Paul's Ministry, Part 02

Awesome, man. Love to hear everybody greeting everybody. And I should have made a stronger point to say the flowers are for all the ladies, not just the moms. Okay. So, yeah, even Nolan, I see Nolan’s got a flower. I’m cool with that, man. That’s great. Yep. Awesome.

So, we’ve come to our portion of the service where we just practice some congregational prayer. You know, we don’t just want to be a church that occasionally prays. We want to be a church that is just a praying church. We are fueled and driven by prayer in every capacity.

So, we are taking the month of May to pray for the women’s conference that Donna, Becca, and other leaders from our Baptist association are putting on. That’s going to be in October. The conference is called the Delight Conference, or just Delight, and Caroline Saunders is a Bible teacher that we are bringing in from out of town—or I should say they are bringing in from out of town—to come and lead. So every week we are praying for a different aspect of the conference. This Sunday I would encourage or invite you to pray for the team and the leaders, the folks that are making all the decisions, so that when all the women come to the conference, they know exactly where to go. They know exactly what to do. They feel so welcomed and loved, and they are in a spot to receive God’s word for that conference. So we’re going to pray for them as well as their team of volunteers.

So, if you’re comfortable with this, I just want to invite you to go ahead and grab a neighbor and pray for the Delight Conference, specifically the leaders and the team. If you’re not so comfortable with praying out loud, man, that’s cool, too. You just kind of sit and pray by yourself, and I’ll put a bow on it here in a moment, but y’all take it away. Thank you.

Father, good morning, Lord. Thank You so much, God. Thank You for putting it on our hearts to be a praying church. Lord, this is the fourth time now we’ve prayed during the service. Lord, thank You for that. God, thank You for Donna and Becca and Sheena and April over at Harbor City. God, the other leaders from the other churches that I’m forgetting right now, God, giving them this vision to bring a bunch of women together from across our city, God, for a couple days just dedicated to worshiping You and studying Your word, getting to know one another. God, I pray that You would bless them for that. Lord, this team of leaders that, Lord, has kind of received this specific assignment from You. I pray that You would please bless them as they’re making decisions, as they’re praying through things. God, I pray for all the volunteers that they’re going to recruit, God, that You would just let all those teams work well so that—yeah. I mean, come October, that first weekend in October, Lord, there’d be no confusion on site. There would be no unanswered questions. It’d be extremely clear what all needs to be done.

Father, I also pray for us right now. God, I’m going to do something that feels a bit foolish. I, as just a guy, I’m going to try to open the word of God and teach it. I can’t do that. God, I need You to bless this. I need You to get a hold of this right now. Lord, there is somebody in here that needs to be pastored through Your word. God, they’ve come through something this week and they are frustrated. They’re in pain. They’re confused, and they need You to speak to them. God, please do that. Lord, there’s somebody in here that’s excited and they’re happy. They’ve had a great week, and Lord, they need to be charged yet again for the sake of the gospel. They need You to do that through me. Lord, I even believe there may be somebody in here who has never gone from death to life. They have not been saved. They have not been forgiven of their sin, and they need to have the spiritual light bulb turned on. I can’t do that. God, I pray You would do that this morning. Lord, get a hold of this and let this please be a better sermon that our church hears than the one that I’m about to deliver. Lord, we love You, and it’s in Your name we pray. Amen. Amen.

Well, today is Mother’s Day. It’s a day to honor women who have shaped our lives through their own sacrificial love, their unwavering strength, and their quiet faithfulness. Whether you have had a godly mother who nurtured your faith, or you’re grieving the loss of that mother or the absence of that relationship at all, today reminds us of something so incredibly deep: that God often works through ordinary and everyday people and moments to accomplish extraordinary eternal purposes.

God takes the mundane and the regular, and He does something supernatural and incredible with it. That’s true for moms, and it was true for the Apostle Paul, the one that we are learning from in the book of Ephesians. In fact, if you have your Bibles, you go ahead and open up the book of Ephesians. Last week, we looked at the who, where, when, how of Paul’s ministry. This morning, we’re going to look at the why. Why? Why would God call someone like Paul, a former persecutor of Christians, to now spread the message of Christianity? Why would God entrust to Paul such a sacred assignment? Because that’s what God does. God loves to give specific assignments to accomplish His general purpose so that people would glorify and enjoy Him.

God loves to do this. He loves to take everyday people. He loves to take everyday ordinary moments and infuse them with meaning and purpose. And that purpose isn’t just for apostles or pastors. It’s for moms, and it’s for all of us. Everyone can leave here today with a renewed sense of the purpose of their life. And that’s what I’m wanting to offer for you today. As we study the why behind Paul’s ministry, my prayer is that you would all leave here with a stronger why for your life. As you go to your neighborhood, as you go to lunch, as you go to work this week, that you would know why has God put you where you are. That’s my prayer for this morning.

