expanding and explaining and benefiting the great way of salvation but so often we the sir from our standpoint on that is very essential and he deals with particular doctrines or he deals with arguments so when controversies that NIDA to the feature in characteristic of this particular epistle is that the epistle seems to be as he puts it himself in the heavenly places and he is looking down at the great panorama of salvation and of redemption from that particular part the result

is that there is very little controversy in it because his good concern here was to give to these Ephesians and other Steven the letter is addressed this panoramic you have this wondrous and various work of God in Jesus Christ now Luther says of the Epistle to the Romans that it is the most important document in the New Testament and I suppose in many ways that is the simple to be the Epistle to the Romans says Luther is the most important document in the New Testament it is the place in which the gospel is found in

its purest expression and there he is certainly right there is no pure airplane a statement of the gospel an expression of the gospel in the Epistle to the Romans well if that is true I would venture to say this but if the Epistle to the Romans is the purest expression of the vessel the Epistle to the Ephesians is the sublime list of the most majestic expression of it you notice I'm not saying the purest because I don't think it is the most direct expression in Romans that is really only one great thing and that is

that theme of justification by faith and its implications here the central the viewpoint is a wider than it is a larger well if that is the purest this is the sublime mist and certainly the most majestic there are as you all are familiar with it statements and passages in this which will do Bethel description the great apostle tiles epithet topography said adjective upon adjectives his superlatives are used and exhausted and still he can't express himself there are passages like that in this first chapter and there are certainly passages and statements like that in the third

chapter and especially towards the end where the great apostle is carried out of himself and above and beyond himself and just loses himself in the benhams himself in a great act of worship and of praise and of thanksgiving I say therefore that there is nothing more sublime in the whole range of Scripture than this epistle to the Ephesians now this morning I'm anxious that we should take a germinal view of it we shall then discuss come on to the details but it's always good to take a general view first indeed there is a sense in

which it can be said that we can only truly grasp and understand the particulars if we have taken a firm grasp of the whole and of the general but we're not going to start with the general the people who think that giving a rough division of the message of this epistle according to chapters that they're therefore dealt with it and can move on to another just displaying the said ignorance it's when you come to the details of this epistle you really discover the wealth and we are general give a written summary of its message it's

alright as a beginning but that's a mere beginning and introduction because I say income down to these particular statements and these were almost words individual words that the rule derivative becomes display to our wandering gaze not I say we start with the general this morning now what is the theme of this epistle what is it about well in a sense in my general definition I've already answered that question but let me put it rather like this it's all suggested it seems to me here at once in this firstness that is again something very characteristic of

the Apostle he could never compelling so if he couldn't restrain himself he immediately proceeded with his seed all hisses on a person of Jesus Christ by the will of God and there you are what is the theme of this epistle first and foremost it is God God the Father grace fealty we goes on to say in the second in peace from God our Father and from the nur of Jesus Christ blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ that's it let's do you know this is how the Apostle Paul always begins and

this is our every Christian should begin this is the thing of curse that controls everything else there was never any danger of the Apostle Paul for getting this where he of airmail as he is reminded us in the Epistle to the Romans knows that it is from God then to God and unto God and by God are all things to whom be glory for ever and ever the Bible is God's book it's a revelation of God and there's all of our Christian thinking must start with God over Weston that we've been a pinch to emphasize

this that most of the trouble in the church today is due to the fact that we are also subjective we all start with ourselves we're so interested in ourselves with egocentric that's the curse of this present century and of this generation that having forgotten God we're so interested in ourselves that we are miserable and wretched quite all with one another all because we have forgotten God and the whole message of the Bible from beginning to end is to bring men back to God and the humblest before God and to enable us to see our true

relationship to God well now this is the theme of this epistle it just holds us face to face with God and what God is and what God has done it is Assizes throughout the glory and the greatness of God God the eternal God the everlasting God over all the indescribable glory of God and greatness of God it's all here you notice how he comes out constantly in various phases that he uses having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself according to the good pleasure of his will having made known unto

