Our Redemption & God's Eternal Plan

[0:00] Take out your Bibles with me please and turn to the book of Ephesians chapter 1.

[0:13] ! We've just begun this study a few weeks ago. Book of Ephesians. Its great theme is the essentials of healthy Christianity. It is a book letter that Paul wrote to Christians in general.

[0:29] He was not writing to a specific church but to Christians in general. So it was a circular letter that would have been perhaps sent first to Ephesus and then to other churches in the area.

[0:44] And so it has a more general appeal to us. Speaking to us about what is healthy for us to think about in terms of God's work.

[0:55] And then what is healthy for us to think about in terms of our walk. And so this is what we come to in Ephesians. Today we'll be focusing on verses 7 through 10.

[1:10] Is that right? Yes, 7 through 10. Wow, that's it. Okay. So I want to read from verse 3 through 10.

[1:22] If you're able please stand as I read from God's word. I'm going to read from verse 3. Ephesians 1 verse 3. Paul writes, Blessed is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

[1:38] Who blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. Just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world.

[1:52] That we be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself.

[2:06] According to the kind intention of His will. To the praise of the glory of His grace. Which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.

[2:17] In Him we have redemption through His blood. The forgiveness of our trespasses. According to the riches of His grace. Which He lavished upon us with all wisdom and insight.

[2:32] He made known to us the mystery of His will. According to His kind intention. Which He purposed in Him. With a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of times.

[2:45] That is, the summing up of all things in Christ. Things in the heavens. And things upon the earth. So it reads.

[2:57] Let us pray. Father, give us insight. Open our minds. Open to us, Lord, Your Word. That we might see the wonderful things You have blessed us with.

[3:13] Open our minds and open our hearts, Lord. Not only our minds to understand, but our hearts to receive. And believe.

[3:26] And be assured. Grant us assurance today. Of Your great blessings for us. This we ask in Christ's name.

[3:39] Amen. Please be seated. Have you ever used a gift card?

[3:52] Ever gotten a gift card? Given a gift card? Gift cards are great, aren't they? You use a gift card to redeem something of value.

[4:04] Right? And it's already paid for. It's just a card. It's like free stuff. Now, years ago, on our way home from Estes Park, we stopped at the Cheesecake Factory.

[4:20] I love that. Do you? You like that play? The menu goes, like, for 80 pages. Anyway. So we were given a gift card for Cheesecake Factory.

[4:31] And so on our way home, we said, hey, let's stop and enjoy lunch that someone else has already paid for. So I'm in there. I'm looking at the menu. You know, there's 1,800 pages.

[4:45] And I just figure, well, I'll just get a burger. You know, I like burgers. And then I realized I'm not paying. I'm getting filet mignon. Someone has already redeemed a filet mignon steak for me.

[5:00] So that's great. That's kind of fun. So in Ephesians 1, 7, it says that God has redeemed.

[5:13] In him, we have redemption through his blood. God has redeemed us. He has paid for us to experience not some temporary pleasure like a filet mignon, but an eternal blessing.

[5:32] It's like the gift card that keeps on giving. But it's not a gift card. It's not that trivial. It's so much more grand than that. So we have looked at these blessings.

[5:47] Last week, we looked at the first two blessings, and they are blessings from our perspective of the past. Right? They're the appointed blessings of eternity.

[5:58] So in verse 3, we saw that the Father chose us from eternity to be his holy ones. He did this before the foundation of the world. So that means it's long before us.

[6:10] Right? It was God's work, not our work. And his purpose in choosing us was to be holy. To be holy and blameless before him.

[6:21] So it wasn't that we should be holy. It's not that we should try to be holy. It's that we already are. He's chosen us to be holy before him.

[6:36] It's not a performance. It's a position. We are. And then secondly, we saw in verse 5 that he predestined us to sonship for his pleasure.

[6:49] He adopted us. And that's about relationship. It's, again, to himself. He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to himself.

[7:00] So it's back to him. It's relationship. And why did he do this? It was for his good pleasure. Not because we were worthy. Not because we deserved it. Not because we had somehow measured up.

