Sermon Tone Analysis

*The Mystery Revealed:*

*The Prisoner of the Mystery*

(Ephesians 3:1-4)

 

Thomas Wheeler, former CEO of Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company, tells the story about a day when he and his wife were driving along a highway when he noticed their car was low on gas.

Wheeler got off at the next exit and found a rundown gas station with just one pump.

He asked the attendant to fill the tank and check the oil, then went for a little walk around the station to stretch his legs.

As he was returning to the car, he noticed that the attendant and his wife were engaged in an animated conversation.

The conversation stopped as he paid the attendant.

But as he was getting back into the car, he saw the attendant wave and heard him say, "It was great talking to you."

As they drove out of the station, Wheeler asked his wife if she knew the man.

She admitted she did.

They had gone to high school together and had dated for about a year.

"Boy, were you lucky that I came along," bragged Wheeler.

"If you had married him, you’d be the wife of a gas station attendant instead of the wife of a chief executive officer."

"My dear," replied his wife, "if I had married him, he’d be the CEO and you’d be the gas station attendant."

It’s all a matter of perspective, isn’t it?

Not an unusual situation in life.

The older we get, the more we realize that things are so often /not/ what they seem.

Take the world we live in, for example.

Just by looking around, you’d swear that conditions are getting worse all the time.

Problems multiply to the point where it seems there are no solutions.

It appears that no one is in charge.

History appears to be going nowhere and the latest in modern thought, be it scientific or philosophic, is that man is the result of a meaningless evolutionary process that is without meaning or purpose and which will eventually run down to nothing as the resources of the world and the universe are tapped out.

Pretty bleak, huh? 

 

Bleak, yes?

But correct?

No.

Not from God’s perspective.

We begin a series today on the first 13 verses of Ephesians 3 that are all about a great mystery of God.

We’ve entitled the series, “The Mystery Revealed” – which hopefully it will be by the time we get done.

Notice Paul says in verse 3, how the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I have written briefly.

He goes on in verse 9:  and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things.

Jumping to verse 11 he adds, This is according to the /eternal purpose/ that he (God) realized in  Christ Jesus our Lord.

Clearly from God’s perspective, there /is/ an eternal purpose – */there is a plan/*.

There is someone in charge; there is meaning; and there is a purpose to it all, and it is all somehow tied up with this mystery.

So what is the mystery?

First, we must understand that when Scripture uses the term mystery, it does not refer to an Agatha Christie or Sherlock Holmes “who done it?”

The term mystery as used by Paul simply means truth hidden in the past, but made evident now.

/As we will see in detail, the mystery is that God, as a direct result of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is, during this age, creating  a new entity – a church, a body of Christ that is comprised equally of believers from all walks of life, all ethnic backgrounds, all cultures and tongues – and that very mixed bag of human diversity, which ordinarily looks very rag-tag in its existence, is going to be a key factor in demonstrating God’s manifold  wisdom to the universe and bringing about the realization of His plan to remove alienation from universe, sum up all things in Christ and restore the glorious conditions of paradise pre-Satan./

*/ There IS a plan./*

/ /

Now I must confess that it is a mystery to me, even knowing that, how God is going to pull this all together, but the more we understand about His plan, the more we will be urged by faith to believe it and to adopt His perspective as ours as opposed to the pessimistic outlook that the world offers us.

This week we are looking at the Prisoner of the Mystery.

In subsequent weeks we will look at the Plan, the Proclamation, the Purpose and the Privilege of the Mystery and in the process, I trust that we will see our own faith in God revitalized and renewed.

* *

Look with me at *3:1*  For this reason I, Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles.

The prisoner of the mystery is, of course, the apostle Paul, and in this verse he begins to introduce a prayer that he has for the Ephesians, /but he gets sidetracked/.

So what he begins in verse 1, he actually come back to in verse 14.  You’ll see that he even starts over with the same phrase in verse 14.  Everything that intervenes constitutes one long parenthetical discourse aimed at insuring his readers are having the proper perspective of life and of their world.

He seems to realize as he begins his introduction by identifying himself as a prisoner, that they might have a tendency to lose heart – */that they might despair of his and consequently their circumstances and fail to see God’s perspective of history/*.

He wants to assure them that they have indeed married right – that in Christ they have the right Lord of life, and that however bleak things may look, /they will come out right in the end./

To get his point, we want to look at Paul’s own place here by seeing his perspective, his pursuit and his passion.

