Hope in Darkness
Confidence in God
Ephesians 3:7-13

Glenn McDonald
July 17-18, 2010

Captain Charles Plumb of the U.S. Navy was shot down on his 75^th combat mission over Vietnam. He spent the next 2,103 days in Communist prisons – almost six years of his life. Towards the end of his time in captivity, Plumb and his fellow POWs were handed a single copy of the Bible, and told that they could keep it for exactly two days.

Plumb organized an around-the-clock effort to transcribe everything they possibly could from Scripture onto anything they had available. Two-man teams simultaneously copied adjoining pages. When they ran out of paper they used toilet tissue. Plumb recalls that a number of the POWs wanted to do nothing more than simply approach the Bible and touch it.

Sometimes we forget what we are free to hold in our hands any time we want. This is a treasure like no other. This is personal communication from God. The Bible was never intended to be the spiritual equivalent of an automobile owner’s manual – that book we keep stashed in the glove compartment in case a red light suddenly appears on the dash. The Bible is God’s gift to us to help us understand every day why we can feel confident whenever we come to him.  

When you approach God, do you feel confident? Do you think that God would have time for you if you chose to talk with him? Do you think he would welcome and encourage you, or express grave disappointment in the way you’ve been living? Do you picture spending time with God as a joyful privilege, or as a miserable obligation to keep him from leaning too hard on you?

Those very issues are at the heart of the short New Testament book called Ephesians. We’ve committed eight months here at ZPC to study Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus in detail, and to challenge each other to memorize all 155 verses. As we near the halfway point of that journey, let’s look back and assess what we’ve learned so far.

The first two chapters of Ephesians are explosive. Over and over Paul assures us that there is a God, and it is not you. There is a God, and he is for you. Your life is not your own project. Your life is the loving, intentional work of a God who has pulled out all the stops to bring you to himself. Paul showers us with rocket verbs that describe God’s actions. He has blessed us, and chosen us, and loved us, and forgiven us, and predestined us, and called us. We have to read almost to the end of the first chapter before we finally learn what role there is for us to play, and that is simply to believe that all of this is so. We can feel confident when we approach God.

Paul also uses two words to describe the spiritual condition of those who have entrusted themselves to Jesus. We are “in Christ” – a phrase that shows up in one form or another 36 times in this book. What does it mean to be “in Christ”? Quite a number of us know what it means to be in debt. Some of us can even describe what it’s like to be in bankruptcy. When we’re in dire financial straits our minds become preoccupied with our condition. We are always thinking about what it’s going to mean today that we are facing a mountain of bills.

So how should that help us understand what Paul is saying? Because we are “in Christ,” we ought to be thinking all the time about the fact that we are utterly secure in the love and grace of God. We should be preoccupied with our condition – the reality that there is literally nothing for us to worry about over the next 24 hours.

Paul also declares us to be “saints.” That doesn’t mean that our portraits are likely to appear any time soon in stained glass windows. Because we are “in Christ,” God has granted to us the status of dearly loved family members, even though our behavior is quite often embarrassing beyond words. The same thing was true for the Ephesians who originally received this letter. Rather often we hear people sigh, “If only we could get back to what the church was like in the early days.” Really? All we have to do is read what Paul and James and Peter and John wrote to those first congregations to realize that they were a mess. Much of the New Testament was written to help clean up local church disasters. The Bible’s authors always point to trusting Jesus as the way forward.

Paul makes it clear in Ephesians that this Jesus is not one spiritual option among many. He is one of a kind. He is the centerpiece of what God has been doing since the creation of the cosmos. And God will tolerate no rivals. The greatest spiritual danger we face is to think and to live in such a way that anything else might get more of our attention than God’s Son.

When we move from chapter one to chapter two, Paul finally turns the spotlight on us. And the picture is alarming. Apart from Christ we’re not just spiritually sick, or lame, or broken. Our condition is terminal. We are dead in our sins. And God doesn’t grade on the curve. What hope is there for us? In one of the signature texts in all of Scripture – Ephesians 2:8-9 – Paul declares that we are saved by God’s grace through faith. And both of those realities – grace and faith – are God’s own gifts to us. He reaches down and places into our hands the very things we need to be rescued by him – if only we will receive them. God gave his all for us; we must surrender all to him.

Paul goes on to point out that being a Christian isn’t limited to how well we’re doing with the Lord. Attention must be paid to how well we’re doing with everybody else, too. The ancient world was stricken by deep biases based on ethnicity, economic standing, and gender. Unfortunately, yesterday’s headlines are still today’s headlines. But Paul announces that when the kingdom of God starts breaking into our lives, everything must change. The walls must come down. God is creating a brand new world, and it has to start with his work in us.

Last week Scott Shelton got us started in Ephesians chapter three. Do you notice that these words are a bit calmer? It’s as if Paul catches his breath for a couple of paragraphs before he turns the heat back up in Ephesians four. Paul even pauses to tell us a little bit about himself for the first time in this letter. Let’s have a look at Ephesians 3:7-13. Once again we have the chance to speak these words aloud – whether by reading from our own copies of Scripture, looking up at the screens, or reciting them from memory. Let’s stand together and declare the Word of God:

I became a servant of this gospel by the gift of God’s grace given me through the working of his power. Although I am less than the least of all God’s people, this grace was given me: to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to make plain to everyone the administration of this mystery, which for ages past was kept hidden in God, who created all things. 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, according to his eternal purpose which he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord. In him and through faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence. I ask you, therefore, not to be discouraged because of my sufferings for you, which are your glory.

