You Can Trust God (His Wisdom), Part 1

You Can Trust God (His Wisdom), Part 1

By Pastor Matt Black

22 April 2007
Lord's Day morning
Ephesians 3:10-12

Introduction: Open your Bibles to the book of Ephesians. We are looking into this amazing letter that Paul wrote to the Ephesians Christians from prison. We will be reading verses 10 through 12 in Ephesians chapter 3.

Did you have a hard week this week? Did you find God’s grace sufficient? I hope you found your prayer closet and more than that you found God. His grace is sufficient not just for your life, but for a million lives. If you’re saved and you know it say “Amen”! Amen. The title of this morning’s message is “You Can Trust God.” Let’s read in this exciting and encouraging text this morning!

Ephesians 3:9-12, “And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: 10 To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God, 11 According to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord: 12 In whom we have boldness and access with confidence by the faith of him.”

[Prayer for guidance and illumination…]

In this world, it’s hard to know who to trust. You and I as human beings fail so often that sometimes we don’t trust ourselves. But before we get to our text this morning, I want us to remember that there is someone we can trust in this world. Solomon, the wisest man to walk the earth in ancient times said this, “Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. 6 In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths” (Proverbs 3:5-6).

I can tell you by experience that at the most confusing and difficult times in my life, God has been my rock and my portion. He’s been my meat when I’ve had no food. He’s been sanity in the midst of confusion. He’s been my calm in the midst of the storm. God is worthy to be trusted. He’s got a pretty good track record.

Ø He’s never failed.

Ø He’s never told a lie.

Ø He’s never broken a promise.

You can trust God. God meets us on our hardest days. He’s there when the floodwaters are over our heads. When no one is there for you, God is there! “When my father and my mother forsake me, then the LORD will take me up” (Psalm 27:10). Ladies, your husband may fail you, or you may not have a husband at all, but remember that “thy Maker is thine husband; the LORD of hosts is his name; and thy Redeemer the Holy One of Israel; The God of the whole earth shall he be called” (Isaiah 54:5). Your friends and family may leave you. Your sanity may leave you, but Jesus said, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee” (Hebrews 13:5). My brothers and sisters in Christ, this morning, there’s not too much you can trust in the world. Stock markets crash. Houses and cars need repair. Computers crash. Jobs are lost. Congress can’t agree on anything, but all God’s people can agree on one thing! God never fails! You can trust Him!! You can trust Him!! He’s there for you in the darkness of midnight when you are afraid and alone. He’s “a friend that sticks closer than a brother” (Proverbs 18:24).

You may have come to the end of your rope, but I want to tell you, He says, “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last” (Revelation 22:13). You may have come to the end of yourself, and that’s good, because then you’ve come to Him, and you’ll have come to the right place. He says, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28-30).

Listen God can be trusted. He gave all that He had so that He could have all of you. Yes saints of God it is true that “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).

I say all that to say, you can trust God! You can trust Him. Now this morning I’ve already proved that to you, but I’m going to prove it even more. I want you to gather up all the failures and doubts and worries of last week and last month and last year, and I want you to put them into the hands of the Lord this morning. “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee” (Isaiah 26:3). I want you to hear me this morning—you can trust a God that will give you perfect peace! He’s speak to you out of the whirlwind of life in a still small voice. He says to you “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10).

If all else in this world fails, I can trust God. I can trust God. Say that with me this morning, “I can trust God.”

You can’t trust too many people in this world, but you can trust God. This morning we are going to find out that

Ø We can trust God’s wisdom to guide our thoughts,

This evening we’ll see that…

Ø We can trust God’s Purpose to guide our steps, and

Ø We can trust God’s Comfort to guide our heart.

I. Trust His Wisdom to guide your thoughts. Paul said in verse 9 that he wanted all men to see and have their hearts illuminated about mystery of the Gospel. I’ll tell you the Gospel is a mystery to a lot of people. They don’t understand it because it is totally contrary to our natural way of thinking. But Paul wanted all men to come to the knowledge of Christ. When Christ comes into the heart, our outlook on life which was so blurry and confused becomes crystal clear. We trust His wisdom and everything else in life starts making sense. But Paul doesn’t say here in this verse to that men should trust in the Lord so that life will start making sense. Paul gives a different reason. Look at verse 10. He says he wants all men to come to know the mystery of the Gospel for the purpose of, or “To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God,”

Paul says there’s a very high reason that I want you to trust in my wisdom with all your heart and lean not to your own understanding. He says—I’m teaching the angels a lesson.

A. God’s Intention for His Wisdom. “Principalities and powers”. What are those? They are the angels of heaven, and the devils of hell.

He says “to the intent” that these spiritual beings, both good and bad, would see through you a reflection of the wisdom of God. You see, God’s intention in saving you was to glorify Himself before the angels of heaven, and to vindicate his wisdom before the devils of hell. In other words, you need to give yourself to God’s wisdom because God is using your life in more than just the lives of the people around you. He is working in and through you to show the angels of heaven a part of Him that they could have never known. The good angels in heaven don’t know about mercy and forgiveness because they have never fallen. The evil angels—we call them devils or demons—do not know about mercy and forgiveness because there is no mercy or forgiveness available to them.

1. God’s intention for the Spiritual Realm.

a. The angels of heaven. Be sure to let God guide your thoughts with His wisdom. There is a multitude of heavenly host watching your life. 1 Peter 1:12 says that the angels are constantly “desiring to look into” and peer into our lives. They are fascinated with the Gospel.

