The Height of the Church: His Glory

The Height of the Church: His Glory

Joe Bridgman

10/1/2017

Ephesians 3:1-14

When did the United States of America reach its height? At what point in our nation’s history have we been all that it means to be America? When have we been doing everything that our nation is supposed to be doing to the max? In 1945, Winston Churchill said, “America at this moment stands at the summit of the world,”[1] because we had the world’s strongest military, a booming economy, and our young heroes coming home to spend their strength on their families and jobs. Was that it? Perhaps it was the harsh era of the pioneers and the cowboys, when our courage, our fierce independence, our hard work, and our undying adventurous spirit crashed headlong into the untamable wilds of the west. Some might even argue that America reached its height in our founding days when the Constitution was written and men died for values like liberty, freedom, and democracy, all of which we have since stopped pursuing and declined. Or have we reached the top today, as an international superpower and a country saturated by wealth, education, technology, and instant gratification? You can see that, in considering the possibilities, the height of America depends on whom you ask.

Now, compare that with the Church. When is the Church at its height? What must she be accomplishing to be at the tip-top of her existence? Is it when she feeds, clothes, and educates every poor person in the world, finally bringing poverty to an end? Perhaps it is when she provides enough moral instruction to reform our politics, clean up our streets, and make our communities safe. Maybe some would shoot for a more spiritual answer: it is when she finally tells everyone in the world about Jesus.

But let’s get personal. When is our church, Riverbend, at its height? What is our ultimate purpose? Are we doing a good job of fulfilling that? Picture this. This week, Riverbend hires your favorite radio or podcast pastor. We also hire seven full-time deacons whose only job is to serve people in our community and help you with projects around the house. We get elders who can teach you how to handle your money, how to fix your marriage,how to impact your neighborhood, and how to study doctrine like seminary students. We get a bigger building with a bigger worship team who put on a rock concert every Sunday for our worship service. We might even get donuts with our coffee beforehand every Sunday. That got some of you excited. Would Riverbend be at the height of her existence if we did those things? What would you vote for?

Today, I am preaching Ephesians 3:1-13 to you. If you are using one of thechurch’s Bibles, that begins on page 977. I hope these questions stirred your mind and your heart to think about what the height of the church should be, because I believe these verses tell us what God thinks about it. So let’s keep our answers fresh in our mind, and let God’s word correct our wrong thoughts, encourage our right thoughts, and make our hearts ache for something greater in Riverbend than we could ever have imagined on our own. Let’s begin by focusing on verses 1-7. Here, before we learn what the height of the church is, we will learn who gets to define it. Here, we will see that God alonewrites the church into his story.

God alone writes the Church into his story

In these verses, it seems that Paul interrupts himself. No matter what translation you read, verse 1 and verse 2 don’t fit together very well. I think, in verse 1, that Paul is about to write the prayer that we see later in verses 14-21. Compare the beginning of verse 1 with the beginning of verse 14. They both begin with the same words, “For this reason I…” After writing about the gospel as the heart of the church, which we heard last week, Paul feels ready to explode into a prayer for this newly-created church. But when he mentions that he is a prisoner, it reminds him of an important detour. You see, the Gentile Christians in the Ephesian church might be worried that they are not truly God’s people. After all, Paul, the one who preached this message to them, is now a prisoner of their government, perhaps about to be executed. It is even possible that, because of the hostility between Jews and Gentiles, these Gentiles have been told they are not truly God’s people. We cannot know this for sure, but Paul’s main point in this passage is to remind them that he is a true Apostle of God. He wants them to know that when he preached the gospel message and they believed, they truly were made part of God’s saved people, regardless of his imprisonment or what some hostile Jews might be telling them. While this might be Paul’s main point, I think he is also teaching us that God is the author of the church. We see that in three ways.

The church was not authored byman’s initiative.

If ever someone could take credit for creating the Church, Paul the Apostle would be the man, wouldn’t he? He traveled in a boat or on foot almost 8,000 miles to spread Christianity and start churches. He trained other men how to start their own churches too. And even beyond his lifetime, the letters that he wrote to churches have been used to start and teach new churches for over 2,000 years!

