Podcasts about ephesians 3:1-13

2023-02-26

Sunday 8:30 Sermon Rev. Dr. Shelton Sanford May 05, 2019

Sunday 8:30 Sermon Rev. Dr. Shelton Sanford May 05, 2019

Sunday 8:30 Sermon Rev. Dr. Shelton Sanford May 05, 2019

Sunday 8:30 Sermon Rev. Dr. Shelton Sanford May 05, 2019

Ephesians 3:1-13 - Derek McCollum

God's glorious plan is too good to keep a secret anymore.

God's glorious plan is too good to keep a secret anymore.

Introduction Well, three weeks ago, I was right in the middle of a sermon. So, how do you begin a sermon, like that? So I want you to take that outline that I've given you in the back and just forget about it. I'm not doing that. I did a lot of that last time. I want to do something else. And I want to zero in on Ephesians 3, specifically verses 8-10, and make that the centerpiece of what I want to say to you today. I want to focus in on God's purpose in Paul's proclamation. Let me just lay my cards on the table. My idea in this sermon is that Paul is an utterly unique individual in redemptive history as the Apostle to the Gentiles. That is true, but he is also a paradigm example of an ordinary Christian, “less than the least of all God's people,” who was given a powerful ministry that has eternal ramifications, and in that way, he's an example for us. We, who are also, we should and could say, “less than the least of all God's people,” less than the least of the saints, we can have a powerful ministry of proclamation of the “unsearchable riches of Christ,” as mentioned here in Ephesians 3. We have that power through the Holy Spirit. We have that calling. Kyle talked about that in his sermon in John 20, "As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you." And so I want to heighten awareness of this and this especially comes on the heels of me having been three days in New Orleans as a trustee of the International Mission Board, and these are trying and challenging times for the IMB. International Mission Board Changes Many of you may know, many of you may not know that because of financial restrictions the IMB gave out a voluntary retirement initiative, a V.R.I., to missionaries on the field above 50 years and older voluntarily inviting them to retire from missions work. And the numbers are in the range of about 600 missionaries coming off the field. That's obviously a soul-searching time for the IMB, it's a soul-searching time for Southern Baptist churches, and a time for us, I think, as a local church to recommit ourselves as never before to missions to unreached people group missions. And so I want to do some of that through this sermon. I want to zero in on Ephesians 3:8-10, and I want to give you a sense of the grandeur and the glory of what God is doing in the world. I want you to be captivated by it. I want you to be captivated by the work of display that God is doing of His own wisdom and glory in the Church. I want you to see that. A Divine Masterpiece A couple of years ago, I had the opportunity, I was going to Serbia and I went with my daughter, Caroline, and we stopped at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, and they have some of the most astonishing works of art there by the Dutch masters, some of these incredible paintings, and they're just huge. And one of the biggest paintings in the museum is a painting called The Night Watch by Rembrandt, and it's just absolutely massive. 12 feet wide 14 feet high. I'm thinking, “How much paint went into that, how many cans of paint?” You know how you go to Lowe's and it's like, "Well, I'm... " if Rembrandt were hearing this, "Cans of paint, really?" But this was a masterpiece. And you have this picture of this scene from Dutch history, and I'm not going to go into what's being depicted there, but he uses light and darkness very well, and different colors, and he highlights certain individuals and others are more back in the darkness. And it gave me a picture of just the vast complexity of what God is doing in redemptive history, the vast complexity of light and darkness, of successes and apparent failures, of pleasureful moments, and moments of great affliction and suffering that go together to make this master work. It's an illustration of God's sovereign design in history, and I want to zero in on missionaries and Christ's servants, that's all of us, as somewhat like various ragged different sized paint brushes that the Lord is using to paint this masterpiece. And He's got a plan, it says in verse 11, that He worked out before the foundation of the world. He's got it all figured out in His mind, and we can be in the hands of the master to paint this incredible masterwork, greater than anything that we can possibly imagine, even greater than a 12 by 14 painting. Now, I was reading recently a sermon by John Piper on this Scripture and I'm indebted to him for the structure. He does a very interesting thing here; he goes right to verse 10 as the centerpiece and then backs out as he often does. Some of you hear this kind of preaching, and it's helpful. He says, "What's the main point of all of this?" And he's going to say in verse 10, the main point is the display of the wisdom of God, that there's a display of the multifaceted various variegated wisdom of God in the Church, to the angels, so the powers and principalities. The means to that, and he backs up one step, is in verse 10, the Church. It is by the Church that the wisdom of God is displayed. The gathering of the people of God, “chosen before the foundation of the world,” elect from before the foundation of the world by sovereign grace completely apart from works, chosen by God, predestined, but then gathered into the Church, the gathering of the people of God, verse 10a, from all Gentile nations. The means to the end of that one step back in verse 9 is the preaching of the unsearchable riches of Christ among the nations. And then one step back from that, the means to that is the “least of the saints,” that's you and me being set apart unto God to do that proclamation. Now, the word preaching may not be incredibly helpful because not many of us are called to be public preachers, but we can proclaim “the unsearchable riches of Christ,” to the end that the Church be gathered from all the Gentile nations, to the end that the manifold wisdom of God would be put on display for the angels to see. That's what's going on in Ephesians 3:8-10. Manifold Wisdom: God’s Children Across the Globe And so I want to zero in on this masterpiece and just look at it. I want us to see it. And as you look at verse 10, we've got this idea of the “manifold wisdom of God.” Now what does that word “manifold” mean? It's not an easy word; it's not a word that we usually would use in everyday speech. And for that matter in the Greek, it's a one-off, it's only used this one time, and so it's an unusual word. Half of the word Poikilos. I usually don't say Greek words from the pulpit, but that word, it means variegated, wrought in various colors, a sense of variety. We could use the word diversity, a sense of the complexity of the wisdom of God. It's subtle; it's varied, it's intricate. But then Paul puts a prefix, polu, so the much variegated wisdom of God in the Gentile nations that are coming to faith in Christ; that's what he's talking about. And so we have very many colors in this masterpiece painting, different shades, some bright some dark. It's complex, it's astonishing, it's variegated. There are people groups from all over the world, every continent on the face of the earth, and you think about it, Europeans, so blond Scandinavians, people from Norway or Sweden, or from the lowlands like Netherlands, Holland, Germany, Britain, and Southern Europe. You've got Italians and Greeks, etcetera. Then you have people from Africa, different tribes, and they have various genetic appearances like the Ethiopians, with what Isaiah calls tall and smooth skin. And then you've got the Congolese or Nigerians, different people