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We keep reaching for more—a better version of the Christian life, a deeper secret, some upgrade that will finally make everything click—when Ephesians 1 says God has already lavished wisdom and insight on us and made known the mystery of His will. What does it look like to actually live in that, rather than keep reaching past it?
The following study questions are AI generated and may contain errors.
The pastor contrasts how we enjoy mysteries in novels versus how we experience uncertainty in real life. How does understanding that God has “solved the mystery” of salvation and our purpose change the way you approach the unknowns you face daily?
The sermon emphasizes that God gives us both “wisdom” (knowledge of how things are) and “insight” (how to apply it). What are some practical examples of how these work together in the Christian life, and where do you struggle to apply what you know to be true?
The pastor warns against seeking “premium upgrades” to Christianity—whether through wealth, secret knowledge, or racial exclusivity. What are some upgrades Christians are tempted to pursue today, and what does it look like to resist them?
How does the illustration of a woman getting stuck between boulders while reaching for her phone challenge you to examine areas of your own life where you might be “reaching” for something unnecessary and getting stuck as a result?
The sermon says God invites us to “live in the solved mystery” now, not just wait for the future. What would it look like practically for your church community to reflect that reality—to live unified in Christ in ways that appear as a mystery to the watching world?
This transcript has been automatically generated and may contain errors.
Who here loves a good mystery story? Anyone love a good mystery? Yeah, I love a good mystery. And some of you are sensible and have good taste as well. Some of you, maybe not. But I love a good mystery. And what I love about a good mystery is the opportunity to go through that story, especially if it’s a novel form. I usually don’t have time to sit down and just read a novel all day. So I read little bits of it, and then I find myself thinking, I wonder how that’s going to come out. You know, what’s really going on here? Why am I getting this detail? Think about those things and decode it.
There’s one series in particular I’ve read for years. I like to follow it because the same characters show up and you get attached to them. So I’ll read the next book in the series when it comes out. It’s just fluff, but it’s fun. You get attached to them and their ability to solve the different puzzles that they’re faced with.
One thing with that series of books, I’m not sure why the author does this, but sometimes he solves the mystery at like the two-thirds point. It’s not just, I think I know where it’s going. It’s solved, it’s done. Then the rest is like a post-log for a third of a book. Sometimes when it’s that way, I find myself struggling to finish the book because my drive to explore is done. I’ve solved the mystery.
Sometimes, he’ll tease and actually there’ll be a second mystery. Oh wait, there was that one thread that wasn’t solved. Oh, now I know why it’s still going on. But a lot of times it’s sort of like, you wrapped it up too quickly here. Now you didn’t meet the page count for the publisher apparently, and so he just drags on.
So when we’re reading a mystery, we don’t necessarily want it to get solved at least too soon, right? We might be going crazy. I wanna know what’s going on. We still want that mystery there because that’s what makes it fun. That’s what makes it engaging.
I don’t think that’s how we really feel about life though, is it? Does anyone say, I really want my life to be unsettled and I don’t know where it’s going because that makes it exciting and engaging? No, I didn’t think so. That’s not how we think, right? We wanna know what’s going on. We wanna know where we’re going. We might not wanna know everything. Sometimes an adventure is fun, but for the big things of life, we’d like to know we have it under control.
Now, as we turn to the next part of Ephesians chapter one, one thing that we see is that Paul keeps using this word. It comes up a number of times: mystery. And we might think, does that mean that I live in one of those novels? They’re just gonna keep rolling on and on and on and I’m gonna wonder what’s going on. Not very comforting, is it? That’s not what we want.
But the problem isn’t God. You see, we’re still chasing after a mystery. We’re determined, we’re gonna decode the mystery. We’re gonna solve the puzzle of life. And the thing that we’re going to find tonight as we continue in God’s word is that God’s already told us the answer. The continuing mystery is the fact that we’re not willing to listen to it. He says, mystery is right there, solved, case closed. That’s good.
But I think that impulse that makes us enjoy the novel where we don’t know it, even though a lot of times we’re not enjoying it when we’re trying to solve life and it doesn’t feel like it’s all coming together, we still have that drive, okay, there must be a mystery. There must be something deeper I’m going to get to the root of.
