The sermon explores Ephesians 1:8–9, focusing on how God lavishes grace through the provision of “all wisdom and insight”. True wisdom is defined as the ability to see life from God’s perspective through the lens of Scripture, while insight is the practical understanding that leads to right decisions and godly living. A central concept presented is the “noetic effects of sin,” which describes how sin darkens the human mind and renders the unregenerate person spiritually blind to the beauty of the gospel. Because the natural mind views spiritual truths as foolishness, the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit is necessary to remove this veil and reveal the “mystery” of God’s plan for salvation through Jesus Christ.
This illuminating grace is not a one-time event at salvation but continues throughout the lifelong process of sanctification, where the Spirit repeatedly opens the believer’s eyes to understand and obey God’s Word. The sermon outlines three specific applications: first, this truth should breed deep humility by highlighting that believers did not save themselves through their own intelligence. Second, it establishes that true wisdom is found exclusively in the Spirit through His Word, rather than in worldly philosophies or personal feelings. Finally, it fosters real confidence in God’s faithfulness to complete the work He began in the believer’s soul. The congregation is ultimately encouraged to remain dependent on God and to seek a continuous, prayerful hunger for the wisdom found in Scripture.
SERMON FULL TEXT:
Last Sunday was Easter and praise the Lord, we enjoyed a good time of worship, remembering the resurrection, celebrating God’s grace towards us, the mystery revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord and the coming day when all things will be united under him. We looked at verses 8-10 in Ephesians chapter 1. We picked up right where we had left off the week before and we preached an Easter sermon from that text. And by we, I mean me. We didn’t preach the sermon. Oh, well, you were here. You heard that sermon. So, what our typical practice is in our church is to pick up where we left off the week before. So, this morning, we’re going to be in verses eight and nine again. You’re welcome. Didn’t get enough last week. You just thought because I went through three verses that you were like, “Man, we’re going to go fast”. No, we’re going to go back and we’re going to do it again. Why? Because we went through it too quickly. It was a great message.
I believe God blessed the message for last week to go along with the resurrection Sunday. And we had a lot of people who were here visiting and I believe the Lord used that to plant some seeds of the gospel. And I know there were some of you who were out last week and we missed you guys. So you kind of get to hear some of it a little bit. But I’m not going to just recover it again. The point is there was more there that I didn’t dig into as deeply and I want to go back. I believe that there is more here for our church, for us to get this morning. We’re going to go back to verses 8 and 9 because these words here show us the how. How did God bring us into the blessings that we celebrated last week? It’s not enough that grace has been lavished on us or that the mystery has been revealed. God has to open our blind eyes and enlighten our darkened minds.
He must give us wisdom and insight so that we can actually know and embrace the gospel and live obediently as his people. So, we’re going to take the time to dig into that more this morning. Last week, we looked at the empty tomb, but today we’re going to marvel at the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit that enables us to understand what that empty tomb actually means to us and for us and to walk in obedience to God’s word. So, if you will stand with me for the reading of God’s word, I will start back in verse three again. As a reminder, verses 3 through 14 is all one big long sentence in the original. So, it is good for us to go back to the beginning and read it again along with the context this morning. The letter of Paul to the Ephesians, chapter 1, beginning in verse three.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him in love. He predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of his will to the praise of his glorious grace with which he has blessed us in the beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of his will, according to the purpose which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in him, things in heaven, and things on earth. Father, this morning as we dig even deeper into your word, Lord, I am in awe of your word. The depths are unsearchable.
Lord, we could spend the rest of our lifetime on these three verses. Lord, we thank you that your word is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword. Lord, it is straight from your mouth. Every word we read is a divine word that you have given us to teach us your ways, to teach us who you are, to teach us who we are, to teach us all things that we need for life and godliness, to correct us, to reprove us, to train us in righteousness so that we may be complete, equipped for every good work. Nothing left out that could be called good. This morning, Father, as we dive into this phrase to understand how you have lavished us with wisdom and insight, revealing the mystery, how you bring that about in our lives. Lord, let it be to us who are your people further enlightening, good for our souls, cause for rejoicing, cause for humility, but cause also for confidence in you. Lord, bless this time the reading and proclaiming of your word for the glory of Christ.
In his name we pray. Amen. You may be seated. First, I want to just delineate here where we’re going to spend our time. I said 8 and nine, but it’s not really all of eight and nine. I want us to focus our attention on in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of his will. I want us to see wisdom and insight. I want us to understand the illuminating grace of God. Notice first, God lavishes his people with wisdom and insight. We talked a little bit about that last week. Again, we’re going over the same verses, so some of this is going to be a little bit repetitive, but hopefully not too much. God has lavished the riches of his grace upon his people. And now he tells us how that grace abounds on his people. It’s in all wisdom and insight. Remember last week we talked about that lavished means to cause something to overflow in super abundance again. It was like the dam just being gone all of a sudden and the water would just come down on us but never end.
