A Worthy Gospel

This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. To access other sermons or to learn more about us, please visit our website at graceedmonton .ca.

The Worth of the Gospel in Ephesians 3

As Shane has said, we'll be looking today at Ephesians chapter 3. We've been working our way through the book over the last few months or so. And today we finally get to chapter 3, verses 1 through 13.

One theologian commenting on this chapter said that the bulk of Ephesians chapter 3 is comprised of material that one almost never hears sermons preached from in our day. That was said 30 years ago in 1994.

Though it wasn't that long ago, I'm afraid that it still likely holds true today. But I'm thankful that we as a church, as Grace Fellowship Church, are committed to the careful, systematic study and exposition of God's Word.

And so we will be working our way through this text. And as we do so, we'll have, I trust, our view and understanding of the worth of the gospel refreshed and, Lord willing, sharpened. It will remind us that the gospel is truly at the heart of Christianity.

Paul has a timely message for the church in the 21st century in which the gospel, at least in the Western world, is often being treated as a commodity. Where in many cases it has been watered down to fill seats on Sundays, where it has become nothing more than a feel-good message, almost like a type of motivational speech without any power or consequence that simply promises one an easier or better life.

The worship in too many churches has been disconnected from a deep-rooted love for the gospel. In some cases the gospel has been completely emptied by removing Christ from it and a gospel without Christ is no gospel at all.

The gospel is simply absent far too many times and has been replaced by 20-minute talks about a random topic of choice by whoever is speaking. Now that disease, I believe, has led to many Christians not having an understanding or a theology of hardship or suffering for the gospel.

Some may even be offended by the idea of it. Likewise the importance of evangelism and the proclamation of that gospel has vanished. We find Christians that are content living quiet, comfortable lives with no one bothering them were they ever sharing the gospel.

Church life without a high-value gospel has led to a great lack of confidence and boldness in Christ for the Christian. Where perhaps we were once fascinated, set on fire by it when we first believed, we do not make of it much anymore in our personal as well as our church life now that we're just a little bit further down the road.

Perhaps it doesn't affect us much at all until, of course, the day we die and we fully get to see it in its full glory as we enter eternity. For some of you here, the gospel does not fuel or rule your day-to-day lives.

You are a Christian, you know the gospel and believe it, but it has lost much of its preciousness to you. For others, the gospel does drive your daily lives and you seek every opportunity to make much of it.

And wherever you find yourselves on the spectrum between those two points, my prayer is that Paul, in his description of his ministry in this text before us today, would reignite your love for the gospel, remind you of the value and infinite worth of it, and encourage you to continue to faithfully live in light of it.

So as we walk through this text and as we hear Paul explain his apostolic ministry, as we see him explain his love, really, for the gospel, we'll see three things. I believe it's in your bulletin as well.

The Gospel Worth Suffering for

First, that the gospel is worthy to suffer for. That the gospel, secondly, is worth proclaiming to all nation. And lastly, in closing, we'll see a gospel that is worthy of confidence. So if you haven't already, I invite you to turn with me to Ephesians chapter 3 and we'll get right into it.

A gospel that is worth suffering for. As Paul begins this summary here of his apostleship, of his being called by God to serve Christ in ministering to the Gentiles, he immediately, right off the bat, highlights the worth of the gospel.

We see this in verse 1. He says, I, Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus, on behalf of you Gentiles. Referring back to last week's text in chapter 2, verse 22, and the theology that he laid out there, he tells the Ephesians that because exactly of that message, of proclaiming that salvation had come to the Gentiles, their inclusion into the household of God, their having been granted citizenship with the saints, their partaking of the covenants of God's promise through Christ, and their reconciliation with the Jews in Christ, Paul finds himself in a Roman prison.

And Paul says, all that is on behalf of you Gentiles. That, after all, is what Christ himself had tasked Paul with. You remember, of course, in Acts 9, verse 15, when Jesus speaks to Ananias, and he says to him, Go, for he, referring to Paul or Saul, is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel.

Later in Acts, we see Paul himself repeating his conversion story in chapter 26. There he reveals that Christ had sent him to the Gentiles to open their eyes, he says, so they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in him, that being Christ.

It was Paul's task to bring the gospel to the Gentiles. And because he was faithful to that task, he was arrested in Jerusalem when he was accused of bringing Gentiles into the temple there, which, if he would have done so, would have been a great violation of Jewish tradition.