But as we come to Jesus and we come to His word, we find the full depth already there. There’s nothing more we’re going to come to. Let’s pray tonight as we do come to His word that as we look at the mystery of God’s love that we would understand that it’s a mystery that’s been solved, a mystery that’s been revealed. Some detective didn’t have to figure it out. God came and showed it to us. And as we come to that, we would be comforted. Will you pray with me, please?
Father, we do pray that you would help us to be those who contemplate your truth, who contemplate the wonder of what you do. And as we do, we see that you reveal yourself to us. You don’t leave us to be those who are constantly chasing after a mystery to be solved, but rather those who live in the mystery that is solved. Every one of us is invited to be in that place today. I pray this in Jesus’ precious name, amen.
Let’s go ahead and jump to the second half of verse seven. Yeah, I know, we’re going in the middle of the verse. We looked at the first part last week. In Him, we have redemption through His blood, but then we’re going to pick up right there, the forgiveness of our trespasses. Excuse me, actually that was last week too. We’re going to pick up right here: according to the riches of His grace, which He lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight.
You see, last week we talked about God’s forgiveness and really coming to terms with the fact that God, when He says He forgives, when He’s going to work His forgiveness, that He does it, that it happens. But it’s so important as we wrestle with that mystery that we’ve been exploring of adoption and being God’s children, that He loves us, that He doesn’t just forgive us, He doesn’t just leave us there, He gives more.
I like the way that John Calvin puts it. He says that what Paul’s expressing here is that God gives us not just His choice of election, not just that He chooses us to save us, but also that He reveals His calling to us. He doesn’t just leave us, okay, great. You’re even a child of the king, welcome, come to the table. You’re mine, you’re safe. Now go and find yourself because you have no idea what you’re supposed to be. You have no idea what you’re supposed to do.
No, He says, I’m gonna show that to you too. Now, I think all of us know that all the details aren’t always there, but the heart of it, the heart of who it is that we’re supposed to be, of whom it is that God wants us to be, He reveals it right there as He reveals Himself in the salvation He gives us.
Paul says that God lavishes forgiveness upon us, but then we have that wisdom and insight as well, sanctifying knowledge. Not just that He lavishes a lot of love on us and then says, and now that you know you’re loved, good luck. So let me show you how to thrive, how to be the men and women I’ve made you to be, because I have a plan for you.
Now, what’s the difference between wisdom and insight? They kind of sound like overlapping words, but I think what we’re seeing here is on the one hand, wisdom is a knowledge of how things are. We’ve been exploring some of this division incidentally on Monday nights as well. If you have time tomorrow night, please join me. We’re going to dig into it more deeply as we continue in Proverbs 2, but Proverbs is exploration of how things are. God tells us about how His world works. Here’s what’s good, here’s what’s bad. Let me tell you these things.
Insight’s how to apply it. And if we think about wisdom in the sense of the Proverbs, we see that knowing how things are and applying how things are are tied closely together. These are not separate things in God’s mind. That’s why they’re stuck here together. But God’s wisdom is a wisdom that’s applied. It’s constantly moving and doing the things that are wise. It’s not simply storing up a lot of knowledge.
We can memorize this Bible from cover to cover, and incidentally, if you have the sort of memory that you can actually memorize that from cover to cover, please do, because that would be a great thing to do. I won’t make it there in my lifetime, but if you can, you should, because what could be better to store up in your mind than the knowledge of God’s Word?
And I firmly believe if you spent the time and were able to memorize the whole of Scripture, it absolutely would also come out applied, because spending that much time in the truth and the richness and the wonder of God’s love, there’s no way that we could just store it in our heads. But theoretically, let’s say we just stored it all. We had it all in there, right? It’s in there, just sitting there. Pull off a volume every once in a while and read it. Well, that’s good, right? We’re filling our heads with good things, but if we’re not actually doing anything with it, it’s not really God’s wisdom.