Not a trickle. It’s a flood. But this flood of his grace comes to us in the form of wisdom and insight or wisdom and understanding. Wisdom being that word Sophia that you know in Greek it is defined in different ways. It’s knowledge and action. It’s what it really is. It’s the ability to see life as it really is. You see, there is a worldly form of wisdom. The world believes that they can see life as it really is through objective observation. That’s not the wisdom God is talking about here because that’s not seeing life as it really is. That’s seeing life as you think it is, as you see that it is, which is not reality. It might be partially real. You might at least observe it. But you cannot understand it as it really is unless you understand it God’s way. When he says he gives us wisdom, he doesn’t just make us smarter is what I’m getting at here.
He doesn’t just give us more of an understanding, a wise way to look at the world from our own perspective. There’s a lot of those people out there, but they all pale in comparison to the wisdom that he’s talking about here. True wisdom is to see life as God sees it from his perspective, which if you’ve been around for any length of time, you know means in accordance with his word. Seeing things through the lens of God’s scripture. This is his words to us to tell us everything we need for life and godliness. So wisdom would be to see life through the lens of scripture so that everything makes sense to you only as it comes through scripture. You go wait a minute that sounds wise, that sounds good, that sounds like you know what you’re talking about, but God’s word says something else. That sounds logical, that sounds philosophical, that sounds really smart, but it goes against God’s clear words. So therefore, it’s not as wise as you think it is.
God’s wisdom trumps all others. So wisdom here is referring to understanding life as God says in his word. And then insight, understanding, has more of the knowledge piece of it and the carrying out of it. It’s the practical understanding of how to put what you understand into action in the decisions that you make in your living every day. It’s practical. Let me just give you the definition I wrote down: practical understanding that leads to right decisions and right living. So it’s not just insight in that it’s cerebral and just mental. It is for the purpose of living your life, making the decisions you make and the way you live your life. So of course, just like with wisdom, there is a worldly form of this. There’s a worldly form of insight and understanding and you all know those people.
There’s some very smart people out in the world and they carry out their understanding of things in the way that they decide and the way that they live. And it’s usually always revealed in how they carry it out. Revealed in the decisions they make and in the life that they’re living which reveals that it is not a godly insight because again, what’s the standard? Scripture. That looks like a right way to decide this about your life, that looks like a right way to live your life because it looks appealing in some way, but if you find in scripture that goes against God’s clear direction, God’s clear commands for your decisions and your living, guess what? It’s not right. Now, that sounds mean, Mark. You’re telling me that you can look at somebody’s life and tell them that they’re not living right? Yes. Not because I’m the standard of what’s right.
Not because I think it’s right, but because God’s word is clear, so I don’t have to even, and this is as someone who doesn’t always get it right. Let me go ahead and say that. But we don’t tell each other whether something is right or wrong based on what we believe. If we go to others with scripture, if we observe other people’s lives with scripture, we can know for certain if they are living according to wisdom and insight according to God’s word or not. There’s a standard and it doesn’t shift. So God lavishes wisdom and insight on his people. Not just to make us smart and wise in the world, but to make us smart and wise in his word. It’s his wisdom. It’s his insight. And all of it, let me say this, all of the wisdom and insight that we need is found in here. Amen. There’s not more out there waiting for us. We were talking about this morning in our lesson about Gideon.
There’s not more signs we’re looking for. We’re not throwing out fleeces going, “God, show me if this is your will or not. Go show me if this is the wise decision or not. Go show me if this is the knowledge you want me to have or not”. It’s all found right here. So God lavishes his grace in all wisdom and insight upon his people. This is godly wisdom, godly insight that leads to right living, godly living. So then in the context where we are at when God saves a person, because again that’s what this whole sentence is about—salvation from beginning to end. When God saves a sinner, he doesn’t leave that sinner in the dark trying to figure out life on his own from that point on. Unfortunately, a lot of evangelism nowadays does exactly that. We share the gospel with them; we leave them right there; we go on; we leave them in the dark. But the point is God does not leave us in the dark. He gives us wisdom and insight.
He gives us what we need. I’m not saying he pours his Bible into us; I’m saying he gives us the wisdom and insight that we need to get into his word and understand it and live it. The Jeep commercial is wrong. There is a guide for life. There is a guide book. It’s scripture. God doesn’t just pardon us from our sin; he enlightens our minds which is part of the spiritual blessings which is part of the riches of his grace that we’ve been talking about. But why is this necessary? Why does God give us wisdom and insight? That will bring us to the second thing I wanted to discuss. Apart from Christ, we are blinded by the noetic effects of sin. Noetic—N O E T I C. It simply means of the mind. Sin affects our mind. The Bible is clear about what sin does to the human mind. Sin does not just make us bad; it makes us blind. It darkens our understanding. That’s what the noetic effects of sin are: you are darkened in your understanding.
