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[0:00] The letter to the Ephesians!

[0:30] We've just finished, or a couple of weeks ago finished, these great doctrinal truths that Paul has been laying out for us and having us know that these are God's gifts to us in Christ and commenting upon how deep they are and in some sense complicated to understand.

[0:54] And then we get to the prayer, Paul's prayer that is intended to help us understand these things, and the prayer itself is hard to understand.

[1:05] I think I've mentioned that before, but I've reacquainted myself with that reality as I've been studying this passage the last couple of days. And there's just so much here.

[1:16] And the depth of it is somewhat difficult to plumb. And so we're going to take our time with this.

[1:27] I hope you don't mind. And you've got your notes there, and you can jot other things down as I kind of fill in some of it, the between-the-lines type of stuff that I'm going to be talking about tonight.

[1:41] But remember, you know, we're looking at what I have called the second of three emphases in this larger passage that started with verse 3 of chapter 1, runs all the way through chapter 2, verse 10.

[1:59] And the second of three deals with prayer. We have looked at Paul praising God. That's the first emphasis. And now prayer.

[2:11] And then after we get through this, whenever that will be, we'll look at purpose. The purpose of God. So that's kind of the direction we're going. And so we're going to focus again tonight on the substance of Paul's prayers for his readers.

[2:27] And we can include ourselves in that number because we're readers of the book of Ephesians. And again, I think I mentioned last week, though Paul didn't know anything about me or you, that is by name, he certainly, I think, had a sense that many, many people would be reading this letter way beyond just the original audience that he had in mind, the believers at the Church of Ephesus.

[2:57] All right, so let's, as we remember what we considered last week, before Paul reveals the substance of his prayers, he gives a word of thanks.

[3:10] Remember, we talked about this last week. That was part of our primary focus last week. He gives praise. He gives thanks. He says in verse 16, I do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers.

[3:24] And so he thanks them. Remember, we said last week, thanks God, actually. He's not really thanking them. But he's thankful for them. But he's thanking God for their profession of faith, first of all.

[3:39] And this is what we looked at last week. And remember, I mentioned that he's talking about faith. When he said there in verse 15, I've heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus. He's talking about their salvation.

[3:51] Their salvation. Because then he says in verse 15, something about their love for the saints. And so he's not only thankful for their profession of faith, but he also is thankful for their practice of faith.

[4:05] And so it reveals a truth that we should apply to our own lives. That is, the practice of our faith is what proves the profession of faith.

[4:20] It's what makes that profession of faith have any validity whatsoever. So Paul then knows the reality of their profession of faith by observing their practice of faith.

[4:33] All right, so now we're ready to look at the substance of Paul's prayers for the Ephesians. And so, this is kind of a continuation from your notes last week, point number three. And I've started our notes this week with point number three.

[4:50] Paul then reveals to the Ephesian believers the substance of his prayers for them. The substance of his prayers. And he says in verse 16, making mention of you in my prayers that...

[5:02] And then from then on, we have Paul talking about the substance, revealing the substance of his prayers for these believers. And again, Paul has revealed some deep, deep theological truths with us, starting way back there in verse 3 of this chapter.

[5:22] And also, Paul has revealed some truth that some of the greatest intellects of history have stumbled over and have trouble understanding. And so, Paul is praying for them to understand these truths.

[5:35] That's what makes this prayer, the substance of this prayer, so important. Because if over the centuries since Paul wrote this letter, if theologians have had difficulty with these great truths, then why should we be any different?

[5:57] We'll have difficulty understanding these truths. So, what's the answer? The answer is prayer. And so, we not only need to appreciate Paul's prayer for the people there, the Ephesian believers, and by extension, all of us, but we also should pray this way for ourselves.

[6:16] We ought to pray on a regular basis. Now, you may not pray exactly the words that Paul used here, because, you know, it's, you know, the words are kind of weighty, and the sentences are a little bit difficult to maybe understand, incorporate in our own prayer life.

[6:36] But when we understand the gist of what he's praying, then we should pray these same things for ourselves, for our family, for our church. Pray these things for me, your pastor.