groups, and that God has elect from each of these groups and it's an astonishingly varied thing that God is doing here. And you've got people from Asia and Latin America and all over the world, and God is doing all of this incredible work, it says to display His wisdom. So look at verse 10b, it says, "So that through the Church the manifold wisdom of God might be made known." So this is purpose language. There's a reason why all of this has happened and God has a purpose. What is that purpose? The ultimate purpose of missions and evangelism, the ultimate purpose of the Church is display, that God would be put on display. That everyone might know how great a God He is, how glorious and radiant He is to put Him on display. God’s Glory: The Purpose of All Creation God does all things for the display of His glory, that's why He created the universe. That's why God said, "Let there be light," and why God created the heavens and the earth, and all of these things were for the display of His glory. Nothing's more important than that. Missions is not more important than that. Nothing's more important. God does everything for the display of His glory, all things. And not only did God create the world and all of its complexity, and it's amazing, I mean this planet Earth. We saw the movie Martian, and the theme of that movie is “Earth is better than Mars.” That's what I get out of that. If you want to live somewhere definitely live on Earth, not Mars. Things just grow better here and it's just better in every respect. There are other themes in that movie, whatever. Redeemed for His Glory But Earth is amazing and it's just beautiful and it's rich and complex, and the people that have grown here created in the image of God and spread out to the distant islands, and all over, and mountains, and valleys and all that; they're all over the earth. God did all of this so that the earth would be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. That's why God made everything. Well that's also why He redeemed the elect in Christ. His purpose is for the display. We're His “sons and daughters,” Isaiah 43 says, “so created for His glory.” And redeemed for His glory. And so, we're redeemed. And so Ephesians 2 talks about all of that in terms of the Gentiles, how "They were dead in their transgressions and sins in which they used to live when they followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature following his desires and thoughts, like the rest we were by nature objects of wrath. But God because of His great mercy, with which He loved us, and showed mercy on us in Christ." God made us alive with Christ, and He redeemed us out of “every tribe, and language, and people, and nation,” and He forgave us all our sins. And we, it says in Ephesians 2, second half of the chapter, we were at one point, “aliens and strangers, and excluded.” Now, mysteriously, according to Ephesians 3, we are “equal heirs with the sons and daughters of Abraham.” We are like “wild olive shoots that have been grafted in now.” We'll get into more of that. Romans 11 uses that language, but we, the Gentiles, we have been redeemed, and we are now deriving life-giving sap from this developed complex tree of Abraham's descendants. And we're just drawing, through Christ, drawing life-giving sap through this incredible work that God's doing in redemptive history. We wild, weird Gentiles grafted into that, and now we're heirs with the Jews. How amazing is that? And that's incredibly complicated and it's varied and diverse and beautiful. And that puts the wisdom of God on display. And the audience, if you're going to have display, you're going to have an audience. And the audience here interestingly are the “powers and principalities.” That's language for the angels, the angelic beings. And so, God is putting His wisdom on display to the angels. Two Kinds of Angels Now, there are two categories of angels; there are good angels, and there are bad angels. I don't know which he has in mind here. Well, let's go with both for a minute. That God is putting the Church, or putting His wisdom on display, through the Church, to the good angels, who it says in 1 Peter 1:12, "Even angels long to look into these things." They are really into what God's doing in missions. Angels are fascinated with missions; they're fascinated with everything Christ is doing, and they're leaning forward to look at what is happening. And they care about unreached people groups; they care about the lost. They care about lost people in engineering departments and at hospitals; they care about lost neighbors. They're interested in seeing the elect come to Christ, and they celebrate, and they get excited when it happens. So, good angels are watching the unfolding manifold wisdom of God here. They're excited about it, and they don't know what's going to happen. That's why they're longing to look into these things. Like, "What's going to happen next?" And it's so exciting; it's just crackling with energy up there in Heaven. What's the next thing that's going to happen? Or we could say it's bad angels, as we're going to get in Ephesians 6:12. We're told to “put on the full armor of God, so we can take our stand against our enemies in the heavenly realms,” who are demonic forces, demons, bad angels. And you could see that too, how God is putting the “manifold wisdom of God,” in the Church, on display to the bad angels. "You can't stop them. I will build my Church and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. You demons can't stop the spread of the Gospel." And so that's a beautiful thing whether good angels or bad angels doesn't matter; to the “powers and principalities,” God is putting His wisdom on display, and that's an awesome thing. And you should be drawn into that; it should matter to you more than anything else in the world, the glory of God. So, missions exists to put God's variegated wisdom on display to the angels, good and bad, and to us. God has a lot to show to us too. Doesn't He? It's not just to the angels. We got that back in Ephesians 2:7 "That in the coming ages, he might show the incomparable riches of His grace." God shows no grace to the angels, good or bad. The good angels don't need it; they never sin. You think about Amazing Grace. Were they ever wretches? Were they ever lost? No they weren't. They've never been wretches who were lost and saved by grace. And then the demons, there is no Gospel for them. There's never been any hope of their redemption ever. There's no promise of it. But we can sing and forever. In Ephesians 2:7, “we're going to see in the coming ages just how much grace God has shown to all of us;” it's going to be amazing. And so all of this is for the display. The masterpiece is being painted now; missionaries and messengers of every type we are the messy brushes God is using to paint that painting. Let me just pause and say "Are you involved?" I mean are you a part of this? Are you involved in the external journey of missions and evangelism? Are you making sacrifices to speak the word Jesus to lost people around you? And if not, I just want to, as winsomely as I can plead with you to come and get involved because this is the work that God iss doing in the world. Alright, so that's the center step, the centerpiece of this, Ephesians 3:8-10. Riches in His Wisdom Divine Wisdom Displayed to Angels Now, let's take one step further removed. It's like a so that, so that, so that journey. So, the ultimate end is the display of God's wisdom. One step back is the gathering of God's worldwide Church, so that His wisdom can be put on display, so that's in verse 10a, “So that through the Church the manifold wisdom of God should be made known.” So the Church being gathered from all nations, that's how it's happening. And Paul talks about his own ministry here in seeing that happen. He says, "to me, although I am less than the least of all God's people, this grace was given to me