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Ephesians 3:1-2
Arnold Schwarzenegger, one of the preeminent bodybuilders of all time, was once asked why he put his body through so much trauma to look and feel the way that he did. His answer was quite surprising. His answer was, well, pain makes me grow.
And growing is what I want, therefore, for me, pain is pleasure. When Arnold Schwarzenegger understood, and what Paul understands, is that our perspective changes the way that we view our circumstances.
If there is a goal we are after, it defines the present. If there is, for instance, in Paul's case, a God-to-please, it affects even the scenarios that we find ourselves in. Even if those scenarios seem, at any given time, to be painful, to be burdensome, and to be trial-laden.
We are going to be looking at Ephesians chapter 3 this morning, verses 1 through 3 in particular. And though this passage is going to speak to, I believe, everyone in this room, it is particularly relevant for those desirous of, or are currently in pastoral ministry.
And the reason for that is because Paul is going to help us understand what motivates him and what alters his perspective. And what motivates him, and what alters his perspective, is what ought to motivate and alter the perspectives of everyone who desires to be a minister of Jesus Christ the righteous.
And so, if you would, please stand with me for the honoring and reading of God's holy and fallible and all-sufficient word. And we will begin starting in verse 1 of chapter 3. This is the word of God.
For this reason, I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus, on behalf of you Gentiles, if indeed you heard of the stewardship of God's grace, which was given to me for you, that by revelation there was made known to me the mystery as I wrote before, in brief.
The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever.
Amen? Amen.
Please have a seat. As we look here at verse 1, Paul starts off by linking what he's about to say with what he has just previously said. He says, for this reason. And what's interesting to find out is that actually he's not going to continue talking about what he means to talk about until verse 14 of chapter 3.
In verses 2 through 13, it's kind of a parenthesis. It's kind of him stepping away, as it were, from the initial thought to explain something.
Further.
But before we get there, notice that he is linking what he has said before with that which he is about to say. For this reason. And what is this reason? Well, of course, the reason that he's about to say what he's about to say is because he is utterly convinced that everything he has said is irrefutably clear.
That God has, in fact, saved a people for himself. He has taken dead sinners who do not respond to spiritual stimuli and he has raised them to spiritual life. He has, by the grace found in God, extended grace to people to rip them out of their influences, namely the world and their flesh, and the devil.
He has, and hear me on this friends, made Christians. But not only that, he has taken those who formerly were closer to God, namely the Israelites, and brought them in to a new community with those whom he had saved outside of that covenant.
Community.
And, though it's not specifically addressed in this book, he is saving the Jews, the Israelites, those who were of the old covenant in the same way that he is saving everyone else, namely by a supernatural spiritual heart transplant wrought in us by the Holy Spirit.
And in so doing, he created the church where we are, as we discussed just a few weeks ago, citizens of a new kingdom. We are also of God's household and we are also made the temple, the new temple of God himself.
And he is growing us both deeper and wider. And he is doing so lovingly, graciously, and most assuredly. And it's because of that reality, in other words, because of chapter 2, I'm going to press even harder.
But before he can press any harder, he's going to tell you a little bit about himself. Of course, in Ephesians chapter 1, verse 1, we learn that Paul is, of course, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God.
And of course, we found out that the apostles play a big role in biblical history last week, that they are the foundation of that household and that temple that God has made, bringing these two groups in to one.
But here he says, I, Paul, and then he tells us something else, namely that he is the prisoner, if you look with me, of Christ Jesus. So the first thing that I want you to see is that Paul is, in fact, the prisoner of Christ Jesus.
So another thing that we learn at this juncture about Paul is that he is, in fact, in prison. We learn this actually throughout the Bible. But specifically here, he's telling us that he is a prisoner, and then there's this modifier of Christ Jesus, which throws us a little bit for a loop if we don't dig deeper to figure out what it is that he's meaning by this.
Well, let's take this one at a time. The first is that he is, in fact, a prisoner. That means he is in jail. He has been in jail, a prisoner, for, at this point, some five years. He spent two years in jail, in Caesarea, and now he is in Rome.