Application: So as you ask God to guide your thoughts each day, let’s never forget that we live on the edge of eternity! We are peering into eternity to see God’s purposes. We can’t always see them, but we know that everything that happens in our lives is for an object lesson for the angels of heaven.

b. The devils of hell. God also has a purpose to vindicate his wisdom before the devils of hell. We read in Colossians 2:15 that God has spoiled the plans of the devil at the Cross. He says he showed that their wisdom was foolish. “And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it.”

Art Katz comments on this and says, “… angels were created and endowed by God with gifts in order to administer His creation and to preserve a certain order and structure of it… In their rebellion [of the evil angels], however, they are using the role and offices that were given them to turn the attention of men away from God. When this administrative order fell, it took on the spirit of Satan who said, ‘I will rise above the Most High.’”

As you follow the wisdom of God in your life everyday, you are showing the rebellious angels that God’s way is best.

2. God’s intention for the church. I want you to catch something that is very important, especially in the country that we live in. Look at verse 10, “To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God.” This is such a neat phrase. Paul says God shows His wisdom in a very special way in the church that could not be seen individually.

Manifold wisdom of God: Literally, the “multicolored” or “multidimensional” wisdom of God. Think of a diamond in all it’s dimensions and all the different colors that comes out of it when light hits it. That diamond is a picture of the church! The difficult situations of self denial and love for enemies in your life are different from everyone else’s. And when we all come together,

B. An examination of God’s wisdom.

Look at the difference between God’s wisdom and the wisdom of this world.

James 3:13-14, “But if ye have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not, and lie not against the truth. 15 This wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish. 16 For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work. 17 But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy. 18 And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace.”

Wisdom of this world God’s wisdom

What’s in it for me?		Matthew 22:39 Love thy neighbour as thyself.
Don’t get mad, get… even!		Matthew 5:44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;
It’s a dog eat dog world! (Survival of the fittest), i.e. Use force, violence, threat, fear, ambition, lust, intimidation and the terror of men to preserve yourself and to make their your own survival the first law of life		Matthew 5:39 Resist not evil (trouble or calamity): but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. 40 And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloke also. 41 And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain. 42 Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away. 1 John 3:16 Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.
It’s ok to be kind and giving, but ultimately you need to think about Number One (yourself)		John 13:14 If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; ye also ought to wash one another’s feet.
If you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours		Matthew 25:40 Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

At this moment both of these wisdoms are converging. There is a spiritual warfare. Ephesians 6:12, “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”

C. A demonstration of wisdom.

The greatest demonstration of the wisdom of God was the Cross of Jesus Christ. The devils of hell and the wickedness of man converged on the Son of God.

As Art Katz has explains it well:

The wisdom of God was marvelously demonstrated at the Cross when the Son of God gave up the right to His own life, without complaint and without answering anything back to those who were mocking Him. “As a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth” (Isaiah 53:7). He was provoked by His own people to come down from the Cross before they would believe Him. He suffered that anguish for them while at the same time hearing their taunts and mocks. Natural wisdom did not come from Christ. In the wisdom of this world, self-justification and self-vindication would rise up and say, “You are nothing but fools! I’m doing this for you! Don’t you understand?” But, instead, He says, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”

It was at the Cross that two systems of wisdom collided. God’s wisdom does not seek anything for itself, but does the Father’s bidding, even unto death. Jesus would not speak His own words, or do His own thing, though He was omnipotently capable in Himself of doing anything He pleased. He fully absorbed the fury of the powers of darkness, and the wickedness of man who wanted to utterly destroy Him, and thought that by doing so, they would obliterate the threat that He represented to their kingdom.

But instead, as Colossians 2:15 says, the Lord of glory had “spoiled [disarmed] principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it.”

Paul said in 1 Corinthians 2:8, that everywhere he went he would “speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory: 8 Which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.”

At the Cross, Jesus disarmed and brought a foundational and devastating setback to the Powers of the air by demonstrating the self-sacrificing wisdom of God.

Application: Is the wisdom of the cross ruling your life? How are you handling your job situation? How do you handle those around you that irritate you, or worse yet, that wrong you? How do you handle your family? You can trust God to guide your thoughts! Do you want to trust God? Do you want to “lean not to your own understanding”? Listen to Paul’s advice in 2 Corinthians 10:5, “Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ”. You can trust God, but you must distrust all others, even yourself! You can trust God to guide your thoughts. Give yourself to His wisdom.

Conclusion: This morning, I wonder, have you come to the Cross of Jesus Christ today? Have you put away the stinging thinking of the world? Have you become a fool for Christ? If you live a life of self sacrifice because of love for God and others, the world will think you are a fool.

Brother and sister in Christ, You Can Trust God!! He never fails. He’s never once failed to deliver what He has promised. You don’t have to worry about that big decision at work. You don’t have to worry about the approval of your boss. You need to stop trying to save your children, and trust God that He will save them! Go with a tender heart of love for God!

Maybe you’ve never experienced the love of God today. He calls you. Put down your burdens. You know, in order to trust God, you have to stop carrying your burdens. You have trust him with your life, your job, your family, your eternity! If you’ve not come to Christ you need to forsake your sins and let God clean you up. He’ll change you from the inside out. You don’t have to worry any more!! Trust can trust God today!

Ø We can trust God’s wisdom to guide our thoughts,

This evening we’ll see that…

Ø We can trust God’s Purpose to guide our steps, and

Ø We can trust God’s Comfort to guide our heart.

Closing Hymn: 418 Trust and Obey