Battle Ready: "Service in Grace": Ephesians 3:7-9 Pastor Daniel Reese

Paul says of this gospel,

I was made a minister according to the gift of God's grace,

which was given to me by the working of his power. To me though I am the very least of all the saints.

The grace, 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 and God,

who created all things. Now, the gospel,

that Paul is referring to, is what he has mentioned in the previous verse,

that the gospel of Jesus is what unites the Jew and the Gentile together.

That is the only gospel. We have talked about that several times throughout our journey through Ephesians.

Paul says that it is the gospel that he was made a minister of, that one gospel.

Just to clarify, this is not, Paul is not talking about my job here.

Paul was not on staff at Ephesus Baptist Church.

When he refers to himself as a minister, he is referring to himself as a servant of the gospel.

Everyone who has received the grace of God and salvation is a minister of the gospel.

Too many times, we think that it is the staff that is working at the church, they are the ministers of the gospel.

My job is to equip you, to teach you, to create opportunities for you to be ministers of the gospel in your home,

at your job, in your community.

We are all ministers of the gospel if we have received the grace of God in our life.

Now, this is where I struggle at times, because my job is directly tied to my family and my reputation in the community.

Now, my boys are playing baseball right now.

So, every week, multiple times a day, multiple times a week, we are at baseball games.

When I see the umpire make a bad call, or a coach that doesn't play the right players in the right position,

I have to show an obscene amount of self-control.

If I lose my temper and let the umpire know exactly how I really felt,

and I made a big scene in front of all the parents at a game, that has potential ramifications on my job.

Now, you as a parent can do that all you want to, and it probably won't affect your job, and it probably won't affect the church's reputation.

What I learned a long time ago is that I was more concerned about my job as a pastor than I was about the people I was around,

and more importantly, the gospel in which I have received.

So, now, I don't lash out in anger because I want to have the opportunity to engage with people, not because I am worried about my job.

Now, the gift of God's grace comes at different times and in different ways.

It isn't just enough to say God's grace because that doesn't explain all of that entails.

There are numerous types of grace that God gives to us.

Some come at different times in our lives, some of us might receive different amounts of certain types of grace,

but all of it fits into God's plan for not only our lives, but the lives of those around us in order to fulfill his purposes here on this earth.

The first type of grace that I want to mention to you is called sanctifying grace.

This is the continuous grace that God gives us to make us more like Jesus.

See, as Lewis tells the story of a toothache, when he had pain in his mouth,

he would go to his mother and she would give him some medicine to do the pain so that he could go to sleep and get some rest that night.

As more pain came, he would deal with that pain until it was unbearable,

and then he would go to his mother and get the medicine.

When asked why, he waited so long to ask for the medicine.

He never doubted that his mom would give him the medicine.

It wasn't like she was getting angry at him for asking for some aspirin.

He hesitated because he also knew that the next morning he would have to go to the dentist.

Those dentists would start messing around with other teeth that had not began to ache.

That's how the Lord works.

People come to the Lord because they want cured or relief from some particular sin.

But the issue with God's sanctifying grace is he doesn't just stop there.

He's going to give us the full treatment, and sometimes it's uncomfortable.

But we have to understand that the treating of sin and removing it from our lives is what makes us more like Jesus.

Sanctification is a continuous process.

Now, if you don't feel like you've spent any time recently, any significant amount of time recently,

needing to confess your sin, you feel like you're doing okay.

You're going through the motions. You're walking with the Lord.

If you don't feel the need to lay before the Lord the sins that you are dealing with and struggling with,

maybe your prayer should be that God would pour out his sanctifying grace in your life.

It's a continuous process.

The next type of grace that we are probably most familiar with is God's justifying grace.

This is the grace that we receive when we accept Jesus as our Savior.

We are putting our faith in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus as a completion of our punishment for sin.

Because God is a just God, there has to be punishment for the sin that we live in.

And that punishment was the brutal death of his son on the cross.

We are justified by Jesus.

We are made righteous by God to God by accepting his gift of salvation offered to us in the death of Jesus.

When we talk about the gospel, when we throw that word out there, the gospel,

we are talking about God's justifying grace given to us.

We are talking about how we are hopeless without it.

We aren't good enough to earn it.

His grace is given to us who put our faith in that sacrifice, in that gift.

An old church saying when thinking about justifying grace, is that it means just as if I'd never sinned.

Think about that.

Justifying grace gives us a clean slate.

It gives us a fresh start.

It makes us a new creation.

The third type of grace that we were discussing this morning is a grace that I am grateful that has been given to me.

But I didn't know it at the time.

I wasn't happy about it at the time.

It is prevenient grace.

And this came to mind this last week as we were in Bible study discussing this very topic.

