Battle Ready: "Be a Regifter" Ephesians 3:1-3

Thank you worship team.

If you have your Bibles, we're back in Ephesians.

Ephesians 3 · chapter mention

Chapter 3. It's been four weeks since we've been there. It seems longer to me, but it's been four weeks.

We're going to continue our journey this morning as we begin chapter 3.

We're going to do the first three verses this morning. If you have your Bibles, pick it up.

Paul says, 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.

How the mystery was made known to me by revelation as I have written briefly.

That's our passage. That's what we're going to memorize this week. Can we do it?

Well, a couple of you can. Have you ever gone through a drive-through?

And the cashier says the person that was in front of you paid for your order.

Then they give you the option, right? To pay it forward for the person that was behind you.

It has happened to me several times and I usually pay for the person behind me.

But it always seems that my total was significantly less than the people behind me.

It doesn't seem like I get the blessing that the person in front of me was trying to pass on.

So what I like to do when this happens is I will pay for the person behind me,

then show the receipt to the next window and take their order as well.

I don't do that. Just kidding.

The grace that God has given to us is not for our own benefit.

Although we need to make sure that we don't carry that analogy too far,

there is certainly a sense in which God bestows His grace upon us so that we can pay it forward to others.

So what I'd like to do this morning is spend a few minutes looking at this passage,

making some general observations about this passage,

and then share three important principles that we all need to apply to our lives if we are followers of Jesus Christ.

After our journey through the first two chapters of Ephesians,

we should be pretty familiar with the writing style of Paul.

In fact, between services, I had some people come up to me struggling with how Paul writes these things.

He often starts to write about one topic, and then something will distract him,

and he'll start a whole other thought and go on and on.

He also tends to use long sentences.

And as we come to chapter three, we find Paul doing those same things again.

He begins with this new section with these words,

for this reason, I, Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus, on behalf of you, Gentiles.

And then you'll notice in almost every translation, those opening words are followed by a dash, right?

That's because for the next 12 verses, verses two through thirteen,

Paul is going to insert a parenthetical comment before he finally comes back to his opening thought,

because in verse fourteen he writes,

for this reason I kneel before the Father.

So before we get to the meat of this passage this morning, there are two phrases that we need to look at briefly,

so that we can understand this text in its proper context.

The first one is for this reason.

This is one of those connecting phrases.

He's connecting something here.

He uses phrases like therefore, or because, or since, or for.

This is what he's doing.

Paul is using that, and when he uses it, it ought to cause us to pause

and look back to what was previously written.

So in this case, Paul is probably referring back to all of chapter two.

Specifically the thought, the idea that the Jews and Gentiles have been brought together through Jesus

into this new creation that God calls the church.

And as we'll see when we get to verse fourteen,

that unbelievable work of God is the reason Paul pauses once again

and prays for his readers.

It's very similar to what he did in chapter one,

where he prayed for his readers that God would reveal himself so that they could know him better.

So that's that.

And then he says, as I have written briefly,

so he's written about this idea before, but where is it?

There's several possibilities of what Paul could be referring to.

He could be referring to the letter in Colossians.

Ephesians and Colossians both were written about the same time, while Paul was a prisoner in Rome.

So it is possible that the readers of Ephesians were also familiar with the letter of Colossians.

And in that letter, Paul had briefly addressed the whole idea of God's revelation and his mystery,

which we're going to look at this morning and again next week in much more detail.

In Colossians one verse twenty five, Paul says,

Of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God that was given to me for you

to make the word of God fully known, the mystery hidden for ages and generations,

but now revealed to his saints.

To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery,

which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

So Paul could be referring to the book of Colossians.

He could also be referring to another letter.

It is certainly possible and it's even likely that Paul wrote other letters that were not preserved

and never made their way into the Bible.

And it is possible that Paul addressed this topic in another letter that this church could have been familiar with.

Another option is I written earlier could be referring to Ephesians.

Now, given the context, this seems to be the most likely explanation,

because in chapter one Paul says,

Making known to us the mystery of his will according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ.

Now, by now we should realize that the first half of Ephesians is clearly focused on God's actions.

What he has done for us.

And Paul continues that approach in that theme here in chapter three.

Once again, all these verbs are going to be passive verbs that make it clear that it is God

and not Paul's readers who were doing the action.

It is God and not us who is doing the action.

It is God who has given us his grace.

It is God who has made known the mystery.

But those actions of God do require us to respond in some way.

So let's look at three important principles that we need to apply to our lives.

I'm going to take these in reverse order in which Paul presents them here.

So don't get confused.

