A Gospel Shaped Ministry

If you have your Bible with you this morning, I hope you do turn to Ephesians chapter 3 as we
continue our study through the book of Ephesians.
And some of you know the story about how I became a minister. And I use that word minister because
it's in the text this morning. Paul talks about being... called to be a minister, being made a
minister by God. So let me tell you how I became a minister, if you don't know that story. When I
was in college, after I became a Christian, I remember having the thought that maybe instead of
going to law school, which was my plan, I would go to seminary. I started to think that being in
vocational ministry might be what God had for me. And I remember going home. over a christmas break
and telling my parents that i was wondering about maybe going to seminary instead of going to law
school and maybe going into the ministry and all i remember of that conversation was my mom saying
you know ministers don't make very much money now mom grew up in the depression both my mom and dad
did so it's not surprising that that would be on their radar but and it caused me to just pause and
go well is it Do I need to be hearing? Is it the Lord speaking to me? Honor your parents? I was
just thinking all those things. I said, okay, I'll just keep going on the path that I'm on. Never
made it to law school. Wound up taking a summer job at a radio station. Was having too much fun to
go back to school, so I just stayed doing that. But after a couple of years doing radio,
I was still thinking, I wonder if I should be going to seminary. There was just a...
stirring there. So I remember going out to lunch with one of the elders from our church and I said,
I've wondered about seminary. What do you think? Do you think I should do that? Do you think, he
said, I think it'd be great for you to go to seminary. I think you'd be good as a minister. But the
more I thought about that, I was married. We had a child at this point. How do you pay tuition? How
do you support a family? How do you study Greek and Hebrew and do all of that? I just couldn't
figure out how to make that work. So I just said, okay, I'll keep doing radio. So jump ahead a
couple of years. I had been listening to John MacArthur on the radio and listening to cassette
tapes of John MacArthur. Kids, cassette tapes are these little things we used to listen to.
And I would listen to these all the time.
John MacArthur was going to be in Kansas City. My parents lived in Kansas City. We were living in
Tulsa at the time. I said, let's go visit my parents. I want to go hear John MacArthur. He's going
to be speaking at Calvary Bible College up in Kansas City. I want to go hear him speak. So we drove
up, visited my parents. My dad and I went to hear John MacArthur speak. And I waited in line after
he was done speaking so that I could meet him and ask him my question.
And my question was, how do you know if you're called to ministry? Because it was still kind of
nagging at me. Is this what I'm supposed to be doing? And he gave me Spurgeon's answer to that
question. Spurgeon famously, when he was asked that question, said, if you can do anything else,
do it.
That was a completely unsatisfactory answer. That was not the answer I was looking for. Because I
thought, well, I can do something else. I mean, most people can do something else. If that's the
answer, nobody's going to be a minister. Most ministers can work at the 7-Eleven.
You can do something else. What I didn't understand at the time was he wasn't saying if you're able
to. He was saying if you can handle not doing this, if it's not a driving unction in your life.
So I continued in radio, kept doing what I was doing. We moved from Tulsa to Phoenix and then to
Sacramento and then to San Antonio, and I remained in radio.
And became an active church person. I mean, I was an elder at our church in San Antonio, moved up
here and became an elder in the church we were attending here. And so I was active and I was a lay
person involved in ministry while I was supporting myself and all of that. And then,
of course, Redeemer started in 2008. And that's where I realized,
even though I was bivocational, I recognized increased responsibility and I began. preaching every
week. And when we think about somebody being a minister, that's typically what we're thinking
about. The guy who preaches every week or the guy who's on staff at a church, that's a minister.
What I came to realize is that I became a minister when I became a Christian.
And so did you.
I don't know if you've thought about that. I don't know if you've ever said to yourself, oh, I'm a
minister. Well, you are, as we're going to see in our text this morning. The Apostle Paul is
explaining to his readers about God's call on his life to be involved in the ministry of the
gospel, how it happened and what it looked like. And I want us to see as we look at this text that
God has given each of us ministry responsibility, a ministry that parallels the ministry given to
the Apostle Paul. It's not exactly the same. All of our ministries are going to look different. But
all of us who are followers of Christ are called to ministry. And I want us to see the similarities
and the differences between Paul's ministry and the ministry you've been called to as a follower of
Jesus. We're just going to look at three verses this morning in chapter 3, verses 7, 8, and 9.