He had been arrested on false charges made by Jews from the province of Asia who were visiting Jerusalem. They had accused him of taking a Gentile, Trophimus, into forbidden areas of the temple. You remember quite a few weeks ago how we talked about the temple itself in Jerusalem had many different tiers, and there were only certain people allowed in each tier, you know, the priest, and then, you know, the Jewish people, the Israelites, and then, you know, everyone else, and then the Gentiles.
Well, Paul was accused of taking Trophimus into a part of the temple he was not supposed to go into. Of course, these were trumped-up charges. They weren't true at all, but nonetheless, he was handed over to the Jews and arrested.
Now, of course, there was a lot more going on than that. Paul also was a disrupter of the peace. He stood up and preached in places he should not, quote-unquote, preach. He preached Jesus in temples ran by men who did not believe Jesus was the Messiah.
He famously preached in Acts 17 atop Mars Hill where he tore down the Greek and Roman gods. This is what we would label potentially riot evangelism. Yes, there is a time for personal and real evangelism where you sit down with friends and you win influence and can speak into their life.
That's one way of doing evangelism. But there's another very real and helpful way to do evangelism, which is to stand up in front of the godless culture and to proclaim the excellencies and beauties of Jesus no matter the cost.
And Paul absolutely did both. And so, for these reasons, he was sitting in jail. So he was a prisoner, a prisoner first of the Jewish people who apprehended him, and then, as he was handed over, a prisoner of Rome.
In other words, he was now a prisoner of Nero. He was property of the Roman state. Not only that, but Paul was a prisoner to his sin and previously to being converted by Christ on the Damascus Road. He was an opponent of Jesus enslaved to the passions of his own desirous and sinful heart.
He was a prisoner in all of the ways that you could be a prisoner. He was chained and forbidden to go anywhere, to do anything. And he was not, as it were, living the American dream. He suffered greatly.
Now, I don't know about you, but I've done a little study on what jail looked like in the first century. And let me tell you, it was not pretty. There was not much modern amenities as there are now, although there is some reason to believe toward the end of his life, Paul did, in fact, get some sort of privileges like people visiting him in Rome.
For instance, he tells his understudy to bring him some books. He knows he's about to be executed and tells them to bring some books, likely the Bible and other theological texts. But he was a prisoner nonetheless, a prisoner of the Jewish people,.
A prisoner of Rome.
So think about that because there's not one bit of agitation in Paul's words up to this point. He doesn't feel sorry for himself. He's not pitying himself. He is not saying, well, if you were in my position, you would do this, or you don't know what it's like to be like this.
You should feel sorry for me. There's none of that. And the reason that there is none of that is because he's not just a prisoner of the Jewish people or of Rome, but of Christ Jesus. In fact, from Paul's perspective, which should be our perspective, he's not held by them at all.
Paul would not and is not conceding to the reality that his incarceration is Rome's doing or the doing of the Jews. He was under God's control, and he was not a victim of any sort.
Of circumstance.
He understood that he was there by divine appointment. He understood that if it wasn't Jesus' chains that were chaining him to that wall, then he wouldn't be chained there in the first place. God sovereignly ordered Paul's steps, and he held him there in his divine providence.
And Paul knew this. Paul knew this, and he spoke about it often. He will say it in Ephesians 4 .1, that he is a prisoner of the Lord, and then exhorts his readers, the Ephesians and then us by extension, to walk worthy of the calling with which we have been called.
In Ephesians 6 .20, he says, I am an ambassador in chains. And in Philippians 1 .13, his chains in Christ to him had become well-known. In other words, his imprisonment had become well-known throughout the whole Praetorian Guard and to everyone else.
It was famous. His imprisonments were famous. Everybody that called themselves a Christian at least heard of this Paul who had been in chains for the sake of Christ. And he says in Philippians even, you know, that this has served to promote the gospel.
He never once, once again, confessed agitation, but the recognition that whatever happened to him, the beatings that ensued, the imprisonments that happened, the shipwrecks and so on, whatever happened, Paul understood that this was of Christ's doing.
He was not a prisoner of Rome. He was in an earthly way or in a very superficial, not looking behind the curtain type of way, but in reality, he was in fact a prisoner of Christ. It was Christ who held him there because it was Christ and is Christ who is completely sovereign all else.