[7:11] But it was because it pleased him to do this. To have adopted sons. Delighted him to love us.

[7:23] To be his treasured possession. So that's the past two. Those are the ones we looked at last week. This week we look at present blessings. Notice in verse 7, it's in him we have.

[7:36] Present. We have. Now it's about blessings that we experience now in the present. We have redemption. Right? And then verse 9, he has made known to us the mystery of his will.

[7:51] So we're going to look at the present blessings. The applied blessings of experience. So verse 7, a blessing of redemption, which is forgiveness. And verse 9, the blessing of a revelation of God's mystery.

[8:05] He lets us in on his eternal plan, which was a mystery in the Old Testament. Something God has revealed new.

[8:18] So look at verse 7. So first of all, he redeemed us. In him we have redemption through his blood. I put it this way. He rescued us. To redeem us is to rescue us.

[8:29] He rescued us from slavery to sin through the death of Christ. We have redemption through the blood of Christ.

[8:40] So we have rescue. We have been rescued specifically from slavery to sin through the death of Christ, through the blood of Christ. So I want to break down verse 7 and 8 here.

[8:56] There's four facets. Our redemption. Two, it's through the blood of Christ. Three, it's about forgiveness. And then four, it's according to the riches of his grace.

[9:10] So first of all, our redemption. What is redemption? To redeem something. Well, redeem. You redeem with a coupon at a store. You redeem. It's like you purchase something.

[9:20] You're to pay a price. So redemption literally means to deliver by a ransom price. So in the Old Testament, the picture of redemption is shown in God's deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt.

[9:38] They were under slavery. God redeemed them with blood. Now what blood was that? You remember how that whole thing started?

[9:52] Right? They're in Egypt. They're to have a Passover meal. They're to slay the Passover lamb. And they're to put the blood, right, over the doorstops. Right? So when the death angel came, he would see the blood and pass over.

[10:06] Because the blood would protect them. They were bought. But a lamb had to die. So there was redemption. There was, they were redeemed by a price.

[10:16] That's what started their march out of Egypt. Their deliverance from Egypt. In the Old Testament, redemption could be to free a slave.

[10:28] You could pay to free a slave. Also, you could pay to deliver a widow. Remember the story of Ruth? The widow in that story, her name was?

[10:40] Naomi. Right? She said, don't call me Naomi. Call me Mara. Bitter. I love Naomi.

[10:53] She's so honest. And she blamed God for the whole thing. Because she believed in the sovereignty of God. God caused this.

[11:03] God caused all my misery. God caused it. God took away my husband. God took away my two sons. God has left me destitute. Of course, there's this young lady named Ruth.

[11:15] Right beside her, which she didn't see for a while. And Ruth became the wonderful, wonderful vehicle through which God brought Naomi back. To himself.

[11:28] But in that story, there is a redemption. She was the widow who had nothing now. Her husband was gone. Her sons were gone. All she had was this Ruth.

[11:38] This alien, this Moabite woman, Ruth. Who happens to meet, to go out and work on the edge of the field.

[11:49] Right? And it just so happened, as Ruth, as the book of Ruth says. Just so happened there was a field of Boaz. Just a coincidence. And Boaz happened to be a really, really cool guy.

[12:05] Really gracious guy. And when he saw Ruth interested in him, he was even more gracious. And so he redeemed Naomi.

[12:21] He took her from her widowhood and gave her security in his home because of Ruth. God's marvelous workings behind the scene.

[12:33] But there's another picture of redemption. Here is this widow who has nothing. And she's just, she's just, God has done this to me. Why?

[12:43] And then, and through the marvelous workings of God's providence in the shadows, he brings her. Well, at the end of the story, she's holding this child, right?

[12:55] In her lap. And the child's name is Obed. You're thinking of naming your kids? Obed. That's a good name. Obed. He happens to be who? The grandfather of somebody.

[13:08] Oh, some David guy. Oh. Now we see the picture of where God was going through this dark time. God taking you through a dark time?

[13:21] Are you in a time of uncertainty? A time of questioning? A time of dark shadows of God's providence?

[13:33] Is he working? He is working. Even if you can't see it yet, he's working. He's working. Watch for it. So, our redemption.

