All Things in Christ, Eph, 1:9-10

Good morning, heavenly seated ones. We're going to continue moving on here in Ephesians chapter 1. And as I go through this, boy, I just get excited. And I'll tell you, one of the challenges that I face each week is we're only going through like a couple of verses at a time. Once we only went through one verse. It's a tough... How do you fit it all in? It's a tough time to figure that out. because these are such rich verses. And as we step into this, just I think a few things I think might be helpful for us to have as perspective.

One of the things we like to bring up from time to time is what's the cultural understanding of what we're reading? Essentially, what we're trying to do is to bring forward the understanding they had as the original readers and to read it with that understanding in mind. And one of the things I think is critical for us to understand is as the apostles wrote, what they wrote was frequently shocking, stunning, startling for their readers to hear. It was not, if you were living in New Testament times, it was not the sort of things you wanted to hear for the first time with a cup up to your mouth or food in your mouth. because this is stuff that's just going to be absolutely startling. And as we get the sense of Scripture, that comes out more and more. Let's take a look at some of this.

One of them, and that's just to bring up the fact, he is continuing to spell out as he goes through Ephesians chapter 1 here, the blessings that we have in Christ. Okay? Remember 1, 3. We have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ Jesus in the heavenly places, okay? Now, imagine, and he's just gone through here and said, talked about the riches, okay? The riches, and those being lavished upon us, okay? Now, think of that.

Estimates are that the population of Ephesus may have been as much as 50% slaves. Most of those slaves are obviously not going to be well off, okay? Let's add to that another part of the society there, and then we know that there were a number who were poor and even beggarly poor, okay?

There's two words for poor in the Greek, and the one used most often in the New Testament is beggarly poor. We're not talking just kind of lower than the usual standard. We're talking about people who are on the brink of not surviving, okay? For beggarly poor, takos is used frequently in the New Testament. Add those together and you can see that the people of the Church who are drawn out of these populations, many of them would never hope to have riches. Many of them had never seen riches and could only dream of what it is like.

For them to even imagine that the Creator of the universe, the God of all that is, would bless them with every spiritual blessing, would lavish his riches upon them. That to them was just wonderful beyond belief. Think of how marvelous and stunning it was for them to hear this. We pointed out earlier that no god, we have no record in all of Greek literature that any of the ancient gods ever blessed any of the people that worshipped them. And here the god blessed them with every spiritual blessing.

Past tense. Done deal. Not hanging it out as if you're going to get it if you do this. You have been, past tense, blessed with every spiritual blessing. That is incredible news. As the people read this, they were absolutely shocked. They had to have been.

But we're not done. Another insight here as we look through this is, to the Greek and Roman mind, time just kind of went on and on and on. It never stopped. perception in the Greek and Roman mind that time would come to an end here on Earth. To them it was endless human beings trying to play tug-of-war with the gods, trying to manipulate the gods into various things and hoping to avoid offending them. Being controlled by the astral powers, that's what they had in mind.

We brought up before in weeks past the influence of the Silk Road trait. Just to summarize quickly, Starting a couple centuries before the New Testament era, trade began with China. And there was a network of roads that carried trade between China and India over into Europe. It took about a year to go back and forth.

But not only was there silk and spices brought over from the Orient and goods that were sent back the other way, one of the things that was brought over from the Orient was Eastern philosophy. And one of the key ones that was well-established by this time for almost 1,500 years was Hinduism. Hinduism has the idea that the world that we see around us is but a dream of God and we're all, over time, over trillions of years, going to be absorbed back into the mind of God. What Paul was teaching was entirely contrary to what the Greek and Roman mindset was of things just go on and endlessly.

It was entirely contrary to what the people were being brought through the Silk Road trade. This was shocking, startling news, a perspective that they had never heard before. Amazing to hear, as the words rolled off the page, as people spoke them and read them aloud to others. People were stunned at what they heard, amazed, astounded by the words that came across.

Now, let's continue on with what he says here in Ephesians 1, 9 and 10. He made known to us the mystery of his will. Let's take a look at focusing on that. He made known. That's a key word, believe it or not, in the Greek, even though it's free in English. He made known, γνώσκω. This is a knowledge that makes us aware, that brings us to a level of understanding. Not intimate understanding, but a level of understanding. It's an aristocratic participle. We certainly don't want to leave that unexplained. The idea is this.

