Paul's Ministry, Part 01

Good morning, everybody. If you are a guest with us this morning, I just want to say welcome. We really appreciate you being here. If Sauldam is your normal church home that you are worshiping with, then man, welcome back. This is always a great day to be in the Lord’s house. Is that right? Amen. Awesome.

Well, Becky said something a second ago that is true—that when our women get together, they are stronger than just the sum of the parts. Absolutely. So, we wanted to announce that to make sure everybody knows that there is still a spot for you in one of our ISI groups as part of the women’s ministry that’s going on right now. So, if Monday mornings—that large group time whenever they gather every other Monday—if that’s not going to work for you because of your life situation, don’t let that be the reason you don’t jump into one of the smaller groups that meets on the other weeks. If you are interested in investing some time and some energy into your spiritual life and into the lives of others, and you are a woman, then let Donna or Becca know. If you are a man and you want to do that, then let’s find another avenue for you to exercise that desire.

So, as well related to that, Donna, Becca, and a few other women who are leaders of other women’s ministries for different churches throughout the Charleston Baptist Association have taken on a massive undertaking that they believe is directly from the Lord. They are putting on the first-ever Women of Charleston, the Charleston Baptist Association Women’s Conference. This has like never happened before in the 200-plus years of our association existing. There’s never been a conference for women put on by women. So, this is going to be coming up in October. We want to go ahead and start praying for it.

Now, on your way out, if you go to those back two tables, you will see prayer calendars that we’re using for the month of May to pray specifically for various aspects of that conference. So, for the Sunday mornings of the month of May, we’re going to use our congregational prayer time to lift up that conference. This morning, we’re going to ask specifically that God would prepare hearts for women to come. The hope and the prayer is that there would be women that do know Jesus as Lord and Savior, and we’re asking that God would prepare them to receive from the Lord just whatever they need, whatever sort of direction and comfort they might need. We’re also praying that lost women, women that do not yet know Jesus as Lord and Savior, come to the conference. So, we’re asking that God would begin tilling the soil so that the seed of the gospel would find some really good soil there.

So, take it away for a few moments. Just grab a neighbor and pray specifically for this conference, and pray specifically that God would prepare the hearts of all the women that will gather there. And I’ll put a bow on it here in a second. Thank y’all.

The Lord reigns. He is robed in majesty. The Lord is robed, enveloped in strength. The world is firmly established. It cannot be shaken. Your throne has been established from the beginning. You are from eternity. The floods have lifted up, Lord. The floods have lifted up their voice. The floods lift up their pounding waves. Greater than the roar of huge torrents. The mighty breakers of the sea. The Lord on high is majestic. Lord, Your testimonies are completely reliable. Holiness adorns Your house for all the days to come.

God, thank You. Thank You for this morning. God, thank You that You reign. Thank You that You sit on Your throne. Thank You, Lord. Thank You that as deafening as the frustrations and the pain of this world can be, as deafening as they can be to us, God, nothing can silence Your voice. God, You have said that this Bible, this is Your word, this is Your voice. And in a few moments, I’m going to read it, and I’m going to explain what it means. God, I beg that You would speak through it this morning.

God, I beg that You would prepare Caroline Saunders to speak Your word, to teach Your word at the conference coming up in October. I pray that You would prepare the hearts of all the women that go to that, God, that they would be good soil for it. And God, I pray that You would do that in this room right now, too. Lord, that each and every one of us, myself included, we be good soil for the seed of Your Word to take root and to bear fruit in our lives. God, please let it be. God, I pray that as I open Your Word, as I share my notes, that this would be more than just me speaking publicly for a few minutes, but it would be the voice of the God Almighty speaking to people. People that He loves, people that He’s drawn here, people that He cherishes, that He created and designed specifically and uniquely. God, let us all walk out of here knowing exactly what we ought to do. Lord, we love You. Meet with us. Thank You. Thank You for bringing us here. And it’s in Your great name that we pray. Amen. Amen.

