Sermon Tone Analysis

Good morning, welcome to Dishman Baptist Church.

Please take your Bibles and open them with me to Ephesians 3, Ephesians 3

Are you tired?

Are you care worn?

Self-admission - I am.

Covid - Mask or no mask, vaccine or no vaccine.

Should we gather or should we remain apart?

I can’t cough in the grocery store.

Am I a racist?

Am I not a racist?

By whose definition?

The condition of our nation

Who can blame anyone for being rundown and tired.

Who could blame us for asking God why is this all happening?

If this is you - I pray that today is a comfort to you.

We have been looking at the apostle Paul’s magnum opus on the church - Romans is his most comprehensive study of salvation.

Ephesians is his most comprehensive study of the church.

Together these two books make up the core of Paul’s Gospel.

This morning we are going to complete our study of Paul’s explanation not only of the makeup of the church but of his role in exposing the mystery of the church.

Let’s look at Ephesians 3, we’ll read verses 1-13 again so that we have the entire context in mind.

Broken Steward

Paul has been in ministry for nearly 20 years

Three missionary journeys

Opposition at every turn

Thessalonica - run out of town in three weeks

Athens - called a babbler and mocked by the intelligentsia

Philippi - arrested, beaten and put in jail

Corinth - mostly after he had left

Ephesus - caused a riot

He must have had moments of doubt

While in Corinth

Who would blame Paul for being tired - we’re tired and we’ve only been doing this for 18 months

Paul makes three statements about himself in this passage

Made a servant - a diakonos - a table servant

Paul recognized that he was just a waiter - he didn’t make the main dish he was just tasked with getting it delivered to the Gentiles without messing it up.

Least of all saints

Paul has a hyper-developed sense of his own standing before God

And here he calls himself the least of all saints

In reality the word could be taken to mean leastest or leaster - but is probably best translated as least of all

This is not false humility or even an effort at self-deprecation by the apostle

This is the recognition of the height of God’s holiness and the lowliness of Paul - even after years of service for Christ Paul recognizes that even his most righteous acts are filthy rags and are not worthy of mention.

For him to claim any status or position based on his apostolic calling would be presumptive.

My afflictions

Paul tells the Ephesians that his afflictions are on their behalf

Much the same as what he said to the Colossian church in his letter to them

Paul had suffered much during his time as an apostle - certainly fulfilling the statement that God made to Ananias

It is important to recognize that Paul’s sufferings, his acknowledgement of these things take on an interesting character here

Notice with me what he says in verses 7 and 8

And of course we would say “yes” Paul received the gift of salvation and it was this gift that made him and apostle and a servant of Christ

The salvation story on the road to Damascus…and we would be partly correct

Notice again - that salvation by grace is already a gift (a statement we acknowledged in our study of verses 8&9 in chapter 2) and so to characterize his conversion and the grace shown to him there as the gift I think is to take an elementary view

No I believe what Paul has in mind here is the grace that sustains him daily as he seeks to serve Christ in the role that he has been given

It is the same grace that sustains each of us as we seek to move and to live in the convoluted world that we find ourselves in

Why do I say this?

Paul was not only timid and worn out in Corinth - but he tells the Corinthians of another time that he was challenged

Oh what a beautiful truth that Christ’s power is perfected when we are weak.

And notice here that it is through His grace - that is is a gift of grace that sustains us because His grace is sufficient.

What situations are you facing in your life right now that you are trying to face on your own apart from God’s grace?

Notice what else Paul says about this grace in 1 Corinthians 15

It is this same power that Paul speaks of in 2 Corinthians 12, 1 Corinthians 15 and in this morning’s passage Ephesians 3 that is at work in Paul making his service to Christ possible - and it is this same grace that is at work in you to make your service and, in some cases, your very life possible.

This is a grace that will not only continue but grow in the life of the Christian

It is in the nature of this grace to grow and increase unto the end.