[13:49] Well, how are we set free? How does this redemption come about? Paul tells us it's, we have redemption through his blood, through the blood of Jesus Christ. It was, it cost his life to free us.

[14:03] He was the substitute. He was the sacrifice for us. To buy our redemption. And what did he purchase? In him, we have redemption through his blood.

[14:15] What does that mean? What did he purchase? Next phrase. The forgiveness of our trespasses. He purchased forgiveness. Forgiveness.

[14:28] Or the removal of our trespasses. Our sins. Our false steps. Our deviations. Our rebellion. In chapter 2, Paul will pick up on this more in chapter 2 of Ephesians.

[14:41] Where he talks about how we're saved. He says, you were dead in your trespasses and sin. You're dead. In which you formerly walked according to the course of this world. According to the prince of the power of the air.

[14:53] Of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them, we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh. Indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind.

[15:05] And were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. We have a bit of a problem, in other words, Paul says. We have a big problem. We're living in sin.

[15:16] We're under the wrath of God. So what can we do? Can we fix it? Can we just turn it around all of a sudden?

[15:26] No. What does he say? That's our state. Verse 4. But God, being rich in mercy. Because of his great love with which he loved us. Even when we were dead in our transgressions.

[15:40] Made us alive. Together with Christ. By grace you have been saved. This is God. We have redemption through the blood of Christ.

[15:51] Because God activates that. That even when we're dead, he makes us alive. It's his work. It's his marvelous work. There was nothing we could do to fix it.

[16:04] There was nothing we could do to correct our trajectory of life. Our slavery to sin. Indulging passions and desires of the flesh and of the mind.

[16:17] So he sets us free. He purchases for us our forgiveness. So why does God do it?

[16:30] Verse 7. In him we have the redemption through his blood. The forgiveness of our trespasses. According to what? Is it according to our doing something right? Is it according to us getting our act together?

[16:42] Is it according to us taking a new pledge that we'll do better? Is it because we've made a new promise, I'll really, really, we'll keep faithful to you, Lord?

[16:53] Is that why he does it? Because I correct my life for all the good intentions that is. And all the good motivations that is.

[17:04] That's not why he does it. But as Paul says, it's according to the riches of his grace. That's why. He does it out of grace.

[17:17] According to the riches of his grace. Paul just loves to magnify God's grace. The riches of his grace. God's not stingy. We see that grace overflows with more gifts.

[17:29] Look at this. End of verse 7. End of verse 8. According to the riches of his grace. Verse 8. Which he, what? Kind of passed out a little bit. Out a little bit.

[17:40] You know. Here, I'll give you just enough. No, that's not what Paul put. Paul says, which he lavished upon us. With all wisdom and insight.

[17:52] He lavished upon us. He overflows on us. He abounds on us. Richly. Along with wisdom and insight on us.

[18:04] The wisdom and insight is so that we come to understand the gospel. We come to understand that it's all him. And not us. How freeing that is.

[18:20] Wow. I want you to notice that Jesus is the center of all of it. Even though his name's not repeated. It's repeated in short form.

[18:31] It's repeated in where he says it's in him. Right? Verse 4. He chose us in him. Verse 5. He predestined us to adoption through Jesus Christ.

[18:43] Verse 7. In him we have redemption. In him. Through his blood. Christ accomplished for us.

[18:55] What we have. We have this redemption. We have this freedom. We have this deliverance. Through the blood of Christ. Through what Christ has accomplished for us. Listen to how the writer of Hebrews puts it in Hebrews 2.14.

[19:10] He says. Since therefore the children. Speaking of us humans. Share in flesh and blood. He himself likewise partook of the same things. Speaking of Jesus. Jesus became flesh and blood.

[19:23] Why? So that through his death. He might do two things. One. He might destroy the one who has the power of death. That is the devil. And two.

[19:35] Might deliver all those who through fear of death. Were subject to lifelong slavery. He destroyed the works of the devil. And delivered us from slavery.

[19:48] For surely it is not angels that he helps. But he helps the offspring of Abraham. Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect. Speaking of Jesus. Jesus had to be made like his brothers in every respect.