to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ and to bring light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things." Now, I've already talked about the mystery. It's that Gentiles could be fully heirs with the Jews; that we can be grafted in. It's interesting in Romans 11 when Paul gives us that image of wild olive shoots being grafted into a cultivated olive tree. And then just talks about that and what God's doing with the Jews as well. And at the end of that, he celebrates the same thing. "Oh, the depths of the riches of the wisdom and the knowledge of God, how unsearchable His judgments and His paths beyond tracing out. Who has known the mind of the Lord or who has been His counselor?" It's just amazing what God's doing, isn't it? It's stunning. God is gathering His global Church; He's gathering elect people, chosen from before the foundation of the world. He knows who they are, He knows what their names are, He knows where they're living, and He will not fail to bring them in, elect from every nation, but they're called by the proclamation of the Gospel. And so, it is as the Church is being built, it is through the Church, believers in Jesus Christ, that the manifold wisdom of God is on display to the angels. So that's one step back now let's take the next step back. The preaching of Christ's unsearchable riches builds the Church; that's how it happens. It's the proclamation of Jesus Christ, and not as a historical figure but I mean, as one in whom is all the riches of the wisdom and the knowledge of God in bodily form, Jesus as unsearchable wealth. The proclamation of that. "Although I am less than the least of all God's people this grace was given to me to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ." That's what missionaries get to do. They get to sell everything they own. Christy and I did that to go to Japan. I'll never forget that. I'll never forget that yard sale. I'll never forget. I am not permitted by one of my kids to say that person's name without asking permission first, and I've not asked permission, but that was a hard day for that person as that person saw that person's toys being sold. I will never forget that. I'm not sure if that person has forgotten it. Probably has. But just selling everything. And you go as a missionary, and you go live in a foreign country. And why do you do that? Well, this is what you get to do. What you get to do is proclaim to people who have never heard of Jesus, or have heard of Him, but don't understand who He really is, haven't made a commitment to Him. They get to proclaim the unsearchable riches of Christ. Do you see that right in the text, the unsearchable riches of Christ. Well, what does that mean, unsearchable? Unsearchable Riches I think there's another word, like fathomless. Okay, the fathomless depths, you think about it. There's this story about Ferdinand Magellan who was circumnavigating the globe. He got into the Pacific Ocean, and it was just immense, and amazing and all that, and he wanted to find out how deep it was, so he spliced together the rope they found lying around on the deck, attached it to a cannonball, and it's like, didn't hit bottom. So they said, alright, we need more rope. So they went and got more rope and then it didn't hit the bottom, and then they got all the rope they had available and it still didn't hit the bottom; that's fathomless. So Jesus Christ is so glorious, you can take all the rope you could ever find, in terms of your own mind, and you'll never hit bottom. That's the greatness of Christ. Or the unsearchable riches, another image comes to my mind from my favorite movie Ben Hur. And they're about to have this awesome chariot race, you know what I'm talking about, that's one of the greatest scenes ever in movies. And they're going to have this chariot race. But before that this Arab guy, who owns the team of horses that Charlton Heston is going to drive goes to this Roman enemy and he wants to make a bet; he wants to bet on the race. So he's got a bunch of guys with him carrying heavy boxes of golden coins, and it's really pretty cool because he takes this metal stick, and he opens up the chest and he starts rummaging around and pushing the stick down. Rummage, push, rummage, push, rummage, push. And there's the bottom. And he's got like six boxes like that. And he wants to bet all of this money on Ben Hur. Well you can get, I don't care what size stick you get, you can rummage and push and rummage and push. Jesus' greatness, His infinite glory is immeasurable. It's unsearchable; you're not going to get to the bottom of the gold box. You'll be forever finding out just how great your Savior is, how great He was in saving you, how great He is, how great He always will be. So perhaps the unsearchable riches of Christ could refer to the infinite mystery of His person, His humanity and deity, fully God fully man. It could refer to that; it's unsearchable. Or the perfection of His life, His sinlessness, that He lived a life “tempted in every way, just as we are, yet was without sin”. Unsearchable. You'll never get done thinking about this. Or you could think about the greatness of the power he displayed in all of the miracles he did; walking on water, changing the water into wine. And raising the dead, Lazarus dead four days, and there was nothing He couldn't do. You could ponder all of the things, speaking to the wind and the waves and it obeyed His voice. “What kind of man is this that even the wind and the waves obey Him?” The “unsearchable riches of Christ.” Well you might talk about just the infinite mystery of His substitutionary death, how He died in our place on the cross under the infinite wrath of God we all deserve for violating God's laws. For not “loving Him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and not loving our neighbor as ourself,” or our corruptions and our immoralities and all of that wickedness. Put on Jesus and the fathomless wrath of God, the infinite wrath of God poured out on Jesus our substitute, unsearchable riches of Christ. And then the glory of His resurrection, the fact that God raised Him from the dead on the third day and He appeared in a resurrection body never to die again, and He ascended through the heavens, through the clouds, and sits at the right hand of Almighty God and from that place, he will return some day to judge the living and the dead, the “unsearchable riches of Christ.” You're never going to get done thinking about the greatness of Christ. And we are witnesses of all this. A Providential Plane Ride I had a witnessing opportunity on the plane coming back from New Orleans sitting next to an African-American woman who had a ministry to public defenders. And she talked about some of the problems with the penal system, specifically with African-American men, and what she does, the training she does with public defenders. But as interested as I was in her work, I was more interested in her soul. So at some point, we're going to change the subject a little bit. Talk about Jesus. So I asked her what her spiritual background was. She said, well, she was raised a Muslim. Her mother had converted from being a Baptist to a Muslim to marry a Muslim man, but then he divorced her, so then she converted back to being a Baptist after he left her. But she was kind of raised as a Muslim. She married an atheistic Jew, and now she's kind of in the middle of nothing. I'm thinking, "Alright, God brought her to me." And we had an amazing conversation. She had question after question after question. She said to me, she said, "I swore I would never talk about religion and politics, but here we are talking about religion." I said "It's fine to talk as long as we don't get heated. Treat each other with kindness." And so, she was encouraged and she had questions about Jesus, about substitution, about Islam. There just wasn't enough time on the flight. We get to do that. Brothers and sisters, we get to