It's a very familiar story. In the 1540s in Scotland, there
was a group of Protestant refugees that kind of took their
refuge in Saint Andrew's Castle. And I don't know how you get the
job to minister there, but John Knox got it.
And he was called to kind of lead as a chaplain and as the
preacher of those preachers. And he was preaching and
teaching there until July of 1547, when the French, under
Mary of Geese came and brought their warships and their fleets
against this castle. And this is one of the most
devoutly Catholic families in all of France.
And she comes and takes that castle.
And she takes with it John Knox, captures and enslaves him, and
he's sentenced to imprisonment aboard a French galley ship, a
French worship. He's chained in place as a rower
and was enslaved in this manner for 19 months.
And so it was his heart and his soul's desire and his continual
prayers that he could once again minister in Scotland.
And if you know the story, there's one point where the the
ship that he's on comes to Saint Andrew's Bay and he can see the
Spire of the castle where he used to minister and this.
And his heart was already on fire.
He wanted to be with his people. And from that moment he prayed
this prayer, somebody was there with him and in his captivity,
weakened from his captivity, he said, I know not how long it may
be before my eyes behold it, but I'm sure that I shall once again
preach there to the glory of God.
And you read his commentators, his biographers, they say his
entire life's prayer was sentenced was was stated like
this, this sentence, Lord, give me Scotland or I die.
And so if you're a fellow prisoner, if you could have been
on that ship with him and asked him how did this come to be that
you're chained to a chair on a French galley ship as a
Scotsman, A Protestant Scotsman, he would have said I'm not a
slave of France. I am a slave, a prisoner of
Jesus Christ. And I was entrusted by God with
a service as a steward of his grace.
And this was a service that's not for myself, it's not for my
benefit. It's I was entrusted with
something on behalf of other people, whatever the cost might
be. And for him, he was entrusted on
behalf of Scotland, his kinsmen according to the flesh.
And his words are like Ephesians 3, one to six with Paul.
Paul is a prisoner not of his own doing, not by his own
design. He says I am a prisoner of the
Lord Jesus Christ. And he's chained not to his seat
on a ship, but to a predatorian guard under house arrest.
And like Knox, his imprisonment was not the result of selfish
motives. His imprisonment was the result
of living according to divine purpose and living no matter
what the cost might be. Because when you follow Jesus
Christ and you you're burning out for Him and you're living
with zeal, it doesn't always take you to the places you would
have designed to go. Sometimes you end up in some
places that you don't particularly want to be.
He's living and his imprisonment is the result of compulsion.
A compulsion to go and to preach and it's living with zeal and a
sense of urgency for the glory of God and for the good of his
church. That is why Paul was a prisoner.
And he says it this way. Necessity is laid upon me or
another way to say it is I am under compulsion.
Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel.
You remember him saying those words go back one verse in that
passage and the the verse that came before it is so important
especially for understanding our passage today.
He says I am entrusted with a stewardship, I've been entrusted
with a stewardship, therefore I must preach the gospel.
And so John Knox and the heroes of the faith who came before
him, those heroes of the faith that came after him knew they
were stewards of what God had given them.
They were stewards of grace. And this made them zealous for
the gospel. This made them zealous for good
works. Have a few quotes from church
history from our forebears. I want you to listen to them
with this in mind and just hear the emotion and the passion that
come off of their words. Moses Exodus 3232.
But now if you will forgive their sin, but if not blot me
out from the book that you've that you've written.
Paul may be inspired by that says in Romans 93.
I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart.
For I could wish that I were a cursed and cut off from Christ
for the sake of my brothers, my kinsman according to the flesh.
That's for evangelism and even for discipleship in Galatians
4/19, he says, my little children, in whom I am in the
anguish of childbirth, until Christ is formed in you, it's my
responsibility to preach to you and to see you formed into the
image of Jesus Christ. David Brainard said I cared not
where or how I lived or what hardships I went through so that
I could but gain souls to Christ another Whitfield Lord, give me
souls or take my soul. How's that for a prayer?