And Paul is trying to get you and me and the Ephesian readers here in the first century to, at this point, be like, well, yeah, that's a no-brainer, right? Because he's done nothing but since verse 3 of chapter 1 talk about the sufficiency and sovereignty of the Lord Jesus Christ and how God has Trinitarianly and sovereignly saved the people for himself and how he has demolished every single obstacle that has stood in the way, namely our sin and our separation from one another and the wrath of God that abided upon us.
Paul understood that God orchestrates and ordains all events in our lives, whether that be trial, whether that be affliction, whether that be prosperity, whether that be joys, whether that be sorrows, whether that be anything at all, it's all of Christ and for Christ and exists to promote the beauties and glories of Christ.
We know this because Ephesians 1 chapter 11, when we were back there, if you remember, it says that God predestined all things according to the purpose of him. That is God who works all things according to the counsel of his will.
This means very practically that God was not caught off guard by Paul's chains. He didn't think, oh, my goodness, my servant has now been arrested, what shall I ever do? Let me figure out a new plan to figure out how to get my gospel to go forth.
No, this is the way, God says, I will choose to make my gospel spread throughout this world. You see, one of the realities that is painted throughout the entire Bible is that God uses that which is evil to flex, to show forth the beauty and glories of his salvific arm.
In other words, he turns bad to good. He uses suffering to bring about beauty and glory. This is why the early church fathers used to say that the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the church. So when we look around at our world right now and we think, oh, my goodness, what in the world is happening?
We have presidents who can't even form sentences. The alphabet people are ruining our world. Everything about education is being flip-flopped. Men are competing in women's sports and crushing everyone.
We look at that and we're liable to get depressed until we remember that God does his best work in the dirt. Romans 8 .28 makes this clear when he says, and we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.
But even more clearly than that, in Genesis 50 .20, in the story of Joseph, when he is sold into slavery and comes into contact with those brothers who did sell him into slavery, he says this, as for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to do what has happened on this day, namely, to save a people, to keep many people alive.
Yes, Paul was imprisoned. He was incarcerated. But it was the Lord Jesus who kept him there. He was a prisoner of Christ and he was a prisoner for the sake of Christ. Children, would you look at me for a minute?
Paul, the same person who wrote this letter right here, he was put into jail for something he did not even do, and he trusted the Lord to protect him. He trusted that that was the Lord's plan for his life.
And instead of doing something wrong or lying and pretending to be something he wasn't, he continued to believe that the Lord Jesus Christ had a purpose even in that moment. Here's what that means for you.
It means that no matter what happens to you, even if some of your friends pick on you for no reason at all, or maybe they make something up about you or whatever the case may be, we can trust that the Lord is going to be with us even in that situation.
And we do not have to get upset, but we can continue to trust the Lord. Friends, this is true all the way even up to the cross of Jesus Christ. The most horrid reality of all history, and yet it pleased the Lord to crush his son to bring about a salvation for his people.
What does this mean practically? How can we use this, as the Puritans would say? The first thing that I would say, especially to those who are not aspiring ministers, but including them, is that don't despise a revile where Christ has placed you.
Don't despise a revile where Christ has placed you. God chooses whom he uses, how he uses them, and what their story looks like. For Paul, it looked like prison. For George Whitefield, it looked like preaching to the masses.
For Charles Spurgeon, it looked like planting the biggest church that existed on the planet at the time. For Heritage, it looks like what's happening right now. And for other churches, it looks like what they are doing so long as they are faithful.
Specifically for the ministers, we do not get to choose if we are used, like George Whitefield, to affect revivals that last... I mean, the effects are like a rock in a puddle that expand throughout all of redemptive history.
We read about him. Book after book, biographies are written about him. We don't get to choose if we are like Charles Spurgeon. Maybe we're not given the same intellect or the same ability to proclaim the Word of God.
We also don't get to choose if we're martyred on day one of our ministry, like many who were in the first century were, or imprisoned, like many of the Puritans were. We don't get to choose if everybody will remember our name for the work we did for Christ, or if we will be unheard of.
As by way of encouragement, one of the best quotes I've ever heard in all of pastoral literature is, preach the gospel, love God's people, die, and be forgotten. Will you be forgotten?
That's God's call.
But your heart should be that, and not to revile the very position.
That you have.