Prevenient grace is the grace that was given to you before you even acknowledged God's presence in your life.

Now, long time ago I used to wish that my testimony was dirty.

I wanted God to rescue me from something horrible so that I would have a powerful testimony, right?

So that I could look back and say, look what God has saved me from.

I've done prison ministry.

I have friends with really rough backgrounds.

And for a period of time in my life, I envied them because these people had had God change their lives

in miraculous ways.

I didn't have that story.

I grew up in the church.

The worst trouble I have been in is the principal's office or in college, the dean's office.

God didn't save me from major addictions or a traumatic childhood.

His grace protected me from it.

That is my testimony.

Because with my personality and my bent, if I ever did drugs, it wouldn't be just once.

I would be all in.

The Lord protected me from that.

He knew I couldn't handle it.

He knew I would have wrecked my life.

He knew the days before me and he knew his plan for me and he preserved me in a lot of ways.

Here's the thing about Provenient Grace, everyone wants it.

I used to wish my testimony was grimy, but I learned as I got older that the drug users and the prisoners I knew

wished they had my testimony and not theirs.

So when I read that Paul was made a minister of God's grace, it means that he isn't just teaching about justifying grace,

but all the types of grace that God gives his children.

I have to believe that over and over and over again, Paul would have shared his testimony of how God had saved him.

Sometimes our greatest tools as ministers isn't the Romans' road to salvation.

That's a good tool, but sometimes it's not the greatest tool.

Sometimes the greatest tool for us as ministers isn't memorizing John 3.16.

Sometimes our greatest tool in the story of God's grace is our lives, is our testimony of how he has worked,

how he has saved, how he has redeemed.

One of the things that stands out to me the most about this passage in particular is the way Paul calls himself the very least of the saints.

The man who wrote 75% of the New Testament, who was sitting in prison as he writes this letter,

because of the work that he was doing for the Lord, he calls himself the least.

This dude healed people.

He spoke with authority.

People were stealing his clothes and taking them to others so that they could be healed.

His writings have had a tremendous impact on the world for generations and generations, and he calls himself the least.

When I am dead and gone, my children will remember me, and if I am fortunate, my grandchildren.

But that's about it.

I am two generations away from being forgotten forever.

Here is Paul, almost 2,000 years later, still being talked about, still being used, and he calls himself the least.

In 1 Timothy 1, he calls himself the chief of all sinners.

In 1 Corinthians 15, he states again that he is the least of the apostles.

Why? Why does he see himself that way?

There has to be some sort of false humility somewhere in there, right?

But I don't think that's the case.

Here's what I've realized as I've gotten older.

As we grow closer to the Lord, humility grows with it.

The longer I've been following Jesus, the more I realize I am still a long way off from where I want to be.

The reason Paul calls himself the least, the reason he calls himself the chief of all sinners,

is because he was one of the closest to ever walk with the Lord.

I have a confession to make, one that is going to embarrass myself and my wife.

Sorry.

Several years ago, while we were at our old church in La Mesa, we had some good friends,

and we shared a common interest that became a problem.

We were both into a show on Netflix called Love is Blind.

Have you ever seen it?

It was one of those shows that was so bad that you couldn't help but watch it.

So every week we'd watch it together, seen it and I would watch it together.

We couldn't watch it without the other one, it was one of those situations.

We had to wait until I got home or until she was done and we would sit down and watch it together.

And then later that night or the next day we'd call our friends and we'd just have a good time about it, right?

We just would laugh about it.

Here's what it is.

These people on this show would spend hours and hours getting to know each other through a wall.

They could see each other, they could hear each other and they could do all those other things.

They would get to know everything they could about each other.

And if there was a connection, the first time they would actually see each other is after they are engaged.

The dude proposes to this girl through a wall.

It's awesome.

It was dramatic and we loved it.

Not every couple that was engaged ended up getting married because that's just a stupid way to find love in my opinion.

There were a couple times that after they were engaged they would, they saw each other for the first time and then there was some disappointment.

He's shorter than I thought.

She has a nose problem.

His teeth are too big.

Whatever the reason, they began to see each other's flaws once they were brought into the light.

Scripture says that God is light.

And in him there's no darkness at all.

As we get closer to the Lord, as we get closer to the light, our flaws are exposed.

Our sinfulness is laid bare and now we realize how far we are from holiness.

The closer we get to him, the more we realize that we don't deserve it.

The more we realize our need for sanctifying grace.

And it should never cause us to ever view ourselves as better than we are.

If you ever hear me say, and I mean this with everything in me, if you ever hear me say, look at what I have done with this church.

Look how awesome I am.

Look how fortunate that you are that I'm here.

Please slap me upside the head.

