Sunday 04 • 28 • 19

Alright, our scripture reading this morning is Ephesians chapter three verses one through 13. So, just follow along with me.

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. 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, 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 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'm suffering for you which is your glory. — Ephesians 3:1-13

You may be seated. How many of us have been engaged in conversations or have started off a conversation or a thought and some kind of way you became distracted or were interrupted in some form or fashion and eventually, you circled your way back to that thought but for a moment, there was a brief interruption? I think as we look at Ephesians chapter three starting in verse one, Paul kind of begins this chapter with this statement: "For this reason, I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of the Gentiles." And then if you slip down to verse 14, which we did not read, he says, "For this reason." So in between one and fourteen is this interruption. It's as if Paul was about to dart into something with this comment "for this reason," and the reason that he's alluding to, he's about to pray for the church at Ephesus which he does in all of his epistles. If you look at the epistles, Paul always breaks out in some type of prayer for that particular church.

So, here he is about to break out in prayer there in chapter three verse one. He says, "For this reason," so he's about to pray for the church at Ephesus in light of what he had just talked about in chapter two—the unity that they have between Jew and Gentile, that the cross that Jesus had broke down those barriers. So, he's about to launch into this prayer and it's as if he became interrupted. Like, there's something else I want to tell you before I jump into this prayer or there's something else I want to inform you of before we journey down this road of prayer. And if you slip down to verse 14 and read verses 14 through 20, you'd see that prayer that eventually Paul prayed for them. But in the meantime, he said, I got something else I need to say to you.

Understanding the Interruption

So, in light of what Paul has said, he says, "For this reason," and as I said earlier, it has everything to do with what Paul was talking about in the second half of chapter two where Gentiles and Jews were made one. So, he's about to break out into prayer and he's interrupted. And he starts this interruption with this statement: "For this reason, I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus, for the sake of you Gentiles, if indeed you have heard of the stewardship of God's grace which was given to me for you."

Paul uses this word stewardship and if you were to define the word stewardship, go to your dictionary, you'd find administration, management, or to manage or to look after someone else's property. As a matter of fact, in the revised standard version of the Bible, it's translated commission—as in maybe the great commission—taking the grace of God that has been granted to you seriously enough to do something about it, to carry out that great commission that Jesus gave to his disciples there in the tail end of Matthew chapter 28.

What Paul is trying to establish here is that God's gospel, God's grace—it's a stewardship issue. Now, when we think of stewardship, we don't typically think of it in those particular manners. When we think of stewardship, we often think of time, our talents, our treasure, our resources, our bodies, our money.

We think of things, resources that God has given us for his purposes. And so we don't think of the gospel or the grace that has been granted to us as a manner of stewardship. I think Paul here in Ephesians chapter three wants to bring that to a head, bring that to an apex where we would begin to see that what God has done in our life through grace—how the gospel has transformed us—we need to deem that as a stewardship issue, as something that we need to steward.

C.S. Lewis in his book Mere Christianity says this:

Every faculty you have, your power of thinking or of moving your limbs from moment to moment is given you by God. If you devoted every moment of your whole life exclusively to his service, you could not give him anything that was not in a sense his already.

What Lewis is trying to tell us here is that God has given us something, and he's given us something that we are now to realize that he's given it to us, but he's still the owner of it. And therefore, we have a responsibility to live out that which he's given us.

So from this text, we are encouraged to think of stewardship in a different context—as stewardship in the framework of the grace of God in the context of the gospel. So the question is: How well have you been managing the grace of God that has been extended to you? Or am I being a good steward of the gospel? A good steward of the grace of God?

And a lot of us, if we're honest with ourselves, we have become very complacent in our Christianity. We find ourselves saying, "I'm saved and that's all that really matters." But we must continue to challenge ourselves with this question: Is there more that I can do? Is there more that I can be involved in? Not so as to gain God's favor, but out of an appreciation of what God has done through the person and work of Jesus Christ.

So I'm asking God: Is there more that I can do? Is there more that I can be involved in? Not so as to gain the favor of God—that's already been granted to me through the personal work of Jesus—but out of an appreciation. Out of an appreciation for what God has done for me, I long to be a good steward of the gospel and of the grace of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen?

Here in this text, Paul is basically trying to communicate that he's been given a great mystery. And this great mystery is the beauty of the gospel that is made both Jew and Gentile to be united as one in Jesus Christ. And what brings about that uniting is the gospel, is God's grace. And that's what Paul is trying to communicate to us. And we need to see ourselves as being stewards of this great mystery, of this gospel, of this grace that God has extended to us.

We see this unity that Paul is speaking of here in verse six where he says that Gentiles are to be fellow heirs and fellow members. We see it in more deeper detail in the second half of chapter two as he talks about how the wall of his hostility has been broken down between Jew and Gentile because of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Paul is making it very clear that this mystery has been made possible. And we are called to be stewards of this grace, stewards of the gospel. And just as Paul was given this stewardship, so have we been given this stewardship of God's grace. So have we been given the same commission to preach the gospel to a lost and dying world. Which is why your church decided to put on a missions conference—because of their commitment to get the gospel out to a lost and dying world and to expose the church here to what God is doing, not only here in Raleigh but around the world.

And so let us find ourselves accepting the responsibility to preach the gospel to this lost and dying world. We've been commanded—everyone of us—to take this message from the four walls of this church to the four blocks that might represent our community into the four corners of the world. The gospel is not something that we're just to hold on to or cling to for ourselves. But there's a lost, dying world that needs to hear and needs to receive the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And we, the church, need to see it as a privilege that the God of the universe would first and foremost save us and bring us into a right relationship with him, but a privilege that he would desire to use us—not only to know the gospel but to propagate the gospel. What a privilege it is!

And what we need to realize, as we see this as a privilege, is that in Christ, he's chosen us before the foundation of the world. That we have the privilege to tell others.

So what Paul is challenging us here from this text ultimately is to be stewards of God's grace. And so we're going to look at these thirteen verses with three main points. The first point—this is a stewardship that is for the lost and from the Lord. We see this in verses one through five.

What Paul is trying to say here is: I am doing this for your sake, for the sake of whom?

For the sake of the Gentiles, for the sake of those who were far off as Ephesians chapter two verse 13 states, and he says, I've been given this stewardship and this is the stewardship of God's grace that is for the lost but not only is it for the lost but it's from the Lord. Meaning, this is an assignment that God has extended to you and to me. It's from him. And Paul makes it clear that it's from him.

He says, this mystery was given to me from Christ by special revelation in verse three. He says, God made known to him this mystery which is the gospel which is the grace of God which is what unites Jews and Gentiles. He said, not only was it revealed to me or made clear to me but he also says that it was revealed to his apostles and to the prophets by the Holy Spirit and we can even take it even a little step further. It has been revealed to us. Because of his choosing of us in Christ Jesus before the foundation of the world.

So, Paul says, this is a stewardship that has been given for the lost and from the Lord. Another text, Galatians chapter one verse 12:

For I neither received it from man nor was I taught it by man but I received it through the revelation of Jesus Christ. — Galatians 1:12

Paul is making it very clear that this is not something that's just out there, some pie in the sky kind of thinking but no, this came directly to me from the Lord and we can say the same.

Understanding Mystery

This mystery that Paul is speaking of here in today's terminology, it's not the way we think of mystery. We're not thinking of something that's mystical. Paul is trying to make it clear here that mystery denotes something that has not been revealed yet or never been revealed before or previously made known. Not something that's just mystical. Paul has been given this great mystery and