It was an action that, in context, took place in the past. It is God who took the initiative, and I think that's key for us to understand. What we see from Ephesians, starting with verse 1 actually, but underscored from verse 3 on down, God keeps taking the initiative. God keeps acting. God is the one who acts. God acts first. God is the one who starts the action.

He started before we even thought of acting. He said, I'm going to bless those people with every spiritual blessing, and I'm going to start before I even make the world. I'm going to start before I even make the world. I'm going to bless them with every spiritual blessing.

Now, the focus, even the form of the verb that he uses here, places the focus on God's acting. There's an emphasis on God's action. Now, the next word that jumps out at us here, He made known to us the mystery of His will. Now, when we think of a mystery, we think, aha, I know what that is, and we think of a book or a movie, and it's got all sorts of twists and turns, and finally at the end, surprise, here's the conclusion that's reached, right? That's what a mystery is. That's not what He's talking about, okay? He's got a different thing in mind.

In the culture of the time, the religions of the time had this idea. They were called mystery religions. They were known throughout the Roman Empire. Some of them were of Roman origin, some of them even of Egyptian origin, some of them of Babylonian origin, some of them coming from the Greeks. But they had this idea of mystery religions. And in those mystery religions, the idea was that you would have people who were initiated into this cult, and the people who were initiated were sworn to secrecy. They'd take them through these elaborate rituals and they would say, okay, now you must swear on penalty of death that you will disclose this to no one. That to them was a mystery. So that's their sense of it. So imagine the reaction. Here's Paul, and this is what I mean by what Paul is writing is stunning stuff.

Paul says, behold, I tell you a mystery. And who is he telling? Not an initiate, but everybody. So people, instead of responding to this as if they're getting some secret mystery because he's telling everybody, they're going, Paul, what are you saying? You're revealing a mystery. You've sworn under penalty of death not to reveal that. No, he says, I tell everybody.

What he did was shocking in the culture. Imagine, He made known to us a mystery of His will, as we'll look here in this verse. Or imagine this, to make known with boldness the mystery of the Gospel. The cultural understanding is you don't tell anybody. He says, we're going to tell everybody. He makes sure everybody knows. Tell them with boldness. And everybody's shocked. Okay, cool. And we didn't even have the loud voices of revelation to draw upon.

What's amazing is we're going to have this word, mystery, about a half dozen times here in Ephesians, and about four times through Colossians. It's going to keep coming up here, because what is He going to do? He's going to draw upon their understanding of mystery only he's going to turn it inside out. He's going to broadly and boldly proclaim what is ordinarily in the culture spoken of only in great secret. Here's the way the word shows itself up. Musterion is the name of the word. It comes from a verb that means to shut the mouth. And the idea is that the people who were initiates into these religions had to keep their mouth shut.

So for Paul, you can see how even the verb having that source, for Paul to say we're going to proclaim boldly this mystery was absolutely contrary to the culture. The people were absolutely amazed that he would write such a thing. So in contrast to the general cultural understanding, Paul would use the word this way. something previously unknown to man, now revealed by God. That's the way in which you see this word consistently used throughout the New Testament, because they were to do the exact opposite of the culture.

Rather than keep this a secret, tell everyone. Tell everybody. That was the key thing. Let everyone know this mystery. Now, musterion is not a moose staring. It has nothing to do with that. It's not a secret moose even. As a matter of fact, I have to tell you something. It has nothing to do with a moose. Nothing at all. Now, what's going on here?

Here's what mystery is about. God is essentially pulling back the curtain on His plan for everything in the universe, visible and invisible. How's that for a mystery? That's not at all what the people had in mind when they thought of mystery, was it? Completely different.

Instead, God is saying, here is the secret of what's happening in the entire universe and throughout all of human history. It's interesting, if you read pagan historians, they'll read history and have a real difficult time making any sort of long-term sense out of it. verses is spelling out for us what has mystified historical scholars for centuries.

He says, here's what God's doing. Here is what God's doing. So he's pulling back the curtain, revealing it. Okay. The mystery of his will, and boy, isn't that something that people get absolutely turned upside down about? Oh, it's God's will. I can't figure out what God's will is. What does God want? Well, guess what? It's no mystery. Let's get the big picture on God's will. You have on your handout something that is similar to this, lacking the color, but otherwise the same content. The first thing, and that is, there are three parts of God's will. We introduced this before, but I want to focus in on it here. The first part of God's will is God's sovereign will is fixed and irreversible.

