Will you please turn to 1 Corinthians? First Corinthians 4. We will read verses 1 and 2.
Let a man so account of us, as of ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God.
Here, moreover, it is required in stewards, that a man be found faithful.
May we have a further word of prayer?
Dear Lord, we do praise and thank Thee for being so good, so gracious, so merciful to us. We thank Thee for the privilege of being gathered together in Thy name, and for Thy precious promise: where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in their midst.
Lord, may Thy presence be manifested among us. As we gather in Thy presence, O dear Lord, we bow our knees and worship. Thou art our Lord. What hast Thou to say to us? Speak; Thy servants hear.
We commit this time into Thy hand and pray that Thou wilt use this time to speak to us, to our hearts, and draw us closer to Thyself. Prepare us, Lord, for Thy imminent return. We ask in Thy precious name. Amen.
Thank God for gathering us together this morning. I always feel such gathering is a special grace and mercy of God.
I believe, brothers and sisters, we all are expecting our Lord’s return. He has promised us. He said to us, “I come quickly,” and we believe that it is about time that He will come.
But, brothers and sisters, the problem is not His coming. The problem is whether we are prepared for His return.
I do thank the Lord for giving us opportunities again and again to prepare us for His return. So we do pray, Lord, that He will use this time to really prepare each and every one of us, that when He shall come, He will find us ready for Him. And that is all for His own glory, and that is the purpose of our time together.
The theme for this time is the mystery of God in the church.
My responsibility is to share with you a general outline of this subject: the mystery of God and the church. This morning, we would like to concentrate on this matter of the mystery of God.
First of all, brothers and sisters, we know that God—He is the greatest mystery in the universe. Unless He reveals Himself, nobody can know Him.
You remember the conversation between Job and his three friends. One of his friends, Zophar, mentioned in Job 11:7:
Canst thou by searching find out God?
Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?
In other words, God is beyond our searching. No matter how we search, we may know something about God, but we will not be able to really know Him.
But thank God, God is One who reveals Himself. You remember the story in Genesis 16, when Hagar fled from her mistress and the angel of the Lord met her and revealed God’s mind concerning her son.
Because of this, Hagar said:
Thou art a God that seeth me.
So, brothers and sisters, unless God reveals Himself, we will know nothing about Him, because He is far beyond us.
I remember, in the early days, Brother Watchman Nee had a fellow worker. Her name was Ruth Lee. I knew her very well. She was like a spiritual mother to me.
Now, this was before she believed in the Lord Jesus. She was a very learned person, but she was an atheist.
One time, she was invited to Nanking to be the matron of a girls’ school. Before she went, her relative, who was a believer, told her that in that government school there was a piano teacher who was very zealous for the Lord, and through her a number of the girls came to know the Lord.
But Ruth Lee said, “I’m not afraid of that,” because she was an avowed atheist.
So after she went to the school, she confiscated all the Bibles that these students had. She was decidedly against Christ. She was spoken to, but she refused to accept the Lord.
There was a time when there was unrest in Nanking, so the school had to send these girls back to their homes. She was to accompany some of the girls from Nanking to Shanghai by boat.
While she was on the boat, she looked at the surroundings—look at all the beautiful mountains. Suddenly, she felt, “There must be a God.”
So after they arrived in Shanghai, she asked a fellow teacher, who was a Christian, for a Bible. She started to study the Bible, and by studying the Bible, she was wonderfully saved. Later on, she became one of the earliest fellow workers of Watchman Nee.
But, brothers and sisters, she may have been able, through the scenery she saw, to have an idea that there must be a God. But that does not mean that she knew God. She knew God through the study of the Bible. God revealed Himself to her.
I believe probably you have heard of our brother Bakht Singh. He was greatly used by God in India. He came from a wealthy family. His father was an industrialist.
He wanted to go to England to study, so he asked the help of his mother. His mother gave him a condition. She said, “I will talk to your father and help you to go to England on one condition: that you will never change your religion.”
Of course, Bakht Singh promised his mother that he would never change his religion. So, on that condition, he went to England to study.
He tried to be like an Englishman. He wanted to dress like them and to act like them.
One time there was a tour of Canada, and he wanted to see Canada. So he went with a group on the boat.
Now, at that time, on Sunday morning there would be a Christian meeting in first class. He wanted to see first class, so he attended that meeting.
While the preacher was preaching, he heard nothing. But after the preaching, the preacher had everybody kneel down to pray.
As a courtesy, he knelt down too. But he wanted to get out, and he could not because he was surrounded by people.