We might have some facts about God’s wisdom, but God’s wisdom is a wisdom that goes from the basic, the raw data to the application of that data. Wisdom and insight. And what do we find in our God? That our God, our very God who gives us His salvation, who loves us, He doesn’t just love us enough to pull us out of sin, but as He gives us Jesus’s righteousness, He gives us wisdom and insight. He wants us to actually understand how to live.
He fills us up. Someone commented that that phrase being used here of God filling us, it could be like a super abundance. In other words, God forgets to turn off the spigot, except that He doesn’t forget, He wants to do it, right? He wants to overflow us with His love and His wisdom. Let’s just, I’m gonna fill my people up.
Why does He do that? Well, because that’s the way that we follow Him. He wants us to take all that overflow that goes into us and then pour it back out. 1 Thessalonians chapter three: “And may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, as we do for you, so that He may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all His saints.” What’s our calling? That’s what Paul prays there. That they would overflow with the love that Jesus has shown them and that then those following Jesus who have discipled them have shown. And that’s the heart of the Christian life.
If we’re trying to say, we’re saying to God, God, I don’t know, okay, so You saved me, now what am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to be? The best place to start is someone who loves people with God’s love. If we want to be countercultural, we can’t get any more countercultural than that. We live in a society of anger, a society that’s constantly doing the opposite of love and God calls us to actually love.
Now, that doesn’t mean we don’t stand for truth. It actually means that we do, right? Because to love is not to lie to someone; it is to say the truth, but we say it with love, we say it recognizing that we’re not worthy of salvation and so the fact that someone else might not seem worthy to us at the moment, well, if we’re reflecting what God’s doing for us, they’re just as worthy as we are. We want them to know that God loves them.
There isn’t really a mystery in how we’re supposed to live. God doesn’t want to leave us in the dark. That’s not His intention, to leave us there struggling, trying to figure out who am I, what am I, where am I? God wants us to understand without waiting until the end of the novel, right? We have our individual life novels, they’re still going. Thankfully, you’re here. We have the novel of the world, so to speak, the continuing history of the world, it’s still going until the day that Jesus returns.
But He wants us to know already because unlike when we’re reading that mystery novel, we need to know and we want to know. And here’s the thing, as much as it’s fun at times to try to figure out a mystery, how much more delightful is it to actually know what God’s made you to do and to feel the love of God working in us?
But the temptation is to say, well, but there must be something more. I need to find the more. I need to upgrade my Jesus package and get a little bit more. I was reading about a woman named Matilda Campbell and she was on a hike and she was doing exactly what I’ve been known to do if I’m going on a walk in nature. If I was anticipating, I’m gonna have my camera, but if I wasn’t anticipating, I at least have my phone, right? And what am I doing? Oh, that’s a, I’m not gonna bend over, but that’s a lovely rock. I’ll take that rock and there’s a tree that’s beautiful. And look at that flower over there. And then that bird.
She’s out there using her phone, taking pictures, leaning over maybe things, trying to get that perfect shot. And then she does the one thing I’ve always thought, I hope I never do that, especially like I’m leaning over something with a really good drop. She lost grip of her phone and it goes tumbling between two big boulders.
Now what do you do? Out in the middle of the woods? If you’re on contract trying to get another one of these, I don’t want to do that, right? I’ll reach down and get it. That’s what she came up with as her plan. She is going to reach down. She can reach through the boulders. No problem. I’ll just squeeze down in there. My phone will be down there. I’ll grab my phone. I’ll go on my merry way and I’ll tell this story. We can all laugh about it later. I’ll tell all my friends. It’ll be great.
Not quite how it goes. You see, she reached down for the phone and then found herself stuck hanging upside down between the boulders. She still couldn’t reach the phone, and now she’s going to get free. What she thought was going to solve her problem because, well, I can’t leave without my phone, ends up leaving it, well, I can’t leave at all.
Hours later, she was found. It took seven hours to get her out of that predicament because they had to move the boulders and then build a framework around the boulders so that if they started to split while they moved, then they wouldn’t come back in and crush her. They never did find the phone, but they freed her, freed her with bruises and a fractured spine.
