For this reason I, Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus on behalf of
you Gentiles - ² assuming that you have heard of the stewardship
of God's grace that was given to me for you, ³ how the mystery
was made known to me by revelation, as I have written briefly. ⁴ When
you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, ⁵ which
was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has
now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. ⁶ This
mystery isthat the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body,
and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. ⁷ Of
this gospel I was made a minister according to the gift of God's grace,
which was given me by the working of his power. ⁸ To me,
though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given,
to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, ⁹ and
to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden
for ages in God who created all things, ¹⁰ so that through
the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the
rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. ¹¹ This was
according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus
our Lord, ¹² in whom we have boldness and
access with confidence through our faith in him. ¹³ So I
ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is
your glory.

We are going to focus on Ephesians 3:8-10. And we are going to move
backward through this text, passing from the widest view to the most
narrow view, or from the biggest picture of things to the smallest,
or from the greatest goal of missions backward through three successively
smaller means to reach this great goal.

Four Steps

So we will move first from the display of the wisdom of God to
the innumerable angelic armies (v. 10); to the means that God uses
to display this wisdom, namely, the church, the gathering of the
people of God from all the nations of the world (v. 10a); to the
means of this gathering, namely, the preaching of the of the unsearchable
riches of Christ among all the nations (v. 9); finally to the means
of this preaching, namely, you and me, the least of the saints
(v. 8).

So we move from the display of God’s great wisdom to the world of
angels, to the church gathered from all the nations; to the preaching
of the gospel of the riches of Christ to the simple, sinner-saints,
who live and minister by grace alone—the missionaries.

I go backward in this order because I want to end with you.
God is not done with the work of missions. He said go make disciples
of all nations. And then he said, “I will be with you to the end of
the age.” The promise is good till Jesus comes, because the commission is
binding till Jesus comes. Therefore you and I face the question individually
what our role is in obeying the great commission to reach all the unreached
peoples of the world with the gospel of the riches of Christ.

That is where I will end this morning, Lord willing. My aim is to
awaken and confirm and encourage a sense of God’s leading in your life
toward cross-cultural missions. And so at the end of this service I
will invite you to come to the front so that I can pray for you and
so that you can receive a card from the missions department here for
your support and encouragement and guidance. I don’t want you to be
taken off guard at the end. I want your decision to come to be prayerful
and thoughtful. So let’s pray now that God would be at work to awaken
and confirm and encourage your own sense of his leading in your life.

A Picture of These Four Steps

Now I want to create a picture for you of these four steps. Remember
we are going to move backward through the text from the display of God’s
manifold wisdom (v. 10b), to the gathering of God’s global church (v.
10a), to the preaching of Christ’s unsearchable riches (v. 8b), to the
service of God’s ordinary missionary (v. 8a).

The picture is this: Picture in your mind a great, wise painter,
painting on a huge canvas with many brushes, most of them very ordinary
and messy. The painter is God, so you can’t picture him. He’s invisible.
But he intends for his painting to be the visible display of his wisdom.
He knows people can’t see him, but he wants his wisdom to be seen and
admired. His canvas is huge. It’s the size of the created universe.
I know you can’t really imagine looking at that canvas because you are
in it. But do your best. And God is painting with thousands and thousands
of colors and shades and textures—a picture as big as the universe and
as old as creation and as lasting as eternity—a picture we call history, with
the central drama being the preparation, salvation, and formation of
the church of Jesus Christ. And he is using thousands of different brushes,
most of them very ordinary and very small because every minute detail
is crucial in this painting, to display the wisdom of the Painter. These
brushes are God’s missionaries.

That’s the picture. Now there’s a reason in the text that I am encouraging
to have a picture like this in your mind. It’s in the word “manifold”
in verse 10: “. . . so that through the church the manifold wisdom
of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the
heavenly places.” This Greek word for “manifold” occurs in the Bible
only here. It is very unusual. Half of it (poikilos) is used
to mean, “wrought in various colors,” diversified, intricate, complex,
subtle. It’s basic idea is of varied in color. Then Paul puts a prefix
on the word that means “many” (polupoikilos). So the emphasis
is very many colors and variations and intricacies and subtleties. So,
since that is in the text, I want you to think of the display of God’s
wisdom as a universe-sized painting with innumerable colors and shadings
and texture. It is unsearchably intricate.

