According to His Good Pleasure

Driving home: A gospel mystery is truth hidden in God until revealed by God.

The Apostle's method of stating a dominant note and then opening it up is compared to looking at a flower as a whole, then examining one petal at a time to see different facets of the truth.

He praises God for the impartation of heavenly wisdom. Then, as he does with so many other parts of this hymn of praise, and many other places in his epistles, the Apostle, having stated the dominant note, he then opens it up. It's like looking at the flower as a whole, and then the Apostle takes one petal at a time and shows us the different facets, of the truth involved in it. So having praised God for grace that overflowed to give wisdom and prudence, that is, penetrating insight into divine realities, that's wisdom,

2:12 - 2:53 Read in full sermon

The point: Consider if it is a precious thought that God took the initiative to arrest you, knowing you would have destroyed yourself.

Paul's repetitive emphasis on grace and sovereign grace is likened to a student's paper being marked 'redundant' by a seventh-grade English teacher, highlighting that a saved person will always be 'redundant' when it comes to these truths.

The apostle knew it. That's why he just comes back almost to the place where if you and I handed in a thing like this in our seventh grade English class, the teacher would have sent it back and said, redundant, redundant. You've got the same thoughts over and over and over and over again. You're redundant, too verbose.

15:02 - 15:20 Read in full sermon

Driving home: Not one of them could say, as you can now say, commonplace talk, Christ died for our sins. The most fundamental, rudimentary element of the gospel, they could not say it with the clarity with which you can now say it.

The Old Testament revelation of the mystery of God's will is described as a 'draped statue,' where the general form could be seen, but not the full beauty and detail, illustrating the partial understanding of past saints.

Listen to what Jesus said about the godly people of the past. And I read now from Matthew 13, 16. Matthew 13 and verse 16. There was a nation to whom God was pleased to unveil at least the shadowy outlines of the mystery.

27:18 - 27:40 Read in full sermon

The point: Go to the missionary poster, look at the tribal people, and ask yourself, 'Why was that not my picture?' to reflect on God's geographical sovereignty.

Listeners are instructed to look at a missionary poster of tribal people from New Guinea and ask themselves, 'Why was that not my picture?' to drive home the geographical sovereignty of God in bringing the gospel.

I want you all to do something within the next week or two. I want you to go down on that little bulletin board downstairs where we have the missionary poster.

35:24 - 35:32 Read in full sermon