How often we’re going through life, we have things that we think are important like our phones, right? We have these opportunities in life that we think are important and we think maybe we’re even, there’s nothing wrong with taking pictures with your phone, right? Enjoying God’s good creation, wanting to take pictures of it, that’s a great thing to do, wonderful. But something goes wrong and we think, but I can’t be happy, things can’t be right. I’m not going to live the life that God intends for me unless I get that back. I need a little something more and so I’m going to squeeze down. I can solve this one.
Satan says, reach, you can reach. You’ll make it. Ah, you know you can make it, right? And our own pride says, oh yeah, come on, go, go, go, you can do it. Yeah, other people get stuck when they try to do that, but you won’t, you’re much too clever. Your arms are a little longer, you can make it. And we reach down thinking we’re going to reach the real prize, the thing that’s going to solve the mystery for us, the thing that’s going to make things right again.
And we reach down and we find ourselves stuck. And does that mean that we’ve lost God’s salvation, that He doesn’t love us anymore? No, just like Matilda, she didn’t die, thankfully, praise God for that. She was rescued, but she was rescued injured. And how often as we follow Jesus do we end up being rescued injured? Because we keep reaching for things we don’t really need, keep trying to solve problems we don’t really need to solve. And it’s not even something, oh no, I’m going to have to pay full price for it because I’m under contract. It’s not even stuff half the time that we need. Sometimes it is important though.
But is it important enough to get off the path that God wants us on? No, but the world says you need a premium upgrade. You need to reach that better mystery.
Okay, you understand that Jesus has come to the world to save you. That’s important to know. But maybe you can get more insight than the others. Maybe you can know more than other Christians. Maybe you can be the one who gets the bonus content, the director’s cut of Jesus. That’s what we reach.
Paul in Colossians, a parallel letter, they’re addressing very similar themes. Paul has several letters here that he writes out covering basic Christian life to believers who are struggling with something. And as he writes to the Colossians, he says he’s praying for them to feel the fullness of Christ in them. It goes on in chapter two: “Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus, the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.
See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit according to the human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. For in Him, the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.”
Paul’s writing to believers here. That’s something that’s important for us to hear. He’s not writing to people who are considering the gospel. He’s writing to people who’ve accepted the gospel. But what? There are people saying, here’s the premium upgrade package. Here’s the way to live the even better, more fulfilling Christian life. Just reach between these boulders and you are going to have it.
The world has a whole host of upgrades it offers us. It offers us the upgrade of wealth. If you’re a Christian and you have money, you’ll be happy. If you’re a Christian and you crack the code to understand the end times, you’ll be happy. Even though Jesus says you’re never going to do that, somehow you will and then you will be happy. So just reach.
Striking over the last few weeks, a number of denominations that are very parallel to us in our theology here at Little Hills have had to issue a statement. They shared the statement. That’s kind of an encouraging thing. Christian denominations actually sharing the same statement, issuing it together, because you put a bunch of Christians together, it’s really hard to get us all to agree. It’s so hard. I mean, it is so hard. So that’s encouraging, but the reason they had to issue it isn’t so encouraging.
And see, as we’re looking for that upgrade package, what’s happening? What do we see in the church? We see people deciding, well, maybe it’d be better if I had Christianity and everyone in the church looked like me, talked like me. It’s something I, if you’d asked me 10 years ago that I really thought there’d be major Christian voices arguing for racial separation in churches, I would have said, you’re crazy.
But friends, there are people, they’re gaining huge audiences arguing this today. This isn’t being made up. These are influential leaders that are writing books that are selling well in Christian circles that are arguing things like this. I said something a few weeks ago about it, and actually had like 400 threatening remarks come back at me just for condemning one of these books that says this. I mean, there’s an angry group out there. Why? Because I think they’re going to get something more. It’s not enough to have Jesus. Let’s have Jesus and restore what I think might be a better time. A better time when everyone was exactly like me.
That time didn’t exist, but they think they can reach that time. And so thankfully, praise God, Christians - I saw Christians of multiple different reformed denominations and some key leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention all celebrating together, condemning this and saying, this is not the gospel. This is not who we are as Christians. This is wrong. But I bring that up because this is one of the upgrades of the moment. People saying, well, we can be better if we just go back to that.