But we're going to read the first 13 verses of chapter 3 in order to get the context for our study.
So I want us to read this together. Let me pray for us before we do that. Father, we come to you
dependent on your spirit to be the one who teaches us from your word this morning.
And so we ask, Lord, that you would clear our hearts and our minds to receive from you,
Lord, the fog that may be there, the disorientation, the scattered thoughts, even the enemy who
wants us to be distracted. We pray that you would give us clarity this morning, that you would give
us... ready to hear and receive and obey. And we ask it in Jesus' name.
Amen. If you would stand with me, we're going to read the Word of God for the people of God,
Ephesians 3, beginning at verse 1. Here's what the Bible says, For this reason I,
Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus, on behalf of you Gentiles,
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.
This mystery... is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs and members of the same body and partakers of
the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. Of this gospel,
I was made a minister according to the gift of God's grace, which was given me by the working of
his power. To me, though I am the very least of all the saints,
This grace was given to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ and to bring to
light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things so
that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and
authorities in the heavenly places. This was according to the eternal purpose. that he had realized
in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in
him. So I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you,
which is your glory. Amen. You may be seated. May God bless this reading of his word.
The grass withers and the flower fades. The word of our God will last forever. Here's what I want
us to see in these three verses that we're going to look at this morning. I want us to see what I'm
calling Paul's gospel-shaped ministry. I want us to look at his calling into ministry,
how he was empowered by God in that calling, and how he was called in spite of his lack of any
qualifications for this ministry. I want us to see what was his message and what was his mission.
So his calling and his message and his mission. And we're going to start by looking at his calling.
Verse 7, he says, I was made a minister of the gospel. So I want to make sure we know what both of
those words mean. Gospel and minister. Okay, so let me start with gospel.
And I don't want to just take for granted that everybody knows what this word means. And there are
two reasons I'm not going to take it for granted. First, because for many years... I had a limited
or an incomplete or incorrect understanding of what the gospel was.
And it's possible you do too. So I want to make sure that we're clear on this.
And then secondly, I think... It's the case for a lot of Christians in our world today,
a lot of people who have been saved, who are followers of Christ, but they are real genuine
believers, but they have an incomplete or a wrong understanding of the gospel. Let me clarify this
for you by telling you first what the gospel is not. What you may have thought it is,
but it's not. It's not instructions on how to live your life. It's not a new law.
It's not a rule book. The gospel is not, here's how to live. Now, the gospel influences that,
but that's not what it is. It's not moral advice. It's not ethical standards being declared.
Again, it influences those things, but that's not what the gospel is. It is not behavior
modification or a self-improvement plan. The gospel is not something that you learn so that you
can live a better life. It's not a call to do good works so you can earn your salvation.
That's not the gospel at all. Tim Keller has famously said that the word gospel means good news,
not good advice. And we've got to keep that in mind. The Bible's not giving us good advice,
it's declaring to us good news. And I love quoting... Tim Keller on these things because maybe more
than anyone else, he helped me understand the gospel clearly. He loved pointing out that the gospel
is distinct from religion. He said religion teaches you obey and therefore be accepted.
And it's also different than irreligion, which is you can just ignore God, it doesn't really
matter. He says the gospel instead means I am accepted through Christ,
therefore I obey.
And that's an important distinction. That's an important difference. If you've thought about the
gospel as meaning I must obey to be accepted, that's legalism. If you've thought about the gospel
being I can do whatever I want and it doesn't really matter, that's license. The gospel is because
I am accepted in Christ, I now choose to obey. The gospel is the good news that while we,
Keller liked to say this, while we are more sinful than we dare believe, At the same time,
we are more loved and accepted in Christ than we ever dared hope. Isn't that good news?
That while you are more sinful than you imagine, in Christ you are more loved and accepted than you
ever dared hope. And I just want to make sure this is how you understand the gospel, because for
me, and I think for many of us, we have this default in us, which is we want to keep pushing
ourselves in the direction of self-justification.
We want our goodness to come for something with God. We want to be able to say,
well, look, God, like a little kid who comes and says, Mommy, see what I did. We want to be able to
say to God, God, see what I did, and have him go, you're such a good boy. That's not the gospel.
We have a performance-based perspective on our relationship with God. We want to earn our way to
Him and be rewarded for our own goodness. That's bad news. That'll kill you.
