Gooding, David: 4 - Movement One (Part 2)

Let us read now from the Epistle to the Ephesians and chapter one. The Epistle to the Ephesians and chapter one, beginning there in verse fifteen. For this cause I offer, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus which is among you, and which you show toward all the saints, cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayer, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him. Having the eyes of your heart enlightened, that you may know what is the hope of his calling, what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the same, and what the exceeding greatness of his power to us all who believe, according to that working of the strength of his might, which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead and made him to sit at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come. And has put all things in subjection under his feet, and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him that filleth all in all. And you did he quicken, when you were dead through your trespasses and sins, when in a foretime you walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience, among whom we also all once lived in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature the children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead to our trespasses, quickened us together with Christ. By grace have you been saved. And raised us up with him, and made us to sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace have you been saved through faith. And that not of yourselves, God's gift it is. Not of works, that no man should glory. For we are his workmanship. Created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them. God fulfill the prayer of the apostle and illumine the eyes of our hearts here this evening is very clear. If we are to have any hope whatsoever of covering movements two and three of the thought pattern of this epistle, says the Ephesians, in the week, in the days that remain to us next week, in the will of God, then tonight, hook or by crook, somehow or other, superficially or otherwise, we must make a valiant effort to complete our survey of Movement One. We reminded ourselves on our first lecture that Movement One of the Epistle to the Ephesians concerns itself with the purpose of God in creation. And in discussing that matter, it divides itself into three parts. There are the verses one to fourteen, which specifically deal with that major topic, the plan and purpose for of God in creation. That part is followed by the second, from verses fifteen to twenty three, wherein Paul makes us to know his prayer for us, that God would give us a spirit of wisdom and revelation so that we might apprehend as a reality in our hearts the glorious plan and purpose that God has for us in relation to creation. And then finally, the third part, which runs from chapter two, verse one to verse ten, asks us to consider again the great opposition and the huge obstacles that lay in the path of the fulfillment of God's purpose, and how God has overcome them, and by what principle, and to what end. So it is primarily that second and third parts of this first movement that we must concern ourselves with this evening. And yet, and yet, and yet. There are things out there still in the first part that are niggling in your mind, I am sure, because as the minutes faded upon us last night, I attempted to do something very rash, and that is to state what is the meaning of the ver- the verses that lie in verses nine to fourteen of our chapter one, that tell us what God's good plan and purpose is in Christ for the fullness of the time. And I dare suggested that God's purpose is this, that Christ is going to play the part of a great orator in God's universe. Yes, he has already begun his speech. Jesus Christ, our Lord, is the word of God, through whom God has made all his statements. Glorious statement of God, there is creation, was made by the word of God. For God's statements are God's works, and God's works are God's statements. So then, as we survey God's handiwork in creation, we are hearing God saying things. It is God's good pleasure that when the fullness of the times comes, Christ shall recapitulate the whole story. And taking the great statements that God has made from time to time in creation and in history, Christ will sum them all up and show how together they make sense as God's tremendous statement of his own character and purpose. But in so rashly and hastily attempting to cover those verses, I left a lot of major things uncommented upon, and for a moment I must recur to those verses, lest I fail to carry you with me in my particular interpretation of this passage. So let us just go back a moment and remember the immediate context that lies behind verses ten and following. And that is this, that God has abounded towards us, not only in forgiveness, but even as he abounded in his grace towards us in forgiveness, he has abounded to us in giving us wisdom and practical common sense, so that instinctively we see that forgiveness is not going to mean that we are now free from the wrath of God so that we might go our own way still, but we have been forgiven and delivered from the wrath of God, that we might now be persuaded to cooperate with God in his great plan and purpose. And that plan and purpose is therefore thus described in verse ten. What is God's plan? Why, God's plan, God's organization, God's scheme of things is that when the fullness of times come, he will sum up all things in Christ. So then our first task is to consider briefly what