Well, you go ahead and turn in your Bibles to Ephesians chapter 3. That’s where we will be this morning. Ephesians chapter 3. Last week I cited this research study that was conducted by Lifeway. It’s one of the arms of the Southern Baptist Convention. This study pulled 2,000 some odd people and it asked them, “How frequently do you wonder about the meaning and the purpose of your life?” How frequently do you wonder if there is anything more to this world than this world? And we put the graphic up on the screen that every person you interact with, out of every five or so, you got three or four of them that are wondering that question at least every month. Most people you interact with are desperately curious to know, does my life have any meaning? Or they are desperate to know that it does have some meaning. They’re desperate to know their purpose. And I don’t think that you would be here this morning if you were uninterested in that question. I think everybody that’s here this morning really wants to know, God, what is my purpose? What have You made me for?

You see, God has a general purpose for everybody. It does not matter who you are. It does not matter where you live. It does not matter your church background, your awareness of the Bible. God has a purpose for you. That purpose is to glorify and enjoy God. That is God’s purpose for you. That’s why you have been made the way you have been made. That’s why you live on this planet. That is why God is still in this moment filling your lungs with the tide of breath so that you can continue to live. You are here because God wants you to glorify and enjoy Him. You were made to enjoy God. I want you to just think about this for a moment and you just be really honest. Do you enjoy God? You were made to enjoy Him. Now, as you enjoy Him, you glorify Him. But here’s the deal. So here’s the rub. We all fail to properly glorify God because we don’t totally enjoy God because we enjoy something else as well. And that other thing we enjoy is called sin. We enjoy missing the mark. We enjoy living for a different standard. We enjoy living for a different design.

That’s why Jesus came. He came to rescue us from our sin and ourselves. He came to restore us to our general purpose of enjoying and glorifying God. You see, while most of Christianity is freely lived under that general purpose, enjoy God and glorify Him, this morning we will see that sometimes God makes it more personal than that. In fact, there’s just really one thing I want you to take away from this morning. It’s this. God gives specific assignments to accomplish His general purpose. God still speaks. He still acts. I fully believe God is at work right now here. He is at work in your life. He is at work in Ravenel, Greater Charleston. He is at work in our country and in this world. God is still at work. He still has a general purpose for every single person. And to accomplish that general purpose, He gives us specific assignments.

That assignment might be as simple as bringing up Jesus with somebody that comes up to you at Starbucks like Miss Linda did a couple weeks ago. That assignment might be so specific. It means that you feel this nudge from God to turn left at Publix instead of right around the end cap because it leads you to a conversation with somebody. That assignment might be seasonal. It might be, hey, I’m calling you to go down to Charleston to link your life with this church out in Ravenel. It might be a lifelong calling of, hey, I have set you apart for ministry.

I have set you apart for this particular vocation because you’re going to get to talk with all sorts of people. God gives us specific assignments to accomplish His general purpose. Today we’re going to look at Paul’s specific assignment. And I believe that there are some connections that that can make to our lives so that we can all walk out of here this morning having a better grasp of what your specific assignment is or is going to be.

We’re going to look at Paul’s specific assignment through some basic questions you were taught in middle school: who, where, what, when, and how. And next week we’ll look at why. So we’re going to look at Paul’s specific assignment in Ephesians chapter 3, verses 1-7. It’ll be on the screens, but man, it is so much better when you bring your copy of God’s word and you get to hold it in your lap right here.

This is Ephesians chapter 3, verses 1-7. “For this reason, I Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles, assuming you have heard about the administration of God’s grace that He gave me for you. The mystery was made known to me by revelation as I have briefly written above. By reading this, you are able to understand my insight into the mystery of Christ.”

What a statement Paul could ever make about himself. You read this, you understand. I get this stuff. Verse five, “this was not made known to people in other generations as it is now revealed to His holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. The Gentiles are co-heirs, members of the same body, partners in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. I was made a servant of this gospel by the gift of God’s grace that was given to me by the working of His power.”

Verses 1-7, Paul is giving the the who, the where, the what, when, and how of his ministry. Next week, we’ll look at verses 8 through 13 and examine the why of Paul’s ministry. So, let’s just handle each of those questions.

First off, let’s look at the who and the where of Paul’s ministry. Well, I kind of buried the lead on that who one because Paul says it’s I Paul. You have to remember we are reading a letter. We’re reading a letter from a real man named Paul that he really wrote to a group of Christians living in a city called Ephesus that really is on the southwest coast of modern day Turkey. These were real words meant to be received and read by real people who lived real lives just like y’all. Really? Paul, that’s who is the who. Paul is the who.

