©2003 Larry Huntsperger Peninsula Bible Fellowship

02/23/03

All Rule And Authority

Ephesians 1:21-23

2/23/03 All Rule And Authority

We return to our study of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians this morning,

a letter in which Paul seeks to introduce us

to what it means for us to be the body of Jesus Christ on this earth.

After spending several months working our way through the first 14 verses of this letter,

last week we picked up the pace considerably

and moved all the way through the second half of chapter one.

We will move into chapter two soon,

but, for this morning, we are not quite finished with something we saw at the end of chapter one

just before we stopped last week.

And let me once again remind us what’s going on here.

Maybe it would help us to mentally hang onto this first chapter

if we keep in mind that Paul takes us through 4 progressive steps in these 23 verses.

1. He begins in the first 14 verses

by projecting the most amazing panoramic picture

of what Christ accomplished in our lives personally

as a result of our faith in Him.

We moved through that section slowly in our study

because so much that we were encountering

was so much more than any of us anticipate when we come to Christ.

With many of us

all we seek

and all we expect when we cry out to our Creator

is some kind of peace with Him.

We simply want God in our lives.

We want His forgiveness

and we want His friendship.

But, as we moved through those first 14 verses,

we discovered that we received so much more.

We heard Paul describing the way in which

God didn’t just forgive us,

but He adopted us into an eternal Father/child relationship with Him,

removing all of our sins from our account forever,

recreating us in spirit in a way that enables us to stand holy and blameless before Him,

and then placing His Holy Spirit within us to seal us in Him,

and opening our hearts and minds to His will.

Simply stated,

in this first section of chapter one

Paul says to the Christian,

“My child, God has truly done remarkable and amazing things in your life personally

in response to your faith in Christ.”

2. But then, from there,

the next thing Paul does

is to drop to his knees

and pray that the Spirit of God would reveal to us the magnitude of what’s really going on.

It’s a little like that camera thing they so often do in the movies.

You know how it is -

the scene opens with the camera showing a close-up shot of a hiker in the wilderness.

He’s picking his way through some rocks and rugged terrain,

climbing upward a few steps at a time.

But nearly the entire screen is filled with this one figure.

And then, all of the sudden,

the camera begins to back off, farther and farther and farther back,

and the hiker grows more and more distant

as that close-up shot is replaced by this magnificent panoramic view

of a majestic mountain range,

in which our hiker eventually becomes just a tiny dot on the side of a missive rock wall.

There is something like that going on for us in the book of Ephesians.

Paul starts out with his camera focused on the individual believer.

That’s what we have in the first 14 verses.

What we see there is thrilling in itself,

but it is only the beginning.

But then, after showing us the close-up,

he stops and prays that God will pull the camera back for us

and reveal to us the whole picture.

He wants us to know

not just who we are,

but where we sit in the landscape of all that God is doing among the human race.

He prays that the eyes of our hearts would be enlightened,

“... so that (we) will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe.”

Let me put it this way.

It’s as if Paul is saying,

“I know you begin your Christian life

with your heart and your mind focused on what you have received as a result of Christ.

But I am writing this letter

to reveal to you what God received as a result of the work of Christ.”

We’ve been looking at this whole thing through our eyes.

Paul wants us to also see it through God’s eyes.

So, step one - Paul reveals to us a picture of the work of Christ in the individual Christian.

Step two, He then prays that God would give us eyes to see

God’s much broader purpose for that work.

3. And then, step three, he begins to pull the camera back

as he tells us that what he wants us to see

is “...in accordance with the working of the strength of His might which He brought about in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him 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 age but also in the one to come. And He put all things in subjection under His feet...”

And it is right here

that we begin to get ourselves in trouble.

It is at this point

that we run the risk

of ceasing to hear what God is saying to us

because what He’s saying seems to make no sense.

You see, we would do fine

if that passage I just read was in the future tense,

if Paul would have talked with us

about how, in the future,

God will give Christ supreme authority and power and dominion

over all things.

We would do better

if he would have said

that God “will put all things in subjection under His feet.”

But to place it in the past tense,

to state it as something that God has already accomplished

as a result of the death and resurrection of Christ

simply doesn’t seem to fit with life as we know it.