that, uh, phrase means, the fullness of the times. What does that exactly mean? We could start our thinking on the topic by contrasting that phrase with a very similar phrase that we find in Paul's letter to the Galatians, chapter four and verse four, where Paul says that when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his son into our world. There we notice the same word fullness, but we notice the word time is there in the singular, whereas in our passage it is in the plural. The passage in Galatians four and verse four is telling us nonetheless a very interesting thing, is it not? It tells us that Christ's coming into our world was carefully timed. That in itself is exceedingly significant. You will have observed that God did not send our Savior into the world the moment Adam sinned. And why not? No, long centuries were to pass before God decided it was now the fitting time to send the Lord Jesus into our world. The thing was carefully timed. Sin is a matter of a moment. Eve had sinned before scarcely knew what she was doing, and Adam had followed deliberately, but his act of taking of the fruit and eating of it was an act of a moment, not so easily it's been put right. Before the appropriate time should come for God to send his son to save us, long centuries must follow. While the terrible harvest of that one sin grew to its height, and men learned what a fearful thing sin is, how one little seed of it is enough to destroy a whole world full of men and women. Men had to be taught likewise, what God's salvation would be like when it came, and what his principles of saving would be, so that when the Savior came, they might at least be prepared for his coming. Only after those centuries of preparation did the fullness of time come, and at that precise moment Christ entered our history. Would you notice the same thing of his life upon earth, do you not? More than once the evangelists tell us that certain people tried to destroy him, but his time has not come. And Mary suggested a certain course of action, but she said, woman, my time has not yet come. Our salvation was not a thing to be rushed at, to be initiated by some will of the wisps thought that happened to occur in somebody's head. But with measured step and deliberate pace, according to God's foreordained timetable, did Christ walk our world and came to his death as an act precisely timed. You know, said our Lord, that after two days is the feast of the Passover, when the sacrifice must be killed. When the hour was come, he sat down. So Galatians is telling us that there was a precise time for his coming. Ephesians chapter one is adding to that a very interesting notion that there have been many times in the course of history and will be yet more. That is to say, there have been many different ages, many different periods of time, when God was doing different things in those different epochs. Here is a young gentleman, and the school authorities are doing their very level best to educate him. But come now, it will be, it will be a process, won't it? You won't expect it to be done all in five minutes or one morning. So here you see him, and he is patiently threading blue colored string through a cardboard with holes in. You say, what on earth has this got to do with education? You wait and see. And here he's playing with a few beans, and you say, I can't see much sense in that. Neither can I, but you wait and see. The school teacher knows what she's doing. Of course, he isn't doing the same thing there as he'll be doing in the sixth form with his calculus and goodness knows what else, but the one was designed to prepare the way for the other. The whole thing has been scheduled before they started, and right to the very end when he comes out as professor of applied mathematics, the whole thing was planned, we hope. You would be unwise to suppose that at each stage the teacher was doing the very same thing. And so with God, why, even when it came to creating our little planet, God took his time about it, didn't he? And the interesting thing about Genesis one is that it tells us, against all our expectations, that God didn't do it all at once. That did different things on different days. And had you been Michael the Archangel, and had you been expecting God to do it all in one split second, you might have been a little bit confused. No, on day two he wasn't making man. And on day three he wasn't attempting to make the animal. No, he had his different things that he was at on different days as they succeeded. And perhaps, I don't know, but perhaps Michael didn't quite see where it was all leading and didn't know how to make sense of all those individual days activities, so diverse were they. Did he make any sense of it much, perhaps until the crown of it all came? And on the sixth day, finally God made man and put him over all the works of his hands and summed up the whole lot in Adam. And when you see Adam, now you see the why that you had to have light and the why you had to have a firmament. Now it begins to make sense why our s- our planet is put in relation to the revolving constellations. Man would need the evidence that they could be used to supply. So even in our creation was God doing things in different times. And if that is true of our own little planet, it is, uh, obviously true of the things in the heavens. When did God make the angels? Why, certainly not the same day as he was making man. And how does the making of man then fit into that other epoch when he was making angels? However it fits. Our verse is telling us that there have been distinct times, not