do that. We get to have conversations like that, and it's a little bumpy to get into those conversations, but once you're in, you may find somebody who really has a lot of questions and who wants to know more about Jesus. We get to preach the unsearchable riches of Christ. Less than the Least God Works With All His Children One step back and the final one. The people who do this proclamation are “less than the least of all God's people,” that's who they are. That's who Paul is. Now Paul, I don't deny I already said it. He is utterly unique in redemptive history. There will never be another Paul ever. And we're not Paul, we can't be. We won't be. But, Paul talks about himself in verse 8, "To me was given although I am less than the least of all God's people of the saints to preach to the Gentiles." But Paul, I believe, is a role model for us, as he is a role model in redemption and forgiveness. In 1 Timothy 1 he says, "This is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am the worst." "But in order to display His unlimited patience and His mercy to sinners like you, He saved the worst, me, so that you'd be encouraged that He can save you too." That's the logic of 1 Timothy 1. Well, here's the logic. I'm going with Ephesians 3. The logic is if God can use me to preach the “unsearchable riches of Christ,” Paul would say, “He can definitely use you.” That's what he would say, I think. So, do you qualify as less than the least of all God's people. You're like, "No, I think I'm actually better than most of God's people." Alright, well, tell you what, why don't you just go out and do some witnessing and some missions and you'll start getting sanctified and then you'll say, "You know, I really am a sinner saved by grace. I am less than the least of all God's people." But wherever you think you are, God can use you to proclaim the unsearchable riches of Christ to elect people who haven't been converted yet, so that the Church can be built, so that the manifold wisdom of God can be put on display to the angels. That's what's going on in this text. Being God’s Paintbrush Do you want in? I want in. I want to be part of that. I don't want to waste my life on something God's not doing. He's painting a masterpiece. I want to be a brush in His hand. What about you? What about you? I don't think it's shameful that this VRI is going on. I don't think it's shameful that 600 missionaries are coming off the field. God does amazingly complicated things. And how is He going to use those 600 missionaries; He's going to use them wherever they go. And God's going to raise up national partners in those countries to step up into the gap and do some of those ministries. He prunes trees to make them even more fruitful. I'm not in any way discouraged, but I do think it's a time for reflection, a time for prayer, a time for recommitment. And that's true of every local church; it's true of our church. So where are we at in all of this? Are we committed to missions? Are we committed to evangelism? Are we ready to take the Gospel to people that we know that are lost? Are we willing to bear the burden of their reaction to our witnessing? Put up with that so that we can get over that and talk about Jesus and His unsearchable riches? Are we willing to suffer? Are you involved in evangelism? Do you have five lost people that you're praying for by name that God would raise up someone to witness to them? Someone to share the Gospel with them. Maybe you're ready to say, "Hey, maybe I could be that person." It doesn't have to be you; just you're praying for that person. Greater Commitment to the Masterpiece Are we, as a church, ready to be more than ever before committed to unreached people group missions. We're going into our Lottie Moon Christmas offering season; Southern Baptist Churches have a time when we sacrificial give to missions that pays the salary of career missions and missionaries and others that are serving. We set goals and we always seem to meet them. I don't want to set a goal that we wouldn't meet. "We are going to raise $5,000,000." God can do anything, but I think for me, I would love to see us give more money to Lottie Moon than we've ever given before. I would love to see the number go up from generally in the $132,000 range up to something like $150,000. And where is that extra $20,000 going to come from? Well, it's going to come from us. It's going to come from us asking questions about our lifestyle, about what we eat, where we go, what we do for entertainment, what we wear, and say, "What can I sacrifice? Missionaries are sacrificing, what can I sacrifice to give? But that's not enough. I want us to be heart and soul committed, not just financially. I want us to say, "Maybe God wants me to go." I mean, we have a lot of younger people. There could be people in the youth ministry. I think about the youth retreat. I was praying for you guys, so thrilled at the work Kevin's doing. But there could be some young people, youth, who are going to go as missionaries in the future. I want this to be a sending church, a church where you caught the vision for missions here. There are college students, a lot of you all sit over here in this area, but you could be scattered around, what are you going to do with your life? What are you going to do with your talents and your abilities? What are you called to do vocationally? And there's going to be more and more opportunities for people to go, not as traditional missionaries, but what has been called tent makers, etcetera, where you go use your vocation in a cross-cultural setting to lead people to Christ. Now, as I close, I want to say one thing, and I've been talking to you as Christians, but I know that God may well have brought unbelievers here today. And for me, I've had the privilege of proclaiming the unsearchable riches of Christ to all of you, but I'm speaking to you, who know yourself to be outsiders. You're lost right now. I want to plead with you to repent and believe in Jesus, just like I pled with Illi, that's her name, that young woman that I talked to and I just wanted her to know Christ. I said to her, I said, "You know, I really believe that God wants to know you in an intimate relationship.” She said, "Oh He knows me." I said, "Well I know He knows all about you, but I want you to know Him through Christ." And she was quiet listening to that, so I'm pleading with you if you know yourself to be an outsider God wants to forgive your sins through faith in Christ, trust in Him. Prayer Now, I'm going to close the sermon and a prayer and then we're going to have a time of celebration of the ordinance, the Lord's supper. So let's close this sermon then we'll go to the table. Father, I thank you for Ephesians 3. We thank you for what you have taught us; thank you for the manifolds, the variegated, the incredibly diverse display of the wisdom of God in the Church. Thank you that you do that through the proclamation of the unsearchable riches of Christ. You can do that through “less than the least of all God's people.” I pray that we would be faithfully involved in evangelism and missions for your glory. And now, Lord, as we turn to the table, we pray that you would just send forth your Spirit in Jesus' name, amen. Like to invite the deacons to come now. Please hear the words of institution from 1 Corinthians Chapter 11. Apostle Paul writes this: "For I receive from the Lord, what I also passed on to you, the Lord Jesus on the night He was betrayed took bread, and when He had given thanks, he broke it, and said, 'This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.'" Please pray. Father, we thank you for the Lord's supper. We thank you for instituting it through your Son. We pray that you would now send the Spirit of Christ in this very place, so that this would not be a bare memorial, O Lord, but it would be an encounter with the living God, by faith in the words of God. We pray in Jesus name, amen.

