I told you we've hosted three fire conferences. We've also had Dr. Nettles to preach three times in our church, and we're so glad of that. He's a little easier to get these days now that he's retired, and he can travel around and take his wife Margaret with him on occasion, which he has done so here. And so it is a real delight and pleasure to have him come and preach to us. Let us give ear to the Word of God. We were greatly, greatly blessed here yesterday and trust we will be so as he opens God's Word and preaches to us. Come, Dr. Nettles. Thank you very much, Dean, for inviting me to come and be a part of this conference, for letting me preach in your church and have fellowship with your people yesterday. It was a great privilege and an honor. When preachers preach to preachers about preaching, it's kind of like carrying coals to Newcastle, isn't it? And yet I think there are probably no people that love to think through the ideals of preaching and the theory of preaching and the biblical theology of preaching more than preachers. Everyone who has stood behind the pulpit recognizes that every sermon is a failure. Never what it could be. We haven't expounded the scripture as carefully as we should. We haven't made the application just like we should. We haven't had the right heart involved like we should. And yet, we also have confidence like the text that we have read. We know that the power is not from us, but God does what he will with his word and with the calling that he has given. We realize that we have not taken this calling upon ourselves. We have not simply decided that preaching would be a good way for us to communicate these truths that are written down for us, but it's something that God himself has established. In fact, in the Ascension, we're told that when Christ ascended, he gave gifts to the church. He gave some to be apostles, and some to be prophets, and some to be evangelists, and then some to be pastor teachers. And this was to last until the time that Christ comes again, till we all reach a unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God. And so we have a great task before us. Every time we stand up, we know that there's something at stake. We know that there's going to be some growth. There's going to be some part of the heart of someone that has changed. Our own minds are going to be challenged. And we're going to resolve to be clearer and to be more passionate. to have a deeper sense of the power of the Word next time. And I think God does that, doesn't He? We've sensed how God will take us above ourselves, how He will take us out of our normal timidity or out of perhaps our normal arrogance and humble us before the Word on the one hand and make us courageous in its proclamation on the other. And so those who preach are the ones who should perhaps benefit most from preaching about preaching. And I pray that it will be that way during this period that we have together. I pray that all of us will be challenged with the infinitely wonderful task before us and that we will have a deep sense of gratitude and blessedness in how God has called us to this, to proclaim the wonderful words about our Lord Jesus Christ. and that he will cause us to improve. Paul told Timothy, let everyone see your progress. He wanted Timothy to work so hard at preaching that the people who heard him would know he was getting better. And I hope that even as old as Dean is, that he can still get better. It's a great prospect, isn't it? Yeah, but it's also a great, it's just wonderful to think that the Lord can do that, make us better. Well, my theme is doctrinal preaching. And I'm going to preach tomorrow out of the text that we read for the New Testament reading tonight. And I'm going to preach tonight out of the text that we're going to have for the New Testament reading tomorrow. So I want to double down on these two texts as being very important for our understanding of doctrinal preaching. So the text that I want us to look at is Ephesians chapter 3, verses 1 through 13. I want to read that. But point one of the message is going to be just a brief statement, sort of a resume about what it seems to me from scripture doctrinal preaching is. What is its importance and what is it? And then point two will be an exposition of this text, which I think lays the challenge for doctrinal preaching before us in a very powerful and almost formidable way. Ephesians chapter 3, For this reason I, Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles, assuming that you have heard of the stewardship of God's grace that was given to me for you, how the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I have written briefly. When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ. 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. This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. Of this gospel, I was made a minister according to the gift of God's grace, which was given to me by the working of His power. 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 and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things 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 was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus, our Lord, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him. So I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory. So since I've chosen this topic of doctrinal preaching, I think it would be perhaps clarifying for me to just give you a few points as to where I'm coming from, what I think doctrinal preaching is, and why I think that doctrinal preaching is that kind of preaching that is set forth with clarity in the Word of God itself. The first point that I would emphasize is that doctrinal preaching assumes that an objective revelation initiates Christian experience and is the personal arbiter of personal and corporate experience. We didn't make up the church. We didn't make up Christianity. We do not induce an experience of saving faith for ourselves, nor do we somehow deduce from our own observations and our own rationality the gospel message that we are to preach. We have an objective revelation. It