Some people will be preaching pastors, some people will be elders, some people will be deacons, some people will do audio and visual and something. Do what God has called you to do, and do it better than everyone else because you are doing it for God.
You're doing it for Christ. You're his slave. And this transitions all the way into every single atmosphere in life, not just ministry. In terms of vocational ministry, if you like to use that term, which I don't love, but you know what I mean when I say that.
Because everyone is in ministry, and everyone, as Charles Spurgeon said, is a missionary, and if you're not, you're an imposter Christian. This means, very practically, that we are also housewives of Christ.
For those of you who are housewives or mothers, you're mothers of Christ, you're business owners of Christ, you're bricklayers or window installers of Christ, you're boot salesmen of Christ, you're IT guys for Christ.
The idea here is not to supplant what's actually being said here. I'm not jettisoning the text. I'm not trying to say that you can interpret this as I, whatever my name is, the housewife or the bricklayer or the IT guy of Christ.
What I'm saying is every single thing that you do has eternal weight, eternal glory, eternal benefits. And it's all, all of it should be seen as being a prisoner of Christ. One of, back to ministers here.
Oftentimes, and I'm only here because one, I think it's what the text is teaching, but two, there's quite a few men in the body that I know are desirous of church leadership or potentially being an elder someday.
And what I want you to understand is that despising our roles can really get in the way of us ministering to God's people. I once heard Paul Washer tell a story that convicted me to my core, and it was actually one of the reasons that I wound up taking a position at a church that seemed to me, at the time, before I understood what I'm about to say, as a demotion, I went from being a lead pastor to a number two guy who had to kind of, you know, submit to another guy who I didn't think always had the best ideas.
And God used that to sanctify me, and he's a great man of God, and he preaches the word wonderfully and faithfully, and I'm thankful for that time in my life. One of the things Paul Washer said is he said, sometimes God uses men to preach, and sometimes he uses our friends to do it, and sometimes we want to get in the way and do something that maybe we are not able to do because of life circumstances, or because of our abilities, or whatever the case may be.
Maybe other people aren't saying what it is that I want them to say in terms of my qualifications. And he said, sometimes God uses the friend to carry the bag of the guy who God will use in bigger and better ways, and there's no lesser glory than the two.
Because you see, Paul could not do what Paul did if Paul did not have an army behind him, practically speaking. If he didn't have the funding that he had to do these missionary journeys, if he didn't have Luke, his doctor, by his side to make sure he was okay, if he didn't have other ministry partners to do ministry with who weren't hunting for glory, he would be up a creek.
And so we get in where God is choosing to use us, and we give all that we have, understanding it's not for us, it's for him. It's not about me and what I get to do, it's about what Christ is telling me to do, even if I have to suffer in doing it.
That's the point of this text. The second thing that we can do to use this particular point is don't despair when your circumstances aren't panning out the way that you think that they should. I guarantee you Paul was not thinking, you know what I really would like out of today to be arrested and held and eventually killed, yet that's what happened.
Or we can think about John the Baptist, for example, who was beheaded for preaching faithfully and calling a magistrate, if you will, to repentance. Their circumstances were not great. Paul's circumstance here is not great.
But had he, that is Paul, thought that his life was ultimately in the hands of his persecutors, his jailers, those bad circumstances, his guards, or the Roman government, he would have despaired. Who wouldn't?
But he knew who was in control. He knew whose he was and whom he was in the light of the gospel reality. Like I said at the beginning, your perspective must be governed by your convictions about your circumstance.
You have to have a theological framework in order to understand what it is you are going through. Whatever that suffering looks like, when we go through hard times, we think, woe is me. But God is thinking, you're welcome.
Because he's growing us, he's sanctifying us, and he's chiseling and molding us into the image of the son. And what is being said here is his gospel is going to go forth. We have a divine perspective.
You see God clearly and you trust in God's purposes. Friends, it is better to be a prisoner in a jail cell if we have the correct theology than it is to be the king of the world. It is better to have rags than to have riches if you are in rags that the Lord has provided.
It is better to suffer underneath the warden, Jesus Christ, than it is to be blessed by any nation or president or system. This is why, for instance, Paul did not shrink back in his ministry when God said of him in Acts 9 .16, for I will show him how much he must suffer for my name.