Please fire me.

Because that means I've lost perspective.

I began to think that this is me and not the Lord.

I'm grateful to the Lord for the gifts that He has given me.

And I'm glad that I'm able to use them.

It is not lost on me that He can take away my voice in an instant.

I want to be closer to Him because I still think at times, well at least I'm not that guy.

At least I got my life together compared to them.

I still consistently need His sanctifying grace in my life.

And grace comes to the humble.

This time last year before we moved, I had this fear.

I had this fear that I was going to mess up everything that Pastor Scott had done in his time here as pastor.

Part of me wondered what you all were thinking in calling me here.

Because there are better preachers and there's better pastors and better husbands and fathers.

And you could have called any of them to be here with you.

But one of God's greatest examples of grace to me was that you looked past all of that.

In light of all that, God still gives us unsearchable riches in Christ.

Now just in case you watch a lot of TV preachers, I'm not knocking that, but just in case you do.

I want to remind you that when Paul's talking about unsearchable riches, he's not talking about material wealth.

The unsearchable riches are not found in a scratch off lottery ticket.

Or numbers on a power ball.

Maybe a better word that some translations use is the word unfathomable.

We can never fully understand how rich we are in Christ.

It's impossible to measure.

If you go and you buy a scratch off today and let's say you win a hundred grand, you can measure that.

We know how we're going to spend it.

And of course we justify it by saying, well, I'll give 10% of it to the church, right?

I'll do that.

But I am sure that we have all imagined what it would be like to win the lottery, right?

Lord, I will do so much good with it.

There'll be no need to raise any more funds for the church.

We'll go buy a building for it to win.

Like I will do so much good with it.

But again, that is something that we can wrap our minds around.

That is measurable.

The riches in Christ cannot be measured.

I'll give you a couple of examples.

One of the riches in Christ is knowledge.

The greatest piece of information that you can have.

The greatest piece of information is understanding that this life on earth is temporary.

And you're going to spend eternity in one of two places.

Knowing how to get to heaven is a vital piece of information.

Knowing that Christ is our substitutionary, atonement is life changing.

The fact that we can know God by reading His word is a blessing.

Did you know that there's people all over the world who have no idea how the sun rises and sets?

They have no idea that the moon was a little bit closer or the sun was a little bit closer.

It would eliminate life on earth.

They don't understand that there is a creator God holding all things together

in just the right place to sustain us.

That is why we support and send missionaries all over the world so that they can know who God is.

This is why we're having Compassion Sunday today.

This is why we spend $38 a month so that children and their families can know about this reality.

I have a lot of useless knowledge in my head.

I know which teams drafted which players in the first round of the NFL Draft.

That doesn't benefit me or anyone else in the world at all.

I know that Cameron and Lauren from Love is Blind got married a few years ago.

How in the world does that help me?

But my knowledge of the Scriptures changed my life and hopefully others as well.

I know that it doesn't eliminate suffering and pain.

It doesn't make me the best husband or dad out there.

It can't fix the broken world around me.

But what it does is it gives me hope and it gives me perspective.

So when things go wrong, I can rest in knowing that all things are for my good because I love him

and are called according to his purpose.

I would take that over all the money in the world.

Another one of the riches we have in Christ is more grace.

More grace.

I've said it many times and that is that we are gifted with what's called common grace.

When we go eat today after church, the hardest part, at least for my family, is deciding where or what we're going to eat.

My wife's biggest struggle, she has put together fantastic meals,

but her biggest struggle is what do I make?

What are we going to have today?

We don't have to eat beans and rice every day of our lives.

When I go home today, my floors are not dirt.

Now I have children, so there's dirt on them, but that's easy to clean up.

I have running water.

I have AC in the summer and heat in the winter.

I was going to say when I get home, the AC will be on, but I don't think today that will be the case.

If we were in Texas, the AC would be on.

Those are all aspects of common grace.

There is future grace, and that's when we stand before the Lord on Judgment Day.

And all he will see in us is the finished work of Jesus on the cross.

There is glorifying grace, which means that my soul will be united with my glorified body,

and I will live forever with him.

Every time we breathe is an act of grace that I don't deserve.

Each and every day God pours out on us an abundance of grace.

Sina and I were discussing this week how we look around at people sometimes,

and we look around and we see, man, they have everything you could ever want.

The stresses that we have about money or the stresses we have about the future, they don't have.

They can just write a check and get whatever they want.

But if you look closely, man, their lives are a train wreck.

There isn't any trust in their marriage.

Their kids are constantly worried if their parents are going to stay together.

There isn't any peace in it.

I've come to find so much more value in God's grace in regards to a good marriage

than having a nicer car or a bigger home.

God's grace is like an ocean.