So who exactly is the apostle Paul? He was the first global missionary in the history of Christianity. It’s hard to imagine anyone with a richer Jewish pedigree. He seems to have been at the top of his religious class. He was mentored by Gamaliel, the most esteemed rabbi of that age. He was a Pharisee. He despised the ragtag followers of Jesus of Nazareth and gladly embraced the opportunity to serve as judge, jury, and executioner of those early Christians.

But Jesus himself changed all that. Paul, while on his way to Damascus to arrange some more lynchings, was blinded by a light from heaven and knocked to the ground. “Why are you persecuting me?” Jesus asked him. Within a few days the Church’s greatest enemy had been transformed into the Church’s most vocal and controversial public asset. Paul’s myriad gifts and training and energy were transferred wholesale into the service of the gospel.

And Paul never got over it. He never forgot where he came from. Look at verse 8: “Although I am less than the least of all God’s people…” The original Greek here is fascinating. Paul invents a goofy new word that is untranslatable into English. He writes that he is the “leastest” of all God’s people. He is the “smallester” of every Christian he knows. In First Timothy 1:15 he says that he should be standing at the front of the sinners’ line; here he announces that if the saints were to become a train, he would be the caboose.

Consider the ways he describes himself in this chapter. He is “the prisoner of Christ Jesus” and a “servant of this gospel.” Elsewhere he calls himself a “slave of Christ.” We may have gotten so used to these terms that we fail to notice that being a slave or a prisoner isn’t exactly what most people historically have aspired to be. But Paul uses such words as badges of honor.

So who in the ancient world would even care about this Jewish fanatic who had lately become a fan of a fellow crucified Jew? He’s stuck in prison, after all. But Paul is now either writing or dictating the words of Ephesians from his jail cell. And what he says in verses 9-11 is deeply threatening to the Roman Empire. Paul basically announces that something fabulous is happening in the Mediterranean world, but it’s not happening because of Rome. And that’s a risky thing to put into print.

At this moment in Roman history the emperor, or Caesar, was assumed to be divine. No rival authority was tolerated. Everyone within the bounds of the Empire was required to make an annual public declaration that Caesar was God on Earth. The goal of Rome was to create a brand new humanity. Actually their aim was to bring about what they called a New World Order. In this Roman vision people of every background would experience unity with each other because of the miracle of the Empire. And get this: The announcement of this plan was called the euangelion – the gospel or Good News from Rome.

Paul says, “You are so wrong on every count.” God is in fact creating a new humanity, and a New World Order, but he’s doing it through Jesus, not through Caesar. Beginning in verse 10 he writes, “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, according to his eternal purpose which he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord.” The real Good News is happening through Jesus. And believe it or not, the place where one can actually see this Good News happening is in local congregations.

Keep in mind that there were no mega churches or beautiful cathedrals in the first century. Congregations were tiny gatherings in people’s houses. They featured men and women worshipping in the same room at the same time, Jews mingling with Gentiles, and slaves sitting down with their masters. This was unprecedented. Paul made it his life’s work to launch these strange little mixed-up gatherings where everybody could come together as equals simply because they were “in Christ” – and that would be the only thing that would matter.

Paul believed that with God’s help he had just one generation to accomplish this social and spiritual miracle. And it happened. All of those little congregations became a sign that mighty Rome would one day collapse and disappear, while the purposes and plans of Jesus of Nazareth would succeed eternally.

What does it mean, in verse 10, that through the church God’s manifold wisdom will be known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms? When we get to chapter six we will discover that these rulers and authorities are in fact fallen angels. They are demonic spirits that wage war against God’s purposes. Paul is saying that local churches – including congregations like ours, filled with ordinary people who by God’s grace are growing up into the likeness of Jesus Christ – are God’s public statement to Satan that he has already lost. His limited power will never be able to undo what God is accomplishing in us right now through the Holy Spirit.

But that’s not all. In verse 12 Paul writes, “In him and through faith in him [that is, through Christ] we may approach God with freedom and confidence.” It matters, more than we know, what picture we have of God in our minds right now. Author and psychologist Patrick Carnes suggests that we have four basic options:

First, we may have in mind a Non-Existent God. In other words, no God at all. We don’t have to worry about approaching a God who isn’t even there.

Second, we might picture a Non-Involved God. This is the God who is primarily concerned with running the universe, and is therefore detached and unconcerned with our personal lives. Why even bother to approach such a God?

Our third choice is the Punishing God. He holds us accountable for our mistakes but rarely rewards us or helps us.

Finally there is the Accepting God. He knows everything about our failures, yet cares about us anyways.