Friends, if God is going to use you mightily, there's a good chance he's going to crush you because Christ's servants know they're weak. And it pains me when I see all of these pastors with their chest out, talking about strength, with their false bravado, and their chest stuck out and saying, play the man, be the man.
No, you're too weak to do that and you need to lean on Christ. You're too weak to be a housewife. Lean on Christ. You're too weak to be anything, IT guy or bricklayer. Christ, Christ, Christ. So how can Paul have this tension resolved, as it were?
He knew his God and he understand his mission. And his mission wasn't just that he would be a prisoner of Christ. Look with me, continue on. He says, on behalf of you Gentiles. So he was a prisoner of Christ for the sake of Christ and the people God had sent him to, those outside the camp, those who were not of the Jewish people.
And yet Paul tells us in Philippians chapter 2 that he was the best Hebrew. And in his mind, he probably thought, the people that I need to minister most to are the people that are as blinded as I was by the way that I understood the Old Testament law, and so on and so forth.
And God sent him, as it were, to the older brother, or not to the older brother, but to the prodigal son. And God does that. I grew up a punk rocker, and I thought that I was going to be an evangelist to other punk rock type people.
And now, I wear ties and I preach in a pulpit.
Why?
Because God does what he wants, with who he wants, when he wants, and he places them there when he wants them to. Do you think that even five years ago, I thought that we would plant a church in.
Tulsa, Oklahoma? Not at all.
But God ordains our steps and gives us to the people that he has for us. And so here, Paul is communicating, I have, in fact, been entrusted with the ministry to the Gentiles. That is, that he personally suffered for their acceptance of Christ's message, his care and his concern for them transcended his care and concern for himself.
This is true for all Christians. If Christ is your warden, using this prisoner language, then you should be other people focused, especially for the ministers. This pulpit, not about you. This pulpit, not about me.
Our Bible studies, our counseling sessions, our plans and ideas,.
None of that is for us. It's for the sheep of Christ Jesus.
That's why you wake up. That's why you labor. That's why you don't sleep. That's why you take calls at 2 o 'clock in the morning. That's why you go where you need to go when you don't want to go there, when you've got something else better to do.
God's people win because there's nothing better for you to do when God has given you to be a minister to his people. Paul suffered greatly and oftentimes alone for the sake of the Gentiles. Paul certainly would have had other dreams and aspirations than to walk around and get beat up and thrown in jail for preaching messages of Christ.
And yet, that is precisely what he did and felt he needed to do once he understood whose he was and to whom he was sent. Children, would you look at me? When we believe the gospel, that is the truth about who Jesus is and what he has done for us, which I'm sure your parents have explained to you masterfully, and I hope that we have communicated well from this pulpit throughout the last couple of weeks even, we begin not to care so much about ourselves but other people.
Even if sometimes that means we don't get what we want because Jesus died. And I'm sure, I mean, he ultimately wanted that because he knew that would save us. But in his flesh, in his humanity, that is not something that he probably thought was going to be that fun.
And so we must understand that if we're about Jesus' business, if we're underneath his care, then other people are what matter. Other people are what matter. This is why, and I don't know if you're sick of hearing this soapbox, but I'm going to do it again.
I can't stand it when I start hearing ministers of the gospel or even non-ministers of the gospel talk about self-care and self-love. Now, I know that's really in vogue, but let me remind you, you can never get too tired of doing that which God has called you to do.
So when you start hearing people say, well, I'm burnt out on that, I'm burnt out on this, the question is not whether or not they've actually been burned out on doing it. If it's what God has called them to do, it's one, has God called them to do it?
Or B, are they doing it in their own strength and making it about themselves? And of course, when you make yourself your idol, it is going to drain every bit of energy from you. You're not supposed to live for you.
You're supposed to pour out yourself for other people. This is why Paul says that he was delighted to pour himself out as a drink offering to the people he was sent to minister to. You do not exist for you.
Fathers, you do not exist for you. Mothers, you do not exist for you. Brothers, you do not exist for you. Sisters, you do not exist for you. Exists for Christ and others to do what he wants with you. Romans 8 uses talking about salvation, of course, but we can extend the analogy here, of clay.