So let’s read Ephesians chapter 3, verses 8 through 13, to learn the why for Paul. This is God’s word for us this morning. It says this: “This grace was given to me, the least of all the saints, to proclaim to the Gentiles the incalculable riches of Christ, and to shed light for all about the administration of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things. This is so that God’s multifaceted wisdom may now be made known through the church to the rulers and authorities in the heavens. This is according to His eternal purpose accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord. In Him, in Christ, we have boldness and confident access through faith in Him. So then, I ask you not to be discouraged over my afflictions on your behalf, for they are for your glory.”

Tucked into these few verses, Paul gives three incredible whys, three purposes behind his ministry. My prayer is that you latch on to one of these this morning. The first one we see is in verses eight and nine. Paul’s first why was to proclaim God’s riches. You see, God assigned Paul to proclaim the incalculable riches of Christ. We spent the first couple weeks and months of this series in Ephesians looking at what those are. In fact, this afternoon, this week sometime, just go to chapter 1 and look at all the riches that God has in store for you because of Jesus Christ. Riches like full adoption into God’s family. Riches like forgiveness for everything you have ever done, everything you will ever do in the future. Riches like being completely sealed in the Holy Spirit so that no one and nothing can ever take you out of the Father’s hand.

In Christ, your destiny, your life is supposed to be blessed incalculably. That’s a hard word to say publicly. Your life is supposed to have spiritual riches just poured and lavished on top. And these blessings are free to anybody. Anybody who would trust in Jesus Christ for salvation. You see, Paul’s past as a persecutor did not disqualify him. It magnified God’s grace in his life. And if Paul, the least of any of the saints, because of his past, if Paul could be saved and assigned, then anybody can. Think about it. The Apostle Paul, when God saved him in Acts chapter nine on the road to Damascus, what was he doing? What was he going to do? He wasn’t just taking a vacation. He certainly wasn’t going off to Bible college. He wasn’t on like a work trip like you might have. Paul was on his way with letters from the religious leaders over in Jerusalem to arrest and imprison more Christians, ultimately for the sake of them giving their lives because they were Christians, them dying because of it. And that’s When God meets Paul. That’s when Paul is saved. And that’s when Paul receives his assignment from the Lord. If God can save Paul in that moment, God can save anybody. There is nothing you have ever done that puts you outside of the scope of God’s grace for you. There is nothing you will ever do that will disqualify you from God’s grace. Which means God can take any of us and do His incredible work in any of us.

Paul proclaimed the good news of God’s infinite grace to the Gentiles. But he also shed light about this for everybody. That’s what verse 9 says. It transitions just from the Gentiles to sheds light for all including the Jews. That’s that means that us, the Gentiles, and God’s people, the Jews. You see, being born outside of the family of Israel meant that the Gentiles were divided from God’s covenants of grace. Over and over again in the Old Testament, God took the initiative to give His covenant people, the Jews, grace. Being born outside of that would mean that the Gentiles don’t have access to those things. But now in Christ Jesus, everybody is invited to enjoy the riches of God’s grace.

Paul’s mission was to help as many people as possible see this plan of grace. This plan that God had to unite everybody in Christ Jesus. A plan that God had created from the beginning. Just as surely as God made the heavens, just as surely as God created the earth, God also wrote this grace plan into history. And Paul’s assignment was to proclaim this and to help everybody see this. That unifying and saving grace is the message that Paul proclaimed to anybody who would listen. That was his first why, his first purpose.

The second why for Paul comes in verses 10 and 11. To reveal God’s wisdom. I’ll read it again. This is so that God’s multifaceted wisdom may now be made known through the church to the rulers and authorities in the heavens. We’ll come back to that. This is according to God’s eternal purpose accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Verse 8 said that the riches of Christ are incapable. Verse 10 says that God’s wisdom is multifaceted. God’s multifaceted wisdom is being revealed through us, the church. That’s incredible to me. It’s a surprising and powerful truth. Instead of using angels or miracles, instead of writing stuff in the sky or spelling it out in your Cheerios in the morning, God chooses us to reveal His plan and His wisdom. He uses an imperfect yet redeemed people to showcase just what He can do.