But just one of the many lies that the evil one loves to perpetuate over and over and over again. Paul, as he’s dealing with the church, as he’s leading them, they’re buying into those lies too, right? If you’re just with other Christians who are both Jews and Christians, right? They’ve actually first been circumcised and become Jews and then become Christians. You’re going to be with better people. Or you get away from all those people.
If you’re just with Gentile Christians, because they’re superior, because they didn’t have to do all that law stuff first, right? Paul’s dealing with this. This is nothing new. It’s what the human heart does. We go searching for these things that are going to make us happy.
And the only thing that’s really a mystery that’s worth solving is the one that’s already been solved. We can’t add anything to Jesus. God doesn’t want to leave us in the dark. But He’s also not giving us some light bulbs to screw in so we can try to light things up ourselves. Because you see, God Himself is the light for the dark.
We go on to verse 9 of Ephesians 1: “As a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in Him, things in heaven, and things on earth.” The age-old search, we’ll divide this way. We’ll divide intellectually. We’ll divide nationally; we’ll divide racially. We’ll divide this way; we’ll divide that way. We’ll find some way to enhance that we get the extra light to follow in the direction of God’s revelation.
I feel like He likes to talk about coming down in a swimsuit so we get the extra bonus package. We keep searching for these things, but what actually provides the light for us? God does. We can’t add anything to His light. God says, I’ve solved this. This is done.
Yes, the fullness of time hasn’t come, and we still see a broken world, but if you believe in Jesus, if you believe in Jesus and you speak English in St. Charles and you’re right here, if you’re part of our online church family in the United States or in Mexico or our missionary family around the world or any other brother and sister in Christ here or abroad or anywhere, if you call on the name of Jesus, you’re already part of it. There’s nothing more to solve.
So we can search because we’re trying to find that enhancement. We need to understand that we’re actually not following God’s call. Because the plan of the ages wasn’t Jesus plus whatever new puzzle we solve and we can do our best Da Vinci Code imitation and unlock the real meaning of the picture behind the picture.
The mystery of the ages was solved on the cross 2000 years ago. We’re just watching it be solved. We’re watching the results of that. The plan of the ages wasn’t something to come; the plan of the ages was Jesus, and He’s already been here and already saved us.
You know what my favorite thing off the barbecue grill is? It’s the hot dog. Just the humble hot dog. I love hot dogs. And you know, I like to every once in a while do a barbecue here at Little Hills and bring some hot dogs. I just mean just that smoky flavor of a hot dog, put it on that bun, just eat it plain, put on some relish, put on some sauerkraut. However you want to do it, it’s just going to be good and delicious. I do, I love hot dogs. I’m getting lost thinking about that delicious hot dog right now. I really want to eat that hot dog.
And no, I don’t have a wonderful live sermon illustration that I’m going to say there’s hot dogs in the oven right now. They’re not there. But you think about it. If you’re grilling most hot dogs, not all hot dogs, but the vast majority of hot dogs are already pre-cooked. And so what’s the point? You put them on the grill to absorb that smoky flavor, to get them maybe slightly crisp, right? The ideal hot dog shouldn’t be completely soft on the outside. You want a little bit of crunch as you bite into it, right? And then a soft inside. You don’t want to dry it out. You just want that perfect, just there’s that spot that just makes that hot dog perfect.
What I don’t do when I grill hot dogs is get a meat thermometer, right? I wonder if I’ve cooked it to a high enough temperature that I’ve made sure to kill everything. It’s already cooked. It doesn’t need that, right? There’s something to do with that hot dog so it’s fully glorifying our taste buds with its deliciousness, but it isn’t about getting it cooked. It’s done.
And a lot of times I think in the Christian life we’re acting like we still need the meat thermometer. How do we really get to salvation? How do we really get to where we’re supposed to be as Christians? And God’s saying, you’re done. I’ve saved you. You don’t need to unlock a mystery. Just follow Me. Love like I do.
And the funny thing is, you know, the more we get into, I wonder if I can really solve this and I wonder if we really need to do this or that. We need to get rid of this troublemaker or that troublemaker. We need to make the church just this way and then it will be good.
