The Open Secret

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

We are gonna be in Ephesians chapter three, and we're gonna be starting in verse one. We're gonna jump into Ephesians three together. If you have ever been talking to someone, and you're trying to have a conversation, and then somebody else just walks right up to you, and then they start talking to you, okay? And then at the same time, I don't know if this ever happened to you, it's happened to me before, the same time your phone rings and you get a text. It's like all happening at once. It can be kind of, you know, it can be pretty distracting, it can make you feel pretty harried. I've also heard that it's called raising young children. That is the exact same phenomenon that happens. You get multiple people talking to you at the same time.

This kind of thing, this kind of multiple things all happening at once is what we see at the beginning of Ephesians chapter three as we look at those verses. So we're gonna look at Ephesians chapter three, verses one through three together. And there are a few things, there's actually three things happening at once in these three verses. So we're gonna read through them together. It 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. Okay, if those verses did not make much sense to you, that's okay, okay, because there's a lot of things kind of going on all at once. Number one, you have for this reason. So it starts out by pointing backward, okay? It's saying for this reason, what reason?

We don't know, we're still in these verses, we're looking kind of forward. But for this reason, kind of points backward. You don't know exactly where it's pointing backward to, it could be pointing backward to a couple of different places. In Ephesians chapter two, it could be pointing back all the way to Ephesians chapter one. We're not 100% sure, we can take some great stabs. For this reason, it's kind of the first thing. And then, and then at the end of verse one, the author seems to be rerouted by their own thought. Okay, because he says, for this reason I, Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus, on behalf of you Gentiles, and that's it, there is no completion of that thought. Okay, you gotta go to like verse 14 before he's really digging back in to that thought. So that thought right there is kind of broken, kind of interrupted, so the, this happens a couple of times in the scripture, not much,

it's pretty rare, but here, verses two and following begin a complete reroute. And then, in an attempt to explain the reroute, he goes into these heavyweight concepts, like the stewardship of God's grace, and he starts talking about a mystery that was made known to him by revelation, and then he says, and I've written it to you briefly. So he makes two allusions to other places that he's written, he introduces heavyweight concepts, and it's all in an effort to explain why he's interrupting himself, okay? So what we're gonna do, we're gonna unwind all of that, okay, we're gonna kind of try to make sense of that a little bit, unwind all three of those things, we're gonna start with the reroute, we're gonna kind of move, kind of move through it, okay? And as we do, as we unwind all of that, okay, this is not just English grammar, you know, one-on-one, this is to help us really take in the rest of it.

We're only going to verse seven today, but if you don't understand what's happening in one through three, you won't get four through seven, and you're gonna miss really what, a deep insight into who we are as a church, and how we grow into this calling, this ministry that we are given as the church, okay? If we don't understand that, if we're kind of missing out on all that he's talking about here, we're gonna miss out on really just a basic building block of who we are as a church, and then how we as Christians, as a spiritual family, like we were talking about last week, how we work together in that, okay? So let's start with the reroute. Let's start with the reroute, and he brings up the fact, he's rerouted when he brings up the fact that he's a prisoner. That's kind of the moment that he gets rerouted. He's like, look, I'm a prisoner, I'm a prisoner on behalf of Christ Jesus, excuse me,

a prisoner of Christ Jesus, on behalf of you Gentiles. And it's almost like he says, yeah, I'm a prisoner on behalf of you Gentiles. Now, what does that mean, exactly? What do I mean whenever I say that I'm a prisoner on behalf of Christ Jesus, or excuse me, of Christ Jesus on behalf of these Gentiles? And verse two really gets into that, and he's rerouting himself because he's almost starting into a concept that he needs to rewind and begin to explain and lay some groundwork for. And what he wants to do, he wants to make sure he lays that groundwork for what he calls the stewardship of God's grace. Stewardship's a big word, and we're gonna kind of talk through that a little bit, but we're gonna look into it. The stewardship of God's grace, the mystery, verse seven calls it the gospel.

And then lastly, so it's the reroute, it's the stewardship of God's grace, the big heavyweight concepts. Lastly, for this reason, he's pointing backwards, right? For this reason, and you find the reason, really, you find the reason in just the immediate previous verses in Ephesians chapter two, 19 through 20, and then 20 through 21. So Ephesians two, 19 and 20, we looked at this a little bit last week, it says, so then you are no longer aliens, excuse me, strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone. We saw this last week a little bit. We saw, Ephesians two, we saw that, there was a painting being taken, or being painted.