is not simply the sum total of human experiences that have been put down in writing that can be changed and altered through the decades and through the generations, but it is an objective revelation that transcends all cultures, it transcends all ages. It transcends time. It is truth that was born in the heart of God in eternity past. It is truth that is set forth about reality until eternity future. It is objective revelation. It is propositional revelation, if you please. And doctrinal preaching assumes that we have that objective divine revelation that can be investigated, that can be synthesized, that can be set forth as truth that defines our experience here that defines what humanity is, that defines what the world is, and that prepares us for eternity. A second point I would make is that doctrinal preaching always has the whole Bible for its text. As the text we just looked at said that these things that were revealed to Paul had not been revealed to the sons of men and other generations, we assume that a complete revelation has now been given and that our task always is to assume the completeness of this revelation. So we don't have to act like we're in the dark if we're talking about Isaiah 53 and ask the question that the Ethiopian eunuch did, who is this man talking about? If we read Isaiah 53, we know who it's talking about and we can preach Christ from that text. If we're reading Psalm 2 and talking about this king being set on the holy hill and that his anger flares up in a moment, but those who take refuge in him will find safety. We don't have to wonder, who is this king that's going to bring into judgment the world? Who is this king whose wrath flares up and yet who gives safety to those who take refuge in him? We know. We know who it is. We can preach Christ from that text. When we go to Genesis 3.15, we don't have to have the same sort of wonder about what kind of promise is this that the seed of the woman will bruise the head of the serpent. We know who that is. The revelation is complete. And so as we do our exposition, we can assume the truthfulness of the whole Bible. It has the whole Bible for its text. And we use that completed and that mature revelation as a way to interpret these things. We do not have to isolate ourselves to something like and say, well, this is Luke and theology. And if I break out of the parameters of Luke and theology, then I am not being faithful to the text. No, we assume that Luke has a particular context. We don't try to violate Luke's particular contributions that he makes, but we always recognize that Luke is consistent with all the other revelation that we have, and so we can bring other passages to bear upon the parables that Luke tells, and the way he tells them, and the order in which he tells them, and all of these things. Without destroying the uniqueness of Luke, we can nevertheless give witness to the fullness of divine revelation. So the doctrinal preaching always has the whole Bible for its text. Third, doctrinal preaching recognizes the specific meaning of individual texts. We do our work. We do not simply make every passage of scripture, and we do not make every sermon that we preach a mishmash of just pressing things together so that we come out with exactly the same sermon every time. We recognize the richness of the text. We recognize the great variety that it has. We recognize the distinctive ways that it speaks to certain situations, and we recognize its context. And we are honest with that, but we are always looking at how does a text derive its meaning from the whole. How can we show that this text is perhaps even richer than we thought? And so we will look at a text, we will be honest about the text, but we will always realize that every text is set within a rich context from which we can understand the precise meaning of that text. Even better. So doctrinal preaching recognizes the specific meaning and aids in our understanding the specific meaning of individual texts. Fourth, doctrinal preaching takes seriously the historic Christian witness to distinctive Christian truth expressed in the confessions. We recognize that Christ has given gifts to his church. There are some gifts that are very outstanding that have been given in different ages, and these gifts will never be again given to the church, and we benefit From them, we recognize their historical situation, we recognize errors they might have made, but we also benefit from the astuteness that they had and from the understanding they had and for the concentrated energy they gave to discussing certain doctrines. We can all benefit from understanding how Arius dealt with Athanasius. We can benefit from understanding why He used certain language and how the preciousness of the understanding of the deity of Christ, the being of the same essence with the Father was a truth that was protected and gained and it had a deep background of biblical exposition and exegesis in it and word studies and even something as detailed as why are all the begats in scripture? What does this begat mean and begat here and begat there? And he does this study because Arius believed that begat meant create. And especially if one being who begats another is before that being, this means that the son comes after the father and so the father gave rise to the son in a created way. And Athanasius says in the Creed of Nicaea, when it comes to the term begotten, he simply added the words not made. Begotten, not made. And the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son becomes an important doctrine as we understand the dynamics of the Trinity. And so the attention that people have given to this thing can help us in exegesis. There's been only one Athanasius that's been given us. There's been only one Augustine. And though we can read certain passages in Augustine and realize that he was beginning to become captive to some aspects that made him drive towards sacramentalism in some ways, he also was being given great opportunity and took it very seriously to do expositions of Scripture that refuted the false teachings of Pelagius. So Augustine becomes