You know, the funny thing is in all that that we chase after, the thing that’s most absent is the one thing God actually said we need to do. We need to look like Him. We need to love like Him.
This thing that sort of struck me a few weeks ago when I made that post on X, and I was getting just like, I mean, some of it, I usually don’t file reports. I was filing reports because some of it was just, I mean, incredibly vile stuff.
Until one, it was people who, their bio said believer in Jesus, follower of the One. Here’s my favorite Bible verse. And it just struck me, I thought, if you read the bio and you read what they say that they’re really about, they’re really about, they’re saying following Jesus.
But you know what Jesus never did? He was never crude or vile. He was forceful when he needed to be. But every single encounter that Jesus ever had with anyone was filled with love. Yes, He turned over tables in the temple. But you know why He turned over tables in the temple? Because He loved the people and He knew that was dangerous for them. He wanted to restore them.
When He met the woman at the well, did He ask her some hard questions? Oh yes, He did. But why? Because He loved her and He wanted her to actually have the living water.
Even when He came to the Pharisees and called them a brood of vipers, I can’t say that’s the most complimentary thing they’ve probably ever heard, but you know why He did? Because He loved the people He’s ministering to, and He also loved them and He wanted to shake them out of it. It wasn’t about glorifying Himself. Even though He was the one that actually deserves to be glorified, it was about turning them away from a path of destruction into Himself.
Where are we pulling out those thermometers? Where am I pulling out that thermometer? Because I know I do this too. We keep going back to it. Somehow there has to be more. Somehow I’m going to make this life what it should be. Somehow I will feel fulfilled. Somehow it was going to be great. We keep pulling out the thermometer, trying to see if we can cook the meat a little higher.
And you know what? If you do that with a hot dog, eventually you’re going to ruin it. Because it doesn’t need that. It just needs to get that, to recognize the fact that it’s done and it’s just meant to do His purpose.
God wants us to understand that we’re saved, that we’re His. The path is already inevitable. Paul writes this, he uses a word that in Greek was a word referring to how they added up numbers. And something I learned as I was studying this passage, I didn’t know. Greeks, when they added up numbers, they did it the opposite way we do. They added and put the sum on the top. Kind of makes sense, actually. It’s the summit, right? Or it’s the sum of what they’re doing. We put it on the bottom. Anyway, it’s kind of interesting.
But Paul uses that phrase as he’s talking about Jesus as the head and the one that everything will ultimately be reconciled to. And I think what he wanted them to hear is that Jesus’s headship, Jesus’s reconciling of all things, Jesus making everything new is as certain as a mathematical formula. Two plus two is always four.
And even more so than two plus two is four, Jesus is the one who fulfills all things. And He’s going to. What’s left?
When you have a series of numbers, let’s say Jeff is at the end of the year tallying up as our faithful treasurer there is tallying up how everything went for the year. If he’s doing it well, which he does, he’s not creating what’s going to happen. He’s processing it, right? He’s not saying, oh, you know, I wish we’d spent a little more there, I’ll just write it down and say we spent more on that. Or I wish we’d spent less than that, I’ll just erase that and put something different, right? The numbers are already fixed. There’s already a path that’s fixed. Now his job is to describe what path that was so that we can see the fulfillment of it. He’s not making that fulfillment happen. He’s simply reporting on it.
And when we preach about Jesus, when we teach about Jesus, when we show Jesus’s love to people, we’re not making it happen. We’re reporting what has happened. Paul wants us to understand it’s already added up. It all adds up to Jesus as Lord over all. He is the one who is all in all. There’s nothing else that’s going to happen instead. We’re just invited to understand that we play a part in that.
He’s invited us into the story, and that we’re in one of those numbers in the column that He placed there, adding up to Him at the head. 1 Corinthians 15:24: “Then comes the end when He delivers the kingdom to God, the Father, after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For God has put all things in subjection under His feet. But when it says all things are put in subjection, it is plain that He is excepted who put all things in subjection under Him. When all things are subjected to Him, then the Son Himself will also be subjected to Him who put all things under subjection under Him, that God may be all in all.”