If that's your perspective on the gospel, one of two things. You're going to try really hard and
you'll fall short and you'll wind up in condemnation and in guilt and you'll find out going,
this is miserable. Or you will succeed at some level and you'll go, look what a good boy I am.
And either of those is going to destroy you. It's bad news. The gospel says you can't be good
enough to earn God's favor, but God, because of his love and his mercy and his grace,
has credited to you the goodness of Jesus. And you're accepted into God's family,
not because of the goodness in you, but because of the goodness in him. That's...
The good news. And that good news, when we get our heads wrapped around it, when we believe it,
when we start to live it, that good news has a transformational impact on our choices,
on our identity, our behavior. It changes everything. So that's the gospel.
And it's important that we get it right so that we believe it and so that we present it rightly to
others. Again, that's what the word gospel means. Paul says, I was a minister.
I was made a minister of the gospel. So if that's what the gospel is, what does the word minister
mean? It's the Greek word diakonos, which is the word that we get deacon from.
It means a servant. A deacon is somebody in the life of the local church who serves the practical,
tangible needs of people in our church. And Paul said, I was made a deacon of the gospel,
a servant of the gospel. Now, this verse is primarily talking about how we take the gospel and use
it to serve others. So a minister of the gospel takes the gospel and uses it to serve others.
But I want to look at it from a little different angle this morning and talk about how we serve the
gospel itself. So here's this good news that God has given us.
How do we become servants of that good news? What does that look like? What does the gospel need
from us? in order for it to be effective. I'm going to propose to you three things that the gospel
needs from everyone who is a believer of Christ. Here's how you serve the gospel. First, you serve
the gospel by believing it. First and foremost, we serve the gospel by embracing the good news,
by saying, I believe that's true.
The gospel is not presented to us so that we can look at it and say, oh, that's interesting. or
that's nice, it's presented to us so that we can either embrace it or reject it.
If you embrace the gospel, then it becomes the foundation for everything else about your life.
It begins to reshape you. It puts God at the center, and it gives Him first place in everything.
That's what Paul says in Colossians. place in everything. That's good news because those who have
surrendered their lives to Jesus, when we surrender our lives, we are reconciled to God. We become
children of God. Now this informs and shapes the decisions you make, the choices you make in life.
This good news defines everything about your life. I belong to the Lord. I am not my own.
We sing that sometimes, right? And because I belong to the Lord and I'm not my own, my choices are
not based on what I want. They're based on what does God want? That's the reshaping work of the
good news. And if you reject the gospel, that has a life-shaping impact as well.
Your rejection of the good news keeps you at the center of everything. You're living your life for
you. You decide that life would be better if you lived it apart from God than if you lived it under
his authority. And by the way, let me just say this. There's no middle ground when it comes to the
gospel. You can't half believe the gospel. You can't decide, I'll believe it when it's convenient
or when it suits me. No, you either surrender to the gospel and believe it,
or you reject it. You either believe that God sent His Son,
Jesus lived a perfect life, that He was obedient to God in all that He did,
and then He died on a cross in your place, paying the debt that we owe for our sin.
that he rose again on the third day, which we will celebrate in glory next Sunday, and that he now
rules and reigns over all creation, you either believe that or you don't. And if you believe it,
then that has implications for every part of your life. You surrender your life to the one who is
in authority over you. You take up your cross and follow him. You deny yourself. You are forgiven.
You receive new life. You've been given eternal life with him. And that's what it means to believe
the gospel. There's no middle ground on it. So the first way we serve the gospel,
we are ministers of the gospel, is by choosing to believe it ourselves.
God sent his son to proclaim this gospel so that we would believe it and have eternal life.
The second way we serve the gospel is by declaring it. The gospel is given to us so that we will
declare it to others. We've received good news. We've heard good news. Now our job is to take it to
people who haven't heard it so they can hear it. There are lost and dying people around you who
have not heard this or have not believed this. They are lonely. They are alienated. To those,
whether they realize it or not, the emptiness and the longing in their own soul is a longing to be
loved and accepted by God. And we have the responsibility to let them know that God loves them and
wants them to surrender to him. Here's how Paul says it to the Corinthians.
In 2 Corinthians 5, he says, Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others.