[6:48] I spend hours every week studying God's Word, and I struggle with it. I labor with it, wrestle with it, and trying to understand what God's Word says and means.

[7:02] And so, if we're going to have the kind of understanding we need, a full understanding of God's Word, then we need to pray for that.

[7:14] And then understand what it means to have a full understanding of God's Word, which will be our subject tonight. All right, now, here then is the substance of Paul's prayers, and we'll just kind of get into this tonight.

[7:32] It kind of begins with what I would call a general prayer. Kind of a general prayer, and they're just one kind of general or introductory prayer. There are some theologians, some commentaries that I've consulted that have the opinion that really what I'm calling kind of a general prayer is the prayer, and then everything else is supportive of it.

[7:55] But I think this is a general prayer that Paul then is going to apply to some specific areas of prayer need.

[8:06] And so that's kind of going to be the direction we go. Verse 17, this is kind of the general prayer that Paul gives here at the beginning, or an introductory part to the prayer.

[8:18] Verse 17, Now, there's the petition.

[8:34] The spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him. Now, there's a whole lot there in that phrase.

[8:44] Now, obviously, if you look at the first part of verse 17, that's all about to whom Paul is praying, or who it is that will grant and give these things, these petitions that he's going to be revealing to us as we go through this passage.

[9:00] But the petition, and I'm calling it kind of an overarching kind of general prayer, the specifics of which and the application of which will come a little bit later, that specific petition or general petition is that God would give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him.

[9:27] So this is a very specific request. I think there's no denying that. But its application is very general. This could apply to so many things in our lives spiritually.

[9:41] So many things within the context of knowledge, of what we need to know, and understanding, and so forth. So that's why I call this kind of a general part of the prayer.

[9:54] Then he's going to be very specific with some applications of that prayer. And so in the next few verses, Paul's going to get very specific. And he's going to apply this request that we have here in verse 17 to three specific areas.

[10:10] And this will be our focus for tonight. When you put all three of those together, then you have this first petition, first of three petitions that Paul reveals in his prayers.

[10:21] All right. So what is the meaning of this petition? If this is kind of a general prayer that Paul is praying for the people, then what does it mean?

[10:36] I mean, just read it again. The spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him. All right. Someone stand up and tell me exactly what that means. Well, here.

[10:47] I've got microphones. I mean, there's a lot there. In fact, it's very wordy, isn't it? I mean, there's some big words here. And if you just want to, first of all, kind of identify the key words, it's nearly every word in that phrase.

[11:04] Spirit. I mean, that's the first word. What do you mean by that? What's spirit? Who's spirit? And we'll talk about that here in just a minute. Wisdom.

[11:15] What kind of wisdom? Revelation. Revelation in what sense? Knowledge of Him. See, these are big powerhouse words. And he puts them all in one sentence.

[11:27] One, really one part of a sentence. And so we need to understand what he means. So let's then look at the principal parts of this prayer, this kind of general petition.

[11:40] First of all, the spirit. The spirit of wisdom and revelation and the knowledge of Him. Now, Paul is not referring to the Holy Spirit.

[11:53] Okay, now there are those who would disagree with me on that. And in fact, some scholars that we would respect and I respect disagree with this.

[12:05] But I'll just give you a reason why I believe that we're not talking about he's not talking about the Holy Spirit. In the first place, the word spirit is presented in the lower case with a lower case s in most English versions.

[12:21] And that's not the conclusive proof that it's not the Holy Spirit because obviously this is an English translation. And you may have the King James, you may have the NASB, you may have the ESV, might have the New King James like me, even the NIV, and they all have the spirit with the lower case s.

[12:42] Now, that's not conclusive, but there's a reason why they translate it that way. And it's because in the Greek text, there is no definite article that is the word the preceding the noun.

[12:55] The noun is the word spirit. No definite article as in the spirit. You say, well, isn't that the way it's translated in the King James and New King James?

[13:07] I just read it a moment ago. In fact, you have it printed there on your page, on your notes, the spirit of wisdom. Well, that's unfortunate because the word the is not in the text.

[13:20] It's not in there. There is no definite article before the word spirit. The technical term is anarthros. You just jot that down. Anarthros.