He chisels and molds us into what he wants us to be, not what we want to be. I wanted to be a rock star playing music around the country with my back turned because that's cool and punk rock and nobody can see my face because I don't love being in public.
I don't love public speaking. But Christ has called me to proclaim his excellencies. And so I won't shut up about it. I won't close these doors if the government tells us to. I won't back down from going to the abortion mills and preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ.
I won't back down from going to the gay pride festivals and proclaiming the excellencies of Jesus Christ, and you should not either. And here's why, which is the third thing that we're going to see, which is that Paul was a steward of God's grace.
So firstly, we saw that Paul was the prisoner of Christ Jesus. Secondly, we saw...now secondly, we are seeing that Paul is the steward of God's grace. Going on, he continues, for this reason, verse 1, I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus, on behalf of you Gentiles, if indeed you heard of the stewardship of God's grace, which was given to me for you.
Now, I need to pause here for a second because there's something happening grammatically, and I wouldn't be Brandon Scalf if we didn't talk about that for a second. Right here, we have a jettison. We have an interruption or a digression linguistically.
That is, he is going to abandon where he was going, and he's going to talk.
About something else.
So verse 1 starts a thought, it abruptly ends. Some translations have a dash after Gentiles, and then he talks about some stuff, and then he picks it up again in verse 14 and says what he was going to say above.
And we know that because he says, for this reason, again. So verse 1 of chapter 3, for this reason, chapter 14, for this reason. That reason is the same reason that he meant to start in verse 2, but instead he decided to say some other things.
Now, I want to pause here and help you understand why that is, and I want to do that because it'll help us be better Bible readers. Oftentimes, if we're not familiar with the Bible or we don't read it a lot, we think that the Bible is just either a systematic theology like Romans, which actually is not the first place that people usually go, but that is one of the places that people go.
Another place, and most often, that people go is this. It's just a bunch of pithy religious sayings. As a matter of fact, that's exactly what I thought, even going to church before I was a Christian, before God had sovereignly regenerated me.
I thought that's just what the Bible was. I have a tattoo on my chest that says, blessed are the pure in heart. And I got that when I was a pagan. And the reason I got it is because I thought it sounded cool.
And the only reason that it's on there is because I was thinking to myself, I really want a tattoo there when I was 19 years old. And I was like, what am I going to get? You know, I'm not a philosopher.
I'm not a deep thinker. I'm not any of these things, you know? I played guitar, and then I joined the army. Like, I do things with my hands, really. But you know what? The Bible, I always hear people saying cool, pithy things from the Bible.
And so I start reading through Genesis, like in the tattoo parlor, and I'm like, I got nothing here. Like, I don't know what's going on. So I just like skipped to the New Testament. And I was like, that's probably where the good stuff is anyway.
And I get to Matthew, and I get to, like, the Beatitudes. And I'm like, man, I'm really getting sick and tired of reading this. I don't even understand any of it. Oh, Matthew 5, 8, blessed with pure in heart.
Yeah, I'm pure in heart. So I'll be blessed, not understanding anything about anything. That's the way that a lot of us come to the Bible. We just think it's a bunch of stuff that's pithy, and it teaches us some things.
But that's not what the Bible generally is. It's real letters or real types of literature written by real people to other real people. Specifically, in regard to this, it's a letter. Paul is writing a letter to a group of churches.
So it would be like, if I got put in prison for something that I didn't do, or that I did do, and the government told me not to do it, and I did it anyway because Christ told me that's what I do because I'm his prisoner and not theirs, on his property and not theirs, and I wrote you guys a letter saying, hey, I'm doing well, you know, send Cory with some cool books, you know, I love you all, so on and so forth.
You know, that's what's going on here. And so Paul is free, though, you know, some critical, you know, theologians like, well, we won't get into their names because I don't want you to know who they are.
But, you know, we'll say, well, that's proof he doesn't know what he's talking about. He's scatterbrained. He can't be trusted. No, he's just being a human being. I've went on 13 tangents.
I'm on point two.
I thought we'd be a lot further on than we are right now. That's what people do. And so he's being intimate.
He's being pastoral.
He's being loving, and he's being, and here's the reality of it, he's being worshipful. Because what we're about to get into is kind of a rehearsal in what we've already talked about for the last year.