You can't buy zeal like this. You can't will yourself to live
like this. If we could just will ourselves
to live like this, with this kind of conviction, we would do
it. Zeal being great energy or
enthusiasm in pursuit of A cause or an objective.
These men and women knew what they were created to do, and now
they were doing it. From all eternity past.
There were good works that they were to walk in, and now they're
walking in them. They're inspired and they're
motivated. This is their glory and their
courage and their conviction comes from understanding the
theological concepts that are outlined for us in Ephesians 3,
one to six. You can't will yourself into
this. And this is where we find our
motivation. This is where we find our
enthusiasm for Christian service and charity.
We get it from a correct understanding of who we were
made to be in Jesus Christ, and we're doing what we're designed
to do. You get it from a right theology
and read with me Ephesians 3, one to six.
These are the words of the apostle Paul.
He says for this reason, in the light of all that's come before,
I Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles,
assuming that you've 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've 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
and 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. So all great men and women of
faith who've done all the amazing things that we, that we
read about that inspire us, it all begins with a work of divine
supernatural grace. This is the starting point.
It is by grace, Paul's already said this, Chris taught us, you
2 believer have been saved by grace.
Ephesians 28 to 9 is where this began in Ephesians.
He says by grace you have been saved through faith.
This was not your own doing. It is the gift of God, not of
works so that no one can boast. And so God's plan for your
salvation doesn't end there. This is paramount to understand.
It doesn't end there and neither does the paragraph end there.
If you flip back and you look at it, there's another verse.
The verse 10 comes after and it says this.
For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good
works which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk
in them. So with our experience of grace
comes ministry and fruitfulness. And our Christian culture sees
salvation as the end goal or the finish line for discipleship
and, and evangelism. And we, you see this in church
planners. You want to go out and we're
going to get people saved, get them across that finish line.
And then we're going to go on and we're going to plan another
church. We're going to move to a new
area, just get them over that finish line and then we're off
to the next one. But when you read scripture and
you read Paul, salvation is the starting line, not the finish
line. Salvation is when we begin our
good works. This is where you're gifted with
a stewardship. This is where it all starts for
you, believer. Then comes the pouring yourself
out for Jesus Christ. So you receive the grace and
outcomes channelling the grace outcomes ministry.
And so we're not saved. Paul says buy good works.
We're saved for good works or we're saved by grace alone.
And and we love that mantra and then the reformers would add to
it. But the grace that saves is
never alone. It's inseparable from
fruitfulness. Jesus says this, I am the vine,
you are the branches. Whoever abides in me, what bears
fruit, bears fruit. He says, you, you follow me.
This is the mark of being a Christian.
You're going to be light to the world, you're going to be
righteousness, you're going to embody this, you're going to
bear fruit. And then he says for the
believers, and this is the part we like, we close our ears, we
don't like it. He says, I'm going to refine you
and I'm going to prune you and it's going to be painful because
I'm going to trim back all of the the noise in your life and
I'm going to make you more fruitful.
And then he says, as a matter of fact, I'm going to go even
further. And then you're going to bear
much fruit. There's going to be fruit.
There's going to be more fruit and there's going to be much
fruit. And by the way, if you don't
bear any fruit, I will cut you off and you will be burned is
what Jesus says there will be fruit.
This is the metaphor of the vine dresser.
Paul last week says that we are a building that he is building.
And in verse 10 that Chris preached to us a few weeks ago,
we are his masterpiece created in Christ Jesus for good works
that he's been planned in eternity past.
And if you're looking at this passage, Paul's keyword is the
word stewardship. You can write that down.
We'll dig into that in just a minute.
We are stewards. He was a steward.
And so you, you receive grace. Now you become a conduit of
grace. You serve according to your
spiritual gifts, not for yourself.
It's all for other people. And so if you live insularly, if
you live for yourself and you see this is actually the gravest
sin, this is a a grave sin, you're living out of step with
how you were created. And so Paul, he calls your
ministry, your responsibility, your stewardship, your
fruitfulness. He calls this a grace.
That's the words that he uses. You're entrusted with a grace.
And having understood that, there's another step.