We're painting a picture, there you go, of the church, and how the church is a nation, the church is a family, and the church is a temple, and he really dives into that temple fact in the next two verses, if you look in Ephesians two, 21, and 22, it says, in whom the whole structure, this is Jesus Christ, in whom the whole structure being joined together grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in him you are also being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. He's helping them, he's saying for this reason, because he's helping them remember something fundamental about themselves, that they are a spiritual family, and specifically, whenever he talks about being a spiritual family, this isn't like Christmas dinner, or spiritual family, okay, this is like, this is a lot closer than that, actually. This is, he's talking about bricks being, or stones being joined together, okay?

He's talking about being tightly packed together, being joined together by cement, or by some kind of bonding agent that's really hard to undo, okay? He's talking about being joined together like that, specifically for kingdom work. You are a, here's his point, you are a family that is working together as one body, or one temple, right? That's what he's saying, he's saying because of that, for that reason, because you are a family that is joined together and working together as one body for this reason, so let's just try to put it all together, verses one through three again, let's put it all together. Says, for this reason, because God has made you a family working together, because God has bound me to this work, so he says, like, I'm a prisoner of Christ Jesus on your behalf, okay? So he says, because God has made you into a family working together, because I am bound to that work,

and then the interruption comes, oh yeah, yeah, I forgot, forgot, first things first. You need to be familiar first, you need to have this bedrock laid down in your mind, in your heart, in your life, about the stewardship of grace. You need to know it, you need to live by it, you need to see everything through it, you need to know how specifically, and he's gonna get into this, you need to know how you receive it, how I receive it, how you receive it. What is it, and how do we receive it? Because it's not just the Ephesian churches that need to be familiar with it, so do we, because we're in the same boat, right? We're a family that's working together, and so let's pay attention to what this is, let's pay attention to the stewardship of God's grace,

and if you read all the way through verse seven, which we'll get there, but if you do, you're gonna find that this stewardship has two other names. It's called the stewardship of God's grace, it's called the revealed mystery, and it's called the gospel, and this tells us a few things. It tells us that it's describing something very large in scope. Okay, if you are talking about something that's really big, you're probably gonna use more words to describe it, because you're trying to encompass a lot, right? You're not talking about something simple that just needs like a word descriptor, you're talking about something you really, it's really tough to get your hands around, so he uses three different descriptors of this, and it also tells us, it doesn't just tell us that it's something very large in scope, it also tells us that as he's describing it this way, that we need to understand each description,

we need to understand each set of words so that we grasp the whole, right? That each of those things that he's describing is going to give us maybe clues to the entire thing, okay? So let's look at it, stewardship. Stewardship is something that is loaned to you for good use, something loaned to you for good use. So my daughter, who drives my story, she's a senior, she drives a car, it is not her car, she does not own a car, my daughter does not own a car, okay? But she drives that 2010 white Toyota Highlander like it's hers, as if it is hers, okay? It is actually a car, she uses a car that my wife and I own, we own that car, she does not own that car, and yet, story does not drive it like she stole it, okay? She does not do that, she does not drive it like this is her last day using it or something, she's driving it in a way that is a good steward of it. She knows it's not her car, she knows that she's going

to have to give account for her use of this car, okay? It's not just hers to do with what she pleases, she drives it as a steward, and so basically, she drives it and uses it for its intended good purposes. You can use a car like a screwdriver, I guess, or you can use a car to crush cans, like aluminum cans, that's fine, I guess, but that's not the intended use of the car, right? If story were misusing the car, she would not be a good steward of that car, okay? It's for its intended use. Stewarding God's grace means that we do not own it

and that we do not dispense it. It means that we are given it to wield it to use it for its intended purposes, which is a blessing. We are given God's grace to be stewards of it, to use it for its intended purposes, which is as a blessing. Part of being a family working together, right? If we are going to be a church that is going to do what we are supposed to do, how do we know we're doing what we're supposed to be doing? One of those questions that we can ask is that, are we feeling that weight of stewarding God's grace to people?

