The Mystery of His Will

[00:00:00] We apologize for the lack of clarity in the first few seconds of this message. Unfortunately, it was on the master recording. Conscious, dear Lord, that thou art well able to reach our heart by thy spirit. [00:00:15] We thank thee for this jubilee. [00:00:18] We praise thee for what we've known already of being delivered out of the authority of Goddesse and translated into the kingdom of the son of thy love. Father, we worship thee for that. We praise thee for every further discovery we've made of that freedom with which Christ has made us free. [00:00:43] But Lord, we lift up our hearts and we praise thee for the day that's coming. When this whole earth and the heavens will know that jubilee. And when these old bodies of ours will know a jubilee released from all bondage to corruption. [00:01:01] Released from all the sin that is still in them and in this world, when the earth will be filled with the knowledge of thy glory as the waters cover the sea. [00:01:15] Lord, we praise and we worship thee for such a prospect which is before us. And we pray thee this morning that as we turn to thy word by thy spirit, thou minister to us. We remember very especially Sandra Goodland, that thou wouldst give her a safe delivery. Watch over that family. We pray, beloved Lord, and bring into this world a new life fully and healthily, soundly. We ask it together in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. And for any others too, Lord, who are in need, we remember them before thee. We praise thee for bringing cath back home to us, bringing her safely home and into our midst. Now, Lord, wilt thou strengthen her, renew her and give her all the rest and peace she needs, making provision for all her needs, spiritual, mental and physical. We ask it together in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. [00:02:24] Now I just want you to turn to Colossians and chapter one. [00:02:32] Colossians, chapter one. That's right. [00:02:38] Colossians, chapter one and verse 24. [00:02:46] Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake and fill up on my part that which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his bodys sake, which is the church whereof I was made a minister according to the dispensation of Goddesse which was given me to you ward to fulfill the word of God. Even the mystery which hath been hid for ages and generations. But now had it been manifested to his saints, to whom God was pleased to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you the hope of glory whom we proclaim, admonishing every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ, whereunto I labour also striving according to his working, which worketh in me mightily. For I would have you know how greatly I strive for you and for them, Laodicea, and for as many as have not seen my face in the flesh, that their hearts may be comforted, they being knit together in love and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, that they may know the mystery of God, even Christ, in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. This I say, that no. 1 may delude you with persuasiveness of speech, for though I am absent in the flesh, yet am I with you in the spirit, joying and beholding your order and the steadfastness of your faith in Christ. As therefore ye received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and builded up in him, and established in your faith, even as ye were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. [00:04:53] Well, now, we haven't got a lot of time this morning, and all I can do is introduce you to a subject that is simply tremendous. [00:05:05] It is all bound up with this word mystery. [00:05:09] Mystery. It comes again and again in this little passage that we have read together, verse 26. [00:05:17] The apostle Paul speaks of fulfilling the word of God, even the mystery which has been hid for ages and generations, but has now been manifested to his saints again. 27 to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles. [00:05:38] Again in chapter two and verse two, the last part, that they may know the mystery of God, even Christ. [00:05:51] What is this mystery? [00:05:54] Is it still a mystery to you? [00:06:00] What does it mean? The very word mystery, I think, is often misunderstood in the scripture because people tend to think that it means this is still a mystery. It is still a secret, if you like. It is something which is mysterious, which is vague, which is abstract, which is mystical. And therefore, only very few saints ever sort of understand what it's all about. But this isn't so. Again and again in the New Testament, the apostle Paul talks about this mystery being revealed, and he says, it's revealed to us not just to a special few, but it's revealed to us all. [00:06:49] It's been manifested to his saints. It says in verse 26. Now, this word mystery, the apostle Paul borrowed it from a greek idea of a kind of secret or mystery which you had to be initiated into. [00:07:07] It was to do with rights and religious rites and other things. [00:07:13] You had to be initiated into it. And the apostle Paul says, every born again believer ought to have been initiated into this mystery of God. [00:07:27] That means it is the birthright of every single child of God to know what this mystery is. This is your glory. Otherwise you're just like God's people under the