We live in a world in which it appears as though almost nothing is in subjection to Christ.

We live in a world in which blasphemy pours like a flood out of the mouths

of those who make up our world every day we live.

A few days ago

Sandee told me about a news show she’d seen

in which the Dali Lama was introduced as “the true Prince of Peace in the world today”.

That title belongs to only One - to our Lord Jesus Christ,

but ignorant news people

think nothing of ripping it from Him

and then trying to paste it onto tiny imitations of the Real Thing.

We live in a world in which people are so filled with hate

that they think nothing of tying a rope around someone whose only offense

is a difference in skin color

and then dragging them behind their truck until he’s dead.

We live in a world

in which our children need to be warned

to be on guard against sexual predators,

a world in which terrorists measure success

by the number of innocent and defenseless lives they can destroy.

And then we come to a statement like this one

in which Paul tells us that God has already placed Christ, “... far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And He put all things in subjection under His feet...”.

How in the world can he say that?

He can say that

because of the next 11 words that complete that sentence.

And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him as head over all things to the church...

Not to the world...not yet.

Only to the church.

Only to the people of God.

The time will come

when God will give Christ, as head of all things,

to the entire world.

We are given numerous glimpses of what that time will look like.

Isaiah describes it like this:

ISA 11:6 ¶ And the wolf will dwell with the lamb, And the leopard will lie down with the young goat, And the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; And a little boy will lead them.

ISA 11:7 Also the cow and the bear will graze, Their young will lie down together, And the lion will eat straw like the ox.

ISA 11:8 The nursing child will play by the hole of the cobra, And the weaned child will put his hand on the viper's den.

ISA 11:9 They will not hurt or destroy in all My holy mountain, For the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord As the waters cover the sea.

The last phrase of that passage has become for me

one of the greatest personal statements of hope and victory in Scripture...

For the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord As the waters cover the sea.

We are told that at that time

PHI 2:10-11 ... at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

And there are other passages in the book of Revelation

that give us vivid descriptions

of the absolute victory and authority that Christ will possess on this earth

when God the Father gives the King of Kings to the entire world.

In fact,

let me read just one short statement from the eleventh chapter of Revelation

because it captures that point in the history of this world in just a few words.

Describing a future event that he was permitted to see, John writes:

REV 11:15 Then the seventh angel sounded; and there were loud voices in heaven, saying, "The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ; and He will reign forever and ever."

REV 11:16 And the twenty-four elders, who sit on their thrones before God, fell on their faces and worshiped God,

REV 11:17 saying, "We give You thanks, O Lord God, the Almighty, who are and who were, because You have taken Your great power and have begun to reign.

At that point

John is describing the ultimate victory of Jesus Christ on the earth.

And that one phrase captures for us

a wealth of understanding about the world in which we live right now.

It is that phrase spoken by those voices in heaven saying, “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ!”

Two kingdoms -

two rulers,

two distinctly different groups of people under their rule.

Did you know

that one of the titles given to Satan is the title “the god of this world”.

It’s used by Paul

to explain to us why what is so obvious to the people of God

so often seems like such foolishness to those around us.

He says, In 2 Corinthians 4:3-4

And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

I mention all of this

because it is the only way we can correctly understand

what Paul is saying to us about Christ in these verses in Ephesians.

Right now on this earth

there are two separate and utterly different kingdoms in existence.

There is the kingdom of the god of this world,

operated by his rules,

under his leadership.

And then there is the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And, in the first chapter of Colossians,

when Paul describes some of the changes that take place

when we turn to Christ he says,

COL 1:13 For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son,

COL 1:14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

Don’t you love the words Paul chose to describe that transition?

For He rescued us from the domain of darkness...

It brings to mind the image of a highly planned covert military operation.

And from a divine point of view

that’s exactly what your entrance into the family of God was.

You were His creation, His highly valued one,

held captive behind enemy lines.

He carefully prepared

exactly the right strategy

with the right people,

and the right tools,

and all the necessary weapons in place

to bring about your deliverance.

And, when all was planned,

and the time was exactly right,

He rescued you from the domain of darkness and transferred you to the kingdom of His beloved Son...

And, did you notice -

you didn’t brake jail,

He rescued you,

He transferred you,

it was all His operation for you from the very beginning.