only in creation, but in history too. From Adam until the flood, man was learning something about where unrestricted free will will land a nation, will land a race. Learning too in Noah and his ark something of God's salvation and a dim prototype of a salvation that God was one day going to provide and a new world completely. And in Abraham and his succeeding race, God was doing a something very special. God was in that period fighting against the perversion of religion and a terrible scourge of old-fashioned idolatry. That was what God was doing. And he wasn't all the time preaching the gospel in the terms that you now preach it, but he was hammering away a certain basic misconceptions about the very nature of God. God since spent centuries doing it. For however would man come to the service of the true God if their whole concept of what God was like was simply that of a pagan. Just as there have been different times in the past, and now we live in another one when God is doing something the like of which he scarce ever did before, so there shall be times in the future. But one day, this verse tells us, that all those different times and all God's diverse workings in different parts and in different ways will be summed up by the great word of God. Oh, I'm looking forward to be there when, when I, when I hear the speech. Well, I've been listening in, doing my best. I've scratched my head over Genesis, haven't you? What was God really saying then? And I thought of the period of the judges and tried to interest others as well. I said, well, what on earth, they're very strange stories, some of them. What was God trying to say then? And how does that fit into now? And as for Amos, Joel, and the rest of them, well, they are a bit difficult and in consequence left up, get left out of many sermons. I tried to fit them together and make sense of it. And I said to myself, and I doubt this, you said to yourself, and what about the heathen that never heard? Oh, what a big problem. I hope it doesn't meet the concrete heart I'm feeling in your breast. How could I believe in a God that could let generations of men go lost, never care about them? How will it all fit in? One day it is God's good pleasure, this is his plan, this is his organizing scheme, this is his dispensation, that at the fullness of the time, the word of God shall gather the message and statement that God was making in each of the particular ages and putting them all together, and the activities of God in those particular ages and putting them all together, he shall speak it all and show us how the combined thing makes sense. Oh, what a story it will be. But it won't be the story merely of God's ways with our little planet. Who knows how many chapters of the story there had been before our planet became? But he shall sum up all things in heaven and upon earth, show how they fit together and what God has been saying. So, will you be part of that statement? Shall the divine orator be able to seize upon this Christian age and amidst all its interesting sections say, and there's Bob McFarlane. Let me tell you how he fitted into God's scheme and what God was saying. By making Bob McFarlane, and by redeeming the man, by creating that unique personality at that particular time in history. Leading him to Christ. This is what God was saying in that man. Oh, I can scarce wait. Oh, is that what he's going to do? It is such a marvelous thing, isn't it, to visit this place or that and listen quietly by somebody's sofa to the way God found them and sought them and brought them back to the Savior, and what he's been doing by his grace in the trials of life, and to find that at the end of it, through multitudinous trials, they can still look heavenward and say, I believe God. Oh, when the story of every redeemed man is told by the divine orator, and all is fitted into place, what a God God will appear. What an honor it will be to be a part of God's self-revelation of himself, a part of God's great statement. But Paul, uh, confirms and assures us, yes. When all is summed up in Christ, you too will have a part therein. And for that purposes, he points out that there are two major groups in the Christian church. In verse eleven and twelve he talks about the Jewish believers. In verse uh thirteen he talks about the Gentile believers. Finally, in verse fourteen he says things that are true of both groups of believers. And here Paul is drawing together God's statements in two ages. There was the Jewish age, and he describes the people then as people who, before hope in Christ. That is to say, he's not just saying that these people happened to trust Christ before we trusted Christ, though thousands have done that. He is saying that before the Gentiles came to hope in the Messiah, Israel had for centuries been expecting the Messiah. During centuries when the Gentiles were, in fact, without any hope and had no future to look forward to. Israel had been given this God-given hope that one day the Messiah should come. Oh, it was a tremendous message. It told them, as distinct from so many pagan religions, it told them that history wasn't going round in circles. It told them that history was moving, and God had a purpose in it, and one day history should come to the time when Messiah should come. It was a veritable gospel message, and still as we read about it in the Old Testament, and we compare our Old Testament with other religions and other pagan philosophies, it stands out like a beacon light. This gospel message all through those ages BC that the Messiah was coming, who should bring in the