[13:31] It means there's no definite article. It's kind of interesting because in the Greek, most nouns, personal nouns, proper nouns, most nouns have the article in front of it, the definite article.

[13:47] It's not always translated that way in the English because that would be really silly in our reading of it. It would make any sense to us to always have the word the before every noun.

[13:59] But very typically, nouns are always preceded by the definite article. There is no indefinite article in the Greek. There is no word a in the Greek. And so, generally speaking, not always, but generally speaking, if it's anarthros, no definite article, meaning no definite article, then we're free to insert a, the indefinite article.

[14:23] So, it's a spirit rather than the spirit of wisdom. That would be a more correct translation, which is, by the way, what you find in the New American Standard and the ESV if you have that translation.

[14:41] And if you have an NIV, I think it's even footnoted there that it probably should be a spirit and not the spirit. So, there's one very key, I think, important proof that we're not talking about the Holy Spirit here.

[14:59] But even that could be debated. And, you know, the experts, grammarian experts, Greek grammarian experts, they debate about that. And so, I would say in the second place that Paul would not be praying that God would give believers something they already have.

[15:17] If spirit is the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit of wisdom, which would be just another, would be a synonym for the Holy Spirit, another name for the Holy Spirit, if that's the case, then why would Paul be praying that we would have something we already have?

[15:34] That is, we already have the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit came to indwell every one of us the very moment we believed. Romans 8, 9.

[15:44] You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit. If, in fact, the Spirit of God dwells in you, and then he says, anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to Him.

[15:56] That is, if you don't have the Holy Spirit indwelling you, then you're not a believer. You've not been saved. So, Paul would not be praying that the Ephesian believers would be granted or given something that they already have.

[16:09] They already have the Holy Spirit. All of us do if you are a born-again believer. also, Paul is not referring to the human spirit in some kind of general way because, well, everyone already possesses a human spirit.

[16:26] I don't think Paul would be praying that we would suddenly be granted a human spirit. We already have that. That would be spirit with a capital, excuse me, a lowercase s.

[16:37] We're not talking about human spirit and not only that, but believers and non-believers alike possess a human spirit of wisdom. If you want to put wisdom, attach wisdom on that.

[16:48] I mean, everyone, it doesn't make any difference if you're a believer or a believer. We all have a measure of human wisdom. So, it's not a human spirit. So, Paul is asking God to give them a humble spirit.

[17:05] A humble spirit. That's the meaning of the word spirit in this context. Sometimes the word spirit, which is pneuma in the Greek, refers to a person's disposition.

[17:21] A certain disposition that a person has. Now, what does that mean? Well, by definition, a disposition is, and this is according to Webster, the predominant or prevailing tendency of one's spirit.

[17:36] Well, what does that or, how about this one? A state of mind regarding something. Just state of mind, a kind of disposition or might even use the word inclination.

[17:49] An inclination, you know, kind of like our English expression. You know, you just need to have the right spirit about that. You know, have you ever heard something similar to that? And we, you know, we talk about a person having a good disposition, you know, a good spirit, good disposition, and we've all known someone who has a terrible disposition.

[18:11] Have you ever known anybody like that? And those kind of people just can't tell them anything. And that's the idea here. And so, Paul is asking God to give the Ephesian believers a humble, teachable spirit or disposition when it comes to the truth of God's word.

[18:29] That's the idea behind this, a spirit of wisdom. It's a willingness to learn. A teachable spirit.

[18:41] an open mind to the truth of God's word so that you can allow God to give you understanding. You have to approach God's word and especially the truth that we have been studying in chapter, in this chapter in Ephesians.

[18:59] We approach those truths not with a spirit of skepticism or approach them with a kind of a spirit of kind of a a spirit of question but open to to to the truth that God is teaching us in his word.

[19:19] And so, it's really talking about a teachable spirit. Alright, so that's number one. First, or second, a spirit of wisdom. There's the next word or key word in that phrase.

[19:32] Spirit of wisdom and revelation of the knowledge of God. And wisdom, wisdom, what kind of wisdom is this? Well, a the teachable spirit is to be applied to a wisdom, a certain kind of wisdom concerning the spiritual gifts detailed earlier in this passage.