And one of the reasons we teach with great gusto here the positional truths, the truths of your position in Christ, is because we can teach them as applicable to every single believer, we can know that it's true, and it is irreversible. It is unchangeable. The position that you have in Christ, and these positional truths are given past tense, it's not one you're going to get, it's one you have now if you're a believer. The position that you have in Christ is based on God's sovereign will, and nobody's going to change it. You can't tweak it. You can't improve upon it. You have been blessed with every spiritual blessing, past tense, no exceptions, not a 90% deal, not even 99%, every, 100%, every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. That's God's sovereign will. There are various things in Scripture that are spelled out this way. The next thing, God's moral will is revealed in Scripture. This is what we're going to see in the last half of Ephesians and in the last half of Colossians.

Paul's going to be telling the people at Ephesus, who as we saw before, Ephesus had a culture in which if you could make it to within a bow shot of the temple of Artemis before being caught for a crime, you were home free. So he's going to write to the believers at Ephesus, some of whom had been criminals. He's going to tell them, you who have been stealing, no longer be stealing.

What is that? That's a part of God's moral will. It is not intended to be lived out by a bunch of rules. What Paul is describing is what does the life of Christ look like in the believer. Real important point. Frankly, folks, there's nothing for you to do here in the sense of those kinds of things other than behold the Lord. It's His life, not yours. You don't get to do it, sorry. But that's good news.

The last thing is God's individual will. Believers over time and throughout the world just torture themselves over trying to figure out what's God's will for my life. Well, guess what? The first big circles on the outside, those are already covered. It's either God's sovereign will, which is not reversible, and you're not going to tweak it or touch it, or it's God's moral will that He's revealed in Scripture. And so the last thing is God's individual will for the believer, which largely consists of wisdom, not of some skywriting in the sky, not of a telegram from God or an email from heaven.com. None of those. The truth is, the great portion of God's will, you don't even have to worry about. It's already been taken care of because of God's sovereignty, or because of what He's spelled out in Scripture. If God's not horrifically worried about it, I don't think we should be.

He wants us first to look at what He's revealed, and that's what this is all about. He has lifted the curtain on the mystery of His will. That's what this is about. And it's not something to get us uptight. It is something in which we can rest, because we can rest in Him. It's in Him, remember? He keeps telling us that all through this. In Him, in Him, in Him. Guess what? If you're in Him, you're in that circle. You're in God's sovereign will if you're in Him. Something else.

I've looked high and low. I cannot find anything that says that the believer goes out of his will. out of Him. He keeps reinforcing, we see numerous times in Ephesians chapter 1, in Him, in whom, in the Beloved, in Himself. We keep seeing that again and again and again. I have yet to find an out of Him. In Him in the Greek would be in Christou, et Christou would be out of Him. I can't find it.

People don't slip out. If you're in that circle because you're in Him, you're not getting out of it. You're not going to slip out. You're not going to go, whoops! And God isn't either. God isn't either. This is the focal point, is that outside circle is God's sovereign will. That's what Paul is spelling out here for us. This is God's sovereign will. He can tell us, this is true of you of believers, because if you're a believer, you're in Him and you're in that circle. You're there, folks, and you're secure in that circle. There is no falling out.

Real interesting, we're going to find out, for example, that we have been seated with Christ, Ephesians 2.6. Do you know I can't find any verse that says anybody's been unseated? Can't find it. I haven't heard of anybody whose chair broke. It just hasn't happened.

Then it says, according to. Remember what we pointed out before. According to's are going to happen about 14 times in Ephesians and about 7 times in Colossians as we go through this. Simply this, according to, you can put in there consistent with. That's the idea that's being carried across. Consistent with. Consistent with what?

His kind intention. It's the kind intention of the Father here. Let's take a look at that. The King James has it as good pleasure. That's also a good way to put it. It's eudokia, good intention or the idea of good thought. And here's what I think is key. God's good intention comes from goodness of nature. Why is that important to us? It's important because of this.

God's good intention comes from goodness of nature and His nature does not change. He says, I am the same yesterday, today, and forever. In the Old Testament, the Lord had the prophets write, I, the Lord, do not change. His good intention for us springs from His unchangeable, constant, continuing nature. He is always of good intent for us because that is His nature.

It's not something we need to worry about. We don't need to threaten Stu. We're driving down the road, we don't say, boy, I sure hope God doesn't change His mind about good intent. No, it won't change because it comes from His character and His character is unchangeable. We don't have to worry about that. What He has done, what He has revealed, what He is doing and what He has revealed springs from His good intention, which is constant. He always has good intent for us. It says, which he purposed. Again, this is the Lord's taking the action.

