Jaws Drop in Heaven

so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places (Eph 3:10).

There's more going on in God's work in the local church than we ever realize.  Paul tells us that part of his assignment is to flip on the lights so that everyone can see Jesus' staggering work of redemption (Eph 3:9).  But there's something happening that we don't see.  Another key element of the spread of the Gospel is "so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places" (v10).  In other words, jaws drop in heaven when angels and demons take one look at what Jesus is up to.  Paul wrote about angels and demons 2000 years before Dan Brown first fired up his laptop.

We need to be fully aware that as God executes His miraculous plan of salvation, the heavenly beings are in awe.  These creatures that see the unseen are overwhelmed by genius of our Triune God as He works in His church.  His brilliance is fully revealed through His amazing assembly of people from every ethnic group, every language, every socio-economic status and every religious heritage.  Jesus is building His church from an endless parade of goofballs, losers and weirdos.  Don't believe me?  That's EXACTLY Paul's point when he tells his Corinthian buddies how "God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise" (1Cor 1:26-29).  Bill Hybels is right when he says that the church is the hope of the world.  Only God could do something so incredible with such a ragtag crew of rejects.  That's probably a big reason why the heavenly audience is in shock.

So why is the Apostle Paul trying to get this point across?  Well, there's a counterfeit gospel that's infected churches in the area that includes the worship of angels.  Just down the road in Colossae, a group of religious charlatans have duped Jesus' followers into believing spiritual snake oil.  They've spread the word that Christ can't save us completely.  He might be good but He's not God.  According to them, we need to follow a complicated list of religious rules and save ourselves.  That includes angel worship (Col 2:18).  In his letter to the Colossian church, Paul makes it clear that Jesus is more God than we can wrap our brains around (Col 1:1-20).  And as God, He created everything we and everything we don't see (Col 1:16).  That includes angels and demons.  The bottom line: stop worshiping angels and understand that they are the ones awestruck by God's miracle in us.  Like the church in Ephesus, when we realize who Jesus really is, what He's really done and who we really are in Him, no goofy teaching like angel worship can fool us.

Paul throws down the phrase "heavenly places" (v10) three times in this letter to the Ephesian church.  He kicked things off by reminding us how "God...has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places" (Eph 1:3).  That's how he kicks off that incredible Tsunami of Blessings that open this epistle (Eph 1:3-14).  Here in chapter 3, the apostle mentions how the entire realm of spiritual beings stand in astonishment at the Son of God's construction of His church.

Later we read some very disturbing news from the heavenly places.  The bad news is that the followers of Jesus still have to deal with attacks from our unseen enemies.  "For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, again the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places" (Eph 6:12).  But the good news is that they are defeated enemies.  Christ has already kicked their tails.  "He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them" (Col 2:15).  Kind of like the remaining soldiers who keep fighting after their army's been defeated.  They continue to be a problem.  But they won't be for long.  We need to always be on the lookout for demonic attack.  However, Jesus has won the spiritual war. 

Paul is turning on the lights and revealing God's glorious plan not just for humans, but the spiritual world as well.  The work of Jesus and His mind-blowing plan of salvation drops the jaws of those in the spiritual realm.  These are the "things into which angels long to look" (1Pet 1:12).  We don't realize it because we can see it.  But thanks to the inspiration by the Holy Spirit, we can trust that Paul knows what he's talking about.  Let's face it, he's had a heavenly field trip (2Cor 12:1-7).

Can we talk a moment about the church?  It's clearly flawed.  It's disturbingly dysfunctional.  But Paul's not talking about any particular denomination or sect.  He's writing about Jesus' church.  Christ's wife.  The Body of the Son of God.  Does it have problems?  You bet.  And it always will on this side of eternity.  But God is using to do breathtaking things as His handpicked vehicle of redemption.  As the Puritans used to say, God can use a crooked stick to draw a straight line.  And that's why jaws drop in the heavens.