Revealing Hidden Secrets

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Ephesians 3:1-13.

I’ve got a secret. Do you want to hear it? You must promise not to tell anyone. Do I have your word? “Cross my heart hope to die stick a needle in my eye.” The sharing a secret with a friend makes that friend your bosom buddy for life. Revealing that secret to someone else is a deep betrayal.

What is more fun than having a secret? Telling a secret! Like Eliney in the Snuffy Smith Cartoon who gathers at the gossip fence. No faster publisher of information in three counties. God has a secret that he wants you to tell. Tell Everyone! Go to the mountain tops and proclaim it. Mystery is not something to be kept secret. God’s mystery is now revealed. Telling God’s Gossip—-And we have already read that God is the one spreading the news. By revelation to the Apostles and Prophets — the cat is out of the bag.

3:2-5a God has a secret. Can you imagine God having a secret called the mystery of Christ? One the prophets did not have access to but longed to uncover. One kept secret even from the angels. See 1 Peter 1:10-12. Yet, if you listened to the evidence, the covenant given to Abraham possessed the very “seed” of God’s secret. And the prophets knew Israel was to be a light unto the Gentiles.

What is the full content of the mystery?

    • Review each phrase in Eph. 3:6 carefully.
    • Through the gospel
    • The Gentiles are heirs
    • Together with Israel
    • Members together of one body
    • And sharers together in the promise of Christ Jesus
  1. Which of these claims would have been hard for first-century Jewish believers to accept? Why?
  2. What does it mean to be an “heirs together with Israel”?
  3. Paul had insight into the mysterious riches of Christ. If we think about that mystery, how might we (notice the plural here) be changed?  How does the mystery change how I look at other people (both those who are part of the church and those outside of it)?
  4. Paul was challenging the racial divides that had long existed between Jews and Gentiles. How do the plural y’all’s speak with power into our current context?  What principalities and powers stand in the way of Christian unity?

3:3, 7-9 Paul uses himself as the primary illustration of the fulfillment of God’s purposes being revealed. His role was to be the minister of God’s mystery to the Gentiles. His mission work was a direct result of a gift which he had received directly from God. He was a servant of God’s will. He was able to accomplish God’s will by the power of God working through him. God used a prisoner to accomplish ministry.

3:10-12 When you see the church you should see the power of God. God has been actively working from the beginning. As the church, we have a purpose bigger than ourselves. We have a role in God’s grand scheme to redeem humanity. The church is an agent of revelation “revealing and making known” God. God revealed it to the Apostles and Prophets. They made that revelation known to us the church. We in turn reveal that mystery to others. We are the vital link in God’s communication of the gospel to the world. We can have confidence in our role because it is the fulfillment of God’s purpose.

Read verses 10-11 slowly and ask yourself: “What is God’s intent?  Why has he revealed the mystery as he has?”  What is the church?  What is it to do?  What is it’s purpose?

And when you participate in the works God has prepared in advance for us to do (2:10), our everyday actions have cosmic effects in the heavenly places.

Excursus provided by the Highland adult education team: On Principalities and Powers “His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms” (3:10). The novelist Frank E. Peretti, in a successful Christian fiction series, interpreted This Present Darkness as a world in which demons and territorial spirits inhabited individuals and locations, directly manipulating people and spreading dark influences everywhere.  Many might shutter or roll their eyes at such a notion. It’s good fiction but not really what’s happening out there, is it? Marva Dawn observes that the French philosopher Jacques Ellul took a different approach talking about the principalities.  Teaching about [the powers] he noted that they “find expression in human, social realities, in the enterprises of man.”  Further, Ellul suggested that their intervention is in human decision and action.” But Ellul further observes that “political power has many dimensions, e.g. social, economic psychological, ethical, psycho-analytical, and legal.  But when we have scrutinized them all, we have still not apprehended its reality….  [I have reached] the unavoidable conclusion that another power intervenes and indwells and uses political power, thus giving it a range and force that it does not have in itself.  The same is true of money … [and technology].” [1] Ellul is suggesting that the forces of evil can co-mingle with human efforts and create something sinister and far worse than humans could create on their own.

Have you seen this happen before?  (Example: a crowd that grew out of control, propaganda that seemed to fan flames and change minds, a meeting that went sideways and created policies or made decisions that took on a life of their own.) Jesus talked about the power of Mammon (Matthew 6:24; Luke 16:13).  How is that related to what Paul is saying about the rulers and authorities? Paul’s letter tells us that Christians have power, having been raised into the heavenlies (Eph. 2:6).  In this way, they are not below the powers, but the powers are out there. Why is it important for the church to remember its place among the powers?

Resource
[1] Marva Dawn, “The Call to Triumph Over the Principalities and Powers” in Unnecessary Pastor: Rediscovering the Call (Eerdmans, 2000), 106-107.