And what Paul is doing is saying, Habib, before we move on, I need you to pause and I need you to understand something. Grace, I know I've already said it's amazing. I know I've already said it's beautiful.
I know I've already said that it has done all of these things to make us Christian and to bring us together in one body. But isn't it awesome? But I mean, really, isn't it amazing? Isn't amazing grace truly amazing?
That's what Paul's doing here in verses 2 through 13. He's helping us by being himself. And he's helping us understand that grace is way better than we think it is. And what he's also showing us is that sometimes, if not all the time, we need constant repetition because our hearts are hard.
Our hearts are hard. Our eyes don't want to see. Our hands don't want to work. And we don't like to think of Jesus as a warden and understanding the grace that is involved in all of that. So I reformed because we love grace as much as Paul loves grace.
There's nothing better than grace. But before we talk specifically about grace, let's look at this word steward. So we learned that Paul is a prisoner of Christ Jesus. Now he's a steward of God's grace.
What is a steward? A steward, not a word we often use anymore, which is probably one of the reasons the world is the way that it is, comes from this Greek word, oikomene, or in this form, oikomenos, which means a servant who has been entrusted with the care and oversight of his master's estate.
It's the very technical definition. And this stewardship, that is taking care of it, would be like taking care of it or that thing as if it were your own. And with that is an immense privilege, because Paul's going to say a little later on here and in other letters, it is grace that was shown to him that enabled him to carry and steward this message of grace.
It is a privilege, but it's a weighty responsibility. And once again, this applies to all Christians and in particular to those who desire Christian ministry. It means that those who love Jesus, love his words, find themselves to be underneath his wardenness, are enslaved not to their ideas, but to his message.
This is why we do verse by verse exegetical preaching around here, because God knows better about what you need than I do. His words are better than my words. His care is better than my care. He's the lead pastor around here, and we trust that his word will do his work in the hearts of his people.
What that means very practically is, for those of us who stand on this stage in front of this pulpit, opening these Bibles, me and Pastor Corey in particular, we are not editors of God's word. We are proclaimers of it.
We do not have permission to play fast and loose with it. We must absorb ourselves in this message so that what we give you is not our thoughts, but God's word. It's God's word. We're enslaved to God's message.
All Christians are enslaved to God's message. Not one of us in this room is allowed to temper with, add to, or take away from any of God's revelation. And understanding this is incredibly. I want you to think about it in this way.
I want you to imagine a king, a king who has yet to find himself a bride, but has narrowed out the bride that he wants. And so he decides he's going to woo her and win her and go after her, but she's very far away.
And he has some things that he needs to tend to that are of the utmost importance, maybe the safety of the entire kingdom that he resides over. And so he takes his most trusted messenger, his most trusted herald, and what he says is, I have a message for you to give to this would-be bride.
And that message is this, that I love her, that I'm willing to die for her, that I have done everything in my power up to this point to secure a safe and glorious rescuing of her in this faraway land.
And extend to her, as it were, an invitation to come to him where she will dwell with him in intimacy forever. Now imagine that that messenger goes to that woman and instead of telling her that, tells her, I love you, let's run away from here.
I do nothing but think about you all the time. And then they run away together. What do you think that king will do to that herald, that messenger, when he finds him and finds out that he did not give the message that he had given him to give, but that he mixed in his own message and actually made it about himself and not the king?
It would kill him. He might imprison him first. Friends, God has given his people a message, a message to steward, to oversee it like it's our own. It is not our own. And it is the only message that can save.
It's the only message that can sanctify. It's the only message that matters at all. And if we are found unfaithful in our families, men, by not burying our face in the word of God, understanding what it means, that is stewarding it and proclaiming it as it is, then we will stand in judgment for doing such that.
Ministers, if you stand up in this pulpit and you have not done your work, you have not done your study, you have not stewarded the oracles of God and you have made shipwreck of his message, then it will be better for the herald of that fictional king than for you on the day of judgment.
You must study. You must know. H .B. Charles has famously said, if you do not study and absorb your life in the text and you desire to be a minister of God, you desire performance, not preaching. Let's be faithful with that which we are to steward.