restoration of all things. And these folks, all down these centuries, before Jesus came, before we Gentiles were much interested, they were hoping in the coming of Messiah. For indeed, verse, um, uh, tells uh, tells us, and isn't ashamed to tell us, uh, verses eleven and twelve, that in the Messiah the Jewish people were made an inheritance. But then I must stop and, uh, and apologize. The Greek word here used in that verse, um, eleven, as you'll see, is differently translated in different versions, and some versions say in whom we have received an inheritance, and other versions say in whom we were made an inheritance. And the difficulty in deciding which is which, which is the intended meaning, is that both in their way are true. Of course, in Christ, the believing Jew has and will receive a vast inheritance, and in Christ, the believing Gentile will receive a vast inheritance that is perfectly true. But in my humble estimation, what Paul is saying here is not so much that in Christ the Jews received an inheritance, as they were made an inheritance. For Deuteronomy in chapter thirty two tells us that whereas God gave Israel the inheritance of the Promised Land, Israel in her turn were God's God's inheritance. inheritance. And when God gave to the other Gentiles their inheritance, he fixed their number according to the number of Israel, because Israel were his specially chosen people. Israel were God's special portion. Don't you start complaining about it. Because God can do what he likes in us. Oh, sometimes being an Englishman, you know, I am, my heckles get raised. Why should the Jews be a special people? I wouldn't feel so concerned if it were the English, but why should the Jews be a special people? And the first answer to that is, and who are you? Do you make this world? Do you make the nation, and God's got a right to do as he pleases. He works all things after the counsel of his own will. If he decides he wants a special nation and he wants to give them a special role in history, he gives them a special role in history. That's the end of the matter. We're dealing with God, not the grocer down the street. Isn't to say because they had a special role given them of God that they were sinlessly perfect, far from it. It isn't to say they were better than anybody else, they never were. Generally speaking, they were worse. And though God gave them the inheritance of the promised land, they sinned so grievously that he had to throw them out of their inheritance. Bad lot as they proved to be, they were his portion, chosen by God to play a special role in history for his interest. To say something about God in this world that needed them a special role in history, he gives them a special role in. That's the end of the matter. We're dealing with God, not the grocer down the stream. Isn't to say because they had a special role given them of God that they were sinlessly perfect, far from it. It isn't to say they were better than anybody else. They never were, generally speaking, they were worse. Though God gave them the inheritance of the promised land, they sinned so grievously that he had to throw them out of their inheritance. Bad lot as they proved to be, they were his portion, chosen by God to play a special role in history for his interest. To say something about God in this world that needed to be said. A great protest against idolatry. It still needs to be said. For our modern world gets sunk in its old, in its new modern idolatries, every bit as the old pagan world was full of idolatry. And still we need Isaiah's message, and still we need Moses' tabernacle and its ritual to make their divine protest in the name of God and for God, against every kind of idolatry, even in our modern world. Thus did he choose them and give them a role. They were his special portion. Does that mean that we Gentiles didn't get any portion at all? No, that doesn't mean that whatsoever. That same Deuteronomy chapter thirty two tells us that, uh, God gave the Gentiles their inheritance. Oh yes, just because he had a special role for the Jew, that doesn't mean that he didn't have any role at all for the Gentiles. He gave the Gentiles their inheritance. So much land. They can't complain, can they? They always did have the bigger share of the world anyway. And gave them natural gifts, sometimes far beyond he gave the Israelites. You would read the Israelites for God's revelation, wouldn't you? You'll scarce go to them for science. You'd go to the Greeks and classical departments for that. Of course you would. Uh, if you wanted to think about science and how to think logically and all those tremendous benefits of art and literature, well, you'd be inclined to go to the Greeks. And if it was a question of administration and learning how to control and administer the world, you'll scarcely go to the Jews. Oh yes, God gave, uh, the nations their inheritance. It is not all lost, you know. What God was saying through the Gentile nations and their development, ah, marred by sin as it has been, but there was something of God the Creator in it. Christ, our blessed Lord, will take it and restate it. Oh, what a sublime contribution it will make to the eternal message. Tonight, I think not simply of the inheritance of the Gentile nations as nations. I am perhaps more concerned with the Gentiles that sit before me and the one Gentile that stands on this platform. You got any inheritance? God ever give you an inheritance in this world? Well, yes, sure. What are you anyway? Well, forget the bite of the minute, uh, look at the scientist. The end product of... What do you