Shane helpfully laid that out for us last week when he taught us about the dividing wall of the temple that had separated the outer court from the inner court, where no Gentiles were allowed to go and face death if they ended up entering there.

And so, in Acts 22, actually, if you like, you can turn with me for just a second, we read about Paul being brought before the Roman Tribune and he's making his defense before the people. And beginning in verse 21, he says this,.

And he, that being Jesus, said to me, Go, for I will send you far away to the Gentiles. And then note the reaction of the people, beginning in verse 22, as Luke continues,. Up to this word they listened to him.

Then they raised their voices and said, Away with such a fellow from the earth, for he should not be allowed to live. And as they were shouting and throwing off their cloaks and flinging dust into the air, the Tribune ordered him to be brought into the barracks, saying that he should be examined by flogging to find out why they were shouting against him like this.

And that's how Paul's journey as a prisoner on behalf of the Gentiles began, and that's where he finds himself now, after it would eventually lead him to Rome as a prisoner under Nero. What's interesting, though, you'll notice, is that he does not call himself a prisoner of Nero, but a prisoner of Christ.

Paul considered the gospel of so much worth that he was willing to be imprisoned for it and considered it even his being in chains and sufferings to be a grace from God, and so he acknowledges Christ's lordship over him even in his suffering.

The question becomes, why did he do so? And Paul gives us the answer to that question in verses 2 through 5. He writes, Assuming that you have heard of the stewardship of God's grace that was given to me for you, how the mystery was made known to me by revelation as I have written briefly.

When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations, as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit.

Paul's main reason why he's willing to be imprisoned for the gospel is because it was the stewardship of God's grace that was given him for the Gentiles. It is not man's gospel. It is not some random idea or scheme that him and the apostles came up with on a random Sunday afternoon.

He says that it was made known to him by revelation. Of course, we all remember that it even had to be revealed to Peter in Acts chapter 11. And Paul knew that when Christ speaks, when Christ spoke to him, that it is divine truth and that Christ has words of eternal life and that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

And so that's why in his first letter to the Thessalonians, Paul can say to them that what they had received from him was not the word of men, but the word of God. This is an amazing time and redemptive history because God had given new revelation to man.

And so the gospel, the inclusion of the Gentiles and the commonwealth of Israel, as we heard last week, is of tremendous worth because God has said it. Because it is a truth that comes from God himself.

And we'll see Paul continues to drive this point home. Look at verse 4. He says,. The mystery of Christ, he says, was not made known to the sons of men in other generations. This mystery of Christ simply had not been known.

Mystery here in Greek does not refer to something that people in the past have tried to understand and they simply failed to do so. Rather, it refers to something that was hidden. A secret that will be, or in this case now, has been made known or clear.

Paul continues to go on to make the point. He says,. It has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. Notice at the end of verse 5, by the Spirit. Again, Paul is highlighting God's revelation to man.

The Gentiles' access to the Father, their really our no longer being aliens and strangers, was not deduced by any earthly wisdom or knowledge or invention. It came directly from above. And therefore, Paul has plenty of reason to love the Gospel, to esteem it highly and consider it worth suffering for.

Because it was the stewardship that he was entrusted with for the Gentiles, having received it from God. Now in verse 6, Paul gives us the content of this mystery of Christ in a really short, concise summary, and we won't go through it all.

I simply refer you back to last week's sermon, unfortunately, where Shane laid all of that out for us very helpfully. But in verse 6, Paul says,. This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the Gospel.

Reminding his readers that Gentiles, if they truly are in Christ, are indeed Abraham's offspring and heirs of the promise to Abraham. That by faith, they are children of God. But the question that we are now faced with at this point is, Do we, do you really value the Gospel as much as Paul did?

Do you have the same love for the Gospel? Does the fact that it is God's divine truth given to men awaken in you a willingness that, should the Lord permit, enables you to endure hardship, imprisonment, suffering, and perhaps persecution?

Do you really believe that the Gospel is worth that much? Paul certainly did. Shane read 2 Corinthians 11, where we read that he received countless beatings. Received the 40 lashes, minus one, five times.

That he was beaten with rods. That he was stoned, shipwrecked, and adrift at sea. It's not just Paul. Many men, women throughout church history displayed the same willingness to suffer. Endless reformers and pre-reformers were killed for the Gospel.