* *

*I.                   ** Paul’s Perspective*

* *

Look at verse 1 again.

For this reason, I, Paul, a prison for Christ Jesus.

I wonder how many of us, incarcerated in Rome awaiting trial, would have thought to refer to ourselves as prisoners of Christ Jesus.

I find in this a fascinating insight into the mind of Paul and a challenge to all of us.

He had been a prisoner for some five years by this time, two years in Caesarea and the rest in Rome.

He had been arrested on /false charges/ made by Jews from the province of Asia who were visiting in Jerusalem.

They had accused him of taking the Gentile Trophimus into forbidden areas of the Temple, /though he had not done so/.

Paul had faced hearings before the Sanhedrin, before the Roman governor Felix, before Felix’s successor, Festus, and even before King Agrippa.

Had Paul not appealed to Caesar while defending himself before Festus, Agrippa would have released him, but after the appeal, there was no turning back.

From Caesarea the apostle was taken to Rome, where he was allowed to stay in private quarters with a soldier to guard him awaiting a hearing before Nero.

Through all of this, although arrested on Jewish charges, Paul did not consider himself a prisoner of the Jews.

Although imprisoned by Roman authority, he did not consider himself a prisoner of Rome.

Although he had appealed to Caesar, he did not consider himself Caesar’s prisoner.

He was a minister of Jesus Christ, bought with a price, and given the special mission of preaching the gospel to the Gentiles.

He was therefore, in his mind, *the prisoner of Christ Jesus*.

Whatever he did and wherever he went were under Christ’s control.

/Without his Lord’s consent, he was not subject to the plans, power, punishment, or imprisonment of any man or government/.

Perspective!  Perspective is all–important, is it not?

*/How we view and react to circumstances is more important than the circumstances themselves./*

If all we can see is our immediate situation, then our circumstances /control/ us.

We feel good when our circumstances are good but miserable when they are not.

Had Paul been able to see only his circumstances, he would quickly have given up his ministry.

Had he thought that his life was ultimately in the hands of his persecutors, his jailers, his guards, or the Roman government, he would long since have given up in despair.

But Paul’s perspective was a */divine perspective/*, and he lived with total trust in God’s purposes.

It was not that he himself knew his future or fully /understood/ the divine purposes behind his afflictions, but that /he knew his future, his afflictions, and every other aspect of his life were totally in His Lord’s hands.

/Despite his apostleship and his many revelations from the Lord, Paul lived and worked by faith, not by sight.

He knew—not because of what he could see but because of the Lord’s own Word—“that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose” (Rom.

8:28).

That is why as believers we are to “consider it all joy” when we “encounter various trials.”

We know that those trials, or testings, produce faith, that faith produces endurance, and that endurance leads to the perfection and completion of our preparation for living a godly life

 

Paul knew that his circumstances had “turned out for the greater progress of the gospel,” so that his “imprisonment in the cause of Christ [had] become well known throughout the whole praetorian guard and to everyone else, and that most of the brethren, trusting in the Lord because of [his] imprisonment, [had] far more courage to speak the word of God without fear” (Phil.

1:12–14).

In John Bunyan’s classic novel /Pilgrim’s Progress, /the hero at one point runs into Mistrust and Timorous fleeing back down the path, having been driven back by lions on the way.

Christian, however, continues on because it is the only way he knows to advance.

As he comes to a lodge where he hopes to spend the night, he notices that a very narrow passage leads to the place, but more importantly, he spies the two lions.

He himself becomes filled with fear and determines to go back lest he face death.

But about that time the porter at the lodge, whose name is Watchful, sticks his head out, having been watching and perceiving that Christian has stopped and appears to be contemplating a retreat.

“Is your strength and your faith so small,”  saysWatchful.

“Fear not, the lions are chained.

They are placed there for a trial of faith.

Keep in the midst of the path and no harm will come to you.”

See, Paul had it right.

We must see every single circumstance of life – the good as well as the bad – as trials of faith.

Always intended by God for good, /either for our own edification or for that of others/.

We do not always know which, nor do we need to know.

Our job is to see Christ.

So Paul saw himself as a prisoner of Christ.

We need to see ourselves as a businessman for Christ, as a farmer for Christ, as a retiree for Christ, as a bookkeeper for Christ.

And we need to see the lost job, the lost income, the fire damaged house, the difficult person, whatever it is, as Christ.

It is nothing more than a trial of faith.

If you are a Christian, living by faith, you are /never the victim of circumstance.

/The lions are chained.