say, cool, end product of? Well, some initial genes and chromosomes somewhere, and I don't know who, long since forgotten, perhaps better so, and down the generations they've come, all sorts of mixings and mixings and mixings and permutations. That marvelous system of hereditary. That had coded on it enough information to make a human being, and you say, here I am this evening. I say, what a spectacular, wonderful thing you are. Hi, those, those original, uh, genes and chromosome things, bits of stuff, you say, yes, I know they're bits of stuff, but they weren't just ordinary bits of stuff. You could put two bits of stuff together and they wouldn't make anything. Bits of stuff coded with information. Down the centuries, after many permutations, have made you. Who coded the stuff? And what was he trying to say when he coded the stuff that eventually made you? Your inheritance? Different from everybody else, aren't you? Why, if you weren't in heaven, there would be one statement. Your gifts, your personality, your circumstance. You say, Mr. Preacher, you're trying to be kind, but you touch a very deep wound. My genes went wrong. And I'm an impaired and broken man. A broken one. How can I believe God was trying to say anything. Ah, how many folks are just there, aren't they? So much suffering in the world. So much suffering in themselves, nature imperfect, producing its sad, sad illnesses and disabilities. And circumstances heartbreaking. How could you believe God was in? But friend, wait a minute. How would you like the other alternative? There wasn't anybody saying anything. That's the only other alternative, isn't it? There was no plan. There was no mind. You're broken. But what did you expect? If you're going to take the mixture of so much stuff without any sense in its head, and you're going to mix it together without any plan, and it's all one colossal accident, what did you expect that people would be broken? Meaningless. Well, I can't. I- I'll tell you straight, I can't. If it's true, well, you'll have to convince me, and I shall hope to face it, but uh, no, no, I go for the other option any day of the week. Anyway, it's true. Yes, you can tell me the sentences in the old gene code have gone a bit astray. And the missing bit of code here has led to leukemia or something, or worse. That the whole of the planet has become disturbed by sin. Ah, but there was an original purpose and intention, and in Christ, my dear brother, oh, in Christ, the whole thing should be taken and restated. God will make sense of it all. In the end, the good bits and the bad bits. It's difficult enough to to invent a speech yourself, isn't it? You try and invent a speech that involves inventing somebody else to speak it for you, and he determines to speak his own ideas instead of yours. God invented humanity as his great state, and we joined the rebel hosts of demons and would speak our way and not his way, and it's led to a colossal confusion. Yet God in Christ. Are we going to have the truth of the matter? And says Paul, talking to these Gentiles, you heard the word of truth. Oh, what is the truth about our universe? Is there a message, and is it true? Yes, indeed it is, for the marvelous thing has happened. The long-for Messiah has come. Though we never hoped him in as Gentiles, we've at least heard him and heard the truth. The truth about our universe that is not a chaotic accident. There was a mind and a plan behind it. There was a God behind it. There was more than a plan, there was a heart. And this is what the God is like that stands behind your inheritance, broken as it may now be. This is the God that stands behind it. Ultimately, we've heard the truth in Jesus Christ and his cross. And hearing the message, the truth, the reality, we've believed it, and believing it. Now a wonderful thing has happened. Why did God spend all those previous ages doing curious things, you say? Well, I'll tell you one of the things he spent his time at. As the Jewish age proceeded, God announced through prophets like Isaiah and Joel and Ezekiel, God announced that one day he would pour out his spirit not only on Jews, but he'd pour out his spirit on all flesh, and the Gentiles would come. Seems a pretty remote notion when Isaiah prophesied it, and so when Joel prophesied it, but there it stood, generation after generation, God's promise, the promise that the spirit would come even upon Gentiles. And you know the Jews, I suppose it's human, they largely forgot that bit. So much so when, uh, that when James heard that the spirit had fallen on Gentiles, James was flabbergasted. Peter, come here. What strange things do I hear of you? You've gone into a Gentile man and taken coffee with him. Peter, what next? But thus it was, says Peter, it wasn't my fault, and I couldn't help it. All I did was to preach the truth, and God went and gave the Gentiles, uh, the Holy Spirit. That sent Peter ferociously studying his Old Testament and came up with the answer, well, that's what the Old Testament said God was going to do anyway. James, my boy, says Peter, huh, now stop your criticism. This authentic. God has sealed the Gentiles as the genuine thing by giving them that promised Holy Spirit, in whom, having believed after you heard the word of truth of your salvation, you were sealed the genuine thing. You've not followed some will of the wisp, my dear brother, my dear sister, at least I hope you haven't. You've followed this message of Jesus Christ. You have followed a message that comes to us stamped with the imprimature of God and the watermark of his Holy Spirit. A thing has