old covenant. [00:07:41] In fact, some of us are worse off than they were under the old covenant. Don't even know as much. [00:07:50] Abraham had quite a lot of understanding and revelation as to the purpose of God and as to the ways of God and the work of God and the coming of the Messiah. [00:08:03] The whole point of the point the apostle Paul makes again and again is that you and I as believers now, at this point in the great onward march of time, we as believers now to us it's been given to know this mystery which has been hid from Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Moses and Joshua and David and Solomon and even the prophets. They desire to look into these things, to see exactly what they meant. But they only understood in part because, as the apostles, the writer of the Hebrews, says, in another place, they were not going to be made complete without us. [00:08:48] God had a glorious purpose, to include the gentiles in this great work that he was doing. It wasn't just to be a jewish concern. It was to be absolutely universal. It was to reach to the ends of the earth. Every tongue, every kindred, every nation, every people were to be included in this tremendous work that God was doing. [00:09:10] So the Lord said, I don't want it just to be a jewish concern. I chose Abraham that he might become the father of all who believe. [00:09:22] Well, now, do you know what the mystery is? [00:09:27] Now some who are very clever will say, ah, yes, it's the mystery of his will. And what is that? [00:09:34] The mystery of his will? I've heard that again and again they say in hushed and awesome tones, it's the mystery of his will. [00:09:46] Well, what is the mystery of his will if there is so much in the New Testament about this mystery, and there is ephesians is all about the mystery and that great roman letter, do you know how the apostle Paul ends up? Listen, I'll just read it to you so that you may know this is how he ends up in chapter 16, verse 25. Now to him that is able to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery which has been kept in silence through times eternal, but now is manifested, and by the scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandments of the eternal God is made known unto all the nations, unto obedience of faith. Now, how on earth can you be established if you don't know the mystery. [00:10:45] That may explain the instability of allotomous. We're like ships without a rudder. We've got the ship. [00:10:53] We've got the steering wheel. We've got the sails. And perhaps we've got the wind. [00:11:00] But. [00:11:02] But we haven't got a rudder. [00:11:06] We haven't got the rudder. [00:11:09] So consequently, we can be blown here or we can be blown there. [00:11:14] The apostle Paul says after this tremendous letter to the Romans. He says to him that is able to establish you according to my gospel. And this letter is all about this glorious gospel. [00:11:31] And the preaching of Jesus Christ. That is this making known to us of Jesus Christ himself. Not just about things that he did things about him, but make known to us him himself. [00:11:47] Imparting him to us through the word according to the mystery. [00:11:57] All right, now, what's this mystery all about then? [00:12:02] Well, I'll tell you this straight away. The mystery is not just a matter of being saved. It is more than that. [00:12:10] It is more than that, thank God. The matter of our being saved is very much to do with the mystery. But it isn't the mystery if you haven't been saved. You can't even be introduced into it. You don't even know what the secret of God's heart is. This secret that was in God's heart before ever he created a world. Before ever he created a human race. Before ever he, as it were, set time in motion. [00:12:47] You've got to be saved. [00:12:50] Nor is it just being sanctified. That's a tremendous thing. What a lot of battles we go over that and what a lot of different views we have of how we really get sanctified. But thank God for every child of God who is sanctified. [00:13:04] I don't mind if you got sanctified in a Quaker meeting, sitting there for an hour in silence. Or whether it was in a very noisy meeting, providing you got sanctified. That's the thing that matters. [00:13:17] We can talk and talk and talk and talk. But in the end, the thing that matters is whether God by his spirit has really set us apart as we ought to be set apart. And that those things which link us to the old life. Link us to the old creation of being severed by the sanctifying power of the spirit of goddess. [00:13:41] But the mystery isn't being sanctified. [00:13:45] It has a lot to do with it. [00:13:49] What is this mystery then? [00:13:53] Well, we have it, I think, again and again. Let me read you a few scriptures. First of all, one that we've already read in colossians. Chapter one. And a very well known. Well, here it is, verse 27. [00:14:08] Christ in you, the hope of glory. Now, you ought to understand that this you is plural, so that it is you and you and you and you. [00:14:22] That's why in your continental versions, you have Christ among you, the hope of glory. [00:14:29] The thought isn't just Christ in me, but it's Christ in me and Christ in you. The same Christ who's in me is the same Christ is in you, and you and you and you and you. And that's the mystery of God. It is the one glorious Christ in us