But Paul does not describe his role in such proactive terms. Look at what he calls himself in verse 1: “a prisoner of Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles”. How many prisoners do you know who put themselves in prison? None! Paul is saying that Christ arrested him, imprisoned him, and sentenced him to hard labor, preaching the gospel to the Gentiles. If you know Paul’s story, then you know he did not initiate this plan to start the Church. When he was making the plans, he was not starting churches; he was killing them. He was devoting all of his energy to stamping out Christianity. But just outside the city of Damascus, Paul was arrested and had his life turned in the opposite direction. In Acts 9, Jesus said of Paul,

Acts 9:15-16, “…he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel. For I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.”(ESV)

Paul is just an instrument in Christ’s hand. If you forget, does your toothbrush choose to brush your teeth at night? Does your lawnmower discuss with you the pros and cons of when and how you should get the yard mowed? No. In the same way, it was not Paul’s idea to create the church. He was made an instrument, a prisoner for that work.

If that metaphor itself was not enough, Paul reiterates throughout this passage how little he had to do with the start of the church. In verse 2, he calls his ministry a stewardship that was given to him. He did not earn his position as steward. Furthermore, stewards do not even own what they manage. The church is not Paul’s brain child. In verse 3, he says the mystery was made known to him. This is not something he discovered or invented, nor did he pry into God’s mind and force this out of him. Paul does not have the copyrights. And in verse 7, it says that he was made a minister, the same word for servant or deacon. Paul cannot make it any clearer to us that the Church was not brought about by the initiation or the effort of men.

There is a lesson for us here. We do not get to define the height of the Church. The Church is not a democracy of good-natured people who gather to accomplish whatever they want. The church is not like America. We do not have the freedom to pick and choose what we like about a church and then vote on it. We do not have the authority to decide what makes a church a good church. When we come to Riverbend to satisfy our own preferences, we are making ourselves the author of the church. When we gripe in our hearts about how Riverbend is not what we want it to be, we have gotten it backwards. Instead of being imprisoned for the church, we imprison the church. Instead of being an instrument for the church’s welfare, the church becomes and instrument for our pleasure.

The church was not authored by man’s need.

The Church was also not ultimately created in response to man’s needs. Look at verses 4-5 with me again.

Eph. 3:4-5, “When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit.”

What exactly is this mystery that has been hidden for so long? It’s in verse 6.

Eph. 3:6, “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.”

That’s what we talked about last week. The mystery is the union of once-alienated, hostile people through the gospel. The mystery is the Church. So why was the Church a mystery hidden by God for so long? If the Church is primarily God’s response to humanity’s needs, why did he choose to keep it hidden for so long, as verse 9 says? It’s because the Church is not, fundamentally, about meeting humans’ needs. If the Church were created to meet humanity’s needs, then God would have created her and sent her on mission to the world in Genesis 4, right after Adam and Eve sinned in Genesis 3.No, the chief, driving force behind the Church was not and is not meeting human’s needs. Now, I want to be careful. The text is not saying that the Church has nothing to do with humanity’s need. On two occasions, Paul says that he was made a church-planter for the Gentiles.The Church certainly does address human needs.It was just not primarily created as a response to human needs.

From this, we should conclude that the height of the church is not about us. If the church were a rocket ship, soaring to the height of its existence, humans might be on the ship, but humans are not the destination of the ship. We can fail to believe this in two ways. We can be consumers, going to church like we go to the mall. If she does not meet my personal needs, then I leave and go somewhere else. That is wrong. But it is equally wrong to conclude that the height of the church is about other people. We may recognize that it is selfish to make the church all about me, so we then decide that the church is all about serving others, that she is at her height when she is on mission changing other people’s lives. We think, “As long as we come up with great ways to positively impact our communities, we’re ascending to the height of the Church.” That sounds very good, and it is not a bad thing! But it cannot be the height of the church. If human needs did not start it, human needs cannot define it. When we are deciding how to worship, how to fellowship with each other, how to love our neighbors, or whatever we do, our first question must not be, “How well are we giving people what they want or what they need?” The author of the Church is not man’s needs.