us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure which he has purposed in himself it's early in him he in whom also we have obtained an inheritance being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will God the eternal and everlasting God self-sufficient in himself from eternity to eternity we didn't even deserve living dwelling in his own everlasting absolute and eternal glory God that's the great theme of dissipation we don't start I say by microscopically examining ourselves and our needs and the provisions murder you

stop there with God you forget yourself you are taking as it were better hand in this epistle and you are told that you're going to be given this great view of something of the glory and the majesty of God that is why I say as we approach this study now you feel that a voice comes to us as it came to Moses at the burning bush and says take off nations from us thy feet for the ground whereon thou standest is holy ground we were ushered into the presence of God in all his glory and

in all his greatness but not only that we are at once face-to-face with the sovereignty of God these are the great terms are they not what you find constantly running through the scriptures these are the great words in terms of Christian doctrine and the Christian theology or little we've heard of them in this present century with our morbid preoccupied subjectivism how literally being taught about the glory and the greatness and the majesty and the sovereignty of God the attributes of God our forefathers delighted in these terms these were the terms of 300 years ago the

terms of the Puritans of the covenant errs they delighted to try to understand and to contemplate tributes of God and here is one of the most extraordinary the sovereignty of God the everlasting covenant God overall you notice the vessel comes to that one stone he says an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God not by his own will he didn't call himself of the churches didn't tell him it was gradual tell him he is an apostle by the will of God indeed he puts this very specifically in his epistle to the Galatians you

remember where he said when it pleased God who separated me from my mother's womb and told me by His grace to reveal his son in me it is God raised on it the sovereignty of God and as we go on through this great epistle we shall find it standing out you know let's Laurel and its magnificence of the river it is God who's chosen every one of the Christian in Christ it is God he says who has predestinated us it is a part of God's purpose that we should be saved that never would have been

salvation if God had not thought of it if God had not claimed it it does not put it into execution it is God Brazil and the world it is published and physicians and made of a woman made under the law it is all of God God's purpose it is according to his own purpose it is according to the counsel of his own world that all these things have happened muscles this epistle he lends us agree with that that's the way to start thinking about Christianity you don't start sure and then go up you start there

and come down it's all from God the sovereignty of God who is over all no we shall find I see as we work through it but not only sell entirely from God in general it is so in particular differences that great team which he works out in the third chapter these special thing he does that innocence has been committed to him as an apostle is this how that by revelation he made known unto me the mystery what is the mystery well it is this that the Gentiles should be fell aware which in other ages was

not made known unto the sons of men as it is now revealed unto his early apostles and prophets by the spirit have you ever thought of it you see it's God who controls everything the time element in particular every other searches you've read through your Old Testament but boy it was that all those centuries had to pass before the Son of God actually came why was it for so long the Durham believe the Jews V is where life had the Oracles of God sent an understanding that there is only one true and living God that's

what the verdict teaches and they've decided that the time had come the fullness of the times that arrived so he reveals this thing which ever to have been a secret it is now revealed but not until despite and here is that another illustration I say and the sovereignty of God known unto God and unto him alone all his rage he determines every pointedly if you everything that happens and as you work through this epistle you will find that the Apostle constantly recurs to that theme God a very old controlling them and timing everything in this

most ordinary manner I know of nothing at a time like this which is so comforting and reassuring as to know that the Lord still train us that he is still the seven Lord of the universe and to do the heathen rage and the people imagine a very failure as he set his son with an easily mount of Zion and today we will come with all these enemies shall lick his shoures and his footstool and be humbled before him and Christ shall be all-in-all the sovereignty of God it's here in this introduction repeated repeated and repeated

itself either because it is indeed one of the cardinal doctrines without which we really do not understand our Christian faith and chemicals he must of necessity go on having said that to deal with the mystery of God and of his greatness and of His Majesty and of your sovereignty this word mystery is used five times in this epistle to the Ephesians he never uses it more than twice in any other it whistle so that I think I'm justified in saying that it is one of the major themes of this epistle the mystery of God's ways