And who knows how many men died on the mission field because of their love for the Gospel. Because they believed God's inspired word. My question is, has the peace and worry-free Christian life that we've experienced diminished a love for the Gospel?

Has your desire to study and know the Scripture, has the intellectual aspect hardened your heart and extinguished the love that you had at first? Are you simply going through the motions without ever slowing down and meditating on the preciousness of this Gospel?

Maybe we've become too accustomed to hearing it that we simply take it for granted. Now most of us have not had to experience, and the Lord knows we'll perhaps never experience anything like Paul. Regardless of that, we are called to be faithful in little.

And you can love the Gospel and stand firm in it when your job requires things of you that will cause you to compromise it. You can remain committed to the Gospel and endure the verbal onslaught and abuse of your friends and family because of your faith.

If Paul shows us anything in these verses, it is that the Gospel is worth it all. That God's worth, God's revelation is a hill worth dying on. And with Paul, all of us, we can consider the great grace when we are being falsely reviled on account of Christ.

And as Jesus said in Matthew 5, you can rejoice and be glad for your reward is great in heaven. The Gospel, brothers and sisters, is worth suffering for. Continuing in verse 7, we come to our second point.

The Gospel Worth Proclaiming to All Nations

We see that the Gospel is worthy to be proclaimed. It is a Gospel worth proclaiming. Verse 7, of this Gospel, I was made a minister according to the gift of God's grace. Paul continues the description of his role and now moves from being a prisoner of Christ to stating that he was made a minister of this Gospel, that he was made, in the actual Greek, a servant.

And of course, the language of having been made a minister is very consistent with Paul's self-description in other passages. We see this in Romans 1 and 1 Corinthians 1, where in both of them, he uses the language of being called.

In Galatians 1, he says,. Not from man, nor through man. And again in other places, he writes,. By command of God, our Savior, and of Christ Jesus, our hope. Paul had not simply woken up one day and decided to become an apostle on his way on the Damascus road.

Apostleship was the furthest thing on his mind. But Paul had a very precise understanding that his having been made a servant was an act of God's grace toward him. He expounds on that and tells us why in the first half of verse 8.

He says, To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given. Paul was a man of great humility. He saw the glories, the riches of the Gospel, and he understood that in and of himself, he did not deserve to be used for that purpose.

He frequently uses similar language to express that idea. And he expands even on it in 1 Corinthians 15, where he says,. For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle. Then he gives the reason, Because I persecuted the church of God.

But by the grace of God, I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them. But it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. And of course, we're all familiar with his self-description in 1 Timothy 1, where he calls himself the foremost of sinners.

And so as a servant of the Gospel, as this recipient of God's grace, he's to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ. In verse 8, he says, The unsearchable there, meaning untraceable.

One dictionary defined the word like this. It said, Impossible to understand, unfathomable, or impossible to comprehend. Paul is to proclaim that which is unfathomable for men. We've done all the exegesis of the earlier chapters.

We have worked through what it all means, what Paul is saying. Yet there remains more for us to understand when we enter into glory than what we already know now and will know when we die. And that's exactly what Paul means when he says in Romans, Oh, the depth of the riches, wisdom and knowledge of God.

How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways. At the same time, this is exactly, this is really where Paul brings everything together because the riches of Christ is exactly what he's been talking about all throughout this letter through chapter 1 and 2.

So remember back as we started in Ephesians chapter 1. I know we worked our way through this the last few months, but Paul mentions these riches of Christ for a reason. He wants us to go back and look at them again.

We ought to and we need to remind ourselves of them all the time. Over and over and over again, we have the need to preach them to ourselves. And so we're going to go through them again quickly. The riches of Christ that he's referring to here are our having been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

It is our being chosen to be holy and blameless before God the Father. Ephesians 1 verse 4. It is our being predestined for adoption to God as sons and daughters. It is the redemption through the blood of Christ and the forgiveness of our sins, which is the richest of his grace.

It is our having obtained an inheritance as well as having been sealed with the Holy Spirit. And Paul, of course, continues on in chapter 2 where he talks about our being dead in trespasses and sins and our being by nature children of wrath, but by God's grace we have been made alive with Christ and are saved by grace through faith.

And last week we heard that the riches of Christ go even beyond that, that after first this vertical reconciliation between God and man, we also have a horizontal reconciliation between Jew and Gentile.