But anyway, that gave him such an impression of God that, after he arrived in Canada, he asked his colleague, who was a Christian, to give him a Bible. He wanted to read it.
And he read it all the way until he came to John, the Gospel of John. Through the reading of the Word, God revealed Himself to him.
Brother Bakht Singh was greatly used by God in India. Wherever he went, the Bibles were all sold.
Brothers and sisters, we thank God, for He is a God who reveals Himself. Otherwise, we would have no chance of knowing Him.
But, brothers and sisters, God is not only the greatest mystery in the world. Thank God, He is also One who reveals Himself, and it is revelation of Him that we really need.
But God Himself is not only a great mystery. The Bible tells us that He has a great mystery in His heart. When you look at Ephesians 1:9-10, you find that God, before the foundation of the world, had the mystery of His will.
You know, God has the greatest will in the universe. That is why, when He created man, He created man with a will, because He is the will of the universe.
Before the foundation of the world, He made a will according to His good pleasure. It pleased Him. And after this will, He created all things.
But God is One who is able to keep His secret for centuries. You know, when we have a secret, probably it will be out very soon. We tell people, “This is a secret. You are the only one I am going to share it with.” But we know the secret is out, and everybody seems to know your secret.
But God is not like that. He is One who is able to keep His secret for centuries and centuries. Even when He began to create all things, and all things had been created, the secret was still hidden.
What a secret this must be, because it is this secret that started God on creating the universe. Many times had gone by; history upon history had occurred, but the secret was still kept.
Nobody knew why God created the universe. Nobody knew why everything happened in history. Why did God allow all these things to happen? Nobody knew.
Not until He revealed His secret to the apostles and the prophets in New Testament times. That is what you find in Ephesians 3.
Brothers and sisters, this is the greatest mystery in the universe, aside from God Himself: the mystery of His will.
But thank God, today it has been revealed. The apostle Paul, in Ephesians 3, tells us that He has revealed it to the apostles and the prophets of New Testament times.
Now, brothers and sisters, since this is a great secret, since this, you can sense, controls the whole universe and all the actions of God throughout time, it must be a tremendous mystery.
Thank God, it has been revealed to us today. So, brothers and sisters, it is our privilege to know what that will, what that mystery, is. It is God’s intention that every one of us should be familiar with that mystery—not only in the sense of knowing what it is, but in the sense of being involved in that mystery.
So, if you turn to Ephesians 1, we read from verse 9:
Having made known unto us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Him,
unto a dispensation of the fulness of the times,
to sum up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens, and the things upon the earth.
So, brothers and sisters, what is this great mystery? It is that one day He wants all things to be summed up in Christ.
God has one beloved Son. He loved His Son so much. That is the reason why He created all things: He wanted to give everything to His Son.
So the will is—the mystery of the will is—that His Son is to sum up, to head up, all things. In other words, everything will speak of Christ. Everything will reveal Christ. That is the reason for creation. That is the reason for you and me.
What is the purpose of creating you and me? The purpose is that our lives may reveal that Christ is the Head of all things. Otherwise, there is no meaning to our life.
Brothers and sisters, do you wonder why you live? What is the real purpose of life? Is it just to enjoy the world, enjoy what God has created for you, and have a good time? Or is there something far more precious and honorable?
God’s purpose for man is that we may be used of God to bring all things under the feet of Jesus.
Do you know why you are saved? Is it because heaven is so empty that God wants to fill heaven with people? Of course not.
God saves you and me with that real purpose and a glorious task that He has committed to us. It is to bring all things to the feet of the Lord Jesus, that our Lord Jesus is able to head up all things, to sum up all things.
Now, probably we do not quite understand what it means to head up all things, or to sum up all things in Christ. But thank God, there is another illustration in the Bible, in Romans 13.
In Romans 13, please turn to it. We will read from verses 9 and 10.
For, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not covet;
and if there be any other commandment, it is summed up in this word, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
Love worketh no ill to his neighbor: love therefore is the fulfilment of the law.
We all know that, in Old Testament times, God gave the children of Israel the Ten Commandments and all the laws.
But there is one thing: the sum of all these laws. No matter what the law says—“Thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not covet,” or any other commandment—whatever commandment it may be, you may sum it up in one thing, and that is, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”
In other words, love is the sum total of all these commandments. Why did God give the children of Israel these commandments? Because through these commandments, they may be brought to love one another. That is the sum of the law.
So, in like manner, no matter how many commandments there may be, no matter what things there may be, it will all be summed up in one thing, and that is Christ. He is all and in all.