Apart from Christ, sin affects your ability to know rightly. Well, how do you know that? Did you do an objective test to find that out? No, God’s word tells me so. Can you do an objective test on something that is not physical? Can you do a physical test on a mind? No. Can you do the physical test on the spiritual heart, the spirit of a man? No. What is it where wisdom and insight are found? In the mind of man. And when your mind, your spirit, your heart, all encompassing the same part of you, is darkened apart from Jesus, guess what? You can’t know life the way it really is. You can’t see. You don’t have godly wisdom. You don’t have godly insight. You cannot understand the things of God or the way that God has made his world the right way. And you definitely cannot find the solution to that problem on your own. Sin destroys our ability to know life as it really is. Listen, Paul describes this in Ephesians 4.
They are darkened. He’s talking about the unregenerate, those that are apart from Christ, the lost people in this world, which we all were, by the way. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to their hardness of heart. Listen, the natural man, the unredeemed, unregenerate man is not just stubborn. He’s ignorant in the things of God. And I don’t say ignorant in a condescending way; I mean it as the word is defined. They don’t know. And what’s worse is they don’t know what they don’t know. They can’t because their minds are darkened. Paul says the same thing to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 2:14. Listen, the natural person again, the unredeemed, unregenerate person, which we all were, the natural person does not accept the things of the spirit of God. They are folly to him. Not only can they not understand it, they seem foolish to those who think they’re wise in this world.
They are folly to him. And he is not able—listen—not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. Not able. That is total inability when it comes to spiritual truth. The unredeemed heart sees, hears, looks at the gospel and says, “That’s foolishness”. The cross sounds like a weakness; the doctrine of election sounds unfair; the call to repentance of your sins sounds like bad news. The natural mind, the unredeemed mind simply cannot see the beauty and the truth of the gospel on their own. 2 Corinthians keeps it going. 4:3-4 puts it even stronger than that. If our gospel is veiled, Paul says, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case, the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ. That is man’s natural condition. That is how we are born into this world. We were all once in that darkness.
We were all once unable to know, unable to understand, unable to love the things of God. And if left to ourselves, we would never have come to Christ. We would never have seen the glory of the mystery of his will that we talked about last week. But praise God, he did not leave us there. In his sovereign grace, the Holy Spirit illuminates our minds and makes that mystery known to us. Look at the text again: God lavished grace upon us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of his will. Again, the mystery is not like a mystery as in you’re in a dark room and you have a black puzzle and you’re trying to put it together. That’s not what he’s talking about. It’s that truth that was once hidden in God as he revealed himself and revealed his plan in time and now has been fully realized, fully revealed in his son Jesus Christ and in his gospel.
God’s plan to save sinners from every tribe, tongue, and nation through the death and resurrection of his son. But listen, the natural mind, the unredeemed, the lost person can never discover this truth, can never discover this mystery on their own. But God makes it known. How? By the illuminating work of his Holy Spirit. Jesus promised in John chapter 16, “When the spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will glorify me”. The spirit takes the things of Christ and opens our eyes so that we can see them as they really are. We can see life as it really is. He removes the veil; he removes the scales from our eyes; he turns the light on in the dark room that we are in. He illumines our minds. And so this is why John can say in 1 John chapter 2 that we have received an anointing from the Holy One and that we have all knowledge. It’s not that we all of a sudden know everything about the Bible, but we can actually see it and understand it now.
It’s the spirit of God at work within us. Regeneration—that is the rebirth that comes about by the Holy Spirit—and illumination go hand in hand. At the moment that God makes us alive in Christ, he also at the same time enlightens our understanding so that the gospel is no longer foolishness. Instead, we will see it as it actually is. It is the power of God and it is the wisdom of God and we want it in that moment. The Holy Spirit opens our eyes to see and the thing we should want the most is what we want the most: Jesus. Illumination then, understanding the undoing of those noetic effects of the mind, begins with the gospel. The very first thing that the spirit makes known to the unregenerate soul is our need for Jesus Christ and the gospel that shows that he has fulfilled that need. But it doesn’t stop there. The wisdom and insight we need doesn’t just stop when we say yes to Jesus.
Well, you got light now, but you’re going to have to carry that light for the rest of your life. You got to try to figure it out from here. You point the light where you want to go and you’ll figure it out. No, that same illuminating grace continues on now throughout our sanctification. The spirit does not give us a one-time flash of light and then leave us to walk in the dark again. He keeps opening our eyes. He keeps illuminating our eyes, our minds to more and more of God’s word so that we can know him, know his commands, know his desires for our life and obey it. Again, it’s wisdom and insight. It’s not just the knowledge of it; it’s also the ability to carry it out. How to carry it out, how to decide, and how to live. Think of the psalmist’s prayer in Psalm 119. He repeatedly prays, “Lord, open my eyes that I might behold wondrous things out of your law.