The first one is revelation from God should lead to a response.

Revelation from God should lead to a response.

He says, How the mystery was made known to me by revelation.

This is the second time that Paul has used the word mystery in this letter.

Now I'm a big fan of mysteries.

I grew up reading a series of books, The Hardy Boys.

Anybody read The Hardy Boys or Sherlock Holmes or things like that?

And I still enjoy watching movies and TV shows that require the viewer or the reader to figure out a mystery.

I'd like to understand how things work.

I like the problem solving process.

I enjoy that.

But when Paul uses the word mystery here in this text in his writings, it has a different meaning.

We'll spend a lot more time looking at this over the next few weeks.

The way Paul uses the word mystery here in Ephesians,

it refers to something that God has revealed in the past,

but has made fully known through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Specifically though, Paul is referring to the idea that Jews and Gentiles have been made one in the church through Jesus Christ.

That is the idea that's present in the Old Testament,

but not nearly to the extent until it has been revealed in Jesus.

For Paul, that revelation, that mystery, the revelation of the mystery,

had come on the road to Damascus as described in Acts chapter 9.

Acts 9 · chapter mention

Now, as a devout Jew, which Paul was, Paul was certainly familiar with the idea that God intended to bless the Gentiles through the Jews.

But like most Jews and his fellow Jews, he figured that could only happen when a Gentile converted to Judaism and was circumcised.

But when Jesus Christ appeared to Paul on that road to Damascus, he made it clear that through Jesus, both Jews and Gentiles had access to God,

and it didn't require the Gentiles to convert to Judaism in order for that to happen.

But that revelation of Jesus was not for Paul's benefit alone.

Along with that revelation came a responsibility for Paul to pass that revelation on to others.

In effect, to pay it forward, to give it to somebody else.

In fact, God called Paul to be the apostle to the Gentiles,

and to focus his ministry on sharing the revelation he had received to those that he had previously been persecuting.

But Paul is not the only one to whom revelation has been given.

And he is not the only one who therefore has a responsibility to respond to that revelation by sharing the revelation with others.

Every single one of us in this room has received some revelation from God.

Even if you're here for the first time this morning, and you've never opened your Bible, God has revealed himself to you.

Although today God primarily reveals himself through his word, he also reveals himself through creation, through prayer, through other people.

And because God has revealed himself to you, and me, and people like Paul, you also have a responsibility to respond to him.

If you've never accepted Jesus as your Savior, if you've never surrendered your life to him, then you need to respond to his revelation this morning.

But for most of us here today, and you've already responded in that, you still have a further responsibility to respond to God by sharing what God has done for you to others.

Jesus made it, himself made it quite clear that revelation always calls for a response.

Revelation always calls for a response.

In John 15, Jesus says, No longer do I call you servants.

For the servant does not know what his master is doing.

But I have called you friends.

For all that I have heard from my father, I have made known to you.

You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide.

Jesus is telling his followers, he's telling you and me that he has revealed himself.

He's revealed himself to them.

He's revealed himself to us.

And they now have a responsibility to go and bear fruit by taking that revelation to others.

You have a responsibility to go and bear fruit and take that revelation to others.

God's revelation is never just for our information.

It's never just for our benefit.

It always requires us to respond in some way.

That's one reason that we have a time after every service, a time for response.

The revelation that occurs each week through the songs we sing, through the prayers that we pray, through the word of God going out,

always requires a response every single week.

Here's the second thing we need to take.

God's grace is not just for our benefit.

God's grace is not just for our benefit.

Paul says, Assuming that you have heard of the stewardship of God's grace that was given to me for you.

The key word in that verse is the word stewardship.

Now other translations translate the word administration.

Unfortunately, in the church, the word stewardship has become synonymous with giving money to the church.

My guess is that if I had included the word stewardship in the sermon title,

you would have assumed that we were speaking on money this morning.

And you would have immediately tuned me out because you don't want to hear how you're supposed to spend your money.

The word Paul uses here refers to somebody who manages, who oversees, or administers the property of another person.

So it certainly does include our finances.

Since the Bible is clear that all of our material possessions don't really belong to us,

they are all God's and we have a responsibility to be good stewards,

to be good managers of what he is entrusted to our care.

But Paul applies that word here to God's grace.

God has entrusted Paul with his grace, not merely for Paul's benefit,

but so that Paul can manage and administer that grace for the benefit of his Gentile readers.

Paul is to be a faithful steward of the grace that God has provided in his life.

If God's grace were merely for our personal benefit, if it was just for us,

then there would be absolutely no reason whatsoever for God to leave us on the earth once we have accepted that gift of grace.