the great doctor of grace and we can understand the whole principle of how grace operates in salvation because of Augustine's tremendous attention to that and then how the reformers picked up on that in Augustine and gave it perhaps even a more coherent framework through the doctrine of justification by faith. And so benefiting from that gift of the past. We can read the sermons of Charles Spurgeon. understand how to make application of texts and how to move from texts into these brilliant theological ideas that are always set within an evangelistic context. There's only been one Spurgeon. There never will be another Spurgeon. And so we should take advantage of that kind of person in helping us learn how to handle a text as we preach. So doctrinal preaching takes seriously the historic Christian witness to distinctive Christian truth expressed in the confessions and the catechisms and in the sermons of the Christian faith. Doctrinal preaching is always Christological. Spurgeon said famously that he takes a text and he makes a beeline to the cross. Some people have said, well, that means he wasn't an expository preacher. This means that he just only had one sermon that he really didn't pay attention to the context, but that simply is not true. If you've read a lot of Spurgeon, you know that he does a lot of topics and he does love Christ and he wants to point out Christ, but he doesn't abuse the Bible and he doesn't abuse his text to do this. It may be that he's just richer in his understanding of it than we are. because Spurgeon understood what the Bible says in context. In his service, he always had as an expository reading of Scripture of 25 verses or so, and then his sermons usually will be one verse or one idea out of that larger expository reading. And he's convinced that the reason that we have the Bible is that it might show to us God's plan of redemption. that from the very beginning we have creation and the test of man and fall and then we've been moving toward redemption and then the Redeemer is going to come and establish His kingdom and take to Himself His church and every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is the Lord. So why should not all the Bible be about Christ and His cross? And if we can somehow ignore Christ in the text of Scripture, I think that we should convince ourselves either we don't have a large enough text of Scripture to understand it or we simply are isolating it simply to some sort of moralism and do not understand the full purpose of the revelation that we have in the Bible. So doctrinal preaching is always Christological. And the sixth point is doctrinal preaching always puts the temporal in subjection. to the eternal. Now this does not mean that it never speaks about the temporal. It speaks about the temporal very much and it has great demands and exhortations and admonitions it makes of us is how we are to live in this world, what kind of regard we are to have for others, how we are to conduct ourselves. All of the epistles have a section in which they will instruct people how they should live, how they should live as husbands and wives, how they should live as children, how they should live as slaves and masters, how they should use their hands for work, how they should interact with each other. There's much about the temporal, but it is always something that we see is in subjection to the eternal. It is always defined by the reality that we have redemption, that we have become children of God through the redemption that is in Christ. And Jesus said, do not labor for the bread that perishes, but for the bread that endures to eternal life. Jesus said, you have not chosen me, but I have chosen you and ordained that you should go and bear fruit. Herein is love, not that we love God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. And so there's always the movement from the eternal to the temporal, and the eternal for the Christian, and especially for the Christian minister in preaching, defines what the temporal should be like. And we've had attempts through the history of the church to subject the eternal to the temporal. The social gospel was an attempt to do that, to define everything in terms of what kind of Christian action were you involved in. So it minimized the importance of the doctrine of original sin. It minimized and even threw away substitutionary atonement. The whole idea of personal salvation through repentance of sin and imputed righteousness and all of this was minimized because true Christian labor is to work for the social betterment of those places in society that are repressed. We also had the liberal Harry Emerson Fosdick who was one of the first felt needs preachers. He became America's counselor through his radio broadcasts and he is constantly turning a text into some sort of reason for a psychological engagement with the people. He always sees the psychology of how you can think better about yourself, how you can think better about your neighbor, how you can communicate better. how you can find hope in sort of these bad situations. He was almost like Joel Osteen. He was always finding the way in which you could take a text and make it a sort of a psychological kick in the pants in order to be a better person and find more happiness in your situation. We've had pragmatism. It seems that we look at something when what it seems to be working for everyone, this is what we do. Doctrine can be kind of dull, especially if we become dull ourselves, we think. And then people do not seem to be responding to that, but they sure are responding to this person down the road who's having puppets and who is having clowns. I think I was talking with someone last night who said he used to be involved in the puppet and clown ministry and all until he began to realize the true importance of doctrine. And there are other things we do that pragmatically work or Southern Baptist recently had this day in which we're going to do immediate baptisms. And like there were thousands of baptisms on one day, and so we said, this is the day, and there are three or four set up to be baptized, and then