all. [00:14:47] That's the riches of the glory of the secret of God, which has determined the whole course of his dealings with man from before time began. [00:15:01] Here it is. [00:15:03] You will see in this passage we've read together how the apostle Paul says everything's bound up with this. He says, you know, he utters these mysterious words about rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, filling up in my body that which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ. What does he mean? Great minds and spiritual minds of wrestled with this verse. [00:15:30] What does he mean? All we know is it's intimately connected with this mystery of God. [00:15:37] He says he strives, proclaim, admonishing every man, teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect, that is complete, not just saved, but complete in Christ. That's it. That's it. [00:15:57] May present every man complete in Christ. So if I'm in him, and you are in him, and every one of us is in him, however so many believers there are here this morning, we're all in the same Christ, and the same Christ is in all of us. It is the one Christ in us all, and it is all of us in the one Christ. That's the mystery. [00:16:22] Now, once you start to see that, it becomes simply marvelous, because you turn to Ephesians and chapter one and read from verse eight. [00:16:38] Here it is. [00:16:40] Now, he's been talking about our redemption in verse seven, and before that, about our being chosen in him before the foundation of the world. And then he says this, making known verse nine, making known unto us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, unto a dispensation of the fullness of the times. To sum up all things in Christ, things in the heavens, things upon the earth in him, I say, in whom, whom ye also were made a heritage. [00:17:15] Here's the mystery of his will. [00:17:17] Everything's going to be summed up in Christ. And anything that can't be summed up in Christ will be banished. [00:17:26] Christ is going to be all and in all it's the restitution of all things. The glorious last phase of human history, when everything will come back to God, everything will be gathered back to God, everything will be restored, restored to its right place in the economy of God, where God shall be the heart, the hub and the circumference of a redeemed universe. [00:17:51] The restitution of all things. Lift up your eyes, you dear little housewife at your kitchen sink, or you at your office bench, whoever you are, you're trapped by it. And you think, all this christian life, what is it? What is this christian life where the whole current's against us, the whole flow is against us, the whole atmosphere is antagonistic. And sometimes you wonder, is it worth it? Is it, my dear friend, you just wait. You just wait. [00:18:23] The restitution of all things, it'll be worth it. [00:18:26] The prophets of old spoke of it. They said the hills and the valleys will sing and shout for joyous. [00:18:34] Even the trees will clap their hands. Have you ever seen a thing like that? [00:18:39] Well, of course it doesn't mean they'll have hands. It just simply means that the trees will just breathe out a glory, because it'll be just as it ought to be and every single insect right up to the whale. [00:18:56] He's not an insect, of course, I do understand that. But I mean, whatever it is, whatever it is in this creation, everything will speak glory. [00:19:06] Everything will speak glory because it will all be just as it ought to have been. [00:19:13] It will be just as God intended it. And that's what the prophets speak about. They say a child will sit down by the hole, the nest of an adder, and will play with it. You've never seen anything like that. [00:19:30] The lion and the lamb will lie down together. The wolf will lie down with the lamb. The prophets speak of this. They saw it from afar. [00:19:43] They gloried in it. They were excited by it. They said, this is what we call now came to be known in the times of our Lord as the restitution of all things. And of course, the apostles connected it with the restitution of Israel. [00:19:59] That's why they were so bothered. Well, you think so? It's extraordinary, isn't it? As soon as the Lord is about to ascend into glory, there they are saying, when are you going to restore Israel, Lord? [00:20:09] You thought they'd been a bit more spiritual than that, wouldn't you? [00:20:13] But they had got hold of something. It was part of the restitution of all things. [00:20:19] And so, you see, it is just simply wonderful to realize that God is going to gather everything. You see, everything's gone off at a tangent. It's lost its hub, it's lost its relatedness, it's lost its harmony, it's lost its cohesion. There is a lot of it still in the universe. There's a lot of it in your human body. But you see, things are going wrong even in our human bodies, because somehow or other it's lost its harmony, it's lost its hub. [00:20:50] But God is gathering it all back, and he's starting with the thing closest to his heart, which is what we call the mystery. [00:21:01] Turn over the pages of Ephesians, chapter three and verse five. Here we have it again. [00:21:08] Paul says in verse four, when ye read, ye can perceive my understanding in the mystery of Christ, which in other generations was not made known unto the sons of men as it hath now been revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets in the spirit. Now, what is it? Here it is that the gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body and fellow partakers of the promise of Christ Jesus through the gospel. [00:21:37] You don't understand what that could have meant to a man like the apostle Paul. A Hebrew of the Hebrews and a pharisee at that. [00:21:46] With all that background. It was just absolutely. Not only was it incredible, I'm sure at the beginning he didn't even know whether he liked it, letting in all the rabble. [00:22:08] But, you see, it's part of this mystery. In other words, this thing which God has been saying silent over, only giving clues and hints to the prophets all down through the ages of time. Now he's revealed it. Suddenly it's as if we see the jigsaw, every piece in place. Here it is. [00:22:29] God's been working according to this right from the very beginning. [00:22:35] And what is it? Listen, this is what it is, that you and I should be part of God's Christ, that we should be his bride, so one with him, that we're taken out of him and made of him, formed of him, and then brought to him as bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, to become one with him forever. [00:22:58] Or put it another way, it is that we are the body of Christ. That is, you've never seen a head on its own. No head walked into this place this morning without a body. [00:23:10] You have to have a body and a head for it to be a living entity. The Lord Jesus is the head where the body. And yet it's one you understand? Here it is, to wit, that the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body and fellow partakers of the promise in the messiah, Jesus Christ. Jesus through the gospel. [00:23:37] Now, God. This was the thing God had in his heart at the very beginning when he first created man and set him there in the garden. You remember, man was alone. But God didn't tell him that he was incomplete. He thought, now, look here, I've got to educate this man, not just physically and. [00:23:57] And mentally. I've got to educate him spiritually. So he said to adam, adam, today we're going to bring all the animals from different parts of the garden, outside the garden, because we're going to have a naming session. [00:24:12] You're going to name them, all of them. So here they came, one by one, before adam. And the lord said to adam, now, adam, what do you call this? And as you know, well, he went on, that's a giraffe, lord. Yes, all right, we'll call it a giraffe. Now, adam, what's this? Oh, it's a rhino. All right, it's a rhino. And so it went on. I think you've, many of you have heard me say this before. [00:24:35] Why did the lord do that? What a silly thing it was. I used to think, when I first read the bible when I was in my teens, I used to think, what an extraordinary thing for the lord to do. Why didn't he name them? He just made them says so in the first chapter. Much easier if he said, adam. Well, you call this a giraffe, right? You call this a. [00:24:55] But you see, what he was trying to do was he was trying to bring out Adam's incompleteness. What he was trying to bring out was Adam's loneliness. Adam was lonely, but he didn't know it. He'd never seen another human being, so he didn't know that he was incomplete. And God said, I'm not going to tell him. So he brought all these animals to see if there was any one of them that Adam could sort of settle down with. [00:25:16] Yes, that was the idea, to see that if there was one Adam could get a connection with and say, I could still have. Don't just laugh. Some people make a lot of their dogs and cats. [00:25:29] The Lord was testing Adam on this point as the dog went by and he said, that's a dog. Can't live with that. [00:25:40] As I've often said, even the monkey, Adam had never seen anything here like himself. So perhaps he would have said, well, if there's nothing else I'll settle down with this. [00:25:51] But no. Then it says at the beginning and end of that passage, there was no help. Meat found for him, that is in the Hebrew. Nothing that corresponded to him, nothing that it comes from the hebrew word of looking into water, nothing that corresponded to his face, nothing that corresponded to him, nothing that was the compliment to him. So at beginning and end, the Lord said, he put him to sleep, he opened his side, he took out flesh and bone, and he fashioned the woman. And he woke up Adam and said, now what shall we call this? And immediately Adam said, oh, this is quite different. [00:26:31] Now this, I can't send this one away. [00:26:34] This is me. Yes, said the Lord, quite right, quite right. This is you. Then Adam said, then she shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. [00:26:44] Now you have to go right over the whole of the old Testament to the New Testament. And it is John, the apostle, who tells us that on the cross the Lord Jesus cried out, finished. And the veil of the temple was rent in two from top to bottom. After that a guard came and pierced his. [00:27:01] And the apostle makes somebody, he says, I the one who bore witness of this, his witness is true. Out of his side came blood and water. What on earth is he talking about? It's nothing to do with our redemption. The Lord has already called. Finished. It's done. The blood has been shed, his life has been. He's dead. Ah, that's it. He's asleep. [00:27:23] And out of