Jesus saved his most severe rebukes and threats for people who were supposed to be stewards but acted like owners. Let me say that again. Jesus saved his most severe rebukes and his threats for people, they are mostly Pharisees, sometimes they're scribes, sometimes they're Sadducees, but mostly Pharisees is kind of culturally who we know they are. They were supposed to be stewards of God's grace but they acted like owners of God's grace. Matthew 23, 13, this is Jesus speaking to the Pharisees and watch what he says, so illustrative, right? He says, but woe to you, scribes and Pharisees. He's probably yelling it at this point, I'm gonna do you guys a favor and not yell, but just know Jesus is really mad whenever he's saying these things. But woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. You can see the exclamation point, Jesus is yelling. For you, listen, look at what he says,

for you shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces for you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in. Jesus is saying to these people who do not own God's grace, who do not dispense God's grace but are stewards of God's grace, he says to them because you are mishandling God's grace, you are shutting heaven's doors to people and you might think to yourself in that moment, wait a second, I don't control heaven's gates. I don't have a ring doorbell for the gates of heaven, I don't lock it when I leave, I don't control those gates. What does Jesus mean when he says to the Pharisees that you close, you shut the gates of heaven to people, you don't go in and you don't allow other people to go, what's he mean?

He means that you and I as followers of Jesus steward God's grace to people and that the effect that that has on others is so profound that it can make people walk away from eternity, okay. So just to be clear, we don't own the car, but we can misuse it, we can be bad stewards of it, to be stewards of God's grace, that's what he's talking about, he says the stewardship of God's grace, that's one thing that he means, there's two more words that he uses though in scripture here, it's not only stewardship, it's also mystery, he talks about the mystery that was made known to me by revelation, that was in verse three, the mystery that was made known to me by revelation and this is a mystery that is revealed, the Greek word is musterion, so the obvious kind of translation of that into English is gonna be mystery, however, in English the word mystery is something to be solved, right,

so we think of Scooby-Doo, Scooby-Doo in the house, shout out, Scooby-Doo, okay. Whenever I see a mystery, I'm thinking Scooby-Doo, where are you, we have something to solve, right, we got a mystery to solve, okay, I'm like, I'm singing the theme song in my head, after this service, Kenneth Harrington will sing that theme song in its entirety to you, it's already playing in his head, I know it is, so don't pretend like it's not, okay,

cause Scooby-Doo when you come through, gonna have yourself a Scooby snack, okay. We think of mystery, we think of Scooby-Doo, right, we think of something unsolved, unsolved mysteries, you know, another from my childhood, I'm sorry, I'm gonna quit reminiscing, this is a mystery revealed, so this is more like what you and I would call a secret, this is a mystery revealed, so the word mystery there is fine, it's not like it's a bad translation, it can be a bit misleading if you don't understand that it is a mystery that is already uncovered, it's an already revealed mystery, it's an open secret, it was secret, and now it's not secret anymore, okay. You kinda see this in verses four and five, Ephesians three, four, five, it says when you read this, so this is Paul speaking to the Ephesian churches, when you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ,

so he's still talking about, there's this revealed mystery of Christ going on, verse five, 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 in the spirit. Now I wanna take a second and just say this, there are people that will misuse that actual piece of scripture right there, Ephesians three, four, and five,

and they will kinda make it mean something that it doesn't mean, here's what it doesn't mean, it does not mean that God gives foundational secret knowledge out only to a select few people, right, that are somehow like modern day apostles and they have a secret knowledge and the only way you can know their secret knowledge is if you listen to them, is if you follow them, is if you give them money and buy their prayer handkerchief. Okay, that's a setup that is prominent, even in Burleson, okay, that's a setup that's prominent in Burleson, there are people in Burleson, there are pastors in Burleson that will say, like I have a more direct light to God than you do, and so, excuse me, and so you need to listen to me to know what God is telling you,

run, run for the hills, don't stay in that church, if you're listening on the podcast and you're like, that's what my pastor says, make sure that guy's not your pastor, that's all I'm saying, that is not of the Lord, it's not good, and that's not what Ephesians three, four, and five means, it doesn't mean that I somehow have some, because I'm a pastor, right, kind of like becoming president of the United States, after people become president, they go in and they brief them on all the natural secrets and then he's carrying a lot more than he was carrying before, that doesn't happen with pastors, they don't take us into a room and show us all the secrets, the secret knowledge of the, it's like passed down from the pope or something, that's not how it works, that's not, it's all here, guys, it's all here, it's all available to you, it's right here in black and white,