It had to be that way,

because, from the very beginning,

He wanted you to hear the most important truth you’ll ever hear from Him,

the message He will continue communicating to you for the rest of your life,

the message that He loves you,

He cares about you more than you could ever imagine.

There was nothing in any way accidental

about your entrance into His family.

It wasn’t just luck,

or heritage,

or fortunate timing.

It was a carefully planned and executed rescue mission by God Himself,

breaking you free from the kingdom of darkness,

and delivering you safely,

eternally into His Kingdom on this earth.

Now, I’ve spent so much time on this today

because, without this clear understanding

of the existence of two distinct, hostile kingdoms

currently co-existing on this earth,

there is no way we can correctly understand

what Paul is talking about

when He boldly proclaims that God has now, already placed Christ “far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And He put all things in subjection under His feet...”

You see, that statement is absolutely true,

but it is only an experiential reality for those within His kingdom.

And that is exactly what Paul is saying to us

when he concludes that description of Christ

by saying that he “gave Him as head over all things to the church”.

And having said that,

let me answer a few of the questions that come to mind to me when I hear this.

First, if Christ truly does have all authority over all of creation,

why doesn’t He exercise it?

Why does He limit it to those within His Kingdom?

Why doesn’t He fix everything that is broken now?

Why doesn’t He bring an end to all the evil and the suffering in our world.

He doesn’t because in order to do so

He would also have to bring an end to the free will of man

that is the cause, the source of all of that evil and suffering.

And to do that

He would also bring an end

to the possibility of anyone else being able to accept his offer of rescue.

Peter put it better than I do.

He said simply,

2PE 3:9 The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.

The human race cannot have the free will to turn to Christ

without also having the free will to reject Him

and bring with that rejection all the pain and suffering that results from it.

Second, just exactly what does it mean for us

to live under the kingship of the One who has authority over all things?

Does it mean that He automatically fixes everything that is broken in our lives?

Obviously not.

Our free will does not stop at the point of our entrance into His family either.

But what it does mean

is that whatever we choose to place into His hands

He will take and reshape for good in our lives.

And it does mean

that He will not allow anything to touch our lives

that will have the ability to separate us from His love.

ROM 8:31 ¶ What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us?

ROM 8:35 Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

ROM 8:36 Just as it is written, "For Your sake we are being put to death all day long; We were considered as sheep to be slaughtered."

ROM 8:37 But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.

ROM 8:38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,

ROM 8:39 nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

And it also means that

because of His presence within us,

and His commitment to live His life through us,

we have now been made adequate for the life He has called us to live.

And it’s right here, of course,

that we once again find ourselves fighting

that ongoing battle between what’s true

and what we believe to be true.

Even though it’s taken me most of 30 minutes to say it,

the message being communicated to us here by Paul is in no way complicated.

He is telling us that God has given Jesus Christ absolute authority over the entire created world,

and that He has then given Jesus Christ to us as.

He now holds us in His hands,

and places His Spirit within us,

and then gifts us and equips us for the life He has called us to live with Him.

Those are all facts of our existence in Christ.

If we understood them,

if we accepted them as the truth they are,

we would live out our lives on a daily basis

immersed in peace with God,

with our lives firmly established

in the kind of confident assurance and victory

that would naturally result from knowing that the One who possesses absolute authority over all things is the One who holds our lives in His hands.

The problem, of course,

is that, rather than living our lives immersed in that truth,

we gain only tiny glimpses of it here and there,

and most of the voices we listen to

are the voices of the enemy telling us lies.

“You’re in this on your own.”

“If God notices you at all, it is only to see what a mess you’re making of your life.”

“There is no way He’s going to meet your needs,

He doesn’t even understand them.”

“How could a God who loves you

allow you to go through this pain?”

“Look at your track record! You’re a failure!

You’ve failed in the past,

you’ll fail again in the future

because that’s what you do best.”

And on and on.

All lies,

but lies that we find it far easier to believe than the truth,

and the truth is, God has established Jesus Christ “far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And He 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 who fills all in all.

We’re not quite done with this,

and I didn’t even finish up my “brief” survey of chapter one,

but we’ll come back to it again next time.