we say, if anyone else would like to be baptized, come forward. And so we had this great harvest of people in baptism. I wonder. It's really a very unusually pragmatic, non-theological, dangerous thing to do. Or popularity. Everyone really likes this person. Everyone really likes the way he preaches. Everyone really likes her expositions or her preaching. Why? Why can't she be a preacher if she does so well and people like her so much? And they have such a large following, by the way. And so this is something that we should engage in. So we look at popularity. But this is always subjecting the eternal to the temporal. It is looking at the temporal and letting it guide us when Scripture is very insistent that it is truth that governs. It is the truth that sets us free. It is the truth that must be proclaimed. And even in the text that we read tonight, that we set forth the truth plainly before every man's conscience. That we know that if they do not believe it, it's not because we hadn't quite used the right technique, But it's because still the God of this world has blinded their minds. So this gives us confidence in the power of that time when God who said, let light shine out of darkness has shown in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. So this is the idea that I'm dealing with when I'm talking about doctrinal preaching. It assumes an objective divine revelation. It has the whole Bible for its text. It recognizes the specific meaning and focuses on individual texts but allows the richness of the entire revelation to inform the specific meaning. It takes seriously the historic Christian witness and the gifts that God has given to the church to the ages in confessions and in preaching and catechisms and so forth. It is always Christological. And then finally, it puts the temporal in subjection to the eternal. I think that is what the Apostle Paul is talking about here in this particular text. In Ephesians 3, he is writing to these Ephesians and he begins this text for this reason. Now when he says, for this reason, he doesn't get back to that until he gets over to verse 14. He says, for this reason again, I bow my knees before the Father. He's telling them why he prays as he prays for them. And the reason that he's introduced is that the purpose of the gospel is to create what he calls one new man. It is to create a reconciled body that Christ will bring to himself that will be a particularly beautiful manifestation of the operations of the triune God, Father, Son, and Spirit in bringing this group of sinners into one body. The whole structure joined together grows into a holy temple in the Lord. And so he has this great vision by revelation and he says, for this reason I, Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles. And then he breaks himself off and begins to explain something about the wonder of this idea that Paul himself had been set apart for the Gentiles and that he was a prisoner on that account. Now, one thing, one application we can see here is that Paul had great joy, great marvelous expressions of freedom of spirit in a tremendously difficult situation. We should be informed by that because we ourselves will be in difficult situations. Perhaps none of us has yet been imprisoned for the gospel, but Paul was. But he recognized that even this imprisonment was something that was a testimony to the otherworldliness, the offensiveness and the truthfulness of the message and of the particular missionary task that he had. He was in prison. because the Jews had misunderstood why he was walking around with a Greek in Jerusalem. And they accused him of profaning the temple by taking this Greek in there, which he did not do. And then when he finally got to speak to them, they listened to him until the point that he said God told him that he would send him away from Jerusalem and he would go to the Gentiles. And then another uproar came. And then when Ananias, the high priest, and others came before to tell why they had imprisoned him, he said that he profaned our holy place. So the whole issue was that Paul was preaching to and giving the Christ, giving a message that related to messianic prophecies out of the Old Testament and applying them to Gentiles and were saying that they could be a part of the people of God. So when he says here, a prisoner for Jesus Christ, for Christ Jesus, on behalf of you Gentiles, he's referring particularly to that historical situation in which he, the epitome of Jewish exclusivity, in the matchless wonder and benevolence of God, had been called as the preacher for the Gentiles. And so then he says, assuming. I'm a prisoner on behalf of you Gentiles. And he says, maybe you don't know the whole story. Maybe you don't know how this has come about. He says, assuming you have heard. Of the stewardship of God's grace that was given to me for you. This was a stewardship that he had. God had given him this. He did not simply say, well, I'm going to go to the Gentiles. God set him aside for this from the very beginning. Then the other apostles agreed to this when he finally went to Jerusalem and talked to them and they gave him the right hand of fellowship and said that Peter would go to the circumcised, Peter, James, and John would go to the circumcised, and Paul would go to the uncircumcised. So God had commissioned him to this. The other apostles had recognized that this was of God. And then as he's writing to the Corinthians, perhaps that most exaggerated of all Gentile situations, He says, this is how one should regard us as servants of Christ and as stewards of the mysteries of God. This was the stewardship that he had to go to the Gentiles. And so he reminds the Corinthians that he was a steward of the mysteries of God for their sake. And then in verse 7, he says, for who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it? Now, on the one hand, I know that quite often we preach this text as if we're talking about the effectual operations of the Holy Spirit in giving them faith and giving them salvation. And I accept that as a reality, that is a theological truth and that's a part of what Paul