But like Paul, when we receive God's grace into our lives, it's not just for us.

God has made us stewards of that grace for the benefit of others.

Paul emphasizes that responsibility in 1 Corinthians chapter 4.

1 Corinthians 4 · chapter mention

He says, this is how one should regard us as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.

Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found faithful.

As we've seen, God entrusts us with the revelation of the mystery of the gospel.

And he calls us to respond to that revelation by being good stewards of what he has entrusted to us.

We need to pay it forward.

Peter also reinforces this concept in 1 Peter chapter 4.

1 Peter 4 · chapter mention

He says, as each has received a gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of God's varied grace.

Peter also makes it clear that we are to be good stewards or managers or administrators of the grace of God.

And we do that by paying it forward.

Now, in a sense, that makes us spiritual re-gifters.

We all know what re-gifting is.

We receive a gift from somebody, and we're grateful for that gift, but we don't want the gift.

We don't need the gift. We don't like the gift.

We have some space in our closet at home where people have given us things that we don't like.

We don't want it. Or we have a duplicate. Well, guess what we do with those things?

We give them to you, right?

The difference is in the spiritual realm, we are re-gifting something that is immeasurably valuable to us.

It's something that we want to keep, but we also give it.

And the good news is that even when we pass that gift on to someone else, we still get to keep the gift for ourselves.

Now, that's a great gift. That's a great gift.

Now, that looks a lot of different ways.

We re-gift it. We share the gift by telling others of what God has done in our life.

We can share our testimony with anyone and everyone who will listen.

Last week, we had the opportunity to share. Many people had the opportunity to share what God has done in their life

as they shared their cardboard testimony.

And it was a powerful moment.

It caused an emotional response.

It caused an emotional response to the point that we got in trouble last week

because we didn't put enough tissues around the room.

They were sharing the gift that God had given them.

We take mission trips around the world so that we can share the grace of God with others who might not ever hear it.

We re-gift the grace of God by using the gifts that God has given us to bless others

and help them experience the goodness of God.

We also invest in the next generation so that we start raising up newer missionaries

and pastors and church leaders so that the grace of God will continue to expand.

Now, I plan on being here if you will have me for a long time.

I will outlast Pastor Scott if you let me.

I always have to add that, right? If you let me.

But I am already thinking of my successor.

I am already praying that the next pastor of Cornerstone is one of the kids that grows up here.

We're investing. We're re-gifting.

Now, Sandy has been doing a great job over the last few months

of encouraging the fifth and sixth graders to begin to think about how they, as fifth and sixth graders,

can begin to re-gift the grace of God to others.

So I am going to ask Abby to come share what they are working on.

You're not nervous this time though, are you? Not as nervous?

My name is Abby Coyne and I am part of Cornerstone's fifth and sixth grade team K class.

The kids in my class know that we have been given God's grace

and we want to share His grace with kids all over the world

by helping meet their basic needs of food, education, and medical care.

But most importantly, we want them to learn about Jesus

so they have the opportunity to become children of God

so they'll know that they were created by God and that He loves them and has a plan for their lives.

God gave us the idea of hosting Compassion Sunday,

which we've been planning over the last few months,

and will take place on April 30th here at Cornerstone.

Amen.

Compassion Sunday.

Now, Abby, you set a goal, right?

How many kids do we want to sponsor out of this church?

Ten to twelve kids.

Ten to twelve kids.

The fifth and sixth graders are hoping that our church will support ten to twelve kids

come Compassion Sunday and we'll know more all about that as the weeks go on.

Abby, why did y'all choose this one?

Why did y'all choose Compassion Sunday?

We want to help kids get out of poverty.

We want to share the gift of grace that God has given us with others.

I'm so, so proud of y'all.

Can y'all give her a round of applause?

The grace that we've been given is not for our benefit.

It's for others.

That's why we have pregnancy resources here today.

That's why we want to continue to give and give and give.

Number three, God ordains so I must obey.

God ordains so I must obey.

Paul says, for this reason, I, Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus, on behalf of you, Gentiles.

Now, we now come to the hardest part of this passage for most of us.

We don't mind getting revelation from God and even responding to Him.

We don't even mind being the stewards of grace and passing it on to others.

But I don't know too many of us who want to be prisoners.

We like our freedom too much.

But the first two principles we looked at so far, God reveals so I can respond and God graces so I can give,

are 100% dependent on this third principle.

As Paul is writing this letter, he is probably a prisoner in a Roman jail.

Maybe even chained to the guard who was assigned to watch him.