his pierced and open side comes blood and water, out of which you and I have been created. It is the blood of his redemption. It is the water of his life. It is the church, the bride, that is being taken out of the side of the sleeping Jesus. [00:27:43] And at the resurrection, it is just as if God woke him up and said, now what about this? [00:27:49] Now I am speaking symbolically, of course, because the church wasnt a there really. And it was as if the Lord opened his arms and said, this is me, this isn't fallen then, this is me. This is flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone. So the apostle says in Ephesians chapter five, this mystery is great, but I speak of Christ and the church. That's the mystery. He connects the whole thing up with Genesis, chapter two. And at the end of the Bible, when you come to the last chapters 19 and 21 and 22, what do you find? You find it's all about applied what God first instituted physically in marriage. He's now got spiritually in a redeemed people from every part of the globe. [00:28:35] God has won God has won. [00:28:42] That's the mystery. [00:28:45] Well, there's a lot more we could say about it. [00:28:49] Go all the way through different scriptures, but I'm not going to do an octavianus or a baching on you. There's a tremendous amount more that we could say about this matter of the mystery because it explains so much. [00:29:06] I will only just give you one scripture to mystify you in revelation ten and verse seven in the midst of those wonderful revelations. This is what it says in the days of the voice of the 7th angel when he is about to sound, then is finished. The mystery of God. [00:29:27] I hope that we shall all see that day. Now don't be afraid. If any of you should die between now and that day, you haven't got to worry at all, not one of you, because the dead in Christ will precede us who are alive. [00:29:47] That mystery of God when it's completed. Oh, how marvelous is. Listen. According to the good tidings which he declared to his servants, the prophets, isn't that marvelous? [00:30:01] The mystery of God. Oh, dear friend, no wonder we're not stable. No wonder we're all over the place if we don't understand what God's really doing. We think this little thing, that little thing, this experience of that is, thank God for every experience we can have of Christ. Thank God for every progressive experience of his fullness and of his power. Thank God for it. Let's go on and possess more and more and more. [00:30:33] But my dear friend, we're in great danger if we don't understand what the heart of the whole thing's about. Have you ever heard of a builder who doesn't know what he's building? [00:30:44] Have you ever heard of a man in a car who doesn't know where he's going? [00:30:49] It's all very well for us to say to them, where are you going? That doesn't matter. The thing that matters is the car. I've got a spanking new car, 1969 model. [00:31:03] Oh, you say, but don't you know where you're going? No. Then someone else much more clever says, oh, it's not the car, it's whether you can drive. [00:31:17] I can drive. But someone even more clever says, aha. No, it's not the car. And it's not whether you can drive, it's whether you've got the fuel in. [00:31:27] What's the point of a car even if you, and you can drive if you haven't got fuel? But my dear friend, you can have a car. You can drive and you can have the fuel but if you don't know where you're going, what's the point? [00:31:40] You can think you're going to Glasgow and be on your way to Penzance. [00:31:45] It's all very well to say. We've got petrol in the car, we've got a good driver, we've got a marvelous new model. But you're on the way. You're going in the opposite direction. [00:31:57] That's why we have to be established according to the mystery, to see what it is that God's driving at. And especially in these last days, when in all likelihood, many of us will live to see the final phase of world history. [00:32:17] Then we shall see with these eyes and in these bodies, though there'll be chains, in the twinkling of an eye, we shall live to see the mystery of God completed. How, Martha? Some people wish that they'd lived in the Old Testament. You know, right back at the beginning. They would like to have been in when Abraham was called and been part of the family that went out for murdered the Chaldees. Others would love to have been in different stages in between. Personally, I think it would be the most thrilling thing of all to be in on the end. [00:32:50] Talk about Jubilee. [00:32:53] My word, there will be nothing like it when that day comes. [00:32:59] May God help every one of us to understand what it is he's driving at. May he give us grace and be obedient to that vision. Shall we pray? [00:33:10] And now, beloved Lord, only thou canst give that spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of thyself. [00:33:19] Only thou, Lord, canst make this mystery a manifested secret to thine own. Thou hast done that, lord. Now we pray for the enlightenment of the eyes of our hearts, that every one of us in this place this morning may know what it is. That is the. [00:33:40] What this glorious secret is, Lord, which thou hast for so long kept in silence and in secret, but which thou hast now revealed to every child of thine. [00:33:55] Help us, we pray, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.