Now, where Paul is ministering just generally to Gentiles. If you’ve been with us at all on Wednesday nights, the we’ve been walking through the book of Acts. We’ve gone like 28 weeks so far and we just landed in chapter nine. It’s awesome. So, we’ve been walking through it. This week, we’re going to look at Paul getting called into ministry and the Lord is just going to start flinging them all over the place. Paul’s going to find himself in Rome and Thessalonica. At one point, he found himself in Ephesus and all of this preaching for the gospel landed Paul in prison. That’s why he says, “I Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus.” Paul literally was imprisoned in Rome because he was preaching the gospel. Paul is the who and the where is wherever Gentiles live. Specifically in this book, the city of Ephesus.

But how about the what of Paul’s ministry? The what. He says verse two, assuming you heard about the administration of God’s grace. That word administration is really interesting. It it means stewardship. It means management. It’s this idea that God had given him a holy responsibility. You see, Paul was entrusted with something special. God gave Paul a divine responsibility to take the gospel to Gentiles.

And let’s just refresh ourselves. According to the Old Testament, there’s really only two groups of people in the world. You have ethnic Jews and you have everybody else. You have the tribe of Israel and you have the Gentiles. Paul grew up a Jew. He grew up the man keeping the law. He grew up under all the customs. He was perfect according to the law. But God saves him and sends him to non-Jews. He sends him to the Gentiles. God gives him a responsibility to take the news of the gospel to people outside of God’s kingdom, the Gentiles. You see, this was not an option for Paul to consider, but a command Paul was meant to obey. The Same is true for us. When God gives you a special or a specific assignment, that is not an option for you to consider. It is not a buffet line at the Chinese restaurant where you get to say, “I’ll have a little bit of this assignment and a little bit of that assignment and a big dollop of comfort on the side.” No, God is kind of like a chef at a restaurant where you don’t get the menu and you just sit down and He says, “This is what you will be having tonight.” And He serves it up. That is what it’s like with God. When God speaks, He expects us to listen.

The same God who planned salvation had given Paul a specific assignment in that salvation plan. He had been given an administration. And that administration centered on a mystery meant to be revealed. You see, Paul’s assignment was meant to bring the story of God’s rescue for sinners to light. Think about it this way. God’s plan of salvation is like a masterpiece that God painted long before time began. For generations, people could only catch glimpses of it at a time, like trying to view a beautiful painting in a dimly lit room. But through Paul’s ministry, God flipped on the lights. God started revealing the full picture of His grace for us to behold, making clear what He had hinted at before. Paul’s administration was all about helping show how the dots of the Bible connect so that God’s story of saving people can matter to us in 2025.

Sitting in Ravenel, Paul’s assignment was to reveal the entirety of the mystery of the gospel. That’s incredible. Previously, prior to Paul’s ministry, most people in the Jewish faith believed that God only really had grace for Jews and Gentiles that would make themselves like them. But when Paul comes to the scene, what he starts preaching is that you and me, folks not born as ethnic Jews, you and me can receive God’s grace as well. We can be part of God’s family as well.

So then Paul, it would make sense, would address the when, that’s verses four through six of his ministry. When would this administration matter? When would this start to come to fruition? Paul clearly says it had been hidden to other generations, but now it is revealed. God’s people of the past caught glimpses of that painting, but they didn’t yet see the full picture.

Take it back to Adam and Eve. They have disobeyed God. They have broken the one rule that God ever gave them. And He promises them a savior in Genesis 3:15, someone who would come and defeat the serpent, who was born through the bloodline of Adam and Eve. That’s just a hint. That’s not the full picture.

Or think about when God called Abraham to start a new tribe called Israel. And God said, “Y’all will be blessed to be a blessing. Your presence in the world will be my channel of blessing to this world.” That’s a hint. That’s not the full picture.

Or when David wanted to make a temple for God, and eventually Solomon, his son, will make it, and God tells David and Solomon, “My temple, my house, will be a house of prayer for all people.” God was hinting at this idea that His home would be a place where everybody could come, not just ethnic Jews.