[20:02] In other words. Made flesh and blood. He had to become a man. So that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God.

[20:13] To make propitiation for the sins of the people. Propitiation. Meaning the satisfaction. Right? To satisfy the justice of God.

[20:25] Make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because. He. Jesus. He himself. Has suffered when tempted. He is able. To help those.

[20:36] Who are being. Tempted. Wow. So. So. Not only has Jesus redeemed us. By taking on flesh and blood.

[20:46] To become just like us. To leave his eternal throne. Right? To empty himself. To humble himself. Right? And to live a life under the same circumstances we live.

[20:59] To be tempted in everything yet without sin. And so to actually keep the law like no one else had ever done. So that he could be a. Spotless lamb.

[21:12] A spotless lamb. Only he could do that. And willingly give up his life in our place. To satisfy the justice of God.

[21:23] But. But. Notice what the Hebrew writer says. He. He's also. Because he did that. He's also able. To help those. Who are being tempted.

[21:35] What does that mean? He's able to help. He's already saved us. But he's able to continue. To help us. Why? Think about this.

[21:47] This is what makes Jesus unique. Among the Trinity. The Father did not take on flesh.

[21:59] The Holy Spirit did not take on flesh. But the Son took on flesh. And he lived the life. And he experienced every temptation. Temptations that God. The Father.

[22:11] Is not tempted with. That God the Son. When he sat on his throne. Is not tempted with. The Holy Spirit is not tempted with. But because Jesus subjected himself. To the humiliation. Of being in flesh.

[22:23] He experienced every temptation. You and I experience. And so. The writer says. Because of that.

[22:33] He's able to help us. Why? Because he gets it. He's experienced it. For the first time.

[22:45] God. Experiences. Temptation. In Christ. He's tempted. We see that most clearly. In Gethsemane. Don't we?

[22:56] Right? He's tempted. To do what? To not go to the cross. Let this cup pass. That's what Jesus. The human. Jesus. Wanted. Let the cup pass.

[23:06] I don't want to go to the cross. He's tempted to. Abandon that. Yet. Let not my will. But not be done. And then he has to pray three times. Right?

[23:18] In other words. It wasn't easy. For him. He gets it. Which. For us. Is a practical. Encouragement. For us to go to Jesus.

[23:29] Jesus. Because he really understands. I think sometimes we think. When we go to God. And we're tempted. We think. You know. He's not going to understand.

[23:39] He doesn't go. You know. He's not tempted with this. Silly stuff. That I'm tempted with. And yet. Jesus. Is. Familiar with it. He gets it.

[23:50] Does that encourage you? I mean. That's an encouragement to me. That's just like. Wow. He's still my Lord. But he gets it. And that makes me love him all the more.

[24:02] That makes me want to. To follow him all the more. That makes me want to. Overcome temptation all the more. Because he did. And he can help me do that. Isn't that good? That's I just. That's extra.

[24:13] That wasn't part of the sermon. Note the reason that he took a body. He took a body. Because we are flesh. And he had to take a body.

[24:25] To do for us. What we could never do. That is to keep the law. To satisfy the law. Right. And then to offer himself. As a holy sacrifice. In our place.

[24:38] So. Blessing number three. He rescued us from slavery to sin. Through Christ. Death. That's a. That's one of the great ways. We're blessed. That's one of the ways. We're blessed.

[24:48] That we experience. We experience that. I don't experience. That having been chosen. From before the foundation of the world. To be holy. I don't experience that. I just believe that.

[24:59] I don't experience. That I was. Predestined to adoption. I just believe that. But I do experience. Being set free.

[25:10] From slavery to sin. Have you? It doesn't mean I don't sin. But it means I'm set free. From the slavery.

[25:21] It means I don't have to anymore. Before I had to. Because it's all. It was my only choice. Did what was natural. And now I still have that natural. But now I have the supernatural.

[25:32] Now I have the Holy Spirit. Now I have this new man in me. And they fight it out. Right. Which dog do you feed? Right. Yeah. All right.

[25:43] So let's. There's a fourth one. Verses nine and ten. This one's a little more. Out there for us. We get the redemption. Verse nine. Says he made known to us.

