Sermon Tone Analysis

\\ *"A Dose of Perspective"* by Kirk Romberg \\ \\ */Ephesians 3:1-13 (NLT) \\ 1 /**/When I think of all this, I, Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus for the benefit of you Gentiles …/**/ \\ 2 /**/assuming, by the way, that you know God gave me the special responsibility of extending his grace to you Gentiles./**/

\\ 3 /**/As I briefly wrote earlier, God himself revealed his mysterious plan to me./**/ \\ 4 /**/As you read what I have written, you will understand my insight into this plan regarding Christ./**/

\\ 5 /**/God did not reveal it to previous generations, but now by his Spirit he has revealed it to his holy apostles and prophets./**/

\\ 6 /**/And this is God’s plan: Both Gentiles and Jews who believe the Good News share equally in the riches inherited by God’s children.

Both are part of the same body, and both enjoy the promise of blessings because they belong to Christ Jesus./**/

\\ 7 /**/By God’s grace and mighty power, I have been given the privilege of serving him by spreading this Good News./**/

\\ 8 /**/Though I am the least deserving of all God’s people, he graciously gave me the privilege of telling the Gentiles about the endless treasures available to them in Christ./**/

\\ 9 /**/I was chosen to explain to everyone this mysterious plan that God, the Creator of all things, had kept secret from the beginning./**/

\\ 10 /**/God’s purpose in all this was to use the church to display his wisdom in its rich variety to all the unseen rulers and authorities in the heavenly places./**/

\\ 11 /**/This was his eternal plan, which he carried out through Christ Jesus our Lord./**/

\\ 12 /**/Because of Christ and our faith in him, we can now come boldly and confidently into God’s presence./**/

\\ 13 /**/So please don’t lose heart because of my trials here.

I am suffering for you, so you should feel honored./*

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*Introduction \\ *Thomas Wheeler, former CEO of Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company, tells the story about a day when he and his wife were driving along a highway when he noticed their car was low on gas.

Wheeler got off at the next exit and found a rundown gas station with just one pump.

He asked the attendant to fill the tank and check the oil, then went for a little walk around the station to stretch his legs.

As he was returning to the car, he noticed that the attendant and his wife were engaged in an animated conversation.

The conversation stopped as he paid the attendant.

But as he was getting back into the car, he saw the attendant wave and heard him say, "It was great talking to you."

As they drove out of the station, Wheeler asked his wife if she knew the man.

She admitted she did.

They had gone to high school together and had dated for about a year.

*"Boy, were you lucky that I came along," bragged Wheeler.

"If you had married him, you’d be the wife of a gas station attendant instead of the wife of a chief executive officer."*

*"My dear," replied his wife, "if I had married him, he’d be the CEO and you’d be the gas station attendant."

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·       There’s nothing like a good dose of perspective to keep us grounded in life.

·       That can be true when things are going well and we’re tempted to think too much of ourselves.

·       That can true when things are not going well and we’re tempted to become discouraged and let our circumstances get the best of us.

·       And apparently this was the case for many believers in Paul’s day.

o      Throughout the New Testament we learn that many believers grieved over Paul’s extended years of imprisonment and over the almost continual suffering he endured because of his ministry.

o      And this was apparently true for the believers in Ephesus.

·       So in the first half of chapter 3, Paul offers his friends a good dose of perspective, divine perspective, so that they won’t be discouraged because of his sufferings.

·       In verse 1 Paul begins *“For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles…”*

o      But then he stops himself in mid-sentence.

o      In fact, he doesn’t even return to his thought until verse 14.

o      And he does this because as he says these words he suddenly realizes there’s something he needs to address with the Ephesians, and that’s discouragement.

o      And we know this from what we read down in verse 13.

o      He knows that his imprisonment and his sufferings have been hard on them.

o      So he presses the pause button on what he was going to say long enough to speak perspective into their life, perspective that will encourage their hearts.

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·       And this is something that every one of us needs as followers of Jesus.

o      A divine perspective, an eternal perspective is all-important.

o      How we view and react to circumstances is more important than the actual circumstances themselves.

o      If all we can see is our immediate situation, then our circumstances control us.

o      We feel good when our circumstances are good but miserable when they are not.

o      But when we keep a divine perspective in the midst of our circumstances, then our circumstances don’t get the best of us and we stay on track with God’s purposes for our lives.

o      In our passage this morning, Paul encourages the believers in Ephesus by sharing with them what it means to have a divine perspective.

o      And he does this by drawing their attention to three realities.

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*1.

An Immediate Reality (v. 1) \\ **“For this reason, I, Paul, the Prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles.”*

·       Back in the opening of this letter Paul introduced himself as “an apostle of Christ Jesus.”

o      But here he calls himself a prisoner of Christ Jesus.

o      By this point he had been a prisoner for some five years, two years in Caesarea and the rest in Rome.