And then he goes on to say, we are ambassadors for Christ. God making his appeal through us,
we implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. That's the assignment. We are to declare
the gospel. If you're going to be a minister of the gospel, you first believe it,
and then you declare it to others. Listen to me. God didn't save you just so you can live with him
forever. and have a good life. Some people have wondered, why doesn't God just take us home when he
saves us? Like the day you get saved, go straight to heaven. Wouldn't that be great? You pray the
prayer and you wake up and I'm for that. But God leaves us here for a reason. Part of it is so that
we can begin the process of sanctification to get ready for heaven. Be a shock when you get there
if you hadn't been ready. But the second part of all of this is so that you can tell others about
Jesus.
The gospel you believe for yourself, you need to spread the word. So we serve the gospel by
believing it and then by declaring it. Finally, you serve the gospel by living according to it.
Paul is going to detail for us what it looks like to live your life according to the gospel when we
get to chapter 4. In fact, chapters 4, 5, and 6 are an explanation of what it looks like to live
according to the gospel. But let me just give you... categories of gospel living.
When we talk about living the gospel, here's a little bit of what it looks like to live the gospel.
First of all, you depend on grace for your own life and you extend grace to others.
Living the gospel means you live a life dependent on God's grace and you extend that grace to other
people. God has extended grace to you. We should give grace to others.
That's the first way we live the gospel. Second way you live the gospel is by walking in a manner
worthy of the gospel. This is what Paul's going to say in Ephesians 4. He's going to say,
walk in a manner worthy of the gospel. Let your manner of life reflect God's priorities for you.
Live in holiness. Live in humility. Die to self. Love others.
That's a life, that's what the worthy walk looks like. The third way,
you live a life that is a gospel-centered life, is by repenting regularly.
Regular repentance. And when I talk about repenting regularly, it's being aware of your sin and not
just feeling bad about your sin, but turning from it. See,
there's a difference. When it comes to sin, a lot of people think repenting means that you cry and
you feel bad and you wish you hadn't done it. That's not repenting. Now, God may be stirring that
in you, but if you don't turn from it, you're not repenting of your sin.
You honor the gospel when you say, I don't want to go this way, I'm going in a different way. And
when you stumble, you get back up and go the right direction. That's what repenting looks like.
Finally, you live the gospel by re-believing it every day. You've heard me say this before.
We are to re-repent and re-believe the gospel as a pattern of life. It's how you live your life.
You keep believing that the gospel is true every day.
That you are forgiven. That God is transforming you, that you have a hope and a future. You keep
believing that in the midst of circumstances that will come at you and say, that's just
foolishness. No, you say, I'm going to believe that. I'm going to believe I'm forgiven. I'm going
to believe that God is making me a new person. I'm going to believe I have a hope and a future with
him.
Here's what I mean by re-believing the gospel. I love this second verse of this hymn.
Maybe my favorite hymn, although you can't, it's like having a favorite kid. But I love when we
sing before the throne of God above and we get to this verse that says, when Satan tempts me to
despair and tells me of the guilt within. Just stop there for a second.
You ever have those moments?
When you've sinned, you know you've messed up, and Satan tempts you to despair and reminds you of
your guilt, says, look at you. You can't be a Christian. You did that. When Satan tempts me to
despair and tells me of the guilt within, upward I look and see him there who made an end to all my
sin.
That's the gospel. Because the sinless Savior died,
my sinful soul is counted free. For God,
the just, is satisfied to look on him and pardon me.
Re-believe that every day. Memorize that hymn. Sing it to yourself in those times when you are in
despair. Keep counseling your own soul with this truth. Because,
listen, there is an enemy of your soul who is going to work overtime to try to get you not to
believe that. To try to get you to believe other things. He'll try to convince you that these
things aren't true.
So here's the point. Paul was made a minister of the gospel, a servant of the gospel. He served it
in part by believing it, by proclaiming it, and by living it. You've been made a minister of the
gospel too. Everyone who has received grace is told to dispense grace to others.
So here's what you have to figure out. What does your call to ministry look like? For Paul,
be a missionary. Be a church planter. For me, be a pastor and preach.
What is it for you?
It will involve believing the gospel. It will involve living the gospel.
proclaiming the gospel, but how do you do that? What does it look like? What's your unique
circumstance? You serve the gospel by believing it and re-believing it.