You're saved by grace, you are entrusted with grace, and then
you become a steward of grace. And this is the movement that we
see that began all the way back in Ephesians 2, verse 8.
It's not going to be the outline for our sermon, but I want you
to see theologically and logically how this progresses.
Grace is received by you. Grace is entrusted.
At that same time, grace is entrusted in you, and then you
have to steward that grace is stewarded by you.
That's the order. So I want as we look to the
sermon outline, I want one of two prayers to be yours this
morning, depending on where you are spiritually.
And I'm going to steal these prayers from words that we've
already heard this morning from Saints, simple prayers from
Saints throughout the history of the church.
My prayers that you would desire these things with all the
urgency that they're meant to evoke in your heart and in your
soul. If if you've never received the
grace of God, then my prayer is that your prayer would be give
me Christ or else I die. And you would experience those
words with all the urgency that was intended by the one who
wrote them. And if you have experienced
grace, he hasn't trusted you with the stewardship that my
prayer is that your prayer would be now give me Scotland or I
die. Whatever I was created to do,
whatever I was created to be, give me that, help me to walk in
that or take away my life. So the first prayer is wash me
Savior or I die. And this was written by
Augustus. Top lady always funny names.
A reformed Anglican clergyman wrote a song called Rock of
Ages. You've probably heard of it in
the song the the back story to it is probably embellished.
Know that. But the the story goes that Top
Lady was traveling through the Mendip Hills of Somerset,
England in 1763. And a violent storm comes on and
he finds a gap in the rock or a cleft in the rock where he hides
himself until the storm is over. And while he's waiting, the
image comes. This is like unto salvation.
God's wrath is being poured out like Noah's flood.
His wrath is being poured out. And I can hide myself in Jesus
Christ and be spared from all the fury and all the wrath.
And so after that he gets out his pen, and he writes nothing
in my hand. I bring simply to the cross.
I cling naked. Come to thee for dress helpless.
Look to thee for grace. There's our word foul.
I to the fountain fly. Wash me, Savior, or I die.
You have to receive grace to be saved.
You have to receive grace or there is no stewardship.
There's nothing to steward. You get your spiritual gifts,
you get your service. You.
You can accomplish true works once Christ's righteousness has
been applied to you or there are no good works, there is no
stewardship. There's no truly good works.
So if you've never come to know Jesus Christ.
The first point is your prayer. The words of top lady give me
Christ or else I or wash me Savior or I die or even as we
just saying give me Christ or else I die.
We pray that that would is that that would be impressed on your
heart. You have to understand if you're
going to understand that statement.
You have to understand how God made us all the way back in the
garden, male and female, to work and to to live according to
God's law. And you go all the way back to
the garden. The first man, Adam, could not
live up to God's law. And if you were in his place,
you couldn't either. And I can tell you why, because
you've sinned too. And so from that moment, there's
cosmic upheaval entered into the whole world.
And what I mean by that is every relationship, every faculty,
your mind, your will, your imagination, your body, every
relationship, your own relationship with yourself, your
relationship to other people, your relationship to nature,
most importantly your relationship to God.
It's all been tainted. It's all been marred.
It's not as bad as it could be. And we say yet even that by the
grace of God. And so this is how we've
continued as enemies of God, separated from his grace,
separated from his fellowship until the focal point of all
human history. Jesus Christ came to the earth
as the God man born of a woman, and he lived his entire life as
the second Adam without sin, fully submitted to God's will,
fully obedient to his law. And he became our our
righteousness. He achieved righteousness.
It was one holy perfect life, the life that none of us could
have ever lived. And when he went 30 to 33 years
later, when he goes to the cross, he dies of death that we
deserved. He lived a life that we could
not live. He died as our substitute.
So that at that moment Scripture says that he counts us
righteous. He looks at Jesus's life and he
he attributes it to ours. He looks at our lives, He
attributes them to Jesus. Our sins are counted as
righteous. And now Scripture goes a step
forward and says, if you believe that Jesus is the Son of God,
and if you believe that the work that he did from the time he was
born until the time that he died actually achieves salvation for
you, you believe in your heart and you confess with your mouth
that Jesus is Lord, you will be saved.