§       He had been arrested on false charges made by Jewish leaders of his day.

§       They had accused him of taking a Gentile into forbidden areas of the Temple, which he hadn’t.

§       So Paul had faced hearing before the Sanhedrin, before the Roman governor Felix, before Festus, and even before King Agrippa.

§       Eventually he was taken to Rome, where he was placed under house arrest with a soldier to guard him.

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·       Although Paul was arrested on Jewish charges, he didn’t not consider himself a prisoner of the Jews.

o      Although imprisoned by the Roman authorities, he didn’t consider himself a prisoner of Rome either.

o      As far as Paul was concerned, he was a prisoner of Jesus, bought with a price, and given the special mission of bringing the Good News to the Gentiles.

o      He was therefore a prisoner of Christ for the sake of Gentiles.

Whether free or in chains, he was a glad-hearted prisoner of Jesus.

o      He understood that whatever he did and wherever he went, Christ was in total control.

o      Without the Lord’s consent, Paul knew that he was not subject to the plans, the power, the punishment, or the imprisonment of any man or government.

o      The only reason why he was in prison was because Christ allowed it.

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·       And that brings us to *our first lesson* from our passage this morning.

o      *Keeping an eternal perspective means trusting the sovereignty of God in my circumstances*.

o      See, Paul understood that somehow his circumstances fit God’s purpose for his life to bring the Gospel to the Gentiles.

o      No doubt there were times when he wondered exactly how they fit, but he understood they fit nevertheless.

o      Corrie Ten Boom once wrote that she considered that wherever she was, that was just the part of the world that God wanted her to take the gospel to – even if where she was, was in a German concentration camp.

o      She wasn’t a prisoner of Germany, but a prisoner of Jesus.

o      Her encounter with the German guard years later in a church meeting where she spoke.

o      And see this was the perspective of Paul as well.

o      It was a divine perspective that trusted the sovereignty of God in his circumstances.

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·       And see as Christians this is a very important perspective for us to keep in our lives as well.

o      And this is not simply a defeatist mindset where we resign ourselves to our circumstances and simply let circumstances have their way with us without any effort on our part to change our circumstances.

o      In some parts of the world when a little child gets sick, the family will refuse to take their child to the hospital to get medical attention.

o      “It is the will of God that my child is sick,” they say as they resign themselves to that circumstance.

o      That’s not what Paul is doing here.

o      Paul is saying that when I have no control over my circumstances and no say in what’s happening in my life, there is Someone who still has a say and that’s God.

o      He’s in control even when I’m not.

o      So I can trust Him that He has allowed this.

o      I can trust Him that this somehow fits within His plan even if can’t understand how.

o      And that simple decision to trust God frees us to stay faithful to Him and to serve Him even in the midst of our circumstances.

o      *In the frigid waters around Greenland are countless icebergs, some little and some gigantic*.

o      If you’d observe them carefully, you’d notice that sometimes the small ice flows move in one direction while their massive counterparts flow in another.

§       The explanation is simple.

§       Surface winds drive the little ones, whereas the huge masses of ice are carried along by deep ocean currents.

o      When we face trials and tragedies, it’s helpful to see our lives as being subject to two forces--surface winds and ocean currents.

o      The winds represent everything changeable, unpredictable, and distressing.

o      But operating simultaneously with these gusts and gales is another force that’s even more powerful.

o      It is the sure movement of God’s sovereign hand and the deep flow of His unchanging love working just beneath the surface of my life moving us in the current of His will.

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*2.

An Historical Reality (vs.

2-6) \\ **/“Surely you have heard about the administration of God’s grace that was given to me, that is, the mystery made known to me by revelation, as I have already written briefly.

In reading this, then, you will be able to understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to men in other generations as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to God’s holy apostles and prophets.

This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus.”/*

·       Paul here is reiterating for the believers in Ephesus the plan of God to bring Jewish people and non-Jewish people together to create one new people who, regardless of their background are now joined together through repentance and faith in God’s Son Jesus.

·       In verse 2 Paul refers to this plan as “the administration of God’s grace.”

o      The word administration is the Greek word Oikonomia which means stewardship.

o      It’s the word that is used in the New Testament to refer to the management of resources that belong to someone else.

o      Paul is saying that he has become a manager of something that belongs to God, namely His plan of grace, His unearned love and favor made available to all through faith in Jesus.

o      And indeed every Christian is a manager of God’s grace through the unique resources, callings, spiritual giftings, opportunities, skills, and knowledge that God gives us so that God’s plan to create one new people can be fulfilled through our lives as well.