When I think about God doing this, when God revealing His wisdom through what I would say would be a pretty unreliable source, I think about what happens every Friday night in the at the kitchen at my house. So, every Friday night we do movie night as a family. That’s like the one time where we watch movies. Because we don’t really watch a whole lot of TV and we also do homemade pizza. Now, for a while, we would have what I would call pretty satisfactory pizza because I was making it. All right, I was making all the pizza and then it it came time for our oldest child to get old enough to be interested in helping make the pizza. Now, I did not so much love the idea of her helping make the pizza. I love the idea of her watching me make the pizza, right? Because in my mind, I was thinking, while cute, it’s also pretty inefficient and disorganized. More of the pepperonis end up in the mouth than on the pizza. The the whole thing. But I’ll tell you, the moment that role switched in our family where Becca started making the pizza on Friday nights and started including the kids, the quality of that pizza skyrocketed. I just don’t get it. I don’t get it. To this day, when I make the pizza on Friday nights, it’s just okay. When Becca makes the pizza using our kids, it’s always fantastic. I never get it. I might just be biased because I’m not having to do the work of making the pizza. I just get to enjoy the pizza. I would say it is definitively better.

When I think about what God does through the church, that’s the best way I could think of it. It would be a lot more organized if God chose to not use us. God would get His work done a lot quicker if we weren’t part of the workforce. However, God in His wisdom does something better with us than what He would do without us. Something much more beautiful.

with us. Something much more incredible. Something much more captivating. When we sit down for pizza every Friday night, I’m always sitting there thinking, “How in the world did Beco work through our kids to create this?” When we leave here on Sunday mornings, we ought to also say, “How in the world does the God of the universe use us to do such incredible things in this world?” That’s what it’s like. God is revealing His wisdom through us.

So once again, I want to say none of us have made too many bad choices. None of us are too uneducated and none of us have too bad a reputation to be used by God. If God can use me, if He can use Paul, He can use anybody. He can use you. The only qualification that God needs from you is the want to. If the want to is there, God will use you. God loves to use the weak and the simple to shame the strong and the wise. That’s what Paul says in First Corinthians. God’s wisdom is shown through His people.

And Paul’s specific assignment from God was to release God’s church into wisdom ministry. The church is meant to reveal God’s wisdom and not just to other people. This is wild. The church reveals God’s wisdom. Verse 10 says to the rulers and the authorities in the heavens. The people of ancient Ephesus would have been deeply aware of what Paul was talking about there. If you don’t remember all the history, just put it this way. In the center of the city of Ephesus, they had this enormous temple built over this asteroid that had landed there at some point, which they believed was not only a sign from the gods, but was an embodiment of the god Diana or Artemis, depending if you’re Greco or Roman. They built this temple over it and every day people were bringing live animals, sometimes cash, sometimes their children, and offering them to this asteroid, this idol.

The people of Ephesus were deeply aware that there are spirits at work in this world doing things. They were deeply aware that we are not the only players of the checkerboard of this world. So when Paul is saying that the church is meant to reveal the wisdom of God to the rulers and the authorities in the heavens, what he’s saying is it’s not just other people that get to see God’s wisdom at work through us. It’s angels and demons. Paul would later say in Ephesians chapter 6 that we don’t wrestle against flesh and blood, but we wrestle against the rulers and the authorities and the principalities in the heavenly places.

Man, make no mistake. Angels, demons, they’re real. They have a real impact on our world, whether you believe it or not. I feel like mamas get this. I feel like my mom got this. I’m the fourth of five. It was a daughter and then four boys. So I would imagine my mom’s prayer life was pretty robust when I was growing up. And she would have to imagine that there were forces at work in the lives of her sons as she would send us off and hear about the things we had been exposed to when we came back in. As she was trying her hardest just to help raise up some young men, some men of some conviction, some men that could accomplish something in this world. My mom had to understand that it’s not just her parenting at work. There is a spiritual force at work around us, man.

Which means the souls of our kids. It’s not just about whatever parenting method you use. It’s not just about if you’re sitting down having dinner together at night. I’m not trying to wig anybody out. But what we do need to recognize is that the Bible says that the world and the flesh and the devil are all warring against the souls of people. The Ephesians understood this. Paul understood this. We’ve got to understand this.

So man, when you are going through life and some frustrating moment happens and you start to hear these dark thoughts in your head that just come at you like a dripping faucet that won’t let up, do you think that’s a guilty conscience? Or do you think there might be something at war against you? Or when you’re trying to make some spiritual moment for the Lord, you’re deciding to get baptized, you want to give your life to Christ, and these hurdles keep bumping up against you. Do you really think that’s just the circumstances of life? Or do you think that Satan would actually like to Hinder any sort of moment and movement you make toward Christ? You’re here today because God in His kindness has drawn you here. My encouragement to you is that you would not leave here with any doubt about your relationship with God, that you would leave here fully assured that you are in a relationship of peace with Him because Christ has done everything necessary for you to have peace with God.