Or even you look at the genealogy of Jesus, if you go to the Gospel of Matthew, the first book of your New Testament, and you would see five non-Jews, some of them even women.

You think about when the people of Israel come to the city of Jericho, a hurdle between them and the promised land, a place they would have to destroy for them to inhabit the land that God had promised to Abraham and had promised to Moses. They have to conquer Jericho first. And they’ve got one ally in Jericho, to a lady who worked as a prostitute who was hearing the stories of how Yahweh had protected and delivered Israel. And she said, “Me and my family, we went into that.” And God writes her into the bloodline of Jesus Christ, our savior. Hints, glimpses, little snatches of the painting, but not having the whole thing.

You see, God all along had been preparing His people and His world for the full revelation of His plan. And when the time was right, He sent Paul to flick on the lights. He sent Paul to help fill in the gaps of that painting. And now in Christ, Jews and Gentiles are brought together. That’s astronomical. We don’t understand the tension of that.

Because we’ve never lived in a place quite like Israel. Unless I really misunderstand your background. Remember the letter of Ephesians was written to help this church in the city of Ephesus. See how God was transforming enemies into family through the work of Jesus Christ for all people. And Paul uses three terms to capture this. Look at verse six with me. The Gentiles are co-heirs. They are co-members. And they are co-partners. If you were looking at the Greek, at least that’s how it would read. For us as English readers, we see co-heirs, members of the same body, and partners in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.

To be a co-heir means that you and me both receive the privileges of being children of God. Whatever God has to pass along to His heirs, you and I both get to share that. Regardless of whether we grew up in the right family or not, we both get to receive all that. To be co-members of the same family doesn’t just mean we get God’s stuff, but we get God Himself. We all become members of His family. We have equal access to the Father. We all get to call Him Abba, Daddy. And to be co-partners, to be co-partners in this promise means that we have full access to God’s future work.

Man, if you’re not tracking, think about this. Your past gets to be redeemed as you and I become co-heirs in Jesus Christ. Our present gets to be transformed as we become co-family members. And our future is full of hope because we both get to claim the promises that are found in Jesus Christ. Past, present, and future. God has utterly transformed us that we could be a unified family in Jesus Christ. This is new and this is good news.

But man, sometimes we walk out of a church service thinking, “I heard some news,” or really, “I heard some information.” The reality of the gospel should always be fresh good news for us. That’s what Jesus Christ came to do for us, to totally redeem our past, to transform our present, and to fill our futures with hope and promise. That’s a message we get to share with people. That was Paul’s assignment. Paul’s specific assignment was to show all of this. Our final question this morning is how. Verse seven, how in the world did Paul get roped into this assignment? He’s really clear. I’ll read it for you. Verse seven, “I was made a servant of this gospel by the gift of God’s grace that was given to me by the working of His power.” Paul’s real clear. I was drafted into it. I was made a servant.

Paul’s ministry, I alluded a minute ago, it began when God appears to him on the Damascus road in Acts chapter nine. Man, if you’re not familiar, later this afternoon, just go read Acts chapter nine and read it like you’ve never heard this before and let the Lord kind of shake you to your core, okay? God still speaks and He spoke to Paul in that moment. In fact, the risen Jesus, the at that point ascended back into heaven, Jesus is the one who appears to Paul. Paul went from a persecutor of Christianity to a preacher of the gospel when Jesus stops him literally in his steps, brings him to his knees and says, “You are now mine. You are part of my work in this world.” God gave him a new assignment in that moment.

This was not a like a lifestyle choice that Paul saw on Facebook or Instagram, right? This was not something that Paul heard about and said, “I’ll dabble in that for a quarter. I’ll give that three or four months. Let’s see if it makes any changes in my life.” Kind of how we switch and swap with like diets and exercise, things like that. That wasn’t what Paul was doing. He didn’t pick up a self-help scroll at some point and say, “I’ll try out this Christianity thing because this isn’t working out for me.” Thank you, Linda. I appreciate the pity laugh. Thank you.