Andy Davis preaches a verse by verse expository sermon on Ephesians 3:1-13. The main subject of the sermon is the proclaimed Gospel as it is revealed in the New Testament.

God, the Keeper of Mysteries Well, this morning we're going to be looking at the 13 magnificent verses, as the Apostle Paul presents, in more detail, his own ministry as a steward of mysteries. Truly God is the keeper of mysteries. Our God is a mysterious God. His sovereign plan is an unfolding of mysteries. He really does keep a lot of secrets. And the passage that we're looking at today gives us an indication of that. If you look at Verse 9, Paul talks about this “mystery, which for ages past was kept hidden in God, who created all things.” It says in Deuteronomy 29:29, "The secret things belong to the Lord, our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever." So God has a whole array of secrets that He's holding to Himself, and He's paying out these secrets little by little, across redemptive history. Again, 1 Corinthians 2:7 speaks of this same thing. Paul says there, "We speak of God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began." So God's been keeping these secrets, hoarding this mystery to Himself from before the creation of the world. Again, Isaiah 45:15, and this verse, "Truly you are a God who hides Himself, oh God and Savior of Israel. A God who hides Himself." God hides Himself, He hides His plans, but then at the right time and in the right way, He unfolds it for His glory, and for our joy, and for our salvation. We have some of that. Now, that includes His people, His names, their specific names, we heard two testimonies today, of how God works specifically in their lives, and we know that God has chosen individuals by name from “before the creation of the world.” I remember earlier in our family life as our kids were growing up, they would come across photos of Christy and I standing alone somewhere, and the kids would look at the picture, the little one, toddlers, and they say, "Mommy, daddy where was I? Where was I?" And so, I don't know when this phrase came into my head but I began saying it. "You were in the mind of God." That's where you were, you were in the mind of God. God was loving you and having a relationship with you in His own mind, even before He knit you together in your mother's womb. And so God is a keeper of mysteries. We already learned in Ephesians 1:4-5, "He chose us in Him before the creation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless in His sight. In love He predestined us to be adopted as His sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with His pleasure and will. God is the keeper of mysteries." Keeping and Sharing Secrets to His Glory Now, God has woven together a magnificent plan for His glory, and for our joy, and He is skillfully unfolding that plan a little at a time. He's like a skillful storyteller that has all these techniques. For example, foreshadowing. I was talking to my son about literature and foreshadowing, and I gave him some examples. Our God is a great foreshadower. He gives us hints and indications ahead of time of what he's planning on doing. It's called prophecy. But those prophesies are complex and they're mysterious and it's hard to put the whole picture together. Also, God unfolds His plan for our lives gradually and patiently. We don't always know what's just around the corner. I think it'd be very hard to live life that way, if we knew what was immediately going to come. If God told you by a prophet, "You will break your leg sometime this afternoon," how would you live? I'd want to go wrap myself in bubble wrap or something like that. And God would show all the different ways he can break a leg, even if you are completely protected in bubble wrap. But we wouldn't be able to live our lives and so God hides from us what He's about to do to us, and this is openly taught in scripture. For example, the call of Abram out of Ur of the Chaldees. We have in Genesis 12:1, "The Lord had said to Abram, leave your country and your people, and your father's household and go to the land I will show you." That's future tense. And so the author to Hebrews, in Hebrews 11, makes much of this. In Hebrews 11:8 he says, "By faith, Abraham when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance obeyed and went even though he did not know where he was going." So God hides from us, His plan. There are mysteries that He is unfolding. How about the Apostle Paul himself in Acts 20 and verse 22. Paul says this to some concerned brothers and sisters who are very, very worried for Paul's future and for his safety. And he says, "And now compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem not knowing what will happen to me there." He doesn't know specifically what's going to happen. He knows he's going to suffer, that he knows. So God's glorious redemptive plan unfolds as a mystery, a mystery kept hidden in God and then revealed. Now, when we come to the word mystery we should not think of it like Sherlock Holmes, The Hound of the Baskervilles. You can hear this hideous hound baying in the distance, and your blood starts to curdle and you start to accumulate clues as you read the story and try to figure it out. Or Agatha Christie. Murder on the Orient Express, and if you're a good mystery writer, you're going to put clues, but you gotta do some misdirection, so it's not obvious and all that. I was reading about techniques on writing, I'm not planning on writing a mystery novel, but you've got to put in the clue, so that's fair game and you can put it together. It's not that kind of a mystery, it's not like that. Actually we can't have figured it out. It's not something you can reason out by your intellect. It's something that God glorifies Himself by revealing. Something you could not have known. That's what the mystery means in the New Testament. It's something that God has kept back for His own sovereign purposes, and at the right time, He pays it out into human history, by the prophets, by the apostles, He lets us know. Paul, the Prisoner of the Mystery The Immediate Focus: Paul, the Apostle of the Gentiles And so Paul here, the apostle, is the revealer of aspects of this mystery. And he is in some ways the secondary focus of this chapter. There's a lot here about Paul, the revealer of the mystery, the prisoner of mystery. And we can begin by looking at Paul the prisoner of this mystery. Look in verse 1, it says, "For this reason, I Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus, for the sake of you Gentiles". So the immediate focus he puts here, the spotlight he puts on himself for this reason, “I, Paul,” he speaks. But what follows is one long glorious interruption. Paul does this from time to time. He'll be going in a certain direction, train of thought, and then just stops and goes off in a different direction and in some ways, never returns. He does this in Romans 5, when he talks about original sin and he interrupts himself and he never comes back, but we get his idea. I find that fascinating. Now, in this particular case, Paul actually does come back with the same verbal pattern, and that is the language for this reason. So in verse 1, "For this reason, I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ, He is for the sake of you Gentiles," and then verse 14, "For this reason,” like I was saying and then goes on from there. Now Paul's about to pray for these Gentile Christians. That's what he's going to do in verses 14 through 21. The second most glorious prayer in the Bible, that is foreshadowing. So when I get to that you're going to find out what I think is the most glorious prayer in the Bible, we can talk about that. But Paul's about to pray for these Ephesian Christians, and he's going to pray that Christ would dwell in their hearts by faith, and we're going to spend some time richly meditating on that. "And that they would have power together with all the saints to grasp the dimensions of Christ's love for them. How wide, and long, and high, and deep is the love of Christ." One Long, Glorious Interruption He's going to pray that for them, but before he does that, we have this long, glorious interruption. If you look at verse 1 and 2, "For this reason, I Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus, for the sake of you Gentiles," verse 2, "Surely you've heard about the administration of God's grace that was given to me for you." Now between verse 1 and 2, in most translations you have a dash. The editors put a dash in there. Not in every one, but in most translations. And so, they're acknowledging Paul's breaking his train of thought here to go in a different direction. Deeper Knowledge of Paul Before the Prayer Now, he's wanting to give them, the Ephesian Christians, deeper knowledge about himself before he prays for them. Now, in verse 1 of chapter 1, he's already introduced himself to them as an Apostle. “Paul, an Apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God, to the saints in Ephesus.” He's already done that, so he's introduced himself to them, and they know him, some of them, because he ministered there. But he wants them to understand his special role in the unfolding redemptive plan of God. Paul had a unique role in redemptive history. Other than Jesus Christ, I would say that the Apostle Paul is the most significant figure of the New Testament. I think that's actually easy to prove. God used the Apostle Paul to write at least 13 books of the New Testament, some debate about the Book of Hebrews. And Paul's conversion, is the most significant event other than things directly tied to Christ, the most