I answer to it, you guys answer to it, we follow the Lord through it, right, it's not, there's no secret foundational knowledge that's still somehow kind of out there, and we know that, because ironically, if you keep reading one more verse, you will see it is a revealed mystery, look at verse six, 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, okay, this mystery,

this mystery is that outsiders, so we talked about this a couple weeks ago, so just remember this, there's outsiders and insiders, so religious outsiders, religious insiders, the insiders were people of Jewish heritage, they had the promise, they had all of these things, and they kind of felt like they had an inside track on a relationship with God, these Gentiles are outsiders, okay, and they don't have all of this religious upbringing, they don't have all these touchstones, they don't have, they can't say things like, well, Abraham's our father, they don't do that, they don't say like, I remember when our great grandfathers escaped persecution, they don't say that, they don't have that heritage, okay, these are outsiders, and the mystery is that the outsiders have the same inheritance, they are part of the same body, and they have the same promise, the exact same promise that's in Genesis 15,

Genesis 17, the Davidic covenant in 2 Samuel 7, there's all these promises, all these promises that God's people have received through the first three quarters of scripture, right, we call it the Old Testament, the Old Testament's full of promises, full of promises, made to God's people specifically, I don't know if you know this, this is super interesting to me, in the Old Testament there are two different words for the word people, okay, so if you're gonna talk about people generally, there are two different words, there is goi and am, okay, goi means, well, I'll tell you, am means God's covenant people, these are my people, am, am, these are my people, everybody else who is not my people is goi, just general, like just people, but not God's covenant people, that is how specific God was in calling things to his people, in making things happen for his people,

he used a different word for his people just so there would be no confusion, there is a major, dark, thick, deep line between who is in and who is out in the Old Testament, and if you are out, you are out, if you're out, you actually can't worship in part of the temple, like let's just say, you're part of the goi, and you're like, I wanna be, I wanna worship the God of these Israelites, they're like, okay, cool, you can never go into the inner court of the temple, by the way, why? Well, because you're not ethnically Israelite.

Weird, right? Like these are people who have been thematically outsidered since time began, right? Since the Tower of Babel, these are people who have been outsiders, but here is the revealed mystery, here is what Paul is talking about, it's that these goi are now on, these Gentiles are now Jews, spiritually speaking, these outsiders are now insiders, that they have the same heritage now. They can all say, talk about bringing back from your childhood, you guys remember this one? Father Abraham had many sons, sing it with me, many sons had father Abraham, pay attention to the next line, I am one of them, and so are you, stop. Why do we get to say that? Gah, right there. In Ephesians chapter three, verse four and five, we can say, Father Abraham, I am one of them, and so are you, so let's just praise the Lord. How do we do that? How do we call Abraham our, you're not Jewish?

Spiritually you are. We're all sons of Abraham. Galatians, actually Galatians two and three makes a much better argument than I just did right then, but it is at least alluded to here in Ephesians three, verses four and five. Father Abraham had many sons, no and six. This mystery, and this is why, this is why when you go back to all the way to Ephesians one, verses 19 and 20, this is why outsiders now can know the hope to which they've been called. Outsiders can know the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints. It's why outsiders can know the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe.

That's how that happens. So let me ask you, what's the big deal about revealing this mystery? Why is there such a major, okay, that's the mystery, it's been revealed, great. What's the, why is it a big deal that it has been revealed? A mystery by definition is something that is revealed to, it's revealed with authority. In other words, that's a pretty poor way to put it. It's revealed to distribute power. You reveal a mystery, you reveal a mystery to distribute power. Let me illustrate with the game of poker, okay, because that's, apparently that's right there, that's the obvious choice. In the game of poker, the structure of the game of poker is built on mystery, okay. It's built on mystery because you have cards in front of you, and there's cards everybody can see, but there's two cards that you have in front of you if you're playing it this way.

There's cards that you have in front of you that the other players can't see. It's mystery built in. It's actually why poker is difficult because you have to try to guess what each player has. Okay, so this is poker, this is built in mystery, but here's what makes you an unfair poker player. Here's what makes you a card sharp at any table that you're at when you know what somebody else is holding, you gain all their power.

Am I right? Any poker players in the house? Yeah, I know you, I see you, yes, oh yeah. Did I get that right? When you know what they're holding, you have all their power. You know, okay, okay, I know this guy's sitting on like Ace Queen off-suit, I'm not gonna call him. Something, I don't know, I just made that up. I hope that's a good play. When you know what they're holding, I never have the power in poker, but when you know what they're holding and you know what you're doing in poker, then revealing their mystery gives you their power. Your mystery is part of your power in poker, okay? But what happens, okay, so you say like when you know their cards, you gain their power. What if you flip it?