with respect to me the mystery of his way we've got it in this very first chapter we shall go on I say finding it having made known unto us he says the mystery of well according to his good pleasure which he hath purposed in himself I wonder whether we always realize this as we should oh how often do even Christian people approach some of these great truths and doctrines never I don't understand this my dear friend you should never have tried them if you start by thinking you can understand the mind in the will and

the way of God I say you might as well give up at this moment I announce it's a mystery it's a mystery table it's the mind of the eternal and the everlasting no more than men can ever cope with this growth is the mystery of godliness no man as guided God he's consulted nobody nobody can understand him if you pray to understand God's ways with respect to men of the world I assure you you find yourself involved in things that are quite inscrutable and you'd be miserable and unhappy and you may end by losing your

faith and complaining against God and having a sense of grudge against him but all the folly of trying to do that the mystery of his will he is infinite eternal we are finite and sinful we don't see we don't understand you forgot isn't fair if that is true my dear friend prefer hell with Joe Bataan your mouth and realize what you're saying and of whom you're speaking the mystery of his will but surely to object to the mystery is almost to deny that we are Christian at all is there anything more wonderful more entrenching more

glorious for the Christian than to be looking into the mystery well I trusted as I'm speaking to you you were already filled with the sense of divine expectation you propose to come with me as we look into the mysteries and have another view and see something further and yet come isn't that the great form of the Christian life isn't that why it's the most romantic life in the world obey you ever born you see Cholewa sighs you turn a corner and you see something you didn't know unborn and on you go it's all here the

riches of His grace but it's all a glorious mystery which he has been pleased to reveal to us by His Holy Spirit but God forbid that we should ever imagine that we'll be able to understand in the sense of fully country handing it all I'm not here to produce some kind of theodicy or defense of God I am here rather to run further history and to lead us to a reverent attitude that we may look at it and worship Him and confess our signee to deny our own ignorance and our smallness and our frailty and

thank him for the mystery of his holy will and then the next thing of course is the grace of God this word is used 13 times in this epistle the grace of God the Apostle I say goes on repeating it he can't help himself in whom we have redemption through his blood the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of His grace indeed in the second verse he started with grace pity when peace from God the Father well this is the thing I suppose that above everything else is displayed in this great epistle God's amazing

grace to sinful men the way he's visited us the way he has provided this means of salvation and of redemption the grace of godless and fandoms of it in particular the riches of His grace again the word which he uses more than anyone else the riches of His grace the blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ my dear friends in this epistle we are looking into the riches the abundance the super abundance of God's grace to Lourdes if you

don't look further to an examination and an investigation of this with the keenest possible anticipation well then I say it is time that we ask ourselves the question as to whether we are Christians at all we are all interested in wealth and in riches we like to go and visit museums and other places where these things are kept under stored we look at gems and that pearls will stand in caves will pay great prices to go in to see the worth of the riches we both give it as individuals and as nations finish well I

say the supreme object of this epistle in the sentences to lead a sermon and to give us a view when the dreams of the which is the abundant simple abundant riches of the grace of God oh yes it all starts with God God [Applause] the Father who is over all but then having said that we can on to what invariably comes next in all the epistles of this writer indeed to that which is always second in the whole of the Bible the Lord Jesus Christ bless grace be to you and peace from God our Father

and from the Lord Jesus Christ did you notice it in the beginning as I read how the name the name that was a bless it to the apostle keeps on coming in he is an apostle of Jesus Christ grace to you and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ and on and on it goes you see in the first verse he tells us at once he is an apostle of