significant event in the Book of Acts. Three times, we have an account of the conversion of Saul of Tarsus, very significant event. And then, once the story of the Book of Acts is unfolded, once you get to Acts 13, it's pretty much the Apostle Paul from then on. From Acts 13 to 21 is Paul's ministry, and planting churches, his missionary journeys, and all that. And from Acts 22 to 28, it's Paul's imprisonment and his various defenses before the Jews in the Romans. And so Paul's life and his ministry is very much the issue of the whole book of Acts. Now, the Book of Acts itself, the theme of the Book of Acts is the spreading out of the Gospel. Geographically, yes, but also from Jew only in the upper room, to Jew plus Gentile, to the ends of the earth. That's the theme of the Book of Acts, Acts 1:8, "You'll receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you and you'll be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." And so, the idea is, we're moving from Jew only to Jew plus Gentile, and there are very significant milestones along the way in the Book of Acts concerning that. The spectacular conversion of Saul of Tarsus, from a church destroying pharisee, to a church building apostle, is a spectacular display of the sovereign power of God and grace. But also it gives us an indication of the mystery that Paul's talking about here in Ephesians 3. Paul would say it's great proof for the power of God in His saving intentions toward the Gentiles. His intention to save the Gentiles. His own conversion is proof of that. “Because of me, you can know how much God wants to save you, Gentiles.” Big Concern: Understanding Paul, His Ministry, His Imprisonment His big concern here in these 13 verses, is that the Ephesian Christians would understand him, his ministry, his imprisonment, so that they understand who it is that's praying for them in the second half of the chapter. Paul talks a lot about himself in verses 1 through 13. He begins with, "I Paul," and then he talks about description of his calling, his insights, his ministry, his preaching, his stewardship of the Gospel. Vital for them to understand Paul's role as the apostle to the Gentiles. He was the apostle to the Gentiles. So he begins in verse 1, "For this reason.” For this reason." For what reason? Well, when you see a phrase like that, something like therefore, you're going to want to go back and say, "Where were we just now, just a moment ago?" And Ephesians 2, the whole chapter has been about how God raised the Gentiles from the dead spiritually. They were “dead in their transgressions and sins, and how God made them alive in Christ by a miracle of His sovereign grace.” "These Gentiles," he says in verses 11 and following, 11 through 15 or so, "were aliens and strangers, and outsiders and they're excluded by the law of Moses." But how God sent Christ, in Christ and His death on the cross has destroyed the “barrier, the dividing wall of hostility” and He's brought these Gentiles who were once far away, “He's brought them near through the blood of Christ.” And how together, with Jews, Jews and Gentiles together, now borrowing that image from 1 Peter, now as “living stones” spiritually resurrected, they're built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by His Spirit. He's got this image of a spiritual temple that's rising at the end of Ephesians 2. Rising and becoming more glorious, more magnificent, larger all the time. As more and more unreached people groups are coming to faith in Christ. More and more individuals are being brought into the church, and it's this magnificent living temple, spiritual structure, rising to become a dwelling place in which God lives by His Spirit. "For this reason, I'm going to pray for you that you would know how much God loves you, and you would know how much Christ desires to dwell inside your hearts by faith." He's going to talk about all that. He wants them to understand, he wants to understand his ministry, and he especially wants them to understand his sufferings. “Prisoner of Christ Jesus,” Not of Man Look, at the end of this section in verse 13. His great concern is that they not be shocked, or put off by hearing that he's in prison. We've been talking this morning, much about prison ministry, and how the apostle Paul was in prison for the Gospel, and he doesn't want them to be stunned by it. Often, as we've heard this morning, there comes a certain stigma, social stigma, it's reasonable to understand that. And Paul wants them to understand actually, that his imprisonment is for their glory, it actually is their glory. He says in verse 13, he says, "I don't want you to be discouraged when you hear about my imprisonment, or my sufferings for you, my chains which are your glory." Paul's chains, he would say, "Are essential to the spread of the Gospel. They're essential." The messengers of the Gospel must suffer or the Gospel cannot spread. It's very plain. It's taught again and again. Paul teaches it in a very difficult teaching in Colossians 1:24. And there he says, "Now I rejoice in what was suffered for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ's afflictions for the church." What's lacking? What wasn't finished at the cross. I thought everything was finished. No, no, not everything. Redemption was accomplished at the cross, but it wasn't applied yet. It had to be applied by people, by messengers, by evangelists, and missionaries, by the power of the Holy Spirit, the blood of the Cross is sufficient for redemption, but it had to be applied, and that had to be by suffering. And it's in the exact same pattern of Christ crucified. Jesus said in John 12:24, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a kernel of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains by itself, a single seed, but if it dies, it brings forth much fruit." You think about that. Image much fruit, and in the center of that fruit there are more seeds aren't there? And those seeds, they need to fall into the ground and die, as well. The blood of martyrs is seed for the church, that's how the church spreads. "Now, I don't want you to be discouraged because of my sufferings. They are your glory. You wouldn't have the glory of eternal life if I hadn't been willing to suffer." He's getting them ready, that they would be willing to suffer too. Let me just pause and ask, are you? Are you willing to suffer for the spread of the Gospel? Are you willing to suffer to bring the Gospel to co-workers, and fellow students, and neighbors? Are you willing to suffer anything at all for the reaching of unreached people groups? Are you willing to disadvantage yourself at all, financially? Are you willing to suffer at all in terms of the way you spend your life because without suffering those unreached unengaged people groups that people haven't heard of Jesus yet, will not be reached. What's going to happen is, God is going to raise up messengers who are willing like Paul to suffer, and they know that their sufferings will be the glory of those people, and that's what Paul's getting at. So he's introducing them to himself and he calls himself a prisoner of Christ Jesus. Isn't that a great expression? He's a prisoner of Christ Jesus. “I'm not a prisoner of the Jews, I'm not a prisoner of the Romans, I'm not a prisoner of any human being. Haven't you heard what God did to my brother Peter? How he was in chains and Herod was going to kill him the next day, and God sent one angel, and the chains fell off, the prison door swung open, and Peter walked out.” God could do that for me. Any time, but He doesn't choose to. I'm a prisoner of Christ Jesus. It's the very thing that the Lord had said to Ananias, when he sent Ananias to go baptize Paul, Saul of Tarsus, that one. Says, "Lord. I don't want to go, send someone else." I love that moment. He says, "Go. This man is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles and their kings and before the people of Israel. I will show him how much he must suffer for my name."” So my sufferings are your glory and I'm a prisoner of Christ Jesus. That's why I'm in chains. Christ Jesus wants me in chains. And it's for your benefit, for the sake of you Gentiles,” he's saying that. “So don't be discouraged because of my sufferings.” Paul, the Revealer of the Mystery “Surely You Have Heard of Me” In verses 2 through 5, we see Paul the reveal of the mystery. “Surely you've heard about the administration of God's grace that was given to me for you. That is the mystery made known to be by revelation, as I have already written briefly. In reading this then, you'll be able to understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to men in other generations as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to God's holy apostles and prophets.” So he begins in verse 2, "Surely, you have heard of me, you've heard a lot of things about me. How God made me a steward of His grace." That's the idea here, administration, a steward of the grace of God. Another word, that idea, is of management, somebody who is entrusted with someone else's possessions. You think about a servant in a household, a wealthy man, a wealthy owner gives to a servant management over his household. Now, the possessions in the household aren't his, they belong to the master. Some day, the master's going to return and ask for an accounting. Paul saw himself that way, as a steward of the mysteries of God. He's administering the grace of God, he's administering God's grace. "It was given to me for you," he says. And so they managed them. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 4:1-2, "So then men ought to regard us as servants of Christ and those entrusted with the secret things of God. Now," he says in the next verse, 1 Corinthians 4:2, "it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful." “So, someday I'm going to give an account to God, for my ministry,” Paul's saying. “Some day I'm going to give an account to God, to Christ, for what I did with the Gospel and these opportunities He's given me, I'm a steward of it. And it was given to me for you, for your benefit so that you might receive”. Mystery! Now he gets into mystery language, as we've already seen in verse 3. “That is, the mystery made known to me by Revelation, as I have already written briefly.” That's something we could never have figured out by reason or by science. You can't set up experiments at MIT or any other place, where you can reason out or tease out these mysteries. It's not like that. Paul uses the word mystery again in verse 4, "And reading this then you'll be able to understand my insight into the mystery of Christ." Paul has special insight into the mystery of Christ. God took the scales off of his eyes, physically so he'd be physically able to see, but then he also showed him things that he had never shown anyone that had ever lived up to that point. And those things he wrote about in the book of Romans and his other epistles, they're just staggering, the kind of things you could spend your whole lifetime studying and not fully grasp. These moments of illumination, these moments of radiant light, of “seeing the glory of God in the face of Christ,” in ways that we can hardly even imagine. “You'll be able to understand my insight, my illumination into the mystery of Christ.” And this mystery, he says, was not previously revealed. Look at verse five, "It was not made known to men and other generations as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to God's holy apostles and prophets." This is how we know the mystery. No one discovered it in a cave anywhere, or figured it out by reason. Plato, Aristotle, none of these brilliant men could do it. God revealed it by His holy apostles and prophets, that's what he's saying here. He revealed it by them and it's now been made known. Now, we are told in Romans chapter 1, that people all over the world are able to figure out by looking at creation that there is a God, a creator God. They're able to reason that out that He is powerful, and perhaps that He's loving or compassionate. The attributes of God, “His invisible nature and His eternal power are clearly seen being understood from what has been made,” Romans 1. But you can't do that with Christ. You can't reason Christ out by natural revelation. It has to be revealed by the word, by special revelation, by apostles and prophets, that's what he's saying. The Mystery: Gentiles One with Jews The Mystery Plainly Declared: Full Jew-Gentile Unity Now, he says a bit of a strange thing here, he's saying now, the Old Testament people didn't know this; they didn't understand. Now, what is this mystery? I'm going to tell you what it is, and I'll show you how amazing this is. The mystery is that the Gentiles are every bit as much a part of the Body of Christ, every bit as much heirs with Abraham, of the promises of God and Abraham as are the Jews. That's the mystery. Is the equality of Jews and Gentiles in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That's the mystery. He said they didn't know it in the past as we know it now. Now, that's strange, because those of you that heard much of the preaching that I did in the Book of Isaiah, you'll see again and again and again, there are missions themes that flow from Isaiah. Again and again, it almost seems like a New Testament book sometimes it's so clear. You remember how in Isaiah 49:6, God the Father speaks to Jesus, to God the son, saying to Him, "It is too small a thing for you to be my servant, to restore the tribes of Jacob, and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the Earth." Well, that's seven centuries before the Apostle Paul was doing this ministry. So what do you mean, Paul? What do you mean that people in the old covenant era and previous generations didn't know it? Well, I think it's pretty clear that they didn't put it all together. It's kind of like this, it's like prophecy, Old Testament prophecy, like a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle. Have you ever done one of those really, really big jigsaw puzzles? I bet you don't take the approach I take. You can talk to my wife about what I do with jigsaw puzzles, it's pathetic. My engineer side comes out, and I take all of 1000 or 500 pieces, and I put them in a matrix X by Y, and I just go systematically and find the next piece. That's what I do. And you're saying, where's the art in that? There's no art in that, but it works, alright? And you, by your weird techniques, you're looking at that same piece again and again, trying to make it fit where it didn't fit 20 minutes ago. You know you've done it, alright? I never do that, I pick it up, try it once, doesn't work, put it back. Now, my kids all say I'm a geek. You figure that out, see if I am. But at any rate, it is clear from the reaction of Jewish Christians to the advance of the Gospel to the Gentiles, how they hadn't put it together. Isn't that obvious? How did Peter react to going to Cornelius' house to preach to him? He did not want to do it. And God had to show him three times a sheet let down from Heaven with unclean animals that Jesus had already declared clean, but Peter hadn't gotten that message yet. And that he was told, "Get up Peter, kill and eat," and he said, "Never, Lord, I've never eaten anything impure or unclean,” “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean!" Three times, like drilling into concrete. And then the Holy Spirit comes powerfully on him, telling him to go to Cornelius the Gentile's house, and he gets there and finds a house full of Gentiles waiting to hear the Gospel. And you can imagine the moment as he gets to the threshold, and he's like, “yeah,” and then steps across. This is the most movement I'll ever do in preaching right here. But at any rate, right across the threshold. And he says right at that moment, Acts 10:28, "You were well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with a Gentile or visit him, but God has shown me that I should not call any man impure or unclean." Ah, he made the connection. He wasn't talking about animals, He's talking about people. God can make an impure man, or woman, or child clean. He has the power to do that. And he's thinking about Gentiles. And then while he's preaching, the Holy Spirit comes down on these assembled Gentiles, very much like what happened on the day of Pentecost. And this is what it says in Acts 10:24-25. "While Peter were still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit came and all heard the message," verse 45, "the circumcised believers" Jewish believers in Jesus, Jewish Christians, "who had come with Peter were astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles." They're amazed, they just never thought that would ever happen. That shows they hadn't put it together. It was not revealed to people in previous generations. And then in chapter 11, the whole first half of the chapter is they have to go back over the same ground again with other Jews, Jewish Christians, who weren't there and who didn't believe it and were upset: "You went into the house of uncircumcised men, and you ate with them!" Then Peter goes through the whole thing again, the whole thing's repeated. He explains it, how the Holy Spirit came down, there were all these witnesses that said, yes, that's exactly what happened. "And when they heard it, they had no further objections, and they praised God, saying, so then God has granted even to the Gentiles repentance unto life." So, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, all of those profits hadn't figured it out yet. Not the way Paul has. "It is now revealed" verse 5, "now revealed by God's Holy apostles and prophets, now at this time by these specially gifted anointed ones," apostles we know, the 12 that the Lord chose, and then he was replaced at the end of Acts 1, and then along came Paul “as one untimely born,” those are the apostles. Prophets in this context, I think, must be New Testament prophets, like James and Jude who are not apostles and others who are able to speak immediately the Word of God in that apostolic era. There's a lot of debate on whether the gift of prophecy still goes on today, but we know at least then, in local churches, prophets were able to speak immediately and say, "Thus says the Lord." So the apostles and prophets now are able to reveal this mystery, that's what he's saying. Gentiles Heirs Together with Israel Now, what is the mystery? I've already told you, but look at it in verse 6, plainly declared, "This mystery is that through the Gospel, the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise that is in Christ Jesus." Oh, the riches of those words. We Gentile believers in Jesus, we are heirs of everything God promised to Israel. We're heirs with Israel. We are going to inherit everything promised to the sons of Abraham. That is staggering. Would have been staggering, it was staggering to the Jewish believers, heirs together with Israel. And what was that, what was promised to Abraham? Well, first and foremost, God himself: "Fear not, Abram. I am your shield, I am your very great reward." You'll get me, Abraham at the end of your life. Gentiles are heirs together with that promise. Well, but not only that, Abraham, we're told in Romans 4:13, was designated to be “heir