And it's Paul's task to bring that plan, those riches of Christ, as he says in verse 9, to light for everyone, to make it known to all people. God chose Paul as an instrument to reveal, to make clear, to bring to light his plan of salvation for the Gentiles.

They're being grafted into Israel. They're being members of the household of God. They're reconciliation with one another and they're being one body. They're growing together into a holy temple in the Lord.

In verse 10 he gives us the reason. He says, so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. Paul shows us here the grandeur of the gospel, that it has ramifications that go far beyond ourselves.

The gospel doesn't end with the salvation of men from every tribe, tongue and nation. The church, being built through the gospel, shows God's infinite wisdom in choosing his people, making them holy and blameless, adopting them as sons, their redemption and forgiveness of their sin, his uniting all things in heaven and earth in Christ.

And it shows his wisdom in the person of Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit to angels. The church is the instrument by which God displays the beauty and variety of his wisdom to the cosmos. As created beings, angels are not omniscient.

And as Peter tells us in his first letter, they had longed to see God's salvation being worked out. Charles Hodge writes in his commentary on Ephesians 3 .10, he says this,. It is by the church, redeemed by the blood of Christ and sanctified by his Spirit, that to all orders of intelligent beings is to be made through all coming ages the brightest display of the divine perfections.

This gives us our highest conception of the dignity of the church. The works of God manifest his glory by being what they are. It is because the universe is so vast, the heavens so glorious, the earth so beautiful and teeming, that they reveal the boundless affluence of their maker.

If then it is through the church, God designed specially to manifest to the highest order of intelligence his infinite power, grace and wisdom. The church, in her consummation, must be the most glorious of his works.

Hence, preaching the gospel, the appointed means to this consummate end was regarded by Paul as so great a favor. When we see how big, how magnificent the gospel is and all that it encompasses with all its cosmic ramifications, from the blessings in Christ all the way to the church, being the manifestation of God's wisdom to the heavenly beings, do we not think that that is a gospel worth proclaiming to all the earth?

Paul thought so. But more importantly, God said it is when he tasked Paul with bringing it to light to everyone. Yet that's what we struggle with most, isn't it? We can perhaps picture ourselves enduring hardship for the sake of holding on to the gospel.

Many of you, I'm sure, are willing to say that they're ready to die for the truth. But proclaiming it, proclaiming it to men, terrifies us. It scares some of us more than anything else. We're terrified of being rejected by men, by being thought of as weird and strange, crazy or whatever else.

We don't think we have the right words. Perhaps we think, who are we to tell the world of Christ? No one is worthy of the task. Paul didn't think he was. But God commands faithful men and women to tell of the good news to those who are outside of Christ, to those who are still far off, who are still strangers and aliens and abide under the just wrath of God.

God wants them to know that they can be brought near and find redemption and forgiveness of their sins in Christ. Brothers, sisters, let us hold on to a great, glorious gospel that has impacted the whole of creation, that unites all things in Christ, Jew and Gentile, that bestows upon man that which we cannot possibly begin to fully understand in this life.

Let's live a life in light of a gospel that is worthy of proclaiming to the nations. Let us love the gospel enough, let it be worth enough in our hearts that we may go and shout it from the rooftops so that sinners might be saved.

With no fear of man, no fear of death, because it is good news come from God himself. It is true and it is the power of God for salvation to all those who believe. Do you have a gospel that is worth proclaiming to sinners?

The Gospel Worthy of Confidence

Paul moves on to his closing section of this passage. And we'll see that we have a gospel worthy of confidence. Paul closes this section with a great encouragement to the Ephesians. He leaves them with confidence in the gospel because of Christ.

Look at verse 11. Paul writes, This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord. Everything that Paul has written up until this point in this book has been God's eternal purpose.

That's how Ephesians starts out. God the Father had purposed it according to his will in eternity past. He did not change his mind halfway through. He did not make any adjustments as history unfolded.

And neither was the church nor the reconciliation between Jew and Gentile and afterthoughts. And because it is an eternal purpose, it will continue to stand into eternity future. But the most important detail in this verse is the second half of it.

Where Paul says, He has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord. We have a little plaque here on our pulpit that says, Sir, we wish to see Jesus. And it's a reference taken from John 12 verse 21. And we have it on here to remind anyone that steps into the pulpit of what he is to do.

Paul is doing it for us here. He is showing us Jesus in this verse. He's saying to the Ephesians that everything he's been talking about this entire time is already done. And that Christ has accomplished it.