The church reveals God’s wisdom about how God accomplished His plan in Jesus Christ. You see, God brings everything into alignment with His purposes. What God starts, He carries through to the finish. And that includes us in His plan. He uses us in His plan, not because He needs us, but because it glorifies Him to use the least likely on the cross. God accomplished His plan to save us.

You see, here’s the deal. God made everybody originally to enjoy a relationship of peace with Him. Those very first people were named Adam and Eve. And the Bible doesn’t tell us how long they lived in a state of peace and harmony with each other and with God. But we can all look around and we can look inside and recognize that something has gone wrong. There is not peace inside of us. If you’re married, if you have children, you can recognize there’s not always peace in this relationship or in your home. You can look to this world and you can recognize there’s a severe lack of peace out there as well. All of that is a sign that our peace with God has been broken because the very first people, Adam and Eve, broke God’s rules. When God gave them one rule not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they took something that was not theirs. And ever since then, we have been dealing with the consequences. And there is no way out of it.

You see, we try to get out of this state of brokenness. We try to do anything we can to mitigate the pain to make ourselves feel better. Sometimes we try to escape the difficulties of life. Sometimes we try to drown it with substances. Sometimes we try to numb the pain by watching stuff or doing things. Sometimes we try to shout it down with our lifestyles, but it’s like we are tethered to a wall and you try to run away from the wall and you try as hard as you can, but eventually you always get yanked back. So you muster up enough strength and you run away again, but you get yanked right back. You might try to run away through a relationship. You say, “Maybe if I get married or if I have that child, then I’ll finally have the peace and the joy on the inside that I’ve always craved.” And then that doesn’t satisfy you. You get yanked right back. You understand how this goes.

So God created us to have peace with Him. Sin comes into the world and we can’t get that peace back for ourselves. So that’s why God sends His own Son. Jesus Christ came to restore something for us that we can never get with God and with ourselves and with others without God. You see, Jesus Christ came and lived a perfect life in our place. A life that we were designed to live. A life of always enjoying God and always glorifying Him. What you have been made for. Jesus came and did that perfectly on your behalf. But He didn’t just live the perfect life. He also died a sacrificial death on the cross. When Jesus died on the cross, God put on Him what you and I deserve. The punishment for our sin. Jesus after taking that punishment really died. We celebrated last month though that Christ did not stay dead, but He rose back to life on Easter morning so that we could be restored back to God and back to one another. We could have peace in our lives. And the way you access that, the way you get that is through repenting of your sin, turning your back on it, and trusting in Jesus Christ for your salvation.

Man, I seriously I say this every Sunday because I really mean it. If you have not given yourself to Jesus Christ, if you have not tasted and seen the goodness of God, if you do not have peace with God, please tune me out and talk with Him about that. You are here for one purpose if that’s you, and it’s to give your life to Jesus Christ. God brought you here for you to be forgiven by Him. Please Don’t leave here without enjoying that. In His wisdom, God uses us, the church, to show the world what He’s up to. That leads us to the third why for Paul. Verses 12 and 13, Paul says that God has changed His posture. The third why is to change our posture. You see, we gain this new posture toward God. That’s what verse 12 says. In Him, we have boldness and confident access through faith in Him. We are given access. We can experience God directly to be able to relate with Him, talk with Him, walk with Him, hear from Him. Man, born again believers, you don’t need a pastor or a pope to go to God for you. Because when Jesus Christ died on the cross, He made a way for everybody to have direct access with God. You get to boldly and confidently approach God because of what Jesus did for you.

So man, are you frustrated today? Are you frustrated with the circumstances of your life? Are you just bored in your soul? Are you? Then take that to the Lord. Share that with Him and ask Him to explain. Ask Him to speak to you on that. Are you, man, have you come in this morning and you have fallen again in some sin and you are just feeling shame and fear? You’re sitting here thinking how in the world could a good and holy God actually accept me? I cannot accept myself. Man, give that shame to Jesus and let Him cleanse you on the inside by confessing it to Him. Whatever you are carrying, fear, guilt, uncertainty, anger, you can bring it all to the Lord. That’s why I can stand up here on Mother’s Day and look at a group of people—undoubtedly some of us on Mother’s Day are happy, some are sad, some are frustrated, and some are confused. And God can handle all of it. So, He can handle the vortex of feelings and thoughts that are swirling in your heart and in your life right now.