But stewardship also in the context of delivering and keeping the message is not just getting it right, it's also about it being right all the time, not just when it suits you. We are to be found faithful at all times.
That means we do not cower in the corner when people in our lives disagree with what we're saying. 1 Corinthians chapter four, verse two says, it is required. It's not a suggestion. It's stewards be found faithful.
And faithful means stewarding that gift which you have been given, namely the gospel of Jesus Christ and the message thereof, and being faithful to it all the time, proclaiming it all the time, studying it all the time.
And we don't blush when speaking of God's revealed truth. We cry out, we do not cower. And so when the world tells us what you believe is fairytale nonsense, we do not acquiesce. When people call us bigots, because we have a message we must proclaim, we do not cower.
Martin Luther famously said, peace if possible, truth at all costs. Of course, speak the truth in love, but the thing that binds us together, remember last week and the week before, is truth of who Jesus is and what he has done.
That is the message that is to be steward. And stewarding requires discipline. Paul had to be disciplined to be the stewarder, as it were, of God's grace, which was given to him for other people. And without discipline, the best intentions to use those gifts that God has given us, our time, our talent, and our treasures for the gospel will be overwhelmed by circumstances and the feelings of the moment resulting in inconsistency, or worse, neglect in using our resources most effectively for the cause of the gospel.
So you want to steward well the gospel message and the gifts that he has given you to promote that message throughout the world, then be disciplined in doing so. I don't feel like it too bad. God is in charge.
Mike Tyson is all over the internet right now because he's fighting another guy and he's 60, who is like 28 in the boxing world. And so he's all over the place. And I heard him talking about discipline with somebody the other day.
And he said, this is the definition of discipline. Discipline is doing something that you hate like you love it. You're not always going to love being disciplined, but it's required of you as a steward to be disciplined, to be disciplined.
This is true in the story, the parable in Matthew 25 of the men and the talents where the master rewards those who stewarded well the resources he committed to their care and he punishes those who did not.
Friends, the gospel message is a treasure that we are entrusted with. And we should give our lives for it. This is not a place that we can just show up sometimes.
And sometimes not.
This is not a place where we can just act like what we do doesn't matter. Everything that we do matters here. Everything that you do matters at home and none of it can be neglected.
It's Christ, Christ.
And God is pleased when we are disciplined, not careless. When God gets our first thoughts and not our afterthoughts. R .C. Sproul says it like this, we are to be wise stewards of God's gifts like the gospel and the talents that he gives us to make much of it.
That means striving to be the most honest, patient, hardworking and committed workers we can be. It means settling for nothing less than excellence. God is the best, amen. And he has given us the best message to steward, amen.
Why would we not give him our best in everything that we do to make much of his name? From shaking people's hands when they walk in to whatever we do behind the scenes, to the preaching, to the Lord's table, to the confession of sin, assurance of pardon, from the fellowship groups, I mean, whatever.
Why would we not give him 300 Many of us will skip church or skip being with God's people because they need to be more restful when they go to their work. Sorry if I'm stepping on anybody's toes. But what we have here and what you should carry with you everywhere you go is something that ought to give or ought to control all of our thoughts, mind, and actions.
We must eat and breathe this stuff. We must dream about this stuff because that's what God's stewards do. It is a weighty thing to be a Christian. It's a beautiful and gracious gift that God has given us.
And in many ways, if we understand it in the right context,.
Our burdens are light.
Because Jesus carries them for us. And with us. But if we don't understand the purpose to which God is working, then our perspective, when we meet trials and when we have to steward and study and so on and so forth, it gets all out of whack.
And we don't know what's going on. But if we have the proper divine perspective that has been given to us, both by the words and example of the apostle Paul and so many others in the Bible, we can trust the Lord and trust his promises.
And we can walk out of these doors and we can honor our warden. We can honor our savior. We can honor our elder brother. We can honor the triune God of the Bible who has saved us and given us all things.
For he who did not spare his own son, how will he not also with him give us graciously all things? Friends, as hard as maybe this message might've sounded, I promise you, especially to the ministers, God has not tried to take anything from you, but only to give to you life, joy, and peace.
And everything that will make you bleed on this side of eternity will be worth it when you see Jesus on the last day. And he says, well done, good and faithful servant.
Amen. Pray with me. Father,.