But the the pressure comes, the urgency comes from recognizing
you are a Sinner and you are without the mercy of God.
You're separated from him. There is no fellowship, and
until you confess him as Lord, the relationship is not healed.
So there must be an urgency and there must be an awareness of
guilt. And then you come to Ephesians
28 and 9, and there's this movement of grace for the Sinner
where Paul says it is by grace that you have been saved through
faith, through belief, through trust, and this is not your
doing, it's the gift of God. And when you look to Ephesians 3
verse one, you see the imprint of this in Paul's life.
He's been trying to impress on you that you have a new
identity, who you were before the Sinner that you were before.
You have a new identity now. It's not just about you seeking
after your passions. Now it's about us as God's
building. And he says of his own identity.
He says I used to be a Hebrew of Hebrews, of the tribe of
Benjamin, a respectable tribe, and I used to be a Pharisee, a
respectable occupation with all of the influence and with all
the power and with all the money.
And he says I was an educated Greek scholar with all the
wisdom and intelligence, and I was a Roman citizen, that
coveted position in the ancient world.
And you look at his identity, it goes even it extends to his
name. Paul's name was Saul.
He's named after the first Israelite king.
It's a kingly name. And Saul meant desired one or
asked for. And all that shifts when I look
at chapter 3, verse 1. He calls himself for this
reason, I Paul. There's a new identity that he
takes on. He introduces himself not as
Saul, but as Paul. The name Paul means humble or
small. And he goes from considering
himself for considering himself the greatest of God's
messengers, zealous, but not according to knowledge.
And now he says I'm the least of the apostles.
He's got a new identity and he adds, I'm a prisoner of Christ
Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles. So not only that, he says I've
been in, I've been a prisoner. He's not Knox, he wouldn't
enslave, but he's, he's a prisoner.
And he says it wasn't even for me.
It's because I became the slave of all as Christ did before him.
He became the servant of all. And look where it landed and it
brought him to prison. Ephesians 2, eight to 10 showed
us that there can't be a separation of the reality of
grace. This is true for Paul from the
reality of the works that flow from grace.
And so the the grace that saves is never fruitless.
There's the mantra of, of the reformers, one of their five
sayings that kind of epitomized that whole movement is that
we're saved by grace alone. And they would add to that
mantra. But the grace that saves is
never alone. And the reason that they said
that the reason that they say the grace that saves is never
alone is because of Ephesians 3/2 and you can look it down to
it. It says assuming that you've
heard of the stewardship of God's grace that was given to me
for you. And so grace is given the moment
that you confess Jesus as Lord, you become a steward of his
grace and choosing to submit to Jesus Christ against the popular
evangelist is not a no strings attached.
This isn't a just come to him and all will be well.
This is a no. This is a submit to Jesus as
Lord. This is you're enlisting in his
army. It it, it costs everything.
This is not a a weak decision. It means faithful service.
It means, as we said last week, taking on Christ's work of
binding the strongman and plundering his goods.
You do that in this world, it's going to cost you something.
You take on the ministry of reconciliation, which means that
we go and we preach the gospel to every tribe, tongue, and
nation, and we say whatever the cost, if it means prison,
imprisonment, if it means martyrdom, if it means staying
right here, being chained to a pulpit and preaching every week
for the rest of your life. We do what he calls us to do,
He's the Lord. It means you take on the work of
loving others because God says this is what you were made to
do. You're made to love, you're made
to serve, you're saved by grace and when you're regenerated,
you're born again. God's Holy Spirit gives you
certain spiritual endowments and he's going to elaborate on these
in chapter 4, but he says everybody gets just like you get
physical endowments when you're born.
Some of us are strong in stature, us not being me, some
of us are weaker in stature. Some of us are meant to work
and, and, and haul heavy things. Some of us get high calves with
high twitch muscle fibers and some of us get low calves with
slow twitch muscle fibers. This governs what we do, he
says. So it is with your spiritual
gifts. Some of you are going to be
overwhelmingly generous and you're going to go out and
you're going to be successful entrepreneurs.