It’s incredible that after twenty centuries of Gospel preaching in the Western world, a clear majority of those who identify themselves as disciples of Jesus picture a Punishing God – a God with whom they associate words like judgmental, strict, negative, and rigid. According to David Kinnaman in his book unChristian, “The most common message that people hear from us is that Christianity is a religion of rules and regulations.” When a large number of American evangelicals were recently asked to identify the main priorities in their faith experience, the number one response was “being good, doing the right thing, and not sinning.”

I suggest this is incredible because it is so utterly at odds with the way Jesus himself pictures his Father in his own teaching, and because it is a total reversal of Paul’s picture of God in the book of Ephesians. Look once more at verse 12: “In him and through faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence.” If we are in Christ, we may have genuine assurance that we are accepted and loved by God.  

I am certain, however, that many of you have never come to believe that that is really so. We might describe this as the phenomenon of Yes, But. Yes, God has lovingly chosen sons and daughters to be in his forever family – but he was talking about other people, not me. Yes, God overflows with grace – but I have disqualified myself from receiving such grace. If only you knew my family secrets. If only you knew my shame. If only you knew why I don’t deserve kindness from anybody, and why it will be better for others and even for God when my life finally comes to an end.

Theologians and counselors tell us that there is an important difference between guilt and shame. Guilt is when we know we’ve made mistakes. Shame is when we think that we are a mistake. Guilt is the gap between how we act and how we think we ought to act. Shame is the gulf between who we are and who we think we ought to be. Guilt generates a fear of punishment – and appropriately so – but shame fills us with a far more grievous terror: the fear that we are going to be abandoned. And abandonment is the darkest of all human fears.

Here is God’s good news: The guilt of our sins has been atoned for – paid for! – by Jesus’ sacrificial death on the cross. And no matter how much shame we may feel, God will never abandon us. We may approach him with confidence – confidence that he is really there, and that he cares for us, and that he is faithful, and that he accepts us even when we fail, and that he is at work right now in the smallest details of our lives in order to bless us.

In recent years I have learned a lot about coming into the presence of God. I have learned, for instance, that when I am worshipping in anonymity in some other congregation, I don’t really care if the soloist hits a wrong note or if one of the words on a Power Point slide happens to be misspelled – things that sometimes distract me when I am a worship leader here. But when I am truly desperate to hear God, nothing else matters. At a funeral here two weeks ago I looked up just before the benediction and noticed that we had forgotten to light these candles. Just as quickly I realized, “Nobody cares that the candles aren’t lit. But I bet almost everyone here wants to know if there is reason for hope concerning the day that they will be the one who is lying in the casket.”

Can we really experience freedom and courage as we approach God? In a world – even a church world – that is skewed toward belief in a punishing God, how can we cultivate spiritual confidence? We can choose to believe four things. Let’s consider each one in turn.

First, our confidence in God will grow if we choose to believe what the Bible says. If the scope of our current memorization project has left you feeling like a deer in the headlights, then memorize just one verse. Let it be Ephesians 3:12: “In him and through faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence.” You’ll find those words printed in your bulletin this morning. Snip them out and carry them with you. Ponder them every day for a month. Choose to believe that what the Bible says is true.

Second, our confidence in God will grow if we believe that at the beginning of every new day we can settle the issue of whom or what we are going to trust. If we’re not careful – if we’re not intentional – we can drown in a sea of anxious, fearful, or contrary feelings about the time the alarm goes off. Gently steer your thoughts back to God. Picture yourself getting up and setting your own spiritual thermostat. Move the needle over to Confidence. God says he can be trusted. Realign your will to line up with his.

Third, our confidence in God will grow if we trust that he shall in fact sustain us in the midst of discouragement. We must risk that God is good and that he loves us unconditionally, even when things are difficult. Look at what Paul writes in verse 13: “I ask you, therefore, not to be discouraged because of my sufferings for you, which are your glory.” Here is someone who is so confident in God that even though he is in prison he is sure that everything is happening according to God’s plan.

Fourth and finally, our confidence in God will grow if we trust that God’s grace is more than we could ever ask or imagine. God’s kindness simply blows away our expectations.  

Last year at Azusa Pacific University, on the day of commencement, university president Jon Wallace pulled aside three seniors to stand before a small group of faculty, parents, and distinguished alumni. He announced that these three seniors were going to serve under-resourced people in impoverished areas for several years after graduation. They were each given a few moments to share their passion for serving others. Everyone applauded.

That’s when President Wallace turned toward the three of them and said, “Someone you do not know has heard what you are doing. He wants you to be able to go and serve without impediment. So he has anonymously provided a gift.” Jon looked the first student in the eye and said to her, “You have been forgiven your school debt of $105,000.” Did she hear that right? Tears began to fall as she grasped what was happening.

President Wallace said to the second student, “You have been forgiven your debt of $70,000.” And to the third he said, “Your school debt of $130,000 has been totally forgiven.” In an instant, the lives of those three students had been changed by the generosity of someone they had never even met.

That’s what God does! He erases not only what feels overwhelming to us, but forgives debts that we could never pay under any circumstances. Why does he do such a thing? So that we can be empowered and released to share his grace with a world in need. His hands are extended to us right now. You can approach him with freedom and confidence. Will you do so?