Are you doing that? You serve the gospel by proclaiming it, telling others about it. Are you doing
that? And you serve the gospel by depending on grace, extending grace, walking worthy,
repenting, and re-believing. Are you doing these things? Look back at the verses here in Ephesians
3. There are two attributes or mindsets that Paul says he needed in order to be effective in his
ministry of the gospel. The first mindset was a mindset of dependence. In verse 7, he says,
I was made a minister according to the gift of God's grace, which was given him by the working of
God's power. Paul understood that his service to God,
his ministry, just like your ministry, like my ministry, depends on the working of his power,
not on the working of your power. It doesn't mean that you're just passive in all of this.
It just means that the power to be effective in ministry doesn't come from you. It comes from the
Spirit in you working through you. Paul had learned a secret in his life. In fact,
he talks in Philippians about the secret of contentment. And that secret of contentment was
learning, I can do all things, how? Through Christ who strengthens me.
He says in 2 Corinthians 12, when I am weak, then I'm strong.
His power is made perfect in my weakness. So one of the things that we have to learn how to do in
order to be effective in our ministry of the gospel is to learn how to be dependent on God.
to work through us. Paul had learned it. He said, I'm doing this by the power of God who's at work
in me. And we have to recognize that anything we do, we're not doing in our own power, our own
strength. It's by the power of God working in and through us.
I presume you know this. In your weakest moments, when you face an assignment and you say, I just
don't have it in me to do this, that's when you need to remember, oh yes, I do have it in me.
Because greater is he who's in me. than he who's in the world. So he has a mindset of dependence.
He also has a mindset of humility. Look at what he says in verse 8. He talks about being the very
least of the saints. Now that can sound like hyperbole. It's like these people who say,
oh, I'm the worst. No. And that can be really annoying when people do that because it's like
they're wanting you to say, oh, no, you're not that bad. No, Paul really looked at his life and
said, I'm... Pretty bad. I don't belong in this role that I'm in.
Paul was not saying this so that the Ephesians would go, oh no, Paul, you're really...
No, he would say, no, guys, do you understand my story, my background? You know what I was doing
before I was doing this, right? Putting Christians to death? You remember,
I don't have... I have a disreputable background. Paul said this about himself regularly.
1 Corinthians 15, he said, I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle,
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,
though it was not I, but the grace of God that is in me. Paul understood that its dependence on God
and humility to understand your position and that it's God working through you.
That's the key to effective ministry. I don't think Paul ever got over the idea that God had saved
him and called him to ministry. He never got over his fundamental unworthiness to be doing what he
was doing. And I think you and I should never get over that as well.
We should never get over the fact that We have been saved by grace. To be a proud Christian,
that's an oxymoron.
If you ever find yourself getting puffed up about how smart you are, I'm smarter than all these
other people. Or getting puffed up about how good you are, oh, I don't do those bad things that
other people do. You are right where the enemy wants you to be. And let me just say here,
it's just as dangerous to grovel and be one of those, oh,
I'm a terrible, no good person, as it is to be puffed up. Neither of those postures is what God is
looking for. He wants us to have a sober assessment of the reality of our sinful condition and a
sober belief in the goodness of his grace, the power of his grace.
Paul never forgot his sinfulness and his unworthiness, but he also never forgot the greatness of
the grace of God. We sometimes will sing two wonders here that I confess.
and my unworthiness. Both are true. Our unworthiness is real.
The grace of God which makes us worthy is real. And we need to embrace both of those
simultaneously. To effectively serve God and serve the gospel requires that you have a mindset of
dependence and humility. And that's what Paul is declaring about himself and modeling for his
readers. That's what he says about his calling. So verses 7 and 8 really reflect on that.
Let's look at the message that he describes here that he was called to. He's been describing this
message throughout this portion of this letter as the revealing of the mystery. I was called to
reveal this mystery. That's my message. God is uniting Jew and Gentile together into one new body.
That's the mystery that I've been called to. But here, he says, actually, my message is bigger than
that. Verse 8, he says, I've been called to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches.
of Christ.
That word for riches is the word plutos, which can refer to material riches, but in this case it's
talking about spiritual blessings. And abundance takes you all the way back to where this letter
began, back in chapter 1, verse 3, where Paul says, to you has been given all the blessings,
all the spiritual blessings there are, you have them all. Here Paul is saying, I want you to be
able to fathom the spiritual blessings that are yours in Christ. He says these are unsearchable.