And that Christ is the center of it all. That he is the one that holds it all together. And without Christ, none of it would be. Christ permeates every single aspect of the gospel. He has accomplished God's purpose from eternity past and into eternity future.

I went back through Ephesians 1 and 2. And I know we've done this already today. But Paul calls us to do so again. So I looked at every reference to Christ. I found that in this half sentence at the end of verse 11.

Paul really sums up all of the first two chapters. This is what he wants us to realize as he shows us Christ. It is in Christ that we are blessed with every spiritual blessing. Every good and gracious gift comes to us through him.

In Christ we have been chosen before the foundation of the world. Before we had done either good or bad. In him we were set apart to be a consecrated people unto our God. It is in Christ that we have been predestined for adoption as sons and daughters.

Been taken into the family of God and become heirs of the promises of God. It is in the beloved that we are blessed with God's glorious grace. That he has lavished upon sinners. It is in Christ alone that we have redemption through his blood.

Have been bought out of slavery to sin and receive forgiveness of all our trespasses. Past, present and future. God set forth his purpose in Christ and all things in heaven and earth are united in him.

He is the centerpiece of the whole universe. In him we have obtained an inheritance of eternal joy and blessing to look forward to. Christ alone is our hope in life and death. He is our righteousness, the solid unshakable rock on which we stand.

In him we were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit. Sealed with God's promise of salvation and marked as his own possession. We are made alive together with Christ. Raised up with him, seated with him in the heavenly places.

In Christ we have been created as God's workmanship to do good works for the glory of his name. In Christ we have been brought near. We are no longer strangers, no longer aliens, no longer separated and without hope and without God in the world.

Christ himself is our peace and through him we have access to the Father. Everything that Paul wrote about holds together in Jesus Christ. Everything finds its fulfillment in Christ. God worked out his purpose in and through Christ.

He is the Alpha and the Omega. That's why Paul goes on to say that we can have boldness and confidence. In verse 12 it says,. In whom that be in Christ we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him.

So where is the Christian? Where can you find boldness and confidence in your salvation? Confidence in the gospel? Paul says it is only in Christ. And the author of Hebrews makes a similar argument in Hebrews chapter 10.

I just want to read it. Feel free to turn it with me. It is just an encouraging great passage to read. Hebrews 10 beginning in verse 11. And every priest stands daily at his service. Offering repeatedly the same sacrifices which can never take away sins.

But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.

And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us. For after saying, this is the covenant that I will make with them, after those days, declares the Lord, I will put my laws on their hearts and write them on their minds.

Then he adds, I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more. For there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin. Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

We see that our confidence is based on the blood of Christ. It's based on Christ's single sacrifice for sin, is based on a single offering by which he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.

Our confidence lies in the new and living way he opened for us, and so we can draw near in full assurance. Not because of what we have done, but because of what Christ has done, because of what he has accomplished.

For God the Father had purposed in eternity past, the Son willingly agreed to accomplish. We're merely the benefactors. The Holy Spirit simply applies it to us. We find no confidence looking at ourselves, but only in Christ's faithfulness to God the Father.

And so Paul, having begun with, I Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles, in closing brings this passage now full circle in verse 13. He says, So I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory.

The mystery of Christ, the gospel that was revealed to him, the unsearchable riches that he proclaimed, an understanding that God's purposes are realized and accomplished in Christ, gave Paul the boldness and confidence that he spoke about in verse 12.

He told the Ephesians how much the gospel to the Gentiles was worth, that it had been made a minister of it for their sake, and now he's demonstrating, he's validating his theology, his doctrine by his action.

This is a man that can draw comfort from his imprisonment in order to encourage the church in Ephesus. His having preached the gospel to the Gentiles, regardless of the consequences, is working for their salvation and future glory with Christ.

That is the gospel that Paul loved. I pray that we would seek to love it in a like manner, to love a gospel that is worthy to suffer for, a gospel that is worthy to be proclaimed to all the nations, and that gives us confidence and boldness in Christ alone.

Let's pray.

Thank you for listening to another sermon from Grace Fellowship Church. If you would like to keep up with us, you can find us at Facebook at Grace Fellowship Church, or our Instagram at gracechurch, y-e-g, all one word.

Finally, you can visit us at our website graceedmonton .ca. We pray that you have been blessed by this recording. God bless you, and we hope to see you soon.