But it's an interesting point that Paul doesn't refer to himself as a prisoner of Caesar.

He doesn't refer to himself as a prisoner of Rome.

He calls himself a prisoner of Jesus Christ.

And he is a prisoner of Christ, not on his own behalf, but for the sake of the Gentile readers.

You'll remember that Paul was in that Roman prison as a direct result of his work

in taking the revelation of the mystery of the Gospel to the Gentiles.

In Acts chapter 21, we learned that a short time before he wrote this letter of Ephesians,

Acts 21 · chapter mention

Paul had gone into Jerusalem to deliver the offerings from the Gentile churches to the Jewish Christians there.

While he was in the temple one day, he was dragged out by an angry mob of Jews

who accused him of taking a Gentile into the part of the temple that was reserved for non-Jews.

An accusation that was false.

After his arrest, Paul was allowed to address the crowd.

As he began to speak in Aramaic, which was the common language of the Jews,

the mostly Jewish crowd quieted down and listened intently to Paul

until he proclaimed that God had instructed him to take the Gospel to the Gentiles.

When the crowd began to call for Paul's death,

he was taken away and was about to be beaten by Roman guards until they found out that Paul was a Roman citizen.

Now ultimately, Paul appealed to Caesar and was taken to Rome where he wrote the book of Ephesians from a jail cell.

Paul recognized that he was in that Roman jail cell not because of what the crowd had shouted

or because the Jewish leaders had conspired to kill him,

but because this was all part of God's plan for him to take the Gospel to the Gentiles.

And although Paul was physically in the custody of the Roman authorities,

he was spiritually a prisoner of the Lord.

I was thinking about that this week and really what it means to be a prisoner.

It basically means that you lose all your freedoms.

You no longer have the right to determine how you live your life.

Someone else is going to determine your schedule.

They're going to determine what time you eat and how you eat,

what you can do and what you can't do.

And that is exactly what God calls us to do as His followers.

God ordains what we are to do with our lives and how we are to live

and our responsibility is to obey God's plan for our lives.

And that is the key that enables us to respond to God's revelation and pass on the gift of His grace to others.

Here's how Jesus stated that same principle in John 15.

I am the vine, you are the branches, whoever abides in me and I in him,

it is that bears much fruit.

For apart from me, you can do nothing.

If we are going to be effective disciples of Jesus Christ and bear fruit for the kingdom of God,

then we must be willing to give up our freedom and become prisoners of Christ.

Or maybe you lack how Jesus says it better.

We need to remain in him, abide in him.

No matter what picture we use to describe it, the principle is the same.

If I want to be able to take God's grace in my life and re-gift it as he intends,

then I must be willing to make Jesus the master of my life.

I must be willing to surrender to him.

I have to allow him to control everything that I do.

God's grace in your life is not just for you.

God has called us to be good stewards of his grace, to give it to others, to pay it forward,

so that others can experience every spiritual blessing that Christ has for them.

You've been given grace.

You've been given grace upon grace upon grace.

How have you used it to pay it forward?

How have you used it to bless others?

Do you keep it to yourself?

Or are you a good steward of his grace?

Are you a good manager of his grace?

So this morning I'm going to pray for us.

We'll have time to respond like we do each week.

But I really just want you to sit there and think, like, am I a good steward of God's grace?

Have I re-gifted it to somebody else?

Maybe some of us need to confess that we haven't.

Maybe some of us need to confess that we're kind of hoarders with it.

And it's just for us and we're not going to do anything about it.

We're not going to share what God has done.

Maybe you need to confess that this morning and surrender your life to him.

Let's pray.

Father, I pray right now that you will speak.

Pray that you will speak.

And we thank you for the grace given to us.

The grace of good friends, the grace of family, the grace of redemption, salvation,

the grace of money in the bank.

I pray God that we will be good stewards of it.

That we will not hoard it.

That we will not keep it to ourselves.

That we will pour out grace on others just like you have poured out grace on us.

God, help us be good re-gifters.

Help us not be stingy.

Help us honor you with everything we do in our lives.

And so, Father, I pray right now that you will speak to our hearts.

You'll reveal where we're hoarding grace.

I pray for the person that hasn't surrendered to you.

That hasn't called upon you as Savior.

I pray, Father, for their salvation.

I pray that you speak.

I pray that you bring them to their knees.

Because your grace is so, so good.

So, Father, I pray that you speak.

I pray.

Amen.

We've received revelation.

We've received it.

How are we going to respond?

I'm not going to tell you how to respond.

I'm just going to ask that you obey.

Obey the Lord.

Whatever He's calling you to do.

But respond this morning.