Brothers and sisters, this is a tremendous mystery. This explains everything. This explains you and me.
Why are we saved in the first place? Out of the millions and millions of people, why is it that God should show special mercy upon us to save us?
It is not because of you and me ourselves. It is because God has a plan for you and me. God wants to use us as instruments and vessels for His great mystery, that it may be Christ, all and in all, in us.
Of course, we know this is a very long history. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. That is Genesis 1:1. That is the beginning of creation.
But as we read the Bible very carefully, we find that in the beginning of God’s creation, there was no man. The highest of His creation was angels.
God created the heavens and the earth, and He created the angels—spirits. These angels were to serve God.
Among the angels, as we find in Ezekiel 28, there was one angel called Lucifer, the bright and shining light. He was the highest creation of the former creation.
He was gifted. He was almost perfect. He was an anointed angel to guard the throne of God.
After he was created, as Ezekiel 28 tells us, God used the king of Tyre as a type. But when you read that, you know no king on earth is qualified for the description. So we know the Lord has used that to tell us that in the very beginning of creation, the highest created being was the angel, and among the angels the highest was Lucifer, the bright and shining star.
He was anointed to keep the throne of God, to lead the worship of the angels. He was given great musical gifts, and he was beautiful beyond description.
The Bible tells us that in the beginning he was good. He was doing all that God had created him for, bringing glory to God.
But gradually, because of his beauty and his talents, he began to be conscious of himself. He began to want to be equal with God.
That you find in Isaiah 14. Five times he said, “I will, I will, I will, I will, I will.” He wanted to be equal with God.
You know, in the words of New Testament understanding, he wanted the place of God’s Son, Jesus Christ.
Because of his pride, he was dismissed from the third heaven. And very truly, the earth that we know now was under his domain.
Therefore, when Lucifer was dismissed from heaven, all that was under his domain entered into curse and judgment. That is why you find, in the second verse of Genesis 1, the earth became waste and void. The earth became purposeless and ruined.
So actually, Genesis 1, from verse 2 onward, is the restoration of the created earth. God used six days to restore the earth to be habitable.
Now, brothers and sisters, it is easy for God to finish Lucifer. God can do it with His breath. But that would not give God glory, just like a grown man beating a little child. There is no glory to that man.
So, in order that everything will glorify God, God has a plan. In that plan, He created man.
The Bible tells us man is made a little lower than the angels. Man is not as powerful as the angels, and yet God will use man to defeat Lucifer and all his plans, and to restore God’s mystery from the very beginning.
So, dear brothers and sisters, what an honor it is for us men. We should know that God created us with a very high and important purpose.
We are not just here accidentally. We are saved for a reason, and it is for the great mystery of God.
In other words, brothers and sisters, powerless and little as we are, God has a great plan for our life.
This is the reason why we, as Christians, need to know: What is God’s purpose in creating us? What is God’s purpose in saving us? What is it that God is doing in our lives?
We need to know the purpose of our life—that it is in connection with the mystery of God, that we should be vessels and instruments of God’s great purpose.
We are committed to bring everything to the feet of our Lord Jesus.
So, brothers and sisters, this is the meaning of life. Sometimes, you know, we feel that life is meaningless. Probably we are tired of living.
But whenever we are reminded that God has a marvelous purpose for us, that should revive us. That should enable us to press on toward the goal.
So, brothers and sisters, this morning this is all that I want to share: just to impress upon every one of us that you are precious to God, that God has a definite plan for you.
You are to do the tremendous work in the universe, because you are to bring all things to the feet of Jesus. Thank God that He should be so mindful of us.
Let us pray.
Dear Lord, we want to thank Thee that Thou hast a great plan for us. Though small as we are, weak as we are, yet, Lord, Thou hast committed to us the greatest mystery that Thou hast hidden even from the foundation of the world, until Thou hast revealed it to the apostles and the prophets of our time.
So, Lord, we want to thank Thee for creating us as men. We want to thank Thee for saving us, that by Thy grace, Lord, we may be used of Thee to accomplish the great mystery of God: to bring all things to the feet of our dear Lord Jesus Christ.
Lord, we thank Thee for the meaningfulness of life. Life is not a waste. Lord, life is precious to Thee, and therefore it is precious to us.
So we want to offer ourselves totally and completely, and without any reservation, to Thee, Lord, that Thy purpose for creating us, for saving us, might be realized in each of our lives.
May Thou be glorified in the midst of the redeemed. We ask in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.