The church was authored by God alone.

If our text teaches that Paul is only an instrument in the beginning of the Church, who is using him? If Paul is the ink pen and the Ephesians are the paper, who is the author? It is God alone.Think back to our passage. Wherever Paul is receiving or being used, God is the one giving or using.When Paul was imprisoned to start churches, God was the jail-keeper. When the mystery of the church was made known to Paul, God was the revealer. When Paul was made a servant of the church, God was the employer. Verse 7 says that Paul was made a minister according to the gift of God’s grace. You know that grace is something that cannot be earned.Paul received; God gave. Perhaps you can see God’s unrestricted sovereignty over the church clearest when our text says that “[this mystery] was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed”. Now, we use the word “mystery” a little bit differently than the Bible does. We apply it to things about which no one has concrete knowledge, like unsolved murders or ghosts. The Bible uses it for concrete knowledge that can only be gained by divine revelation. I appreciate how The Discovery Bible describes it. They say, “In the Bible, a ‘mystery’ is not something unknowable. Rather, it is what can only be known through revelation, i.e. because God reveals it.” Thus, as long as God chooses to withhold that knowledge, it remains a mystery. He chooses precisely when he reveals his mysteries, to whom he reveals them, and how he reveals them. No one can hurry him, trick him, or bribe him. A great example of this is the day that Christ is returning. Jesus said,

Matt. 24:36, “‘But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.’”

God has certainly set a date on the calendar when Christ will return. It is concrete knowledge. And yet, God has not revealed that knowledge to us. It is a mystery. No matter how many times men have tried to predict that day, they have continually been wrong. In the same way, the church was a mystery hidden in the mind of God. Man could not take the initiative and drag the church out of God. Man’s needs did not hasten or pressure God into hurrying his revelation of the church. Satan’s threats did not force God to create the church to fight back. In God’s eternal plan and purposes, for his own self-sufficient reasons, he revealed the church to history precisely when he wanted to. I can think of no clearer way to illustrate that God alone is the author of the church.

Therefore, if God alone is the author of the church, then he alone determines what the height of the church is. What has God ordained the height of the church to be? What are we aiming for? The next verses of our passage will tell us. But we already have a small hint. Even though God is the creator of the church, he chose to keep it hidden for millennia. What craft can you think of where the most skilled creators intentionally hide parts of their creation from you? Stories.It’s stories. The most skilled story-tellers keep parts of their narrative hidden until the right time. This is why I keep referring to God as the author of the church.God is writing a story with history, and the church is a part. Thinking of it in this way will help us understand the second part of our passage this morning. To know the height of the church, we must know that it is part of a story, and we must know what part of the story the church plays. This brings us to our second point.

The Church is the culmination of God’s story

From the beginning of Genesis throughout the rest of the Bible, one thing brings it all together: a story. It is a story of creation, perfection, rebellion, brokenness, and God’s unstoppable mission to redeem a people for himself. Though many obstructions to God’s faithful promises appear in the story, none of them stop him. The most surprising obstacle is the faithlessness of the very people he is saving. God always shows determined steadfast love to his people, and they always respond with determined rebellion. But God continues the story. Why? The prophet Isaiah gives a succinct, pointed answer. Quoting God, he writes,

Isa. 48:11, “For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it, for how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another.”

God continued to tell his story through history, because it manifested his glory. He will not allow a single score against his glory. This game is a shutout. Every turn of his story is a fierce defense and grander showcase of his glory. Through every chapter of the story, the value of his glory grows. After the climax of Christ’s victorious death and resurrection, we wait breathless for its impact on the story. How will God show forth his glory in the aftermath of Christ’s work? The result, which we learn about in these next verses, is both humbling and overwhelming.

The height of God’s story is the church.

In verses 8-9, Paul describes his church-planting ministry in rich terms. But I want to draw your attention to the result in verse 10. Here, Paul lays out why God started the church through him. It says,