In other words, it all adds up. You can’t change the numbers. God is the one who is all in all, and everything will be subjected to Him. Everything will come under Jesus.
So where do we factor into that? I beat up on that series of novels a little bit, but I was thinking about that as I just finished one of the more recent installments of that series. And in that one, it finished up the actual mystery. It all got solved about maybe three quarters of the way through. There was still a substantial amount of the novel to read that was after Once Again, and I kind of thought, oh, here we go again.
But then I realized there were an awful lot of things that I would have liked to have known what the characters, how they were going to react that I hadn’t gotten to see because at that key scene where everything came together, they weren’t all there. Mystery was solved, but I wanted to know how all these characters that I’d come to care about, how they were going to process it, what was going to happen.
And that’s exactly what the last quarter of that particular novel was like. It was, let’s hear about this person over in Italy and this person in France and this person in New York that have all been working together and how they’re reacting to what they’ve solved together. It was incredibly satisfying because it was already solved, but there’s still the enjoyment of the solving.
And that’s what God’s inviting us into in this life. We’re not the ones solving the mystery. The mystery is solved. God has revealed for reasons we will never be able to explain that He is the God of all, the one who is just and holy, and yet the one who loves us so much that He would come into this world to save us. And that someday, a day of His choosing, whenever He wants, He’ll sum it all up.
But in the meantime, He invites us to be those who enjoy the solving of the mystery. We’re still solving. If we’re still thinking we’re trying to put together the mystery, what are we going to do? We’re going to do like the spy in that novel. We’re going to hunker down and try to stay away in case the assassins are coming. And we’re going to be trying to figure out who the ingroups and the outgroups are to make sure that we don’t get anyone that’s going to get in the way of solving it.
God says, you can quit hunkering down. No assassin’s going to take you away from Me. No evil, maniacal, shadowy world leader is going to destroy the evidence. No one’s going to do anything that’s going to stop Me from summing everything up. The numbers add up, and they’re only going one place.
So just come out, come out into the light. Come out and just act like Me, even when the world doesn’t get it, even when it seems like they’re going to oppose you, even when it seems like they’re going to win. Why? Because they’re not going to get it. Why? Because you don’t have to worry. I’ve already solved it for you.
Your mystery’s already solved. You already know who you are, you’re Mine. And you already know what you’re meant to be. You’re meant to be one who reflects My love to this world. And when we do that as Christians, when we do that and people see us around the world unified together, that nothing in this world divides us, our tie, our purpose, our importance is founded in Christ and Christ alone.
We do show the world a mystery that’s a mystery to them still, the people that don’t know Jesus, because it doesn’t make sense. The world says we should do all the things that we too often fall into doing. But when we turn to Him and we do that, we get to live in the solved mystery. God isn’t inviting us to someday experience what He’s going to do when He comes back and the world is good, and that’s why we should spend all of our time trying to figure out when it is that He’s going to come back.
He’s not going to let us experience the fullness of the Christian life if we just figure out the right way to add the expansion packs to make it good. God is inviting us to live in the light now, not just later. And that’s been a truth that’s been true for 2,000 years, and there’s a truth that’s true today. May we experience that today.
Would you pray with me, please? Father, we do pray that You would be with us, that You would help us to be those who live in Your light, that we reject the division and the anger and the hatred that we see in this world, that we would stand firm for Your truth. We stand firm in love. That the mystery that the world sees isn’t how people can speak so much about a loving God and act so unloving, but rather how we can act loving even in circumstances that don’t seem to encourage it.
How when we’re despised and rejected by the world, we still act as those who are loved because we follow One who was despised and rejected by the world. That we can live that way because we don’t live day to day wondering if we’re going to solve the mystery or not, but we live in the solved mystery that the God of the universe would love us. And then the days that we wait for You to return, that Lord, that we would enjoy those days, even in the hardships, even in the pain, because we already know that everything is under Your control, that You already have the victory. It’s a victory that You invite us to as our loving Heavenly Father. We pray this in the precious name of our Savior, Jesus. Amen.
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