You're going to image God in the world.
You're going to fund the church. Some of you are going to be
serving and you're going to serve according to the service
of 10 men and 10 women because this is what called you to do.
Some of you are are fueled with mercy.
Some of you are going to be inspired for evangelism and
you're going to go and work primarily outside the church
winning people to Christ and others are going to be preachers
and teachers and you're going to primarily be within the church,
operating within the church. This is your stewardship.
You become a steward of grace and entrusted with the
stewardship. Stewardship is literally the
word oikonamia. We get our word economy from it.
It means literally house management.
That's what we're doing. And this is a deliberately
building on last week, as God said that we became his
building. This metaphor of, of a building
and a structure and architecture is what drove us through.
And if you remember, we said there was 4 words that had that
word Oikos house. There's 4 words that contain
that as God is dwelling and he's building and he's increasing and
building together. And there's, here's a fifth one,
Oikonamia. And I think this is
intentionally last because he says as God is building this
house, now there's house managers.
Now we're, we've got to take care of this entity that God is
building. There's work to be done and so
the grace becomes stewardship, salvation, transitions into
responsibility and very important to understand, we're
going to we're going to dwell on this in Ephesians 4 is that each
one of these gifts, all of this management, none of it is for
you. Every gift that God has given
you is for somebody else. It's for others.
Paul says in verse 2, you can read it.
It's an administration that was given to me for you.
And to illustrate this, one of the greatest anti abortion
arguments that I've ever heard came from a lady named Stephanie
Gray, a hero doing exactly what called God called her to do.
She had a moment. I was watching her in an
interview and she said she's in a debate and she was stumped.
And maybe you've been there. She's in an argument with
somebody. She says way smarter than her,
way more qualified than her. And she had nothing to say.
And she said it just took a moment.
And I closed my eyes and just as quickly as I could said, Lord
help give me something in this moment to respond on behalf of
the Christian faith and those who are listening.
And she said, I had this argument come to my head and
this is what it is. She said that the womb is the
only body part, male or female, that exists solely for the
benefit of somebody else. She says the heart is exist to
pump blood to the individual. The stomach is for digestion and
bringing nourishment to the bodies, to the body.
The stomach, the lungs exist to oxygenate the blood of the
individuals. She said the womb is different,
it's design, it's telos, it's not for the woman at all, but
for another. It's function is ordered toward
nurturing, housing and sustaining the life of someone
else. She uses that as an argument
against the my body, my choice, the logic, and the declaration
of the woman's autonomy over her own body.
Her conclusion is that pregnancy is not a violation of a woman's
bodily autonomy. It's actually a fulfillment of
how her body was naturally ordered.
This is a functioning according to its purpose.
It exists for somebody else. And that's true.
We could say the same is true for you and the gifts that
you've received. Your gifts are not for you, and
you're not going to be satisfied if you're using the gifts for
yourself. You've received spiritual gifts,
and serving God and others with urgency is not somehow a
violation of your autonomy. That word meaning literally self
rule. It's not a violation of
something that you could be doing with your time if you
weren't having to do this. It's actually what you were made
to do. It's you cooperating with your
very purpose, the natural order of how your salvation is
ordered. And this is what Paul's saying
with respect to his own spiritual giftings.
And you might be tempted, I'm sure as he was tempted of saying
a very similar thing of saying, you know, my resources are for
me. My time is for me.
My time, treasure and my talents are all for me, my benefits, my
liberties, my freedoms. Paul says spiritual
responsibility was given to him for the church and his context.
It says for for him, for Gentiles specifically.
This is my stewardship was for Gentiles.
And you see when we get to spiritual gifts, I'm just going
to read a few. They're all for other people.
None of these are self-serving. Hospitality is not for you.
Mercy, leadership, administration, evangelism,
service, preaching, teaching, giving.
You don't exist to serve yourself only you exist to serve
your family. You exist to serve the church.
You exist to serve the world and yourself.
You're in there too. But Paul says we look not only
to our own interests, but also to the interests of others.
And Romans is going to go one step further and he's going to
attach attitudes to our giftings.