is talking about here. But I think what he has in mind more specifically is the fact that he has called his stewardship as to the Gentiles, and that they have what they have because of His going to them and preaching. It was something God had given Him. God worked upon them in a special calling, as He refers to later, so that is not absent from the text. But the thing that He has in mind is you receive the gospel by someone being sent to you and being preached to you. What do you have that you did not receive? You received the gospel because someone came to you. If you received it, why do you boast if you did not receive it? to take away the importance of Paul's apostleship here, because false apostles have come among them, and he's reminding them, how is it that you first heard this? What do you have in your knowledge of Christ that you did not receive? In verse 14 and 15, he says, I do not write these things to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children, for though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers, because I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel. So he knew that this was a stewardship God had given him. The Gentiles heard the gospel because God sent Paul to them. They received this, not through any ingenuity of their own, not through any other apostle, not through these false apostles, certainly. Perhaps there were good teachers within the church that he deals with later in the epistles, and they are tutors in Christ, but you heard the gospel from me. I was a steward of this. And so here in Ephesians, he says, assuming you have heard of the stewardship of God's grace that was given to me for you. And in the same way, if we have received a call to preach, we must realize that we do have a stewardship of God's grace. It's not something we have made up. It's not something we have chosen for ourselves. Neither our position, nor the gifts we've given, nor the content of the message we have is from us. We have received it and those who receive it from us will receive it as if we have a stewardship. It is required of a steward that a man be found faithful. And that is to deliver that which is granted him by the one who has appointed him to this service. Now this stewardship, he tells the kind of stewardship he has. This is a stewardship of special revelation. In verse 3 he says, he talks about how the mystery was made known to me by revelation. He's going to explore the mystery later, but the point right here is that it comes to him by revelation. And notice that the revelation He says, is also committed to writing. And I think maybe 10 years ago when I preached in your congregation, Dean, one of the messages I preached was entitled, did the apostles know they were writing the Bible? And I believe I used this text. And of course, a lot of people say, well, the apostles didn't know they were writing the Bible. The church has selected that later on. Well, the apostles knew they were writing the Bible. The apostles knew that they had divine revelation. The apostles knew that what they were saying was going to be true and would be powerful within the church in perpetuity until Christ came again. Paul knew that. John knew that. Peter knew that. All of them knew that. And so when he's saying this here, and you trace out the times, when he says, make sure this letter is read to you and you make sure you read the letter that comes from this other place. John says several times, I have written these things to you, in order that. I have written these things to you, young men. I've written these things to you, little children. I've written these things to you, mature men. So the writing is important. And he says here, as I have written briefly, when you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ. The written message carries the power of that which was spoken immediately under the impulse of the Spirit as the apostles were preaching, giving this special revelation and now as they write it, it is not diminished in its fervor, it is not diminished in its revelatory value, it is not diminished at all in its inspiration. But it is set forth for us in perpetuity to be used in the church until Christ comes again. And so this is a written revelation that we have. Now, notice that he also says, when you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, 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." Now we have here two of the offices that he will mention later in Ephesians 4. He gave some to be apostles and some to be prophets. This is what he's talking about in chapter 2 verse 20, when he says that the church, the household of God is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets. He's not talking there about the Old Testament prophets, although that is certainly true. Peter talks about that. Jesus talks about that. All the Gospels talk about it. Paul talks about it in Romans. It's certainly true that the Old Testament prophets and all the writings of the Old Testament are fundamental and foundational to the revelation of God in Christ. But particularly here, he's talking about the office of prophet that was given by Christ when He ascended, the office of prophet that would be a local church manifestation of the gift of the Spirit that would receive divine revelation. The Apostles could not be everywhere. The Apostles could not be in all the churches. So how were the churches going to have New Covenant preaching when the Apostles were not there? They were going to have New Covenant preaching through selected persons, selected by the Spirit in the congregations who would receive special revelation and would set forth this special revelation. Paul regulates this in the book of 1 Corinthians in chapter 14 saying that If a prophet receives a revelation and is under the impulse, then the one who is speaking should sit down and the other prophets speak. Three of these can do this at every service. And he says, it's not something that just overwhelms you so you're unable to control your speaking because the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets. So there's a regulated way, there's