[25:55] The mystery of his will. According to kind attention. Which he purposed in him. With a view to administration. Suitable to the fullness of time. That is the summing up. Of all things of Christ. Things in the heavens. And things upon the earth.

[26:05] We feel like. Okay. Paul keep going. Paul's gone. He's gone. I had him for a few sentences. And then. Then he just kept adding. And now I'm lost. Do you get.

[26:15] I mean. That's Paul. It's like. Okay. Slow down Paul. How do we summarize this? Here's how I summarize this. Clearly. He has made known to us.

[26:26] The mystery of his will. Okay. So he's revealed. A mystery. A mystery. That is his will. I'll put it this way. He reveals the mystery. Of his eternal plan in Christ.

[26:39] That's how I'm going to put it. I think that's the best way I can summarize it. He reveals the mystery of his eternal plan in Christ.

[26:50] So. Five facets here. Five. Breaking down this long sentence of Paul. Paul. So part of it's.

[27:01] Part one is mystery. Part two is. According to his purpose. Part three is. Set forth in Christ. Part four. Is. What did I say? Fullness of time.

[27:12] Part five. Is. The summing up. Right. So there's all these parts to it. So let's. Let's see if I can walk through it. Don't worry about trying to understand all of it.

[27:22] Because. You know. It's Paul. We get him a little bit at a time. Let's see if we can simplify some of this. Mystery. He's revealed.

[27:35] A mystery. Now. The. The. The grammar here. So verse seven. It's in him. We have redemption.

[27:46] Verse nine. Is he made known to us a mystery. Those two. Actions are connected. We have. Redemption. And his redemption is connected to making known the mystery.

[28:09] It's in that he reveals how the redemption comes to us. He's made known a mystery. That reveals how redemption comes to us. Does that make sense? So.

[28:20] So he's made. We have redemption. Okay. And the miss. Revealing the mystery is part of. Showing how that redemption came to us.

[28:30] So mystery. The. The word mystery in the scripture means something that's hidden. Something that's unknown. Apart from revelation. Okay. It's a mystery that God had not revealed before until.

[28:43] The time of Christ. And part of it until the time of Paul. So Paul is making known something. God has revealed to him that was hidden before.

[28:54] So. What was hidden? Well one of the things that was hidden. If we look over chapter three of Ephesians. He's going to talk about this mystery again.

[29:07] He says in Ephesians 3.3. That by revelation there was made known to me the mystery as I wrote before in brief. And by referring to this when you read you can understand my insight into the mystery of Christ.

[29:23] So it's a mystery related to Christ. Which in other generations was not made known to the sons of men. As it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets in the spirit.

[29:35] What is it Paul? What's the mystery? Verse six. To be specific. That the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body. And fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.

[29:50] That's the mystery revealed. It was not revealed in the Old Testament that God would bring these Gentiles into an equal status. The Old Testament says the Gentiles could come in.

[30:04] But they're out on the edge. They couldn't come all the way into the temple. They're on the. They're the furthest out. And don't you dare cross that barrier wall.

[30:16] You will die. Right? So they're out. But the mystery is that now God has purposed from long ago to include the Gentiles. Right?

[30:27] To be fellow members. Fellow. Right? That's part of the mystery. So why does he reveal to us part two? Why does he reveal to us? It's according to his purpose.

[30:38] It's what he purposed to do. According to his kind attention which he purposed in Christ. It's again his good pleasure. His delight. His desire.

[30:48] What is the starting point of this mystery? Where is it? How come I don't see?

[31:07] Oh, which he purposed in him. Sorry. He set forth in Christ. Does the ESV have set forth in Christ? Yeah, that's why. I'm reading from the, excuse me, New America Standard.

[31:18] I was looking for set forth in Christ. It's not there. It disappeared. Sorry. That's because I'm looking at a different translation. So, which he purposed in him.

[31:29] So, he purposed it in Christ. So, how is he going to bring about this bringing in the Gentiles? It's through Christ again. Here's Christ at the center of it again. He is the focus.