He's going to say not only the gifts, but how you use them has
to be for the glory of God and the good of the church.
He goes on. He says we serve in generosity.
We serve with cheerfulness. We serve with zeal.
That's how you were made to be, which is a reminder not to come
to church as a spiritual consumer.
We have enough people in the church who come and they consume
doughnuts and they consume air conditioning and they consume
the services and the Wednesday nights and the content.
We come to church to follow Paul as he followed Christ when he
said to the Philippian church, even if I'm being poured out as
a drink offering upon the sacrificial offering of your
faith. I am glad Philippians and
Ephesians or both in the context of Paul's imprisonment and he is
literally pouring himself out as a drink offering.
Romans 12 says that we are a sacrificial offering present
your bodies to God as a as a sacrificial offering.
This is the Christians reasonable service and the the
the image of the the wine being poured out is is like his blood.
He's saying, I'm pouring myself out, whatever the cost.
And, and for him it ended in martyrdom, it ended in death.
He gave the ultimate price. He suffered and he died solely
for his love for the Gentiles. And he said, and I would have
done so much more were I able. I would have given my very soul
on behalf of my kinsmen if it were possible.
So we pour ourselves out as a sacrificial offering for their
faith, whoever them is. In your context, we're a an
offering. Ephesians 47.
Every Christian is given a measure of grace for the
building up of the body, which leads to the second prayer.
If you've received God's grace, walk in it and pray that would
God would increase your sense of the stewardship that he's given
to you. And you can pray this prayer,
Give me Scotland or I die. And to do that you have to
answer this question, what was I made to do?
What were you made to do? What did God equip you to do?
What passions do you have? What can the pastors of this
church come alongside you to accomplish for the glory of God
and the good of his church? And you can compare Paul's zeal
here with that of the consumeristic American church.
There's a book called Brand Jesus.
You can find it upstairs by Tyler Stevenson.
He says our church age is characterized by a consumer
theology made-up entirely by market logic, where he says,
what project, what product do you want, What product do you
want? And go and find it in the
church. How will this church meet your
needs? And we say to that heritage, we
are not spiritual consumers. We are not a Church of spiritual
consumers. We are contributors, we are
producers. We are multipliers.
He says it's also represented by a commodification of faith,
where faith is a transaction where you come and you pick your
style of Christianity and you pick your style of worship.
It goes on to say it's individualism.
We've been toward individual choice rather than communal
discipleship. All you got to do is go to last
week and you see Paul says you are no longer you.
You have become we. We are God's field.
We are God's building. We are God's body.
We are God's church. The individuals are pictured as
wheat. We are all of these individual
strands of wheat which have been cut down and baked together into
one loaf. Some fundamental ontological
difference has now been made. We are the bread.
We are the church and so if this is where you are, if you're a
spiritual consumer or if you like the church but you don't
love the church, or if you serve but not with zeal, you're
committed, but you don't pour yourself out.
You've been saved, but there's no burden to go and buy in the
strongman and plunder his goods. Then you have to pray that God
would reveal your work to to you that he's entrusted to you, that
he would give you a burden and a zeal.
And you can pray the prayers after them of Jonathan Edwards.
He begins, Lord, commit me thy work that I might not labor in
vain. If you don't know the work that
he's given you, then say that commit to me my work.
Don't let me waste my life. Don't let me waste the
stewardship. John Calvin Lord, let me serve
thee with all the gifts thou hast given me.
Whatever you spiritual inventory you've given me, may I pour it
out on behalf of somebody else. Amy Carmichael Lord, make me
wholly available, wholly at Thy disposal to do whatever thou
wilt and you can hear their prayers.
They all begin the same way. Lord, Lord, Lord, Lord, use me.
Please don't let me squander this.
Please don't let me waste my life.
And if you're a believer and you don't have Christian zeal, Jesus
says you are in the worst possible spiritual state.
He says this to the the Laodiceans in Revelation 315.
He says I know your works. I know you would that you were
cold or hot. You're neither hot nor cold
would that you were either one. But because you are lukewarm and
neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.
And that is a euphemism from our translators.