of the world.” So that means that through Abraham, the blessings of not just the Promised Land, but of the whole world comes to his sons and daughters. So that means that we stand to inherit the whole world, we are heirs of the world through Abraham. That's amazing. We are heirs together with Israel, we are members together of the same body. We're not second-class citizens, we're not going to be licking the dust off the feet of the Jews and kissing the hem of the garment and all of that, these images of total domination that some Jewish patriots might have had, zealots might have had back then. No, no, no, we're equal citizens with Jewish believers in Christ. And we are sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus. Sharers in that promise. You know what I think of that? There's this image in Romans 11 of a cultivated olive tree, with the root system in the patriarchs; Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And Paul speaks of nourishing sap being drawn through that root system up to the branches. And we, Gentile believers in Christ, were cut out of some wild olive tree, cut out, and we were grafted in, and now are drinking in life-giving, spiritually life-giving sap from the root system of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. What is that sap? It's the Word of God, it's the promises made to Israel, the promises of Christ. Gentiles Sharers Together of the Promise in Christ And so in Christ, “all the promises of God are yes and amen,” and that includes too us Gentile believers. So we are able to drink in benefit from the promises made to Israel. Now, you may say, well, give me an example. Alright, here's a good example, how about this? How about Jeremiah 29:11? Some people say, oh, that's my favorite verse. What is it? Well, it goes like this, "I know the plans I have for you,' declares the Lord. 'Plans for your welfare and not for evil. To give you a future and a hope.'" I know a lot of Christians that say, that's my life verse, I love that verse. Well, how do you know, oh Gentile, that you have anything to do with that verse at all? Read the context, it's all about God restoring the Jews to the Promised Land. You could be accused of ripping it out of context; not so fast. We are able to suck benefit from the promises made to Israel now in the New Covenant. And we're able to see beyond the mere restoration of a small number of Jews to the Promised Land to the big picture of what God is doing in the restoration language. He's giving us a home forever in the New Heaven and New Earth. And we're able to get happy about that as Gentile believers in Jesus. We are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus, that only through the Gospel. Not by the Law of Moses, but through the Gospel. Paul, the Proclaimer of the Mystery Paul a Servant of the Gospel That's the mystery, that's what's being revealed now. Paul is the proclaimer of that mystery. Look at verse 7-9: "I became a servant of this Gospel by the gift of God's grace given me through the working of His power. Although I am less than the least of all God's people, this grace was given to me, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to make plain to everyone the administration of this mystery, which for ages past was kept hidden in God, who created all things." So Paul calls himself here a servant of the Gospel. "I am a servant of the Gospel." He said in another place, "I consider my life worth nothing to me if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me, the task of testifying to the Gospel of God's grace." So Paul considered his ministry a gift of God's grace, and his ministry also a display of God's power. "I became a servant of this Gospel by the gift of God's grace given me through the working of His power." Paul’s Ministry: A Display of God’s Power Now, you know what I mean by that, it's a transforming power. Paul began that day breathing out murderous threats against the Lord's disciples, hating Christ; hating him. Hating Christians. Hardened in his heart. And he was nearing Damascus with letters in his hand from the high priest, and he was about to beat up more Christians and arrest them, when suddenly a light came from Heaven and he fell to the ground. “And he heard a voice speaking to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’ ‘Who are you, Lord?’ he answered, ‘I am Jesus, the one you are persecuting. Now, get up and go into the city and you'll be told what you must do.’" Somewhere in there came the sovereign power of God through Christ, through the Holy Spirit, transforming Saul and making him a Christian. Somewhere in there he had a vision of the glory of God in the face of the resurrected Christ. Maybe right before he said, "Who are you, Lord?" Somewhere in there in he called Jesus Lord. I think he already knew the answer to the question when he said, "Who are you, Lord?" “Well, just to make it clear, I am Jesus.” Paul’s Deep Humility about Himself Somewhere in there was the power of God for Saul's conversion, and that's when his ministry began. And he had deep humility about himself. He said, "I'm less than the least of all God's people, and this grace was given me. I am nothing. God is everything. God is everything.” Paul often made little of himself, often. He said, "I am less than the least of all God's saints here, less than the least of all God's people. I'm the worst Christian on Earth," that's what he would say. Actually in another place in 1 Timothy 1, we've been studying on Wednesday nights, how Paul says in 1 Timothy 1, he says, "Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the worst." Not was the worst, I am the worst. "But for that very reason, I was shown mercy, so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display His unlimited patience as an example for those who would believe on Him and receive eternal life." And he says in 1 Corinthians 15:9-10, "I am the least of the apostles, and I do not even deserve to be called an apostle because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God, I am what I am." So Paul makes very little of himself. If you came to Paul and said, "Paul, how do you explain your great success? You're an author, you're a successful revival speaker, you're a successful church planner. How do you explain your success? Tell me about yourself." He's like, "It has nothing to do with me. It was in spite of who I am and was, not because of it." Now, we have another 7 or 8 pages to go on this sermon, we're stopping here. I hate doing this, but I'm not going to hurry through all this good material. How do you hurry through the “unspeakable riches of Christ” that's coming in the next phrase? So let me just stop here, and we'll resume in a couple of weeks. I'm going on vacation. So this is a big interruption, an interruption in the middle of an interruption, but it's okay, because I am not going to hurry through the “unspeakable riches of Christ. Application Just by way of application, let me begin by just inviting any of you who are here who know yourselves to be outside of Christ, I just believe with all my heart that God sovereignly brought you here today. You've heard two testimonies of men whose lives have been radically changed by the Gospel. And then we've been looking at the Apostle Paul and how his life was radically changed by the Gospel. There's no accident that God brought you here today. I'm just pleading with you to repent and trust in Christ crucified and resurrected for the forgiveness of your sins. And if you have any questions about that, any question about the Gospel, come and talk to us, talk to Steve, talk to Mark, talk to Jack, talk to me, talk to any of the elders at the corner or the doors of the church, talk to us. And then secondly, if I could just urge you to consider the great majesty of God in the unfolding of mysteries. God has more mysteries to show us. It makes life really exciting. Go to Him and say, "Lord, I don't want to miss your purpose for my life. I don't want to live a boring, unexciting life, a life that is not filled with the glory of God and with the work of God. God, am I missing it? Do you have a calling on my life, a ministry for me to do? God, show me what it is. You put a calling on the Apostle Paul's life. I'm not going to be the apostle to the Gentiles, but God what do you have for me to do? It might be prison ministry, as we've already talked about; it fits perfectly. Paul is talking about his being a prisoner. But it might be something else, might be international ministry, it might be others. I'm asking you to assess and see how is God calling you to serve? Prayer Close with me in prayer. Father, we thank you for the things that we've learned today, we thank you for Ephesians 3, and we thank you for the joy that we have in studying these words. I thank you for the Apostle Paul, and the way you worked in his life sovereignly. And God, I pray that you would just be taking these words and pressing them to the hearts of all that are hearing today, that they would know the Gospel and that they would find joy in the Gospel and salvation. And Lord, those of us who are already Christians, help us to see the glory of God in the face of Christ and the fact that he has revealed, Lord, you have revealed the mystery of Christ to us already, help us to be thankful. And help us to find our place of service, whatever it may be. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.

Andy Davis preaches an expository sermon on Ephesians 3:1-13. The main subject of the sermon is the mystery of the Gospel being revealed by God to both Jews and Gentiles.

Ephesians 3:1-13

Ephesians 3:1-13

includes Q & A