Sermon for MHBC (8 May 2022). You can watch on our website or on Facebook or YouTube. Live at 11:00am on Sundays.
Christianity is the biggest phenomenon in the history of humankind. Think about this. The God of the universe makes an agreement with a man named Abram. On the basis of that agreement, God becomes the God of the people of Israel. Then there’s this Jewish man named Jesus who starts saying strange things about him and God being equal. A lot of people follow him. The political leaders of the day kill him. But then his disciples start talking about an empty tomb and a resurrection. They are so convinced Jesus is alive, they start preaching. Eventually, this preaching causes social turmoil, so they start to move out of the area, and while they’re traveling, they are preaching. People start following Jesus.
Fast forward to today. People from every country in the world follow Jesus. They do not look the same or dress alike or speak the same language or sing the same songs. And yet, most of them believe they are all connected. They take up the same Scriptures and follow Jesus. All of that from an agreement with a man named Abram.
These people who came from that agreement with Abram are the covenant people of God. We call them the church. And the church was God’s plan. God calls the church his people and he gives them a mission. I can summarize the message with this sentence: The church has been brought into the covenant people of God, so that the church has a central role (i.e. mission) to play in the universe.
That’s what Paul tells us in Ephesians 3:8–10:
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.
Look at what Paul says. This grace, which refers to his ministry, was given to accomplish three things: (1) to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, (2) to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, and (3) so that through the church the wisdom of God might be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.
What is this mysterious plan? Look back at Ephesians 1:9–10: making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. Here’s God’s plan: to unify all things in Christ, to bring everything back to God.
Now it’s helpful to see this plan from the beginning. In Genesis, we see God creating the world and the first humans. Then we see those humans joining evil in a rebellion instigated by a snake. And that rebellion fractures creation. Humans are separated from God. Humans are antagonistic toward each other. And even creation and humanity will struggle against each other.
But in the midst of all that, God speaks to the snake, who as you’ve probably figured out, is not simply a snake. This so-called snake is the architect of the rebellion. So God judges him harshest. Look at Genesis 3:15: I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.
Here is the promise of grace. God will send one from the seed of a woman who will fight the snake, and though the snake may successfully hurt the seed, the seed will crush the head of the snake. What we see in the third chapter of the Bible is a cosmic battle that will take place across human history. And God is declaring victory from the beginning.
God chooses a man named Abram. And God makes this promise to Abram in Genesis 12:
Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
God covenants with a man and promises to bless the world through that man. This covenant leads to the people of Israel. God reaffirms his commitment to the covenant constantly in spite of the people.
In fact, God broadens that covenant. He includes a promise to a king named David that one of his descendants will hold the throne of Israel forever (2 Sam 7). That’s hard to believe when the kingdom of Israel collapses several hundred years after David. But God sends these people called prophets to reaffirm the covenant and actually to broaden it again. Isaiah, for example, talks about God calling Egypt and Assyria, Israel’s enemies, God’s people. And there’s Ezekiel who talks about Israel expanding and David being king over it like God promised (36:36–38; 37:24).
And here we see the magnitude of God’s plan. Through Jesus, God was creating a global people who would share in all the original promises, indeed, who would share in the very life of God.
Look back at Ephesians 2:12–19:
12 [You Gentiles] remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. 14 For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility 15 by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, 16 and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. 17 And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. 18 For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.
And one more in 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.
You are sitting here today because the God of Israel chose you. Before the very creation of the world, God determined that people from every tribe, tongue, and nation would sing or God’s glory. It’s often lost on us but we are not the first heirs of the Kingdom. By all rights, this belongs to the nation of Israel (Mark 7:24–30).
And yet God has brought us near, giving us the promises of Israel, promising the same blessings to us, and ultimately giving God’s own constant presence and blessing to us, who are now the people of God. Abraham is ours. David is ours. Their promises are ours. God is redeeming the fractured and broken world corrupted by Satan.
I must emphasize the reality of this text. Christianity is not merely a belief. It is an announcement. It is an announcement of what God has done in Christ. The God of Israel has acted so powerfully that the course of the universe has been reversed, and all creation will be reconciled to God. This is the message we find on the pages of Scripture.
And that announcement is not only a witness to people. Look at v. 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. The church doesn’t merely exist for the good of us, the community, or the nation. The church exists to display the magnificent wisdom of God to the powers of the spiritual world.
Remember I said at the beginning that Christianity is the biggest phenomenon in the history of humankind. That’s only part of the story. Christianity is the biggest phenomenon in all of the created universe. It is an announcement that God, the source of all life and wisdom and goodness and truth and beauty, has poured out his infinite grace upon his creation, in order to snatch it from the hands of sin, Satan, and death.
And how does that happen? Through an invasion. God becomes incarnate. He dies a real death. All of his enemies, both human and spiritual, believe they have won the day. But the infinitely wise God has laid a trap for them. In his infinite wisdom and grace, he confounds them. By crucifying Jesus, the powers of Hell thought that they had destroyed any claim God might have on creation. What they didn’t know is that it was precisely through the death of Jesus that God was stripping them of their power and destroying them.
But there’s more. In this moment, God’s reach didn’t stop with Israel. In this moment, as the powers of evil are realizing that they’ve been outflanked, God says, “It’s not just Israel that belongs to me. It’s all of creation. Every nation, tongue, and tribe. Every ocean and lake, every mountain and valley, every forest and desert, every corner of the universe.” When God looks at the cattle on a thousand hills, he says, “Those are mine.”[1]
The powers of evil may have thought this world would belong to them forever, but in the unfolding of God’s plan for the universe, God broke them. God’s wisdom and grace confounds the powers. And now, the role, the obligation of the church, is to display the wisdom of God.
As I’ve said before, this means when we gather for worship, to celebrate the wisdom of God, we are declaring to the powers that they have been defeated. And there’s more. Look what it means to say we are the church. It means we have been accepted into God’s people not because of our beauty or our goodness or our missions or anything else. We are accepted into God’s people through Christ. And we have a mission, a part to play in God’s plan for the universe. Our part is to bear witness to the announcement that Christ is victorious, that the doors to God’s promises have been flung open, and while we are bearing witness to that reality we are highlighting the infinite wisdom of God for all of creation. Christ invites you and me this morning to become heralds of this announcement.
[1] I heard this from John Piper once. I don’t recall if it was a tweet or part of a sermon.