The Purpose of This Blog

In response to the challenge by the Southern Baptist Convention that churches take on the task to share the gospel with unengaged unreached people groups, the missions team of Harmony Pittsburg Baptist Association felt the need for a way to focus prayer on the task. This blog is intended to facilitate prayer for those contemplating their role in fulfilling the Great Commission. This on-line prayer guide may prove useful to those exploring a call to missions involvement as well as to those who have sensed a call to pray for those who will go to the front lines.

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Mystery Solved: God's Eternal Purpose

The Bible is about two things: a Man and a plan.  The Scriptures teach us about the Messiah, God's suffering Servant who would suffer, die, and rise again to redeem mankind from the bondage of sin.  They also teach us that God has had a "plan for the ages" as W. O. Carver put it.  That plan is to reconcile to Himself people from "all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues" (Revelation 7:9).

There was one follower of Jesus in the Bible who perceived and preached and practiced the two themes before any of the Twelve -- Saul of Tarsus, later to become Paul the Apostle.  It is interesting that the Lord used an outsider to show the way to the "establishment."  How often He uses someone that others have rejected to accomplish His purpose.  To the Ephesians, Paul describes the revelation of God's plan as a "mystery which from the beginning of the ages has been hidden in God who created all things through Jesus Christ" but now made known by the church "according to the eternal purpose which He accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord" (3:8-12).

The idea of "mystery" in New Testament times was of a truth that one could not know unless it was revealed to him by God or by someone else to whom God had revealed it.  Paul writes of the "mystery of Christ" both to the Ephesians and to the Colossians, the companion letter.  The words of Paul about this mystery show us the same two themes we have seen throughout the Bible.

To the Colossians Paul shows that the mystery had to do with the person of Christ: "the mystery which has been hidden from ages and from generations, but now has been revealed to His saints ... which is Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Colossians 1:26-27).  Paul's life was devoted to the truth that a right standing with God came through faith in the person of Jesus, not through observance of the Mosaic code.  He also insisted that this simple faith in Christ could be embraced by peoples of all nations and cultures.  To the Ephesians he wrote: "by revelation He made known to me the mystery ... which in other ages was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to His holy apostles and prophets: That the Gentiles should be fellow heirs, of the same body, and partakers of His promise in Christ through the gospel" (Ephesians 3:2-6).

Paul's life gives us an example of what it means to devote one's life to the purposes of God who calls us to salvation in Jesus and to service in the nations.  Let's pray to understand and to obey God's will not only with regard to faith in Jesus but also in aligning our purposes with His purpose, to bring all peoples to Himself.

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