Here's this word purpose, protissimai. It means to place before, and it has the implication in the second word there that's part of the compound, to place before laying down as a foundation, to just lay it down, set it out, lay it out. God had set out in advance. He'd laid it out in advance. He's giving us kind of this word picture here, so we get the idea. God had an intent for this entire universe. He didn't just create it and say, boy, now what am I going to do with this thing? He's spelling out the intent that He had, because God set things in place. He set things in place with this intention. He purposed it. Things have a purpose. a purpose, a reason.

And isn't that what a great deal of the world just gets totally lost in? What's my purpose? What am I doing here? People become despondent because they don't sense the purpose in things. How's going through this subject of trials and suffering? It has a purpose, okay? And understanding that purpose is critical.

What the Lord set in place, okay? He purposed There's a reason for it. What He said in place from the beginning is what He's about to spell out here. The other thing to point out, we've brought out God's will. It's God's sovereign will. It's not going to be thwarted. See, God's not going to get partway down the road and then something will come up and He says, Oh man, that was a surprise I wasn't counting on. What am I going to do now? God's not doing that. God has an intention here that will not be thwarted. And ultimately, it is in Him. It is in Christ. That's the focal point, and he spells that out even more in the next verse here. What we'll see there, this is a word that is interesting. It's short. It's translated in the New American Standard, with a view, that in, in the King James there. It's a short word, ice. It has nothing to do with that really cold stuff.

This is the idea of into or toward. It's directed. There's a direction. As we look at this word here, we get this idea. This is introducing the direction of what God has purposed. You see that? Here is the direction that God has set things. That idea of purpose is to place before. He set that as the direction in motion.

Then we have this word that's translated administration here. Dispensation is another translation that comes out in the King James. Oikonomia. And there's one thing we've got to make clear first. That's kind of a different word. We're not accustomed to thinking of it. Oik has nothing to do with a pig with a cold. So it's nothing like that. This instead, this is a word here. It's a compound word. It means household principle. Household principle. There's a family of words involved here.

As a matter of fact, as we go through the book of Ephesians, we're going to see this word come out again and again, and we're going to see it in Colossians as well. Why? It's because he's introducing something that he's going to lay out in far more detail as we get farther down the road. And frankly, that's what we're going to do. We're not going to cover all the detail here this morning. What we're going to do is introduce it with the idea that as we get into those passages that explain it in further detail, we'll do exactly that.

But this is a word that was introduced, and it's in the family, introduced about 20 times in the New Testament, plus some other words that are derived or a part of it, and also several times in the Greek Old Testament. Greek version when they translated it from Hebrew into Greek a couple centuries before the New Testament era.

Okay, oikonomos is one. This is the person who is assigned to manage, part of that family of words. Oikonomia, this is the administration or management or the stewardship arrangement, that's translated the dispensation. And it is the arrangement for the person who is the manager. It's like, okay, here's your arrangement. Here's the area that you have to work in and here are the principles that you operate with. Oikonomayo is the action of that oikonomos, again, the manager, in carrying out the assigned stewardship. When they would act in managing, that would be this word oikonomayo.

Or finally, oikos is this house or household. And it can be anything from a household to a state, a nation, or even a large group of people. It was applied on different levels. It was the domain, however big or small, of the oikonomia, this administration or management.

Now, let me point out, for those of you who'd be interested, at the cabin just to the right as you exit, there's an additional handout if you want to grab that and are interested in studying these words even further. There's some information on that that you might want to take a look at. We're specifically focusing on this one. He's talking about a stewardship arrangement. A stewardship arrangement in this particular verse here. With a view to this stewardship arrangement, suitable to the fullness of the times. Here's a word, pleroma.

In the context of time, it has the meaning of a completeness of a time duration, the full extent of the time, whether it's days, weeks, years, whatever the time is, the fullness of that time. And that word was used throughout the New Testament, even starting in the Gospels, about the full extent of the time. It was used both in a sense of, for example, when the time had come for Mary to deliver Jesus.

The fullness of that time. Or it would be the fullness of a period of time, like 40 days, 40 years, 3 weeks, whatever the time was. The full sense of the time. Example we see in Galatians 4. When the fullness of time came, God sent forth a son born of woman. So here's this sense that's brought across. The full extent of the time. And he's using it in that context here. That is, the summing up. And this is an interesting word, it's a rare one. Anakephalaiomai. And if you want to say, oh my, that's fine. But, anakephalaiomai. And this is a rare word.