Jesus Christ my friends it sounds totally ridiculous to have to say it doesn't it and yet it is essential today there is no gospel and there is no salvation apart from Jesus Christ is it necessary to say that it is there are people who can talk even about Christianity without Christ they talk about forgiveness that the name of Christ isn't mentioned they mentioned the love of God and the pity of God the Lord Jesus Christ isn't committed not so the Apostle Paul there is no gospel there is no salvation a thought from the Lord Jesus

Christ the gospel in particular is about him Oh God's gracious purposes are carried out by Christ in Christ through Christ from beginning to the very end every thing that God in His sovereignty land by His infinite grace and according to the riches of His mercy and the mystery of his will everything that God has planned and purposed and carried out for our salvation he has done in Christ in him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily in him God is treasured of all the riches of His grace and of his wisdom everything I say

from the very beginning the end is in and through the Lord Jesus Christ there is no Christian message apart from him we are called and chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world we are reconciled to God health by the blood of Christ listen to it in whom we have redemption through his blood the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of His grace we are all interested in forgiveness how am i forgiven is it because I repent and ask God to forgive me and say I'm sorry and God looks upon me and loves

me and forgives me I say no with the reverence I assert it again but even the Almighty God cannot forgive men sinned like that there is only one way whereby God forgives us it is because he sent His only begotten son from heaven to us and to the Yagami of the frame and the dress of the crop here in whom we have redemption through his blood there is no Christianity without the blood of Christ he simply is absolutely essential there is nothing without it not only the person of Christ in particular his death his shed

blood is a turning substitutionary sacrifice it is in that way and that way alone that we are redeemed O Christ is absolutely central in this epistle we shall find it as we come to the details he's everywhere he must be called in him chosen in him saved by his blood in him that's a standing in position he's the head of the church as this very first chapter reminds us he has put fallible principality and power and might and Dominion and every name that is named not only in this world but also in that which is

to come he's the head of the church the body the fullness of him that filleth on all and you know and then he is this morning at the night end of God with all authority and power in heaven and in earth jusers our Lord to clean the son of God the savior of the world that's going to be our scene aren't you beginning to look forward to it to look at him to gaze upon him in his person in his offices in his work in all that he is done can be to us the Father

the Son and then of course in particular as I have already been anticipating in a way a God's great purpose in Christ that is the practical theme of this epistle here it is in the tenth verse that in the dispensation of the fullness of times don't you like words like that you know I rather like saying them they gave me a very fluid I know nothing like them that in the dispensation of the fullness of times he might gather he God might gather in one all things in Christ both which are in heaven and which

are on earth even you need that's the purpose and then of course the Apostle goes on to tell us why this has ever been necessary and that is of course because of sin in the second chapter we shall find how he tells us that all the human problems that are harrassing the minds and the hearts of men this morning are due to one fact only and it is this that Prince of the power of the air the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience he tells us why God's plan of redemption is necessary

it's all because of the fall of men yes preceded by the fall of that bright angelic spirit called the devil or Satan was become the god of this world the Prince of the power of the earth there it is and he shows us the agony and the enmity and the fight and the havoc that has been wrought in the human race men and women are divided and separated the modern world is torn asunder divided up into rival factions the ancient world was exactly the same indeed it's been like that ever since men fellow you get

it in Cain and Abel at once you see there's nothing new about this foolish de belem against God it's philosophy that relationship it's men setting himself up as a god that causes all these disruptions under your taking back to the very beginning and Oh shown the paradise that God had made in a state of chaos and God announces his plan man begins to put it into practice and the Old Testament you see is just an account of how God began to work this out first of all he said to himself the people called the Jews

there is his purpose of redemption out of this Western out of this mess of mankind he firms the people for himself he calls them in named Abram turns into an orphan gather these people there his special people nobody else they stand alone like an island in a Glade emerging ocean God's people God's plan there is the beginning of something new oh yes but there was great rivalry and jealousy between the Jews and the Gentiles here I say one of the major themes is how God has taken all this a stage and a step further the