[19:52] Alright, so we need to have a teachable spirit, the right kind of disposition as we approach the truths that Paul has been laying out before us in this passage.

[20:05] It's kind of how to use the knowledge of what you have in Christ Jesus. Paul has been giving you this great list of what we have in Christ. How do you use that knowledge?

[20:18] It's the practical kind of practical not only understanding but practical use of the truth of God's Word. So, how do we use what we have in Christ?

[20:30] How do we use it regarding worship, for example? Or how are we to use it regarding our service? How we're serving the Lord? How should we use this knowledge of God's Word or knowledge of God regarding lifestyle?

[20:49] You know, shame on many quote believers and I kind of doubt the reality of some of these, the reality of their faith, that they could grow in the knowledge of God's Word and yet it has no impact, no effect whatsoever upon the way they live their life.

[21:08] You know, they can just do what they want in life and still say, well, I believe God's Word, God's truth. And they study God's Word but it doesn't translate over into the life. See, the kind of wisdom that Paul is talking about here is wisdom that takes the truth of God's Word and it transforms the way we live our lives.

[21:31] So, how you use the knowledge of what you have in Christ Jesus regarding worship and service and lifestyle, decision making, how you make decisions in life, we all have those nearly every day.

[21:45] Some, you know, minute, small little decisions we make, some big ones and then also regarding your overall outlook on this world.

[21:58] I tell you, this is a big one for our day because there's some pretty horrible things happening in our world today and some of them close to home. You can just kind of list all the major concerns of our day.

[22:13] You know, maybe Ebola is at the top of your list, I don't know, right now, as much as we hear about it and the scare of it. You know, Dallas isn't very far from here, is it? And so, what's your outlook on that?

[22:25] how then should the Word of God and knowledge and wisdom of God's Word affect the outlook you have on life?

[22:37] Whether it's some major issue, maybe just some issue in your own house, whatever it may be. Alright, third, the third kind of part or specific part of this petition, a spirit of wisdom in revelation.

[22:54] Revelation. Revelation refers to a knowledge about the truth that God imparts to the believer. This is something God does and it's very unique and very important to our understanding of God's Word.

[23:18] It's the word apocalipsis and it means to lay bare or to make naked or to it's the disclosing of truth or instruction or whatever it may be and all of that of course within the context of God's Word.

[23:36] So in a sense this is a and I want to be very careful here. I'll explain myself when we get to the next part of this but in a sense this is an additional level of wisdom.

[23:49] Wisdom is very practical and we get it from God's Word and then there is revelation which is kind of another level of wisdom. In fact the two words almost appear synonymous in the verse and yet Paul is not trying to be redundant.

[24:07] So wisdom is wisdom and then revelation is also wisdom but it's an additional level of wisdom that goes beyond just intellectual knowledge. which leads then to a fourth part of Paul's general prayer and that is a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of God.

[24:27] Now all these go together. You can't just pull these out like I have been and just understand them separately. They must come together and really the word knowledge is what brings all this together.

[24:41] The kind of knowledge Paul is asking for cannot be taught, cannot be learned. That's very important to understand here. It cannot be obtained through some theological book.

[24:55] I've got a whole library full of those things. Commentaries and word studies and dictionaries and theological works. Some of them I can't even read.

[25:07] They're so complicated. So I've got all that. You're not going to get this kind of knowledge from books. You're not going to get it.

[25:17] It's not something that can be taught in some kind of Bible class. And that's why this is so important that we understand that these things are within the context of prayer.

[25:30] I'll talk about prayer. If it wasn't dependent upon God imparting these things as a result, as an answer to prayer, then Paul would be taking a little different approach.

[25:43] He'd say what you need to do is go to the local bookstore and pick you up some more books. Or enroll in some Bible study, group study or something.

[25:56] Those are important, but that's not how we get the spirit of wisdom and revelation and the knowledge of Him. Christian colleges and seminaries cannot teach their students this kind of wisdom.

[26:07] that's not something that can be taught or learned or something that can be learned. The kind of knowledge of Him or knowledge of God that Paul is praying for comes from God.