No matter how hard you try to understand the riches of Christ, you'll never...
plumb the depths of the riches.
It's like me saying to you, let's go explore the Atlantic Ocean. I want to see every square foot of
the bottom of the Atlantic. You'll never do that.
Back many years ago, we had the opportunity to go to London with our kids on a trip. This was 20
plus years ago, I think. Five days in London. We did all the stuff you do when you go to London. We
went to the Tower of London. We went to the Churchill's War Room. Maybe my favorite place to go in
London. We went to Buckingham Palace. We took a day and we went to Windsor and we saw Windsor
Castle and there's a Legoland in Windsor. So we took the kids to Legoland in Windsor. And we went
to the British Museum for a few hours. You know anything about the British Museum? It's huge.
A few hours in the British Museum is just stupid, right? There's so much there.
You'll see the Rosetta Stone and maybe a few other things, but there's just so much there, you're
not going to be able to see it all. You know how many items the British Museum has under curation?
Eight million items that they have. The British Museum is unsearchable.
In fact, I just did the math on this for fun. If you looked at 100 items from their collection
every day,
Monday through Sunday, throughout the week, every day for the rest of your life, it would take 219
years, looking at 100 items a day, for you to see everything that they have at the British Museum.
It's unsearchable. The riches of Christ are more unsearchable than that.
You can spend the rest of your life examining, exploring, looking at the riches of what we have in
Christ. You'll never get there. In glory, we'll get closer. But we'll spend eternity plumbing the
riches of Christ.
And this is the message Paul says, I've been commissioned to bring to you Gentiles. Down in verse
18, we'll get there, he talks about his readers wanting to have the strength to comprehend the
breadth and the length and the height and the depth, to know the love of Christ that surpasses
knowledge. I want you to know the love of Christ, and you'll never be able to. That's what he's
saying. And that's just the love of Christ. He wants you to understand the grace of Christ, the
mercy of Christ, the wisdom of Christ, the justice of Christ, the goodness of Christ. You get the
point? It's unsearchable. Paul's message for the Gentiles and for us is that all of these riches
are ours in Christ and they transcend human understanding.
The difference between the artifacts in the British Museum and the unsearchable riches of Christ is
that the riches in the museum belong to them, and you can look at them. The riches of Christ belong
to you, and you can possess them, and you can experience them. Charles Spurgeon preached a sermon
on the unsearchable riches of Christ, and he said we can explore the riches of his love,
the riches of his pardon, the riches of his comfort. The riches of his wisdom,
the riches of his happiness and joy. He summed it up this way. He said, Jesus is a greater savior
than you think him to be when your thoughts are at the greatest.
And John Stott said it this way. He said, what is certain about the wealth of Christ,
the wealth Christ has and gives is that we shall never come to an end of it.
Paul's message about the unsearchable riches of Christ. That's our message too.
Our message is not to weigh in on current events. That's not what's most important for a Christian
to do. It's not unimportant, but it's not our most important message. It's not to make moral
exhortations. Again, not unimportant, not the most important. Our message is not our story,
although God can use your story significantly in the lives of others to point to an example of his
transforming grace. But our message is the unsearchable riches of Christ.
And we've been given the same assignment as Paul. So I want to go from his message to his mission
because it's our mission too. Look at verse 9. The mission is to bring to light for everyone what
is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things.
Let me just make a couple observations about what Paul is highlighting here. First of all, he
describes the revealing of this mystery. as bringing it to light. So the unsearchable riches of
Christ, I want to shine a light on that. He's saying that this good news requires spiritual
enlightenment because people around us are walking around in spiritual darkness.
You and I know people who are desperately trying to find peace for their souls, trying to find
meaning and purpose in life, trying to find a reason for hope in a dark world. They are searching
for all of these things in darkness. Have you ever tried to search for something in the darkness?
At night when you wake up and the room is dark and you're stumbling around and you stub your toe
and you can't find what you're looking for? Because it's dark. That's how people today in our world
are looking for spiritual truth. They are in darkness. Paul says, my mission is to bring light to
them. And the light we bring is bringing the gospel. Remember, one of the names for the enemy of
God is he is the prince of darkness.
And it is only the gospel, when it is heard and believed, that brings light to that darkness.