If you've ever stood in the ocean and you put your back to the ocean,

you'll get hit by waves, right?

You'll just get hit by waves.

They are constant.

One after another after another.

God's grace is the same way.

It is one of the riches of being in Christ.

Grace upon grace upon grace every single day.

The final richness of being in Christ is one we talk about every month.

It has been woven into the culture of this church by Pastor Scott.

His story continues to live on and will continue to live on in this church.

Each month after communion we declare that I am fully pleasing.

Think about what that means.

As a pastor, I am not fully pleasing all the time.

I have disappointed some of you already, and I will do so again.

My wife has been disappointed in me, believe it or not.

She has this list of things that she needs me to do around the house.

Now, here's what I've learned as we've been married longer.

Occasionally, I will get a wild hair and I'll be like,

I'm just going to knock out a bunch of this stuff on this list.

And then I'll knock out what I can in a day, and then I won't think about it for a while.

And then when I come back to the list, guess what?

There's 13 other things that she has added to that list.

Now, I'm grateful that she loves me in spite of my failure to finish her list,

but I have to believe that she would be more pleased with me if I would just get it done.

And every woman in here is like, yeah, just do the list.

My kids have been disappointed in me.

They don't like when I take away their phone.

They don't like when I make them do chores around the house.

They don't like when I can't give them all of my attention at one time.

The gospel is that I am fully pleasing to God.

And all of my sin, he is still fully pleased with me because of the cross and resurrection of Jesus.

I don't have to impress him.

I don't have to try harder.

I don't have to do a honey-do list for him.

He is just fully pleased with who I am.

Some of you need to come to that understanding.

You, as you are, are fully pleasing to him.

He is not waiting on you to get your life together.

He's not waiting on you to get your ducks in a row.

Fully pleased with you right now because of the cross and resurrection of Jesus.

That's something of value to me.

Because I don't have to perform.

I don't have to earn.

Because the reality is I don't deserve it.

And you don't either.

Fully pleasing.

Totally accepted.

Because of the cross and resurrection of Jesus.

So as we think about God's grace in our life.

If you're like me, maybe you realize today for the first time that God's pervenient grace saved me from a lot of heartache.

We need to give him thanks for that.

Maybe you weren't like me and maybe your life was a train wreck.

And it was his justifying grace that redeemed you and saved you.

Maybe you're like me in the sanctification process, the iron sharpening iron, the being refined by fire.

It's a painful process but I look back and I'm so grateful that he has poured that out on my life.

We need to give him thanks for that.

But most importantly we need to understand because of Jesus.

We are fully pleasing.

Fully pleasing.

And I have a feeling that some of you just haven't grasped that yet.

You're trying to earn it.

You're trying to work for it.

You're going through the motions.

And you haven't surrendered to them yet.

So I'm going to pray for us.

I'm going to pray for you.

That as God has poured out his grace on your life.

That you'll acknowledge it.

That you'll thank him for it.

That you'll celebrate the fact that he has redeemed you and saved you and changed you.

And may we all be ministers of that gospel.

Of that gospel.

It's not my job.

Well, it's not just my job.

Are you using the grace that God has poured out on you.

And telling the story of how he's redeemed you and changed you.

There's people all around us that aren't fully pleased.

With their life.

With their family.

Are you speaking of the grace that God has given you.

And helping them understand that they are fully accepted.

And totally accepted by the goodness and grace of God because of Jesus.

When he looks at you.

He sees him.

That's a story that we need to tell over and over and over again.

Let me pray for us.

Father, I pray right now.

And I thank you for your grace in my life.

I thank you for the grace in this church.

I pray God that as we just kind of sit here and dwell.

As we sit here and think about how good you are to us.

That you've called us.

That you've anointed us.

I pray God that you will receive all the glory for it.

So God, help us be aware.

Help us be aware of all the ways that you've poured out grace in our life.

Help us be aware of all the riches that we have in Jesus.

Help us come closer to the light so that our flaws will be exposed.

So that we will be in constant need of more sanctifying grace.

Thank you for Jesus.

Thank you for redemption.

Thank you for sending your son to pay the price for us.

I pray God that we will acknowledge that today.

I pray God that we will celebrate that today.

So I pray God as we sing and as we pray that you may speak in our hearts.

I pray for the person in this room that is not fully surrendered to you.

I pray God that you bring salvation to their life.

So God, I pray that you speak.

I pray that you may pray.

I pray that you respond however you like this morning.

However you like.

If it's here at the altar, then great.

If you want to surrender your life to Jesus and you want to tell somebody and celebrate, then let's do that too.

If you need prayer, then the prayer team will be available.

Respond how the Lord leads you to respond.

Let's just walk in obedience. Amen.