He was actively hunting down Christians. Paul was imprisoning them and sometimes personally killing them, and then he becomes one. God makes him a servant of the gospel. He was an enemy of Christ, but God saved him and brought him into the ministry of spreading the message he was trying to stamp out. Of course, that would be what Paul calls a gift of God’s grace and God’s power. Paul didn’t deserve to be saved. We don’t deserve it either. Paul didn’t deserve this specific assignment for God’s general purpose, and we don’t either. This was a gift of God’s grace and it was a display of God’s power. Romans 1:16 says that the gospel is the power of God to save to the Jew first but also to the Gentile. And the message of God’s grace is also the means of God’s power to transform lives.

If you want to see somebody’s life change, then stop giving them your life advice and start sharing the gospel with them. If you want to see your family have more peace, then don’t start freezing people out in the group text or at Sunday dinner. What you need to do is say, “Hey, Jesus Christ did not come for us to treat each other this way.” If you want to see your neighborhood or your roads be bettered, if you want to see the dark stuff of this world start to evade and get out, man, don’t just set up like government systems. What you need to do is start sharing the gospel with people. That is God’s power to save sinners and transform us.

If God can save Paul and use Paul to start churches that he was trying to stop, then God can save anybody else that we ever interact with, including you. I’m sure there is somebody in the room this morning that came in. Maybe you were invited. Maybe coming to church is just something you feel like you’re supposed to do. It’s a family habit you’re trying to keep up, whatever it is, and you’re really just not even settled about this whole Christianity thing or Jesus or whatever it is.

I can’t promise you all the answers. And I’m never going to promise that I can answer every doubt you have about the Bible or about creation or end times. But what I do know is that God has made you because He loves you. But we give our love to other things instead of God. And that is an act of disobedience that deserves to be punished. And it brings fear into our lives that we have shame before a holy God. There’s only one thing that can get rid of the sin and the fear and the shame. And it’s not self-help. It’s not religion. It’s not being a good person. The only thing that can get rid of those things is the saving power of Jesus Christ in your life.

I tell you, if you came in this morning curious about the meaning and the purpose of your life because you feel like something is empty and missing, can you suspend some of your past for me and your doubts? You set aside any of the church things you’ve done or haven’t, and you just bow your head for a moment and you say, “Lord, I feel empty inside and I want to be full. Help me. Please fill me, God.”

That’s where Paul was. Paul’s on the Damascus road, very full of himself, but empty of anything that really mattered. And God wanted to transform him.

So, I want to ask you a final question. So, what? So, what? I’ve gone for 20 minutes talking about a guy that died 2,000 years ago who talked about another guy that died a few years prior to that. So, what? I began this morning with a pretty audacious claim. I said God gives specific assignments to accomplish His general purpose. I meant that in the present tense. I think all of us want to know what our purpose is in life. Right. Right. Yes.

There are four postures toward God’s assignments. The first posture is the posture of a wanderer. This is someone who just is unable to hear what God’s assignment is. Your lifestyle has placed you like the person walking toward those mountains. You’re just wandering in a desert. Jesus Christ might be your Lord and Savior or He might not. Either way, you’re not walking in the purpose that God has for you. You are just kind of wandering around.

This there’s there’s a second posture. It’s that of a wrestler. This is the picture of Jacob wrestling with the angel of the Lord. God had an assignment for Jacob and he was resisting it. Like Jacob, you know God’s assignment for you, but you flat don’t want it. You have heard God speak, but you are scared or you are frustrated. It’s not the assignment you wanted. It’s not the call on your life you were hoping and praying for, and you are wrestling with God.

You might be a watcher. You might be like somebody standing on the beach and man, you are ready to hear God’s assignment. You are looking out at the ocean of possibilities. You are ready to hear from Him and to see the clouds riding in the sky, but God has not spoken yet. You are watching, or you might be a walker. That’s somebody you have heard God’s assignment, and you are doing your best to faithfully obey it. God has very clearly called you to something, and you’re just trying to walk in it. What’s your posture? Are you a wanderer? Are you a wrestler, a watcher, or a walker?

If you’re a wanderer, I want to share some good news with you. God so loved this world that He gave His only begotten Son, so that anybody that would trust in Him would not perish but have everlasting life. If you are wandering away from the Lord and have not given yourself to Jesus Christ in salvation, please stop the wandering and find your home with the Lord today. The worst thing you could do is hear me share the gospel and leave here not doing anything with it. For you, all you must do is accept that you are a sinner, believe that God sent Jesus Christ as your Savior, and confess Him as Lord of your life, and God will utterly transform and fill you.