an orderly way in which it's done, but the prophets were receiving qualitatively the same kind of revelation that the apostles did. Now, I don't want to say anything that's offensive to anyone, but I simply must speak my heart in this and something that I think is true in Scripture and is for the good of the church, the whole movement in which we say that we still have prophets today is simply wrong because it does not have this particular qualification that is set forth in Scripture. Prophecy in Scripture is a revelatory movement that is not to be doubted. And the prophets in the New Testament, the New Testament church, the prophets, they were subject to the instruction of the apostles. As Paul said at the end of 1 Corinthians 14, he says, if anyone does not listen to me in this letter, then you are not to listen to him. And he's talking specifically about the instructions he's given about prophecy. And so the prophetic ministry was parallel to the apostolic ministry as a revelatory ministry until the completion of what we would call the canonical expression of divine revelation. And then that which was to be said about Christ and about His work and about His coming again and about all the things that have to do with the church, that was complete apostolic instruction is complete, the promise of Christ of giving the Spirit to the Apostles to bring everything to their remembrance, that was complete, that promise had been done and what we have now is the text of this revelation. And so it was the Old Testament, it was the Apostles and the New Testament prophets that were receiving this revelation and Paul puts these on the same level. They had this insight into the mystery of Christ that had not been made known to people in other generations in the same way that Paul did. So this is a revelatory ministry and God is taking care of his New Testament church during the time of the New Testament so that they will have this increasing revelation until it comes to maturity during that time. Now he says it was not made known in other generations. This means it was gradually and progressively given. We know that this is the same thing that Peter says in 2 Peter when he talks about the way in which he preached the Gospel. And he looked at his having been on the mountain with Jesus Christ, and he says there in verse 19, listen carefully to this, Jerry, I think you and I might have even had a conversation about this particular text in your living room one time. But we have something more sure the prophetic word to which you will do well to pay attention is to a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. Now, there are interpreters who are interpreters that have great insight, and they make a wonderful point out of this, that the prophetic word is more secure than our experience. And so Peter was not exalting his experience above the word, they would say. But what I think that Peter is actually getting at here is that Peter, as an apostle and one that was with Christ on the mountain, was involved in the situation in which the prophetic word that had already been given was now made more clear. It is made more sure. We know who this person is. The voice came from heaven. This is my beloved Son. And so Peter says, now we have that prophetic word made more sure, the prophetic word that preceded us. We now have revelation that explains it to us. And it is this prophetic word to which you do, this additional prophetic word, the more sure prophetic word that you do well to pay attention to. How long? as to a lamp shining in a dark place, that is this world, until the day dawns, the day dawning, of course, is the coming of Christ. The morning star rises in your hearts, that is Christ Himself rising in our hearts. When we see Him, we will be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. This is a complete conformity of our life to Christ. And so we pay attention to this completed prophetic word until Christ Himself comes again. And then, notice how He claims inspiration for the entire body of the prophetic word, including that which he himself utters in the preaching of the gospel. Knowing this, first of all, that no prophecy of scripture comes from someone's own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. Now, he says this in confirmation of what is already talked about in 1 Peter. Notice just verses 10 through 12. There, 1 Peter 1. Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preach the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look." And so when Paul says here, this was not made known to the sons of men and other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit, he's saying that that which the prophets have revealed to them that was as yet not fulfilled, which seemed unclear even to them, but nevertheless they knew that it was true. Now all of that mystery has been cleared up, Christ has come, the prophecies have been fulfilled, and we have a full revelation of all that God wants us to know about this. It has now been revealed to us holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. So what has been made known? What is it that has been made known? Well, just to summarize it, he says, this mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. I know some of you are thinking, right, man, I wish I could take that text right now and just preach it. Wow, isn't that loaded? Doesn't that just challenge your mind to take every one of those phrases and just want to say something about all of them to see how they tie together, to see the synthesis of these things? The Gentiles are fellow heirs. The Gentiles are members of the same body. They are partakers of the promise. What does the promise mean? Well, how many times do we have the word promise? The promise of the Holy Spirit, the promise of Christ, all the promises of the Old Testament, the promise of redemption through a Messiah that would be coming. For takers of the promise, and the promises of where? In Christ Jesus. This is why we say it must be Christological. All of these things are yea in Christ Jesus. All the promises are yea and amen in Christ Jesus. The promise