Man, we approach God like He’s a DMV counterworker, right? Don’t we do that, Matt? We say, “I’ve got to have all my boxes checked. God’s so holy and so high. So, man, He’s probably a little distant toward me. God’s a little bit cold, man.” No DMV is ever an inviting place, right? For a place you have to go to, I wish they put a fiddle tree in there or something, play a little house music to make you feel a little bit better. But that’s not how it is. And we approach God that way. We think that He is looking for all the correct documentation on our little paper before He can put His on it. Say, “Yep, heaven. Yep. Forgiven. Yep. I still love him.” That’s not God. I would actually like to say that God describes Himself as a good parent and He wants us to come to Him unhindered and full of trust. My kids, when I’m in a good relationship with them, they just run off of things and jump off of things expecting me to catch them. And it’s terrifying sometimes. When I’m expecting it, I still got 40 pounds of Luke flying at my face. But when I’m not expecting it, it doesn’t matter because he trusts me. So Luke’s on the couch and he runs off that joker. And that’s how God wants us to approach Him. As if we really do trust Him. As if we really do believe that He loves us. Because He does. He loves you. He’s wild about you. He sent His own Son to come and die for you. So whatever you did last night, last week, last year, one, He knows. Two, He’s already paid for it. We live in the credit. God would love to have you that way.

God wants to change your posture toward Himself, but He also wants to change your posture toward your suffering. Verse 13 hints at a personal dynamic between Paul and the Ephesian church. You see, Paul wrote this letter from a jail cell in Rome. Paul had spent his ministry life spreading the news of the gospel, a message that he had once killed Christians over, and he eventually would land in a jail cell himself and eventually would give his life for being a Christian and helping others become Christians. And the Ephesians were feeling pretty responsible over his imprisonment. They were incredibly discouraged. But Paul says, “Hey, my imprisonment, my suffering, it’s not a burden to you. It’s like a gift for your credit, for your glory before God.” You see, when we and other Christians suffer for the sake of Jesus and following God’s purposes, that suffering is never meaningless or wasted. But God always uses our suffering for good, and He counts it for our glory. Paul’s life shows that when you accept God’s assignment, you will suffer for it. As Pastor Jeremy Simmons likes to say, the word comfortable is not in the Bible, especially when it comes to following God and His plan for you. But suffering for God is always worth it because you’re never suffering alone. You’re suffering with God Himself. You’re suffering with the church. Hearing and following God’s assignments will produce some suffering in your life. But God, man, He uses that.

Last week, I teased up this idea, these four postures we have towards God’s assignments. We can be wanderers, wandering away from the Lord. We can be wrestlers, people who have heard from God, or we think you’re hearing from Him, but you don’t want it. You could be a watcher. You might be just listening and watching for God to speak. You might be a walker. You might have heard God speak and you’re just trying to obey it.

This Wednesday night, what I want to do during Bible study at six o’clock is just share what I’ve learned about how to hear from God. You’ve all come in here this morning because church has some value for you. My prayer, Al’s prayer, is that church is not just something you attend, but that your relationship with God, you’d be able to say that you experience Him. Wednesday night, we’re just gonna talk about what it means to experience God and to be able to hear those assignments.

But for now, the final question I want to leave you with is, what purpose do you live for? You came into this morning feeling some pride about some sort of accomplishment and some frustration or sadness about some sort of failure. I’m curious, what are those accomplishments and those failures? Because that tells you the purpose you live for. Maybe your pride is in your 401k and your financial assets and your frustration might be in a lost investment. Maybe your pride is in something your child has done and your frustration is in how maybe another child hasn’t quite come to what you expect for them. Whatever it is for you, what’s your purpose in life? Because God wants to take that and honestly kind of blow it up. Because no purpose that we could ever invent for ourselves is as meaningful as the one that God has for you.

The greatest purpose you could ever live for, no matter what season of life you’re in, whether you are a mother to children in this room or you’ve never been a mom or you’re not even a woman, the greatest purpose you could ever live for is helping others enjoy and glorify God. I pray that you give your life to do that.

If you will bow your heads with me. Father, I just wanted to be faithful to what Your Word says. God, I pray that You will please help all of us to live for that purpose, to help others know and glorify You, to help others enjoy You, to help others live with and for You. God, I pray for the purpose, the perpet [inaudible] God, who doesn’t know You like a loving parent, but knows You like a DMV worker. God, I pray that You would make that switch for them. I pray for the person that has given their life to You, but is not living for the purpose that You have for them. And I’m asking, God, that You would please wake them up to this calling. God, once again for all the moms of the room, I pray that You would encourage them. No matter the state of their home, no matter the state of their kids, I pray that You would just encourage them in that role today. Lord, we love You and it’s in Your great name we pray. Amen.