Ephesians Lesson 23 of 39 part 2

We had someone the other day that said, "Every time I go into a bookstore all I see are all these books on "how to.’" Hey, we don’t need books on how to. If you will just get into the book and begin to understand the manifold wisdom of God and all those things take care of themselves. We are being inundated by all those books that are keeping people from the Bible. We have never read one of those self help books that shows or even reveals the manifold wisdom of God in any of them. My wife has for many times sat in front of her computer and asked the Lord to reveal which book or books that He wanted her to copy and then would just wait on Him. Then shortly He would show her who and what book someone had written, that He wanted us to have and she would download it, then many of them would sit in her book list until such day and time that the Lord wanted us to learn something of Him from it. Authors from way back such as Jacob Behaem, Major W. Ian Thomas, Andrew Murray, William Law and others many of them we never heard of. But for this one thing, they all had Paul's mysteries in common. This revealed wisdom that we can acutely show to the principalities and powers in the heavenlies is going to be according to the eternal purpose. 

Ephesians 1:11

"According to the eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord:"

What is the eternal purpose? The whole scheme of scripture is to see lost people saved. God does not want any person to go to Hell, but rather He wants everyone to be saved if that could only happen. But what is the second purpose of scripture? For us to be used of God to reveal these things that may spare someone from an eternal doom. This is our only purpose for doing what we do. We are all, to become stewards of the secrets and operate within God's manifold wisdom because Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 6 that we will be judging the angels, the nations and members of the Body. Is any of this happening? NO! Not as of yet because the worlds churches tell their people that we are NOT to judge, thusly distorting, twist, and wresting what the word tells us. God does place restrictions and conditions on this because not every one will be promoted to this understanding. We each have a special place or job to do under His headship and direction, for in this way He is glorified because we exhibit His Glory through our obedience.

Ephesians 3:11

"According to the eternal purpose which he (the God of verse 10) purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord:"

Now that’s not the end of the sentence, but we're going to stop here for a moment, and we are going to have you turn with us to 2Timothy chapter 1. We are going to hone in on verse 9, but we want to begin in verse 7, and lead up to what Paul says in verse 9.

2Timothy 1:7

"For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind..."

That brings up a question that we don’t have to deliberate here. Should believers ever have mental problems? We are not saying could they, but should they? No, we really shouldn’t. We know it is a possibility, but really we shouldn’t have mental problems. We should never be plagued with depression, which is one of the forerunners of a lot of mental problems. Because what have we got going for us? And we have it so good here in America. Last night, for some reason we just weren’t sleeping very well, we were thinking of those people in Yugoslavia, and Albania, and we are so spoiled.

How could we handle it if all of a sudden Texas was a sovereign country, and they would just literally move up to the eastern half of Oklahoma, which looks like it is the size of Kosovo, all the way from I-35 to the Arkansas border, and would just literally cleanse the land of all of us? They would just literally over-run Texas, to where they would have to died or have to flee to Arkansas, Kansas, or Missouri, and leave everything behind. Have you ever thought of it that way? God loves them, and they hurt, tell you what it is absolutely awful, we can almost get emotional when we read and see the horrors of that situation. Anyway the scripture says we are not to fear, but to have power, and love, and a sound mind.