Give me understanding that I may keep your law and observe it with my whole heart. Let my eyes be fixed on your commandments”. You see, the believer who’s been given wisdom and insight wants more of it. You want a quick test of your spiritual life: Do you desire more wisdom and insight from God’s word or do you stay away from it? Do you desire to sit under teaching of God’s word or do you refrain yourself from it? Do you hunger and thirst for it daily reading, studying, meditating on it, or is it something you just check the box to do? A believer wants more of this wisdom and insight because sanctification is the lifelong process of the renewing of the mind. And the renewing of the mind happens through the word of God. Paul prays for the Philippians like this: “And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and all discernment so that you may approve what is excellent”.
You see, growing in wisdom and insight is not optional for the Christian. It’s the normal outworking of what the spirit is doing in us. Beloved, this is the wonder of our salvation. God does not save us and leave us ignorant; he saves us and teaches us. He gives us wisdom and insight so that we can know the mystery of his will, believe the gospel, and then walk in obedience to his word. So what does this truth mean to us? Three things that I want us to focus our attention on here to apply these things to our life. First, knowing these things should breed deep humility. It should crush all our pride. We did not save ourselves. We weren’t smart enough to figure it out. We did not come to our senses by our own intelligence or willpower.
The fact that you believe, the fact that you see, the fact that you know the beauty of the gospel, that you see Christ and understand him is entirely the work of God’s sovereign grace. Every glimpse, every spiritual truth that you come to understand is a gift of God. It is not for us to boast in ourselves, but everything in all of these things to thank God for. So, first, it breeds humility and crushes our pride. Second, it tells us where true wisdom and insight are found. I mean, if I was to ask anyone in this room, do you want to live a wise and understanding life? Every one of us would say, “Yeah, sign me up. I don’t want to be an idiot. I don’t want to be a fool. I don’t want to be dumb all my life,” as Granny Miller used to say. I want wisdom; I want understanding. Okay. Well, this verse tells us where true wisdom and insight are found.
You must go to God’s word and it must be illuminated by the Holy Spirit. You don’t dare lean on your own understanding. Proverbs 3. We don’t dare lean on our own feelings. We don’t dare lean on what seems right in our own eyes or on the philosophies and the insights of the world. As 2 Timothy 3 reminds us every week, the Christian is fully equipped for every good work. How? Through God’s word. We have the Holy Spirit living in us and the sufficient word of God in our hands. The only other legitimate help that we need comes from fellow believers who open the scriptures with us, who are also full of the spirit to counsel us, to teach us, to preach to us, to do so in a way that is grounded in the spirit and the word. You want true wisdom and insight, it’s only going to be found in the spirit through his word. That’s it. Every other wisdom and insight is less than, is worldly, is not good enough.
Third, even though it breeds deep humility and crushes our pride, the third thing that this actually does is it breeds real confidence. And you’re going, “Wait a minute, that sounds contradictory”. Didn’t you just say it humbles us and crushes our pride? I’m not talking about self-confidence, but it breeds confidence in God and in his word. The more clearly we see the spirit opening our eyes through the scripture, the more our faith grows. We become increasingly convinced that God is actually faithful to do what he said he’s going to do, that his word is actually true, and that he will finish the work that he has started in us. So these verses do a double work in our soul: it crushes us down low where we need to be, showing us that all faith in ourselves and in this world is empty and worthless, and at the same time, it builds us back up, showing us that faith in God and in his word is truly life indeed.
So if you’re here today and you have never trusted in Christ, I want you to hear the bad news and the good news clearly. The bad news is that apart from Christ, your mind is blinded by sin. And I was there; we were all there. I’m not mad at you; I’m not talking down to you. But I want you to understand the reality of your situation: you were blind. Well, how do you know I’m blind? Because I was there. I was blind, but now I see. And I can’t unsee what I’ve seen. Apart from Christ, you are blinded by sin; you can’t see the beauty of the gospel on your own. But the good news is that the same God who lavished on us wisdom and insight is actually able to open your eyes too. The Holy Spirit can make known to you the mystery of his will. Call out to him. Ask him to remove the veil.
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, his death, burial, and resurrection as payment for your sins. And in that moment, you will begin to see and you will be saved. Church, beloved, we need to walk away from this text today humbled, dependent on God, and confident in him. And so, let us pray along with the psalmist as we heard earlier: “Open my eyes that I may behold wondrous things from your law”. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. For the same spirit who opened our eyes will keep opening them more and more and more as we grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.