[31:40] He's the heart of the mystery. He is the beginner of the new covenant. Remember, Jesus at the Last Supper instituted the cup, which is the new covenant.

[31:50] The new covenant, which replaced the old covenant. The old covenant meaning keeping the Ten Commandments. If you keep the Ten Commandments, you're blessed and you're great, you're good.

[32:03] If you break one of those Ten Commandments, which who hasn't, you're out. The new covenant offers forgiveness. The old covenant did not. Well, the old covenant did answer some forgiveness, didn't it?

[32:19] Couldn't you offer a sacrifice for forgiveness? Yeah? What did it forgive under the old covenant? Unintentional. Unintentional sins. They were accidental.

[32:30] Oops. Didn't mean that. Touched a dead body. Wasn't intending to. But anything like what David did? You know, lust. Stealing another man's wife.

[32:45] Committing adultery with her. Lying to her husband. See, what else did he do? That's at least. Oh, murder. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

[32:58] Well, just, you know, send them into battle and just pull everybody back. Is that murder? Yeah. So he broke five of the ten. And he probably broke more than that.

[33:11] David was a dead man. So we read Psalm 51. That was David's repentance after that whole Bathsheba experience. And he prayed for mercy.

[33:22] He did not pray. If there was a sacrifice, I would give it. There was no sacrifice he could offer. Right? So, so, so, have mercy. Have mercy.

[33:33] Have mercy. Have mercy. Be gracious. According to thy loving kindness. There's nothing else he could do. He's a dead man. So Christ is the center of it all.

[33:46] When did he reveal it to us? Verse 10. The fullness of time. So verse 10, this is a tough verse. And every translation, I think, has it different. New America Standard has with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of time.

[33:59] I don't know what the ESV says. What? As a plan. For the fullness of time.

[34:09] For the fullness of time. Oh, wow. It really makes it simple. So there's this word in verse 10, translated plan, or translated here administration, which is the word dispensation.

[34:23] All right? So the word dispensation can mean plan. It can be administration. There's a theology called dispensationalism. So they use that word to talk about different dispensations where God works in different ways in different times of history.

[34:40] So here, in this sense, God's working in a different way through Christ. With a view to a plan or to an administration suitable to the fullness of time.

[34:51] So this is what he, he reveals it at the fullness of time. He reveals it when he has arranged it to be the perfect season. And there, the word for verse 10, fullness of times.

[35:04] Times is not chronos, as in we think of chronology, as in sequence of time. But it's kairos, meaning seasons. It's more like God time.

[35:15] The fullness of God time. The fullness of seasons. Seasons are longer, can go real long, can be real short. We go through seasons as Christians.

[35:26] We go through seasons as a church. Right? So fullness of time. So he's picking the right time. In Galatians 4, it talks about how God sent his son at the fullness of time.

[35:40] The perfect time. And historically, the perfect time was when Greek was known through the world. And so the language that could spread the gospel was already there.

[35:53] Greek was already there. Everybody spoke Greek. Everybody spoke Greek. The Hellenists spoke Greek. The Jews spoke Greek. Jesus spoke Greek. The apostles spoke Greek. That gave them the opportunity to both write and preach to everyone in a known language.

[36:11] The other thing that was perfect was Rome. Well, Rome wasn't perfect. But the Roman roads were. If you've ever seen a Roman road, you'd be amazed. It was pristine.

[36:25] It was level. It had sewer going down the middle. It was clean, sanitized. I mean, the road system that the Romans did because the emperors traveled the roads sometimes.

[36:39] It was amazing. So therefore, the gospel could go out. So Jesus came at a time, right? When the language was there. The roads were there. The Pax Romana was there. So there was relative peace.

[36:51] As long as you, you know, paid tribute to the Romans. There was peace there so the gospel could be spread. It was a perfect time.

[37:02] So God brings up the fullness of time. His goal is to sum up, to unite all things in Christ. To unite everything under one Lord. All right.

[37:20] Are you tired? I'm tired. Sorry. It feels like that's a lot. And I don't want to overtax you. How does God reveal this mystery to us?

[37:35] So how did he do that? How did he let us know? He let Paul know. How did he let us know? When is it that we come to understand this? Paul explains it in another letter in 1 Corinthians chapter 2.