1. The Display of God’s Manifold Wisdom (v. 10b)

Now let’s go to our four steps and start in verse 10 with the greatest
goal of history and missions. “. . . so that . . .” You can see from
the words “so that” that God’s purpose and aim for missions
and the
church are now being expressed. The riches of Christ are preached to
the Gentiles, the nations, and the church is gathered from all the peoples
“. . . so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now
be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.”

So this is God’s goal. He created the world, and he redeemed a people
through the death of his son (see Ephesians 2:12-19), and he sends missionaries
and gathers his church by the preaching of the riches of Christ “so
that that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be
made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.” That’s
the goal of all of history. That is the goal of missions, the central
drama of history.

This universe is finally about the many-colored wisdom of God. History
exists to display the infinitely varied and complex and intricate wisdom
of God. Missions is the means that God uses to gather the church. And
that gathering from all the nations is the focus of this wisdom-displaying
painting. You see that in the words “through the church”: “so that through
the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known.”

But stay with the display of God’s wisdom for a moment. The next
point has to do with the church. Look who the audience is in verse 10:
“so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be
made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.”
This means that the painting, and the drama of history and redemption
that it portrays, from creation to consummation, is meant to show angels—the
good ones and the evil ones—the greatness of God’s wisdom.

Missions exists, and the ingathering of God’s elect exists, and the
church exists so that angels would stand in awe of the wisdom of God.
God displays his wisdom in history so that the worship of heaven would
be white hot with admiration and wonder. The good angels never fell
into sin, and only marvel at the wisdom of God’s grace from outside,
so to speak. No angel will ever sing Amazing Grace. “How sweet the sound
that saved a wretch like me.” They are not wretches and have never been
lost.” This is our song and our joy, and they can
never sing it or know it. But God wanted them to see it. And so his
aim in history is to display the wisdom of his grace in the way he saves
the church by justifying the ungodly from all nations by faith alone
on the basis of Christ alone. And the angels love to stoop down and
get as close as they can to the wonders of redemption and how God prepared
and saved and gathered his church (1 Peter 1:12).

And the demons (Ephesians 6:12)—the evil principalities and powers—must
look at this painting and watch the wisdom by which they were defeated
in the very moment they thought they had triumphed—in the death and
resurrection of Christ, and in the blood of the martyrs, just as our
fighter verse this week says, “Behold, the devil is about to throw some
of you into prison, that you may be tested, and for ten days you will
have tribulation. Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown
of life.” Just when God paints a dark color of the death of his witness
and the devils begin to gloat, God picks up another brush and with orange
and yellow and red makes that dark death serve the beauty of his wisdom.
And the demons gnash their teeth.

The final glory of the painting “Missions” is that every brush stroke
will add to the infinitely intricate display of God’s wisdom to the
armies of heaven.

So let’s turn now from the display of God’s manifold wisdom to through.
. .

2. The Gathering of God’s Global Church (v. 10a)

We have seen in verse 10 that it is through the church that
the great divine Painter is displaying his manifold wisdom to the armies
of heaven and hell. But now notice that the church is being gathered
from all the nations. Verse 8-9, “To me, though I am the very least
of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles [there
is the first pointer, the “Gentiles” are the non-Jewish nations] the
unsearchable riches of Christ, 9 and to bring to light for everyone
[there it is again: we are to spread the gospel to “everyone”] what
is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages inGod who created all things.”

The “mystery hidden for ages” is exactly this universal scope of
the gospel to include Gentiles and not just Jews in the covenant people
of God. Verse 6 makes this crystal clear: “This mystery isthat the Gentiles
are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise
in Christ Jesus through the gospel.” The nations share in the promise
made to Abraham. They become part of the historic people of God. They
become “true Jews” (Romans 2:29).

We have seen all of this in Romans 11. Wild Gentile branches are
being grafted into the tree of promise, and broken-off Jewish branches
will be grafted in when the fullness of the Gentiles comes in. It’s
the complex and strange and intricate way that God is saving his church
from all the nations so that none can boast that brings Paul in Romans
11:33 to the exact place he comes in Ephesians 3:10, namely to the praise
of God’s unsearchable wisdom: “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom
and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable
his ways!”