As rivers, the nearer they come unto the ocean where they tend, the more they increase their waters, and speed their streams; so will grace flow more freely and fully in its near approaches to the ocean of glory.JOHN OWEN

Now to be sure - each of our calling may not be into the same ministry that Paul was given.

To this end Dr. MacArthur writes “No man should enter the ministry unless he is absolutely certain of the Lord’s calling.”

Spurgeon is more succinct “I always say to young fellows who consult me about the ministry, “Don’t be a minister if you can help it,” because if the man can help it, God never called him.

But if he cannot help it, and he must preach or die, then he is the man.”

But God dispenses this grace upon Paul for a reason - two of them that Paul is going to share with the Ephesians now.

Broad Spectrum

Paul tells us the spectrum of his ministry is to proclaim to the Gentiles the incalculable riches of Christ and to shed light for all about the administration of the mystery

There is no greater incalculable bounty than that which is given by Christ to the poor, wretched sinner who repents and places his or her faith in Him.

And even more so that this incalculable richness has been offered to the Gentiles.

We have chronicled and studied as Paul has described the pre-Christ, pre-church condition of the Gentiles as being separate from the chosen people of Israel and, more importantly, separated from God.

But now, through Christ, it is possible for them to be brought near.

And not just for the Gentiles of Paul’s day but for all men.

300 Quotations for Preachers from the Reformation (The Gate of Salvation Is Open to All)

Since no man is excluded from calling upon God, the gate of salvation is set open unto all men; neither is there any other thing that keeps us back from entering in, save only our own unbelief.JOHN CALVIN

There is a contrast here that we see as Paul speaks of his own unworthiness (less than the least of all the saints) and then the incalculable, the incomprehensible riches of Christ.

Paul, who in his own eyes deserves salvation the least, is freely justified by Christ through the same act that brings justification to the Gentiles.

But salvation is not the only thing Paul has in view here - it is the entire compass of the riches that are made available to us through Christ.

We have not simply been blessed with salvation and then left to fend for ourselves.

We have been made inheritors of the kingdom, the very sons and daughters of God and members of His household with all the rights and privileges that entails.

And we have been made members of a new nation - citizens of Heaven.

This is the second part of Paul’s ministry - to shed light for all about the administration of the mystery - the formation of the church - not simply to the Gentiles but to everyone

He is the foremost authority on the formation of the church

He says four things about this mystery

Hid for ages in God - the term for ages here is aion and here it means from ages past - while this was always the plan for salvation and for the inclusion of all people in Christ, this plan was hidden in God until He determined to reveal it to Paul and other apostles and prophets

That this is a creation of the God who created all things.

John Stott said “It is through the old creation (the universe) that God reveals his glory to humans; it is through the new creation (the church) that he reveals his wisdom to angels.”

We’ll come back to the second part of that quote in a minute.

God’s greatest acts of creation were not encompassed within the physical creation around us but in the spiritual regeneration of dead souls, bringing them back to life and in the institution known as the church.

Multi-faceted wisdom - this is the idea of something being multi-colored or multi-hued.

This is the phraseology used in the Septuagint, the Greek OT to refer to Joseph’s coat of many colors.

This rare term combines the more common adjective ποικίλος (poikilos), meaning “many-coloured, spotted, pied, dappled, wrought in various colours, changeful, diversified, manifold” (LSJ 1430), with the common adverb πολύς (polys), meaning “many.”

When God designed the church He removed all distinctions, all divisions, all barriers.

Isn’t it interesting that what God sought to remove through Christ and is so clearly delineated here in Ephesians we are working so hard to bring back into the church today

Black churches, white churches, hispanic churches, almost any other ethnic group you can think of (and even some social groups) we have a church designed to fit them…this is contrary to the picture we’re given.

Paul could have set that model for us by establishing Jewish churches and Gentile churches but he didn’t do that because that is not in God’s plan.

Now - hear me - I’m not saying that if language is an issue that churches should only worship in one language…contrary to popular belief English is probably not the language of Heaven (but maybe it is).

But if we are all worshipping in the same language why do we feel the need to segregate along ethnic (or any other) boundaries?