What if you put your own cards down? You're probably gonna lose, right? You are distributing power to the table. Every other person now knows what you have, okay? They are all equally powerful because you have laid your cards down. God revealing the mystery is similar in that he is showing his hand, if you will, if God were to play poker. God's revealed mystery is him showing his hand so that he can invite outsiders into the same power that insiders have. And so when he reveals that mystery, it's not just like, oh, I didn't know that, and now I know that, amazing, no. When he reveals that mystery, it is a big, hairy deal because it invites people into the same power. You see something akin to that in Galatians 1, and it seems kind of out of left field a little bit, but he makes a big deal, I'm just gonna read it, it's not up here, I'm gonna just read it. This is Paul writing to the Galatian church,

and he says this, and he makes this point in particular, I want you to kind of hear him say it. He says, for I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man's gospel. That's a big deal for him. This is not man's gospel, verse 12. For I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.

This is such a big deal here and in this revealed mystery, because it helps us understand that power given here runs along the lines on the rails of personal relationship. It doesn't any longer run along the lines of status, or wealth, or prestige, or privilege, or holiness, or heritage, or anything like that. And you can really see that, you can really see this power distribution kind of laid out in practical terms in the next verse, in Ephesians 3, 7.

Says, of this gospel, so he's still talking about the stewardship of God's grace, he's still talking about the revealed mystery, which he's called the gospel, now he's talking about the gospel outright. He says, of this gospel, I was made a minister according to the gift of God's grace, which was given me, look at that, by the working of his power, by the working of his power.

Excuse me. A gospel, a gospel is something that is to be declared. A gospel is something that's to be declared. So the stewardship of God's grace means, so it's kind of multilayer, we're gonna look at that one more time, it means that you are first, you are a steward of what, you take care, you take what God has graciously given you, and you freely give that to other people. If you were going to be a steward of free grace that was given to you, then you don't turn around and charge for that grace. That's not being a good steward of the free gift that you've been given. Jesus actually tells this whole long parable about a guy that owed a ton of money that was forgiven that money, but then he had a neighbor that owed him a little bit of money, and that guy started choking him out. And it says that Jesus is like, that guy doesn't understand grace. He doesn't understand the free grace that was given him.

So if you're gonna be a steward of God's grace, then you need to understand that in the way that it was given you, which is free, then you also give to other people. How do we do that? You handle people, you minister to people, you listen to people. In the same power, in the power that he gives us, you share a story of that grace with them through sharing the gospel, through sharing your testimony. Whenever he's talking about the stewardship of God's grace, it means it is a call to action on our part to freely give as we have been freely given, and to do that in a way that is bestowed with power and authority from God himself. And I wanna point that out in particular, when you look at Ephesians 3, 7, it says, of this gospel has made minister according to the gift of God's grace, which was given me by the working of his power. That is a theme that runs throughout the New Testament.

It's actually a big deal. Like sometimes, you could see a bumper sticker with a verse on it, and you're like, yeah, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Okay, cool, that's a bumper sticker, or that's like on your wall or something. Fine, that's good. But here's what I really like. I really like reading the entire New Testament and wondering aloud and finding things that pop up all the time. If I see it in the Old Testament, oh, excuse me, if I see it in the New Testament just again and again and again and again in all these different books, all these different places, and they're there, that's gonna get my attention. That's gonna make me go, oh, okay, that's a big deal. So what he's saying is, I'll just read two other verses for you. Ephesians 1, 19, right? We kinda looked at it, but it says this. It says that we can know what is the immeasurable greatness

of his power toward us who believe according to his great might that he worked when he raised Christ Jesus from the dead. According to his work that he works when he raised Christ Jesus from the dead. So we work in his power according to what he's done, according to what he's doing, Colossians 1, 29. It says, for this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me when you and I partake in the stewardship of God's grace, when we share the God's, excuse me, when we share God's grace with others, let me just tell you, it is draining.

It is not fun. There's sometimes whenever you are ministering to somebody, and about halfway through their story, you start thinking to yourself, my word, did you not see those warning signs? Like, did you not see that coming? That's gonna hurt you, right? And then that only halfway through the story, right? That was only 10 years ago. You're getting now the last 10 years, and it's even worse than the first 10 that they were telling you about, okay? And I don't say this to make fun of people with terrible stories. I say this to say, when you're listening to that, everything inside of you is going, like, do you not see that, and maybe they don't see it, but do you not see it? Can you not put that together for yourself? Can you not, like, we want to, this is the feeling that we fight, right? We want to shake somebody whenever they are telling us this story about how they were foolish over and over

and over and over and over again, and how their life is just some big ball of trash because of mistakes they've kept making. And it's even the same kind of mistakes they've kept making. Now, granted, we don't see that in our own lives, just as a small caveat, we miss that. We miss that mirror, okay? But as we are administering to people that are dealing with some deep and abiding frustration and really caught up in sense slavery, when we do that, it is draining.