[26:25] It comes from God through prayer by way of a teachable spirit. So we've put all of it together and that's what we have here. This kind of understanding of Christ, understanding of who He is, what He has done, what you have in Him, what that means for you, that kind of knowledge comes from God.

[26:50] And we get it, it's granted through prayer. And we receive it by way of a teachable spirit, a spirit of wisdom. I need to be clear about something and that is that this knowledge I'm talking about, even though it's something that you cannot learn, something that no one can teach you, this knowledge is not outside of or in addition to the Bible.

[27:19] I'm not talking about some additional kind of revelation. There is no knowledge for us in this life that would take us further than the revealed word of God.

[27:31] We've got to always remember that. And you ought to always have a flag, big flag go up when someone said, well, God told me this, or something to that effect.

[27:43] Well, I have a revelation from God. No, all revelation has been given to us in his book, in the general sense of revelation, there's no new word for us.

[27:58] It's all right here in the Bible. We just had to read what we've got instead of this crazy, almost insatiable appetite for something more from God, or some other word from God.

[28:13] And the thing of it is it sells books and it fills churches and packs out houses for Bible conferences and such when you say I've got a new word for God.

[28:24] People have this appetite for something new, something extra, something beyond the Bible. And it's not there. We have everything we need right here. So when I talk about a knowledge that comes from God, or I talk about a revelation that is beyond just an intellectual knowledge or wisdom, and I'm talking about something apart from God's word, the knowledge we need, and Paul is talking about, is the full knowledge of God's word.

[28:57] That's the idea. A full knowledge. Specifically in this text, it is the truths Paul has revealed to his readers in this chapter. That's what he's praying they would have a full knowledge of.

[29:09] What are those truths? Well, we've been over them and I've repeated them a number of times. He's blessed us with every spiritual blessing, chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, predestined us to the adoption of sons, made us accepted in the beloved, the riches of His grace, which He made to abound toward us, made known to us the mystery of His will.

[29:33] In Him we also have obtained an inheritance, and on and on. These are the kind of things that Paul is praying that the Ephesian believers would have a full knowledge of.

[29:44] A full knowledge. Do you know these truths? Do you know them? Not do you know about them. You see, you know about truths, and maybe even be able to recite some kind of definition or explanation for these truths, but that's not the same as knowing them in the way that Paul is talking about here.

[30:05] Do you know them seriously, intimately, to the extent that they are transforming your life and affect everything you do and how you think and your outlook on life and so forth.

[30:20] And so essentially Paul is praying, God, grant them the full knowledge of what they possess in your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. The full knowledge of it.

[30:32] And then after this general prayer for wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Christ, Paul includes some specific applications. So this is what we have coming next.

[30:43] Some applications. Something more specific. specific. This first part of the prayer is very general. It can apply, you know, kind of across the board when it comes to our need to understand, fully understand, and know God's Word.

[31:02] Now it gets very much more specific. And so the first specific prayer, prayer of application I'm calling it, is this. Paul prayed that they, we, and we might understand the mysteries of God.

[31:18] The mysteries of God. Verse 18. The eyes of your understanding being enlightened that, or so that, you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of His glory, of His inheritance in the saints.

[31:37] That's a mouthful. I mean, it really is. I mean, my goodness. We need to pick this apart and understand what He's talking about here. And so again, let's just look at some of the key words here.

[31:52] First word, and I'll skip, kind of go into it a little bit further and start with the word understanding. That's how it's translated in the New King James and King James.

[32:06] Understanding. Now, you should know, and if you have one of the other more recent versions of the Bible, then you probably have already noticed it if you've looked at it.

[32:18] The word understanding does not appear there. You have the word understanding, for example, in the New American Standard or ESV or NIV. Rather, you have the word heart.

[32:31] Now, that doesn't sound like the same thing, does it? I mean, how can one version of the Bible have the eyes of your understanding being enlightened, and then other versions of the Bible have the eyes of your heart being enlightened?

[32:49] What's the difference? Why the difference, rather? Well, without getting too complicated, the NIV and the New KJV, I mean, excuse me, the KJV and the New KJV, they rely upon a one set, a particular set of manuscripts of the Bible.