in Christ Jesus through the Gospel. That is, when we understand Christ Jesus through a theological exposition of the Gospel. What is the Gospel? We understand the person of Christ and the work of Christ in the context of the gospel work that he came to do. And so what we learned here is because the Gentiles are brought in as fellow heirs, this shows the importance of our discussing the person and work of Christ as God and man, the covenantal status of Christ as the second Adam, and the promise that comes to us as stated in Abraham through faith and not through the ceremony law of circumcision. And so, this makes that the reality when Christ comes, it is not just as a Jewish Messiah, though He was a Jew and though He was the Messiah fulfilling the prophecies set forth in the Old Covenant, but the mystery is that this always related to the entire human race that was in Adam. And there were people from every tongue and every tribe and every nation. And so the incarnation means that Jesus is not just a Jewish man, but He is a man. He is a human. He is not just fulfilling the Jewish Scriptures, He is fulfilling the truth that the Scripture has to say about every person being a sinner. Every mouth is stopped and every tongue. Every tongue is stopped. The whole world is held guilty before God. And there is no difference. For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. And the entire argument for the universality of what Christ has done is built upon this particular idea, the promise. This is the mystery. The Gentiles are fellow heirs. And so if we understand that, if we develop a theology of it, when we come to something like the passage in 1 Timothy 2, verses 3 through 7, where Paul writes, this is good and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and there is one mediator between God and men, the man, Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time. For this I was appointed a preacher and an apostle, I'm telling the truth, I'm not lying, a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and in truth." He's saying this is the mystery. He didn't die just for the Jews, he died for Gentiles. This is what it means. He gave himself a ransom for all, people all over the world. are going to be brought in by this one who was the Messiah predicted in the Jewish scriptures. Okay, I don't want to abuse the time here. Now, the second part. The first part is we have a revelation. This revelation sets forth the gospel for us through Christ, and it's a revelation that says the Gentiles have been included. How is it communicated? Verse 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. Now later in Ephesians 4, he talks about Christ's ascension, as we mentioned, where he gives some to be apostles and some prophets. Paul is talking here about giftedness in two ways. Paul is talking about that he himself is a gift, he's an apostle. I was made a minister according to the gift of God's grace. When Christ descended, He gave gifts to men, He gave apostles. Paul himself is a gift. But also, Paul could not be a gift unless there had also been a giftedness that was given him to perform his function. If God gives gifts to the church and He gives ministers, He's going to give gifts to ministers also by which they will be able to function in their role. They will be able to read and understand scripture. They will be able to speak so that people can understand. They will have hearts that are yearning to be like Christ and yearn to see other people come to Christ. And there will be a gift in which they love to speak to those and seek to draw them to believe the Scripture and to love Christ and to love the Gospel. There will be gifts given to them. There will be a yearning that they have for this kind of communication. So, Paul is saying, I am a gift. by the grace of the Gospel, and He has given me this gift that I might speak to the Gentiles. It's by the working of His power in me. To me, the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, notice he calls it a grace, to preach to the Gentiles. The unsearchable riches of Christ. Now here's where the real impetus for doctrinal preaching comes in. We are to preach to the Gentiles. We're to preach to all people. The unsearchable riches of Christ. Now how much theology can you get out of the unsearchable riches of Christ? What are you going to do in your ministry to explain what this means? The unsearchable riches of Christ, His preexistence, His incarnation, the mystery of His person as God and man in one person, the mystery of His death as a substitutionary atonement, dying the just for the unjust, the mystery of His conquering death and pleasing the Father and being raised from the dead and ascending into heaven and being seated at the right hand of the Father and being given a name that is above every name. How are you going to give an exposition of the unsearchable riches of Christ without continually pressing in the doctrine of who Christ is. And to bring to light, this has to do with his own revelatory ministry that it is for him that he has this to bring to light, but when he brings it to light in his preaching and writing, this becomes our authority. If we're going to bring it to light, we have to bring it to light in the very way that Paul and the apostles did. To bring to light for everyone What is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things? And then later he says this was according, verse 11, this was according to the eternal purpose that is realized in Christ Jesus our Lord. This is again why I say that all doctrinal preaching is Christological. It's Christ-centered. It's all realized in Christ Jesus our Lord. And what we are to do, we cannot be afraid of saying that we can know some things about the eternal purpose of God. We have revealed to us many things about the eternal purpose of God. That's our task. If you're going to preach what Paul said we should preach, Then you're going to preach the mystery that was hidden for ages in God who created all things. Why did God create the world? He created the world to reveal these things that are hidden in God. The world was