The only other place it occurs in the New Testament, as a matter of fact, the only other place I can find it anywhere, is in this Romans 13.9 passage. Paul also uses it there.

It has the idea of to sum up or to head up. And so what's he saying? Christ in the fullness of time has been exalted so as to be appointed as the head of all things in heaven and earth. He is to head up everything. You could put it this way. Christ is God's summary statement. Christ is God's summary statement. Sometimes you wonder if a pastor ever gets there, right? But Christ is God's summary statement. That's what he's talking about. And finally, he ends up, he's trying to get us to understand the extent of this. Christ is God's summary statement, the one who is heading up all things. In all things in Christ, isn't it amazing? In Him, in Christ, in whom? In Himself, in the Beloved. It keeps coming across. This is no exception.

Things in the heavens and things on the earth. We saw in, when we went through the book of Revelation and actually touched on it in Philippians, This is the way you see from the Old Testament and the New. If you want to talk about everything, if you want to say everything, and Ben, I'll keep the decibel level down. If you want to say everything, you include heavens and the earth. Heavens and the earth, or heaven and earth. And you'll see those words together in verse after verse after verse where the expression is everything. Everything in Him. that He is the focal point.

As we look at this passage, I think the key thing to look at is the people that Paul is writing to, they never had any clue what their gods had in mind. If the earth shook and they had an earthquake, it was because somebody, unbeknownst to them, had offended the gods. If something bad happened, who knows? They never knew what the gods had in mind. Here Paul is giving an absolutely stark contrast, saying, here is God, the creator of the universe, telling you this is what He has in mind.

He has as His intent to head up everything in Christ. Everything. Now you know, he's telling them, now you know what everything is all about. Now you know the meaning of history. Now you know the meaning of things that are before history. Now you know the meanings of things after history. All things. Now you know.

It's to be headed up in Christ. One of the key things that we look at here is this picture of God's will. And I think as we look at this passage, He brings up this phrase, His will, several times in this passage. And the way the Greek comes across is not the English translation, his will, but it's the will of him. The will of him. And that's really good to know the distinction, and here's why. It isn't just a simple statement of his will. It's the will of Him. God has a specific will.

There are things that He specifically has in mind. He wants us to know what those things are. He wants us to know that those things are headed up in Christ. You want to figure out, you know, what's life all about? You better look at Christ. You want to know, even in the details, what's going on in my life? Why is this happening? He tells the church in Rome, he says, all things work together for good.

All things? You're kidding! Yes, all things. For those who love the Lord, called according to His purpose, they are being conformed to the image of the Son. All things. The big picture, we're told, the small details. All things. It's about Christ. You want to know about the small detail? It's about Christ. You want to know the big picture? It's about Christ. It's focused on Him. Christ is God's summary statement. And eventually I'll get to one.

As we look at the things in this circle, certainly Paul is putting the focus here. He's starting with God's sovereign will. He's laying out what is eternal and irreversible and irrevocable in God's sovereign will. Things that won't be tweaked. things that won't be touched, things that won't be reversed. He is moving inward in the circle, isn't he? He's telling them as he moves in, he's laying out things, and he's going to start laying out what is... this is God's moral will. But he doesn't do that until he's first told them, this is God's sovereign will and your place in it.

And your place in it is in Him. And your place in Him is where He's blessed you with every spiritual blessing. Your place in Him is your position in Him that you have in Christ, irreversible and untouchable in the heavens. And that's marvelous, wonderful good news.

Later on, after he has dealt with the sovereign will of God and revealed his moral will, he will turn to things influencing their individual will. He'll write to them things like, don't be fools, but be wise. learn what wisdom is. He's going to put their focal point on that. But that comes later. Right now, he's going to spell out God's sovereign will and continue to do that for three more chapters in Ephesians. The first two chapters of Colossians. What we're learning about is God's sovereign will.

Who we are in him. He's going to keep underscoring that message. In him, in him, in him. That is wonderful news. Aren't you glad you're in him? Okay, let's pray. Lord, what a marvelous place we have. What tremendous blessings. Thank you, Lord, that by your work, by your action, every believer here this morning can count irreversibly, untouchably, untarnishably on being in Him. And in being in Him, having every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies. We thank you that that is your sovereign will for every believer. We can count on that, depend upon that, and we look forward to learning more of the depth and the riches of that as we continue through these marvelous books. In Jesus' name, Amen.