[33:12] It's called the Textus Receptus, and it's just a, what's called kind of a grouping together of manuscripts and parts of a manuscript, and there are hundreds and thousands of these kind of fragments and things.

[33:28] They put all these together, and they have put together what's called the Textus Receptus, that means the received text of manuscripts, and then they have translated the King James from it.

[33:41] And the New King James is a translation from the same group of manuscripts. And in those manuscripts, or the majority of them, they have the word, and I've given it to you there, dianoya, dianoya, and which means dia is through, it's a preposition, and noya is mind or thinking.

[34:13] So the idea is a way of thinking, even feeling, understanding, so that's why they've translated understanding. So it's not that they have looked at the same Greek word and decided it meant one thing, and other translators have decided it meant another thing.

[34:31] We have two different words. And so in the Textus Receptus, we have dianoya. The other translations, the New American Standard, ESV, NIV, and probably some others, they rely upon a different set of manuscripts, different groups.

[34:49] A different grouping of manuscripts. Some of them are manuscripts that have been discovered by archaeologists since the Textus Receptus was grouped together or formed.

[35:02] And so it's called, I think, the critical text. That doesn't sound like a very positive term to use for a group of manuscripts, but that's what's called the critical text.

[35:12] And the NIV is from that, translated from that, NASB, ESV, and so forth. And it has a different word. It doesn't have dianoya.

[35:24] It has the word cardia. Now that word sounds familiar, doesn't it? Cardia. That's heart. And so you have two different words in one manuscript as opposed to another, and these versions have been translated from it.

[35:41] All right, so we might get a bit alarmed by that. Think, well, my goodness, I didn't realize there were mistakes in the Bible. Well, there aren't any mistakes in the original writings, but we don't have any of them.

[35:55] But there are some variances in many of the manuscripts, and some good study Bibles will point that out for you, at least those that really matter, and some won't.

[36:06] But, you know, the difference between the two translations seems bigger than it really is. And here's why.

[36:19] Because to the ancient Greeks, and even to the Hebrews, the heart was what mattered. They didn't talk so much about the mind as they did the heart.

[36:30] And the heart, for them, is the, they saw it as the center of wisdom and understanding. That is, true wisdom takes place in the heart, and not in the brain, not with the intellect.

[36:46] True wisdom, true understanding, and then they go a little bit lower into this area, the bowels, as the old King James uses it, and that's where feeling and emotion takes place.

[36:59] But the heart is the seat of wisdom and understanding. The heart, they believed, could understand things the mind could never know.

[37:12] And hence we're talking about something that God imparts, something that we know in the heart. All right, so let's go a step further. The expression, eyes, of your understanding being enlightened, eyes, this idea of the eyes, is just simply a reference to spiritual insight.

[37:31] I think we can figure that out. I mean, that's pretty easy to see. Not physical sight, but spiritual sight, or insight. And so we need what?

[37:43] We need inward spiritual insight, or the word illumination, I think is probably more, better descriptive there. We need illumination.

[37:56] Illumined. Light shed in our minds on certain truths and facts. We need illumination if we're going to fully know and appreciate God's revelation.

[38:07] And, you know, many people get no further than mere intellectual understanding. A lot of people, when it comes to understanding something, they just rely upon the old peanut, you know.

[38:23] The noggin. The head. The brain. You know, so, too many people, and you cannot, you cannot understand God's word with just your intellect.

[38:34] I mean, there have been scores and scores of liberal scholars over the years that intellectually go way beyond their knowledge and, in a sense, understanding understanding of God's word way beyond any of us.

[38:55] But it's all intellect. And mere intellect won't get you there. I mean, because there's no depth of any real understanding. No, there's no real conviction.

[39:10] That all takes place here in the heart. That's why the Greeks and Hebrews really focused on the heart because that's where true belief in something takes place and conviction and true worship is something that takes place here.

[39:26] And where valid emotion, emotion is a part of it. We are created emotional beings. Anything wrong with emotion is a whole lot wrong with emotionalism.