And there’s some in the room that you have trusted in the gospel. You are born again, you are a Christian, and you are still wandering because you have trusted in Jesus as your Savior at some point, but maybe functionally He’s not actually your Lord, and you’re still dabbling in the sin God had to rescue you from. I would ask you to stop. You call on the Lord. You say, “God, give me strength. I cannot stop this. Free me from this. Help me to stop wandering away from You, and bind my heart to You.”

If you are a wrestler this morning, you have heard God’s assignment, and you just don’t want it. Man, my response to you is that old hymn, “Trust and obey. There’s no other way to be happy in Jesus but to what?” Man, God’s got good plans for your life. I did not say easy or comfortable, but He’s got good ones. And God knows best. If He knows, and He’s got good plans, and He’s sovereign, and He loves you so much that He would leave His home in heaven to come and have you, then you can trust Him, and you can obey Him.

If you’re a watcher this morning, my encouragement to you is keep watching. Keep waiting, man. Don’t get tangled up in something God doesn’t want you to do that you’ll have to stop doing in order to start doing what God wants you to do. In America, we have this saying, “Don’t just stand there, but do something.” I think the Bible oftentimes is like, “Hey, don’t just do something, stand there and wait for the Lord to speak on this thing.”

And if you’re a walker, if you have heard God’s assignment and you are trying to obey it and it’s hard, remember this: God is with you, and He makes no mistakes. Whether you see the fruit of this or not, God is with you, and He can transform and use anything in your life. God has an assignment for you. So what’s your posture?

In a minute, we’re gonna close this time of the service with what I just call open hands prayer. If you’re like me and you want to hear from the Lord, you want to hear His voice, you want to know what is my assignment, God, what do you want me to do today, in this week, in this season with this life that You’ve given, I’m going to invite you to take your hands and just kind of put them in your lap like this. This is a posture of receiving something. When you were a child and it was Christmas morning, you had to receive those gifts that you didn’t deserve, the ones that your parents had picked out for you. Our assignments are the same way. They are gifts from the Lord. He wants to give us things He has picked out for us.

First, I want to celebrate something because on Wednesday, May 14th, we get to celebrate someone in our church who has gone from a watcher to a walker. Or at least we’re going to vote them into the process. A few months ago, Kristen Cordre got up, and she had mentioned that while she has loved being the director of our kids ministry, and she has loved leading that team, and she loves our kids, and fully intends to stay in that ministry as a regular teacher, she no longer can direct the ministry.

So, we’ve been praying, we’ve been asking, Lord, would You please reveal who is supposed to lead this ministry for us? This is huge. The kids ministry, if you’re not aware, it touches half of our church. Between volunteers and kids and their families, half of our church is touched at least monthly by the kids ministry. It’s a vital ministry of our church. We have to have somebody that can lead that and do it well. And God’s given us that person. Kim Mulaney on Wednesday, May 14th, is going to be voted in to the kids director position, and I’m super excited for her.

Per our bylaws, because that is a ministry director position, we don’t just get to just toss her into it and put the label on her, but it needs to be an act of our congregation. So, if you were with us last Wednesday night, then you heard that the nominating committee is calling a special meeting. There’s only one thing on that agenda, and that is just to make the vote right there. You see it in your bulletin again. That’s going to be May 14th, Wednesday night.

And I’m curious, who else wants to go from a wanderer or a wrestler or a watcher to become a walker? If that’s you, will you please take your hands and you put them in your laps, just giving yourself to the Lord, adopting a posture of waiting on Him.

Father, I want to walk in everything You have for me. I want that so deeply, Lord. I want that for our church, God. God, please free us from wandering away from You, Lord. Keep us from wrestling against You and with You about the things You want us to do as a church and us individually. God, for the one that’s waiting, I pray that You would speak to them right now this week, that they would move from waiting to walking. God, for the one that is waiting, God, please keep them waiting. Help them to wait well. And Lord, for those in the room that are walking, I pray that You would give them courage, passion in their work, God, that others would get behind them and be wind in their sails, that they can continue to do what You want them to do. Holy Spirit, please take a just please, please speak to us for a few moments.