been in preparation all down these centuries, and now you've got it. You can see the blueprint and say, yes, so it was promised, and so thank God it has happened. Meanwhile, that Holy Spirit is in earnest of what yet shall be. Earnest of the inheritance you shall have in that coming day. It is God's seal until he pleases now to come and take you, the possession that he has now by redemption, and take you home to glory to be for his eternal praise. With that Holy Spirit within you, already communicating the secret how fortunate you are. God. It has been hard sometimes in the centuries to read God's intention in our universe, hasn't it? Indeed, for us too, sometimes it's a little bit difficult to read the secret of God's ways in the tiny detail. But the plan has been made known, and we're so far advanced on it that with the coming of the Holy Spirit, you can begin to see, ah, you can begin to feel, what's more, you can begin to live. That great final statement. Blessed are your eyes. Kings and prophets desired to see the things that you see and weren't given to see. And now in our age, what even perhaps Noah didn't see, nor Abraham fully comprehend, or David enter into completely. Now you're miles ahead of him. And already the Holy Spirit within you, the part payment, the anticipatory experience of what the final inheritance will be. Two parts, therefore, remain to us, and they may be summed out fairly simply. If this be God's plan, then before he will proceed, Paul will pause to tell us that he constantly prays for us. Why? Why? Because the danger is that though this is truth, this is God's plan, it will in the end seem merely words. I remember on one occasion having been asked to speak to some students on the epistles of the Ephesians and did my little best. And I felt a talking, how could you escape it, of believers being in the body of Christ, being fellow citizens, and I let my imagination loose under the control of God's word, the thought of that great city that shall be the center of God's administration for all eternity. And, uh, and I suppose I waxed in my little way eloquent. And afterwards, a very polite student came and said, and uh, yeah, well, that was bombastic, wasn't it? That was rather fancy. Mean anything you'll say. Mm. It'd be better to be honest, wasn't it? We'd make a lot more progress in our spiritual life if we were as honest as she was. What a good of high-sounding words. If in the end, the reality doesn't grip us. Therefore, Paul prays. Mark you now, he is praying for believers, by definition for believers. And he's praying for the Holy Spirit for believers. Oh, you say, no, he mustn't be doing that because it'd be heresy if he does that, would he? You say, yes, we d- we believers don't have to pray for the Holy Spirit, we got the Holy Spirit. Be that as it may, Paul prays for those who have already been sealed with the Holy Spirit, he prays that God would give them a spirit of wisdom and revelation. That must be the Holy Spirit, mustn't it? For only the Holy Spirit can reveal anything. He is praying that God, by his spirit, will open the eyes of believers. Gives them, by his spirit, a revelation. That the things of which he's been speaking may become real. And three things in particular. What is the hope of our call? Why are you saved? What's the point in being saved? I hear you say to escape the lake of fire? Well done, my brother. What next? One may speak for another, I find it very easy to have a tiny little view of the hope of my calling. And to fail to relate the hope of my calling to the universe around me. Easy, you know. It's dead easy to go along in your youth to Sunday school. There are some very nice dear folks. Tell you about Jacob and Joseph, a little word about Samuel, and it's all very good. And that's what you do on Sundays, when you're moderately, um, well behaved. Then weekdays you go to school. There, of course, you learn the real things in life, physics, mathematics, cookery, architecture, goodness knows what. They're the real things of life. In that part of the world, they're not much concerned about Jacob and Joseph and, uh, about Samuel. And then Sunday, for rest, you come away from all that real world into some cocoon of a, well, it's Martin Hill, looks like so friendly, it's a little bit like Red Riding Hood, you know, it sort of comforts you, but whether it's real, and what on earth it's got to do with this world or physics or atomic science, who could know? And what's happening? Why the eyes of their hearts haven't yet been enlightened, saved from the wrong content of the law. They haven't yet grasped what the hope of his calling is, that they have been saved, that they might fulfill God's plan for this vast creation around them. One day, as the sons of God take over the running of it with Christ. Christ. More real than any career you could possibly imagine. For the real and final answer that your physics book can't give you, nor the cosmology either, is why the whole caboose was started, and what is the end of it? And here in Christ you've got the end of it, and the purpose of it, and you call to share in that purpose. And then he prays that the eyes of our understanding be enlightened, that we might know what is the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints. And once more, the term is perhaps ambiguous, as frequently in scripture, it can mean what we inherit in Christ. It can mean, can't it, what God inherits in us. For the Lord's inheritance is his people still. Do I need the eyes of my understanding open to see what is the riches of God's inheritance? I fancy I