That is what God aims at in heaven and on earth—the praise of his
many-colored wisdom in the way he is saving and gathering his church
from all the peoples of the world. There are twists and turns in history
that no one ever dreamed would bring about what God designed. There
are no wasted strokes on this canvas as God paints his wisdom in the
history of missions.

Which leads us now to the means of this gathering. How does missions
advance? How is the church gathered from the nations to the praise of
God’s many-colored wisdom.

3. The Preaching of Christ’s Unsearchable Riches (v. 8b)

Ephesians 3:8-9: “To
me, though I am the very least of all the saints,
this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable
riches of Christ, 9 and to bring to light for everyone what is
the plan of the mystery hidden for ages inGod who created all things.”
Missions happens by preaching to the nations “the unsearchable riches
of Christ.” Missionaries lift up Jesus Christ and all that God is for
us in him, and God gathers his elect from all the peoples of the world.

That term “the unsearchable riches of Christ” is worth a year of
sermons. But I give you one pointer to what it means. In Ephesians 2:12
Paul tells the Gentiles—the converts from the nations—“Remember that
you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth
of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope
and without God in the world.” In other words, once, all that God had
ever promised in the Old Testament for the glorious future of his people
was not theirs. They were excluded from everything God promised.
Now verse 19 is the gospel message based on the cross of Christ: “So
then you are no longer strangers and aliens,but you are fellow citizens
with the saints and members of the household of God.”

That is what missionaries preach everywhere they go: you—you Uzbeks,
you Maninka, you Kachin, you Shandai, you Swedes, you Germans, you Russians,
you British—you who trust Christ are now part of the covenant made with
Israel. You are fellow citizens. You are members of the household of
God. You will inherit every promise ever made if you believe in Christ.
All of them are yes to you in Christ. You will inherit the earth. You
are heir of the world. You are children of the maker of the universe
in Jesus Christ. All things are yours. And Jesus Christ is the sum of
all those things, and all things will show you more of him and increase
your joy forever.

Ephesians 2:7 says that it is going to take eternity for God to exhaust
on you the unsearchable riches of his glory in Christ Jesus: “. . .
so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of
his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” It will take ages
upon ages upon ages for the riches of Christ to be searched out.

That is what missionaries say to the nations of the world and show
them—that Christ died and rose again so that people from every nation
might be one in this inheritance.

Which leaves just one final question: Who are the brushes? If God
aims to display his many-colored wisdom with the canvas of world history,
and if the in-gathering church from every people and tribe and nation
is the main drama on this canvas, and if missions is the means of gathering
and establishing that church among all the peoples, what are the brushes
God uses to paint this drama?

4. The Service of God’s Ordinary Missionaries (v. 8a)

The brushes he uses are messy, ordinary people who have seen the
unsearchable riches of Christ and are willing, and often eager, to take
these riches to the nations. The brushes are broken, sinning, ordinary
missionaries—of whom the world is not worthy (Hebrews 11:38).

Verse 8: “To me, though I am the very least of all the saints,
this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches
of Christ.” There are two reasons Paul mentioned that he was the least
of all the saints. One is because he was a hater and persecutor of the
church and of Christ. He never got over that God had chosen him in spite
of his horrible past. The other reason is to remind you today that he
can do the same for you.

So here is one of the greatest incentives of all to draw you into
missions. God intends to use ordinary, messy, small paint brushes on
the canvass of the history of missions because every minute stroke of
his brush matters. Every bright stroke of triumph and every dark stroke
of suffering matters. He is an infinitely wise painter. He knows what
he is doing with your life. Not one stroke will be wasted. You can trust
him with your life. Yield the wise hand that would paint with your life.

Oh, what riches we have to give!

So I want to invite you to come. And I want those of you who do not
come to feel good about not coming because of how committed you are—for
now—to sending those who come. This is a partnership. Sitting is an
obedience. And coming is an obedience. If God has been at work in your
life to stir you to seriously look toward cross cultural missions in
your life—short term, midterm or long term—I would like you to come.
I would like to pray for you and give you a card for your encouragement
and support. Why don’t you who are already missionaries and already
committed to going join the rest.