The word is, oh, I will vomit you out is what he's saying.
Literally says if you're lukewarm, you're squandering
your stewardship. If you're lukewarm, you are of
no practical use to Jesus Christ and his church.
If you're lukewarm, you are an offense to the to the Savior who
was zealous to seek and to save you and to pursue you, who is
zealous for you and your works. To be lukewarm is to be
repulsive. And that's the context of these
words that that famous passage. He says, Behold, I stand at the
door and knock. That's that's here.
That's this passage. And Jesus is not knocking, as
you well know, at the door of salvation of the lost, hoping
that he can come in and and bring them this grace.
He's knocking at the door of a complacent church that they
would repent and let him in and he would restore to them their
zeal for gospel ministry. That's what he's doing when he
says, I stand at the door and knock.
We know this because his command to that church is be zealous and
repent so that the application is clear.
If there is no zeal, repent of it.
Jesus stands at the door of your heart and in this context he
knocks. He says don't squander my grace.
Don't waste your life and you can pray to him as you repent.
Say give me zeal, give me enthusiasm, give me a holy
intensity, give me a holy energy so that I might serve outside of
myself. Give me Scotland or I die.
You were not saved to be lukewarm and idle.
You are not saved to be of no effectual use to your Savior.
You were saved to be a steward of his grace and I have a
wonderful illustration of this. David didn't know I'd use it,
but you sent me a prayer on Thursday of a Puritan when he
was confessing these words. He says, Lord, I need your
support, I need your comfort, I need your strength, I need your
holiness that I might be a pure channel of thy grace and be able
to do something for thee. And he goes, keep me from lack
of warmth and fervency. So this is Paul's goal for
himself. And this is Paul's goal for us
after him to be a pure channel of his grace, that we might do
something for him in warmth and fervency with urgency.
And then Paul explains, he goes on to explain his own calling
and the rest of these verses as a minister to the Gentiles.
He says salvation was coming to the Gentiles according to the
Old Testament prophets. We, we knew, we, we just studied
Isaiah. We, we saw the whole book was
about salvation is coming to the ends of the earth to every
tribe, tongue and nation, multi ethnic, multi generational New
Jerusalem. And he uses this word again,
mystery. And the, the idea that salvation
was coming to the end of the world was not the mystery.
The mystery was how, how was salvation going to come to the
ends of the earth? And it's not, no man could have
written this. The mystery is that salvation
was going to be offered to the Gentiles with no obligation to
become Jews, and salvation is going to be offered to the
Gentiles with no obligation to keep the law.
And that salvation was going to be taken away from the Jews for
a time and given to the Gentiles and that the world was going to
be won through Gentile missionaries.
And Israel, when the time of the Gentiles is going to is
complete, would be jealous of the relationship that we have
with their Savior, and then they would turn and repent.
We can't, we couldn't make this up.
This is the plan that the church would be the evangelist.
And he describes this stewardship, this plan in verses
3 to 6. Read it with me again.
This was his unique calling, how the mystery was made known to me
by revelation. As I have written briefly verse
4. When you read this, you can
perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which by the
way, we can't. We read chapter 1 with all the
Trinitarian theology that's worked out and the the Gentiles
coming and being of one building, all this is
incredible. We've perceived into it.
And he says verse 5, which was not made known to the sons of
men and other generations, as it has now been revealed to his
holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit.
This mystery is that Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the
same body and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through
the gospel. And this is even more powerful
because this is the fulfillment of the covenant that God made
with Abraham all the way back in Genesis 12.
This is the fulfillment of the Abrahamic, Abrahamic covenant.
He told Abraham, I'm going to bless those who bless you.
In him who dishonors you I will curse.
And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.
And you Fast forward to the New Testament.
Paul says in Christ, this is Galatians 329.
In Christ we are all Abraham's seed and heirs according to the
promise. And so he says we as the church,
as Gentiles or fellow heirs, members of the same body,
illustrated as the same building, partakers of the same
promise. And Paul says this mystery
revealed by the Spirit in Christ must be proclaimed to the ends
of the earth. And he says, the buck stops with
me. I'm going to be the one to do
it. He entrusted me with the
stewardship. And it doesn't matter if I end
up in prison. It doesn't matter if I die.