[39:37] There's nothing wrong with emotion if it's in the right order. emotion comes from our knowledge of the truth. We don't evaluate truth on emotion.

[39:51] Truth is what regulates our emotion. The facts. So, you know, intellectual understanding is not it. Because if that's all you're going for, then there will never ever really be any life change.

[40:08] all right. Now, about what did Paul pray that the Ephesians would be enlightened? Enlightened.

[40:20] Paul prays that their eyes would be open to the mysteries of God's sovereign plan for all born-again believers. The mysteries.

[40:30] And I'll use this word again, the mysteries of God. And I'm not talking about mysteries in the sense of unknown, undiscovered secrets. Right?

[40:41] Usually that's what we think of. We think of the word mysteries. I've explained this before. When we talk about mysteries in the context of Scripture, the context of God's revelation, we're not talking about undiscovered secrets.

[40:55] But mysteries in the sense of previously hidden, obscured, but now revealed. The mysteries of the Old Testament now revealed in the New Testament.

[41:08] The mysteries of God. And what are these mysteries that we need to know? Well, there are a bunch of them, but Paul focuses on two things. First of all, the hope of his calling.

[41:21] The hope of his calling. This hope of which he speaks is talking about a sure expectation of a future fulfillment, the future fulfillment of God's eternal purpose for every believer.

[41:40] It goes way beyond what we know today and experience today. The full, full, complete fulfillment of God's purpose for us.

[41:54] And it includes everything Paul has been talking about in this chapter. election, predestination, adoption, redemption, forgiveness, wisdom, insight, inheritance, the sealing of the Holy Spirit and so forth.

[42:09] That's what he's talking about here. The sure expectation that God will fulfill all of these things in our lives. The beginning point is his calling.

[42:22] That's why he says it's the hope of his calling. That's where it begins. And that calling is the effectual calling. Effectual calling that results in salvation.

[42:35] Salvation for all those who believe. Salvation through faith. But the salvation is only the beginning point. Like 1 Peter chapter 5 verse 10, but may the God of all grace who called us to his eternal glory by Christ Jesus after you've suffered a while perfect, established, strengthened, and settled you.

[42:58] Second, we have the riches of the glory of his inheritance in Satan. So here are two things. Two mysteries that were hidden before but now are revealed.

[43:12] In fact, Paul has revealed them right here in Ephesians chapter 1. The first one, the hope of his calling. The second is the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints.

[43:23] Now that's a mouthful too. It almost has a rhythm when you read it. The riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints. Well what in the world does it mean?

[43:35] One day, here's what I believe it means, one day, through us, his saints, God will display to all creation, that would be all creation terrestrial, celestial, all creation.

[43:54] He's going to reveal to all creation the riches of his glory. He's going to reveal all that. He's going to do that through us. That is, we are his treasures, the treasures of his glory.

[44:10] He's going to reveal his treasure, his glory through us. we are his inheritance, his wealth, his choice.

[44:28] Not just for now, but for all eternity. We are his precious possession. Now, that's a mystery right now to everybody but us.

[44:41] It should be a mystery to us. But it's unknown to this world who we are. that we are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, that we're his inheritance, his possession.

[44:58] That's not known to the world today. Do you think that our godless culture knows who we really are? They don't have any idea who we really are. They know what we claim and they despise that.

[45:12] But they don't know who we are because that's a mystery to them. Do you think the lesbian mayor of Houston knew just who she was dealing with when she sent out those subpoenas to those pastors in Houston?

[45:27] You know, subpoenas to have their sermons on homosexuality. Do you think she really knows who those pastors are? Who they really are? That they are the prized possession of a holy God.

[45:44] It's a mystery still today. Do you think ISIS knows? People of ISIS know that the Christians they persecute are in actuality the precious possession of the one true and only God.

[46:01] Now one day that will be revealed. It will be too late for them, but they will know. And everything that we have claimed, proclaimed, everything that we have suffered for, all of that will be vindicated one day when God brings the consummation of all things.

[46:30] So one day they will know, but we can know it right now. That's the point of Paul's prayer. And I mean really know it. We need to really know it. And so the first then specific prayer of application is that Paul prayed that they might understand the mysteries of God.

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