[37:46] And he talks about how, Paul talks about how there's a foolish gospel that he preaches. That Christ saves.

[37:58] Right? And there's a foolish message that, or a foolish method that he uses in preaching. Paul stubbornly keeps preaching instead of using another method. And then there's the foolish means by which people are saved.

[38:12] And that's the Holy Spirit. Instead of some manipulation. And we learn a lot from that. That Paul intentionally chose foolish things because they were God's foolish methods.

[38:26] God's foolish ways. Foolish message of the gospel. Don't change the gospel. Foolish method, which is preaching. Don't change the method. Well, we shouldn't preach.

[38:37] That's outdated method. It's God's method. Keep using it. What is preaching? Well, we'll hopefully figure that out. And then the foolish means we depend on the Holy Spirit, not on manipulation.

[38:50] So how does Paul reveal? How does God reveal this mystery to us? 1 Corinthians 2.6. Yet among the mature, we do not impart wisdom.

[39:02] Though it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God.

[39:13] Literally, the wisdom in mystery. Which God decreed before the ages of our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this.

[39:23] For if they have, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But as it is written, What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him.

[39:41] What no eye has seen. Nobody would have imagined this. Nobody would have made this up. No one ever saw it coming. No one ever heard this before. No heart ever imagined.

[39:53] No man made this up. Only God could make this up. These things God has revealed to us through his spirit. For the spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.

[40:06] How does God reveal this mystery to us? Through the Holy Spirit. When the Holy Spirit comes, he teaches us, he reveals it to us. So God's plan is mystery.

[40:17] The whole thing is a mystery, isn't it? He sends his son to die. To defeat sin. He does not send his son to set up a new kingdom to conquer Rome.

[40:30] He sends his son to die. We were talking about that this morning. That every Jew raised in the first century would never have, never saw the Messiah to be like what Jesus was.

[40:43] They all expected the Messiah to be a greater David and to conquer Rome. And Jesus came and he did not offer to do any of that.

[40:56] His kingdom was actually much bigger than that. Right? He told Pilate, my kingdom's not of this world. It's much bigger. But nobody saw that.

[41:07] It was a mystery how he even came. It's a mystery of salvation that is received by faith, not by works. It's given by grace, not by law. It's what no man would have conceived.

[41:22] All right. What difference does all this make for us today? Let's get down to some application. One, do you recognize that your greatest problem in life is your sin?

[41:38] Not your troubles, not your money issues, not your health. Your greatest problem in life is your sin.

[41:49] Can you see that sin has bound you and enslaved you? Do you realize that you can't fix it? Two, has God revealed his mystery to you?

[42:05] Has he revealed the mystery of Christ? Has he shown you that only Jesus can free you and deliver you and forgive you? And Christian, do you daily draw on Christ when you're tempted?

[42:19] Do you seek him to help you through temptation? Or do you fight it on your own?

[42:32] Finally, do you continue to embrace these gifts? How do they affect you? Do you see what difference it makes that Jesus is your answer for sin, not only for the sin of your past that brings you to salvation, but as a Christian too, the sin that still plagues you, right?

[42:58] As we pray in the Lord's Prayer, lead us not into temptation, but deliver. So we still need God's help to grow, right? To conquer, right?

[43:11] Ultimately, do they cause you to humble yourself, to fall on your knees, and thank the Father? These are the blessings that Christ has given to us.

[43:23] Let us bless him back for what he has done for us. Let's pray. Father, we thank you, Lord, for Paul. We thank you for what he, what that incredible mind could put down on page to, to translate to us.

[43:41] And though Paul can be fairly wordy, as we are able to meditate more on his words, we get greater truth and greater understanding.

[44:01] So convince us today, Father, even great, more greatly, convince us that we have redemption in Christ through his blood. And that you have revealed this wonderful mystery of how you save people.

[44:18] This wonderful mystery of how it's not our works that bring us to freedom, it's your works. Convince us all the more, Father, that we might give you praise.

[44:31] We ask in Christ's name. Amen. Amen. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Amen. Amen.