So he says, God has given me this mission, which is to bring light to people who are in darkness.
And notice that he says it goes beyond Jew and Gentile, it's really the whole world. I mean, I
guess Gentile, anybody who's not a Jew is a Gentile. But he's saying, this is not just for the
Greeks and the Romans. My mission is to take this to the whole world. He'd been through Asia Minor.
He'd been in Greece. He had been to Rome. He was now under house arrest in Rome while he's writing
this letter. But he had a desire to go to Spain. He wanted to go everywhere where there were people
to bring light to the darkness so that they could see the unsearchable riches of Christ.
And here's the interesting thing. Here's what's at the heart of this mystery. We've talked about
the mystery being the uniting of the Jews and Gentiles into one person.
But the mystery was in a polytheistic culture where every nation or every tribe had their own god
or gods. The Greeks had their gods, the Romans had their gods, the Ammonites had their gods,
and the Jebusites had their gods. All the different, wherever you were, they all had their own
gods. The mystery is that there is one true god,
and it's Yahweh, the god of the Jews. That would have been a surprise to everybody.
Why are you saying your God is the one true God? That's the mystery. You always thought it was just
a tribal God. the Jewish people. No. God is now explaining that he is the God over all the earth.
In fact, in this verse it says, the God who created all these things.
Paul is saying the mystery is that Yahweh, the God of Israel, the God who is the creator of
everyone and everything, is not just the Jewish God, he's the God over the whole world which he
created. And he says, I am living in the day when that mystery is being unfolded,
when the darkness is over and the light has been turned on. And God is giving me a part in
revealing that. And there are people around you every day who are stumbling in darkness just like
you once were. And you have the light. You have the answer to the mystery.
You can tell them about the unsearchable riches you have found in Jesus.
And you don't. Or you won't.
Why?
Let me go back to where we started. We've been called to minister, to serve, to believe,
to proclaim, and live the gospel. Let me just ask you, which of those three areas needs attention
in your life? Do you need more believing?
Some of you do. Some of you need to re-believe the gospel today. Do you need proclaiming?
More of that? Some of you do. You need more boldness in your interactions with friends,
neighbors, coworkers. Do you need to walk in the gospel more regularly?
Some of you do. Some of you would say, Yeah, I can see which one of those I need more work in. Some
of you would say, hey, I need help in all three of those.
All of us need to be asking, how can we minister the gospel? By the way,
there's a website you can go to.
This is not going to help you minister the gospel. I'll just tell you about this. It's PulaskiDeeds
.com. If you go to PulaskiDeeds.com and you search for my name, this is what will come up. Do you
see my name there in the middle? This is proof that as of September 14, 2010, I was officially
ordained for gospel ministry in the state of Arkansas. You can find my credentials.
They are in Book S on page 38. And any time I officiate a wedding,
I have to not only sign the wedding certificate, but I have to note you will find me in Book S on
page 38. You may not have your name in any of the books or on any of the pages at the county
clerk's office. But I'm here to tell you this morning, you have been called. I'm here to ordain you
for gospel ministry. You're called to it. If you know Christ, if you've received grace,
God has extended grace to you so you can be a steward. I love what Irving said about that.
That word steward is what we're called to do. You've been given the gospel, steward the gospel.
You've been given grace, steward grace. You've been made a ministry, a minister of the gospel.
Believe the gospel. proclaim the gospel, and live the gospel. Paul understood that assignment.
Do you? Let's pray.
Father, we acknowledge and do understand this morning the joyful assignment you have given us.
Lord, we confess that it is easy for us to think of this assignment sometimes as a burden rather
than a delight. And yet to revel in your grace will thrill our hearts.
To share good news with others will bring us joy. To walk in obedience gives us life.
Lord, help us to recognize the responsibility that you have given us is both a privilege and a joy.
And help us to be, as Paul was, faithful ministers of the gospel in our world.
And Lord, I pray this morning for anyone who might be here. who has never believed the gospel, or
maybe they believed an incomplete gospel, maybe they've never understood it fully. Lord,
I pray that you would, by your Spirit, reveal to them clearly the truth of the gospel,
that they might hear it and follow you, that they might believe it and experience forgiveness of
sin and
the transformation that you promised, the new life that you promised.
Lord, we ask these things in your name. Amen.