big thing that has been revealed to me says Paul is that not only the Jews but the Gentiles also the middle wall of partition is gone the third to be made one new men and will approach God by one spirit the Gentiles are coming in there's a new nation and even when there's something new come into being it's called the church and this is to go on since the Apostle until again when the fullness of time shall have arrived God will end it all and that is inimical to him shall be destroyed and everything in

heaven and earth and everywhere else shall be one leading Christ that's one of the major themes of the successful Jews only then gives em Gentiles then everything and all is to be done in and through Christ so that that in turn leads to the other major theme which is the church God's purpose is seen most plainly and clearly in and through the Christian Church it is in the church that you see this great purpose of God bringing together all things in Christ here we are this morning different people different nationalities come from different parts of

the world with different experiences different in appearance is different in our psychology and in every conceivable respect and yet we are one you see one in Christ Jesus well this is but an exemple a pattern and illustration this is what God is doing until finally there shall be this new heavens and the earth wherein dwelleth righteousness and Jesus shall reign from shore to shore and moon shall wax and wane no more but to me it's a very thrilling and a very wonderful thing to see the church in that light and to see therefore the importance

of being a member of the Christian Church and the privilege and the responsibility of being a member of the Christian Church it is because of this says Paul that you must live the Christian life so in chapters 4 to the end he comes down to the practicalities the ethical behavior the conduct that is expected of such people right well because that's what they are there in the plan of the purpose of God and there are many suspicions of it versa very for God's sake must manifested in their daily life and living that's his argument that's

why the ethical appeal must come in a tear but it's all you see in terms of the nature of the church and the realization of God's glorious purpose well very well then I've given you a very hurried review of the great themes of this epistle as I close let me put it like this in a very simple and practical form why am i calling your attention to all this and why do I propose to do so it is because I am profoundly convinced that the greatest need of every one of us is to know the

instruments it is I say because we all need to look again at the glorious revelation it is because we need to be delivered from our morbid preoccupation with if we but saw ourselves as we are depicted in this epistle what a difference it would make if we but realized as the Apostle says here in this prayer of his very place that we may know what is the hope of our calling and the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the Saints and what is the exceeding greatness of his power toward us what that believe

weak miserable and happy Christian feeling that the fight is too much for you and you're on the point of giving up and giving and enduring out if you only live the power that is working mightily for you it's the same power that brought Christ from the dead our lives would be a revolutionized at once if we but realized it if we but knew that we are meant to be filled with all the fullness of God we'd no longer be weak and ailing and complaining we'd no longer present such funny pictures of the Christian life to

those who loss and deliver out and about us that we need my things is not an experience better here less not real what God has done in Christ Reddy's placeless we don't realize our privileges that's our trouble our greatest need is still the need of understanding our prayers for ourselves should be the prayer of the Apostle for these people that the eye is about understanding may be enlightened that's what we need understanding conservatives rather which is displayed let's enter in and look at them and take hold of them and enjoy them and above all perhaps

at the time like this how vital it is I say that we should have some new and fresh and deeper understanding of God's great plan and purpose for the world with international conferences taking place almost on our doorstep with the whole world wondering as to what its future is to be and what the outcome of it all is going to be seeing men at the end of their wits and at the end of their tether patching up agreements here and there and yet with no much confidence in any of it or all of it what

a tremendous thing it is to stand and look at this revelation and see God's plan and purpose behind it all and Beyond it all and it isn't being done through statesmen it's being done through people like you and myself the world ignores it and laughs at it and mocks it but we ought to know for certain this morning that all principalities and powers and might and Dominion name that is named not only in hidden in this well but also in that which is to come have been set beneath his feet was rejected by this world

when he came into it then dismissed as this fellow this carpenter that was the son of God and the savior of the world that King of Kings the Lord of lords the one that was named every knee shall bow things in heaven and things on earth and things under the earth thanks be unto God for the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ for the riches of God's grace we do hope that you've been helped by the preaching of dr. Martin lloyd-jones all of the sermons contained within the MLJ trust audio library are now available for free

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