created for a specific purpose. We know why the world was created. Not only do we know that it was created, which we need to defend also, but we know why it was created. So this mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things, so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might be made known, but this was according to the eternal purpose that He realized in Christ Jesus. So we preach these eternal things, we preach. the counsels of God that are revealed in Scripture. We preach that there is an elect people that He's going to save. We preach that He works all things after the counsel of His own will. The counsel of His own will. We preach those things. That is a part of the doctrine that Paul preached and that he commissions us to preach. Now also, This is done so that through the church, the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in heavenly places. Now, this manifold wisdom of God can never be exhausted. It will take the form of biblical exposition. It will take the form of particular doctrinal preaching. It will be a continuing synthesis of the whole Bible as we talk about this manifold wisdom including every point of doctrine contained in all of revealed truth. We will talk about God and His character and His attributes. We'll talk about God and His purposes. We will talk about the sin of man that made necessary redemption and it made necessary redemption only in one like Christ. He alone can save. But we see again that he says he's realized it in Christ Jesus, our Lord, the manifold wisdom of God. And then if you take it on down, all of this is realized in Christ Jesus, our Lord. So we make the manifold wisdom of God known as we preach. We make it known to those to whom we preach. But we also are making it known to rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. Now, this is really an astounding thing. How do we do that? I think it is in two ways. One way is through the existence of the church. that God has a people that will be composed of those from all over the world will be an amazing thing to the rulers and authorities. Now these rulers and authorities, they could be either fallen rulers and authorities or elect angels who are doing the will of God and ministering to the people of God. I think all of them are learning more. Those who are opposing the ways of God are learning bit by bit through the existence of the church and God's calling out people to be in the church is saving people in every generation. and they're becoming one, becoming loving and they have squabbles but then they reform and they get back together or even the squabbles themselves create divisions that create greater witness in some ways. God works all of these things and so every effort to thwart the plans of God on the part of the fallen angels are things that eventually fail. They are learning more and more about the manifold wisdom of God. And the elect angels who are sent to serve those who will inherit salvation also are learning. They're seeing the great wisdom of God as He molds together these fallen human beings. The angels have no experience of redemption. They fell and they are kept in gloomy dungeons. Their doom is sealed. The elect angels are tested and approved and they will never fall. They are not a race. How in the world God can save a fallen race of such perversity as we are is a mystery to them now, but that He does it and does it in every generation and brings them to heaven to praise Him is something that causes these beings to learn It is being made known to them throughout the generations and it is through the manifold wisdom of God and the existence of the church that this happens, but it is also not through just the existence of the church, through the message that is preached in the churches. And I think this is the emphasis that Paul is having here because he's talking about his preaching, he says, so that through the church, the manifold wisdom of God may now be made known to rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. And so, when you preach, brothers, your emphasis has to be on the manifold wisdom of God. that is manifest through Jesus Christ as He is seen in the Gospel. And as you do this, you are informing those who hear you. God is using that message to draw His elect to Himself. He is using that message to conform them to Christ, to give them greater holiness, to give them greater desires, to be like Christ, to give them greater sense of worship and praise for God preparing them for their chief occupation in heaven. But you are also setting these things forth in a way, in content, that is informing rational spiritual beings that are created other than the fallen humans to whom you are preaching. The manifold wisdom of God is being made known to them also. It is an awesome calling. staggering responsibility. It is something that transcends the moment in which you're preaching and has to do with the eternal perceptions of the spirit world about the wisdom of God. So we must give ourselves to this reality that God has revealed Himself, He's revealed truths and He has revealed a truth that moves toward a single expression of all that He does in the person and work of Christ who is the one that redeems us and brings us to heaven so that we will spend eternity in fellowship with God, experiencing the love of God and the joy that dwells within the Trinity and praising Him forever. That is what is at stake in our preaching doctrinal truth. Let's bow for prayer. Father, we do thank You for the great calling You have given us. We thank You for the fact that it transcends any gifts that we have on our own. It transcends our own spirituality. It transcends all that we are. It lets us know that we are dependent upon You and that it is something that goes beyond the very moment we have and engages us into your great wisdom, your manifold wisdom and your eternal purpose. Let us sense the glory of that. May that energize us as we preach. May that give us hearts for the tasks to which you've called us and for the lives of those that you set before us. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.