This is worth me going to the far corners of the world.
This is a worthy ministry. This is a worthy cause.
The Gentiles have to understand this.
The gospel is for them. He says I'm going to go and I'm
going to take it to them. And for Paul it meant here
prison, and ultimately it would mean martyrdom.
He said the ministry of stewardship that was given him
was a cause worthy of imprisonment and worthy of
death. Because God is building a
building and as stewards, he needs stewards.
He needs house managers to manage his building.
Romans 10/2. He needs Christians who have a
zeal according to knowledge. We'll pause here and say we have
enough men and women in the church with zeal.
We need men and women who have a zeal according to knowledge that
are out working according to God's revealed will.
According to theology, we need Philippians 22 selfless
Christians who look not only to their own interests but are bold
enough to look to the interests of others.
We don't want lukewarm Christians who have no role to
play. We want inspired men and women
of God in this church. We need Isaiah, men and women
like Isaiah who say, here I am, Lord, send me.
And we need those who say, as Paul did, I do not account my
life of any value if only I may finish my course.
What is your course that he's given you to finish?
This is what Paul has taught us. God has lavished his grace on
you, and by grace you have been saved through faith.
God has prepared works for you to walk in, and he did it in
eternity past, before you were ever created, before you were
ever born. Verse two of our passage, he's
entrusted you with a stewardship of grace.
Verse one, he's given this, he says on behalf of others, people
you don't know yet, people you don't like, people who don't
like you, people who don't know you yet.
You're made to serve is the Puritan prayer read to be a pure
conduit of His grace, And you can try to complete the sentence
for yourself. By grace I've been entrusted
with a stewardship. Woe to me if I do not What?
And you're going to find the answer to that by understanding
this fundamental truth about yourself as a Christian, that
you were made to serve. This is how you were designed to
live. This is what the blessed life
looks like. You will be most fulfilled when
you order your life that way, and you won't be content until
you order your life that way. That is where the blessing comes
from. And as an aside, if you hear the
sermon and you hear these words as do more, be more, try harder,
do better, accomplish more than you've missed the point.
The point is, be motivated by the lavish grace that has been
poured out on you. And you can go back to Ephesians
2, verse 11. He says remember where you came
from and allow that to motivate you.
Verse 12 of chapter 2, remember where you came from and consider
where you're standing now and allow that to motivate your
service. Remember what God has designed
you to do and to be fulfilled in.
Recognize you're a steward of a precious gift given to you by
Christ. Be motivated by what he's done.
Be motivated by the gospel and in his energy go and walk in the
good works that he planned for you long ago.
It's whatever your spiritual state is.
Now, one of these two prayers is for you.
If you do not know Him, then I want you to pray with gospel
urgency. Give me Christ or else I die.
If you do know Him, then pray this with gospel urgency.
Give me Scotland or I die. Church, please pray with me.
Lord, there is so much that you have given us to do, and we're
beginning to see in this replanted body what it is that
we're called to do. We're beginning.
We're getting glimpses that we are here to serve vulnerable
families, that we're here to minister to the people of this
context that we're called now with 11 going through counseling
training. We're called to be counselors,
we're called to to plant churches.
We're called to send missionaries.
And we're doing it, Lord. But you have a, a calling, a
stewardship for every soul that is in this room.
And my prayer is that we would live up to that.
There's good works that you've planned for us long ago.
God and, and we want to walk in those things.
Help us not to squander our life.
Help us to live according to our stewardship and press it on us,
Lord, so that we can say these words.
I'm in the pains of childbirth. Until this ministry happens, I'm
in the pains of childbirth. Lord, give this to me or I die.
Give us a cause worth fighting for, worth dying for.
Teach us to share the gospel and to fulfill whatever works,
whatever endowment you've given us.
Lord, for your glory, Amen. Thanks for listening.
To learn more about Heritage Church or if you'd like to
respond to this sermon, visit our website at
www.heritageshawnee.org.