do. If my behavior is any guide to it. Now, incidentally, tell me what this inheritance of God is. Why, the woman sitting next to you? Oh, I thought you were going to tell me something about heaven. Oh dear. Oh dear. What do you think God's inheritance in eternity is going to be? A few marble pillars and a, a, a, you know, few Corinthian pillars in front of a big stone temple? Will that be glorious? Open your eyes, woman. That man sitting beside you, that dear woman sitting beside you, if they are the Lord, are something that God himself, he designed the whole universe to get them. And he spent the blood of Christ on getting them. And all these young years he's been toiling with them patiently to perfect their redeemed character. They are his inheritance eternally. He thinks they're wonderful. A good man, that dear fellow Christian of yours sitting by your side now. If you could see him, not as he looks at this moment, if you could see him as he shall be when God is finished with him, if you could see it at this moment, you'll be down on your knees worshiping the Lord. And how do I know that? Why, when John saw an angel and fell down at his feet, an angel, so shall be infinitely below the redeemed of the Lord. You say, mister, this is excited imaginary talk. Then your eyes haven't been opened, have they? Oh, I can recite the words. My brother, my sister is a veritable son of God. Destined to be a being the glory of which will delight the very heart of the transcendent Lord of the universe. And next Monday I could cut them dead and put a metaphorical knife in their character. Why? Because the idea that they're God's inheritance is still only words, you see, and hasn't percolated through and become a reality. Oh, if you saw the ruptions, the quarrels, the squabbles, the shameful treatment of fellow Christian to fellow Christian this world through, then you'd begin to pray, shouldn't we? That God would open the eyes of our understanding to see what is the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the same. Till it became a reality. And we were afraid to do anything to injure any child of God. What the exceeding greatness of his power that he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead, yes, but but the point is, what is the implication for us? The exceeding greatness of his power toward you that he wrought when he raised Christ from the dead. What implications has it for me? Oh, pray ponder a moment what God has done with the Lord Jesus. Raised him up from the grave and set him above every conceivable type of authority that you could think of in this vast universe, so that today he sits as the supreme Lord of every force, be it physical or spiritual, in God's vast universe. And not only now, but if God has universes to come, and he surely has, and ages to come, and he surely will have, Christ will remain the supreme head. That's where he is. But get the point, what's that got to do with me? Well, because God has taken that Christ, head over all things as he is, and given him to the church. For the church to be his body. To be the thing that makes him complete, as a body makes its head complete, or as a wife makes her husband complete. So that we, the church, shall be the Eve to the Adam who is Christ. The Rebecca for the Isaac, the father's son who had all things in his hands. And as the days of the better, the aftermath of Joseph as supreme administrator of the universe is largely Gentile blind. Oh, that God would open my eyes to take it in as literal fact. It remains so easily at the level of my mere emotions and imagination, doesn't it? You can tell that, because you'll see me on Monday getting irritated if the carrots get boiled. I'll get burned. Oh yes, you will. You wouldn't guess when you see what little things will put me out. You'll never guess. That I really believe I'm destined to a destiny. I guess. How about you? Well then, let's pray. And I must say, a very curious thing strikes me as I think of these things. I suppose in my little life I've been to hundreds, if not thousands, of prayer meetings. I can't remember one where I've heard any brother get up and pray all these three things at once. Have you? I don't think I have. I've heard little bits and snippets now and again. But I have to confess how rarely I've heard somebody get up in the church and say, oh God, we need supremely above everything else, open the eyes of our understanding, illumined by your spirit, reveal to us till it becomes real in our assembly, what the hope of your calling is, what the riches of your inheritance in the saints is, what's the significance for us of the power that you have exerted in raising Christ from the dead and putting him at your own right hand. I'll tell you a more curious thing. I have been, as I say, to thousands of prayer meetings, and I haven't really prayed it myself. I've really prayed it myself. You see, we talk about it. The It important hasn't really is the become. time of the now. And you need to pray. For this is the truth. This is the real situation. Less than this are but the myths and confusions of untruth or truth, but partially perceived. We're not going to get our third part done, are we? I can't go on any longer, so we shall have to reserve it for better or for ill until next week. But as we ponder these things, let's make a response to God, if you'll allow me so to do, by reading you the verses of a well-known and a lovely hymn. All blessed God, how kind are all thy ways to me. His dark, ignited mind was enmity with me. But now, subdued by sovereign grace, my spirit longs for thine enter.