After you listen to somebody for two hours, it's very, very rare that they will turn around and go, tell me what's going on with you, and want to listen for two hours. It's just rare, it's just rare. And it's not to say that that's wrong, it's just to say that that's people. And sometimes that's at loss. Sometimes people ask us what's going on, and we just, I mean, we just all over them, you know what I mean? And then at the end, we're like, thank you, I feel so much better, and then we go home. And we're like, wait, I didn't even ask them kind of what was going on. Okay, right. When you are ministering to people, you are giving more than you are receiving, and there is still blessing in that, but it is draining. You are tired. Okay? It is not a picnic. Okay? And let's not even just go, I mean, I described all that, let's not even start with the second or third time

they tell you the exact same story. Okay? Let's not even go there. That's even more of a beat down. Okay? I don't say all this to complain, I say all this to say, whenever we're talking about ministering to people, when we're talking about sharing the gospel to people, sharing our lives with people, investing in relationships, when I'm talking about doing that, it is not light work. It is not something that you think like, you know what, I'm gonna start caring about people today. And that's it, that was the beginning of the rest of your life. No, that's not how that works. It is a discipline that you need to submit to, whereby you receive power from the Lord to be able to minister to other people.

You call on God and you say, I cannot do this. I cannot do this on my own, I need you to do it. And that's why the how is so important here. That's why whenever we look at these verses, we are concentrating very hard on the how. Whenever we're talking about the how of ministering, whenever the stewardship of God's grace, the revealed mystery, the power that we've been given, the authority that we've been given to minister to other people. When we're talking about that, if we start to think to ourselves, yeah, that's not like something I can do, like on my own, you're wrong.

However, when you consider what you have, you have all that you need. God's call to disciple people is for God's people to share in God's gospel, to show God's love in God's power according to God's mercy. It's really all Him. But if you're gonna say that, then you need to learn to pray. In other words, it's not, look, if you start dealing with some frustration, you start, like people start coming to you at work, and you feel like you're just kind of getting torn apart by it all, your temptation is to climb up on the cross. Your temptation is to be woe is me. I need a break. I need to do something. I need to smoke a cigarette. I need to binge watch my Netflix show. I need to do something for me. I need to have a me day. I need to go to the spa. Okay, I'm not saying that any of those things are necessarily terrible. What I am saying, though, is that that mentality is toxic.

That mentality that's just like, I've spent an hour serving somebody else, now I need to spend five hours taking care of me. No, man, that's not in Scripture. You don't really see that. What you see in Scripture is seeing, you see people pouring their lives out like a drink offering to the Lord, which is just poured out. You see lives just getting poured out, and you see these people that are pouring out their lives saying, Lord Jesus, I need your strength. I need you to help me do this again tomorrow. We have all we need. And so in one sense, it is a calling. It is a, we can see how in the beginning, in Ephesians 3:1, he says, I am bound to you. I am kind of tied up in this calling to you.

I am a prisoner on your behalf. That's what he's saying. I am a prisoner to you, to serving you. And so in one sense, yeah, that is not like what you wanna put on the front of the Hallmark card. I do get it. However, it is the call. But there's another part that's actually kind of exciting in that, and I just wanna, I want you to see both. I want you to be terrified and excited, because it's both terrifying and exciting.

Here's the thing to kind of celebrate, man. We don't need something else to disciple people. You don't need to wait until you've gained 10 years of experience with the Lord. You don't need to wait until you've had one year of experience with the Lord. You don't need to wait until you feel like established in our church. You don't need to wait until you graduate seminary. You don't even need to wait until you graduate gospel course, okay? You don't, there's no bar for you to pass.

You have everything you need now. And you might think to yourself, like if I'm gonna administer somebody, I need to know like certain, I need to have certain stuff, I need to study, I need to pray, okay, yes. Feel that, respond to that, begin to pray in that, yes. Go to the Lord with what you need, yes. But don't let those feelings of inadequacy keep you from actually doing the work of ministry. That's what you're made to do. That's actually stewarding God's grace correctly.

You actually don't steward God's grace correctly. Hear me on this. You don't steward God's grace correctly when you take something that was freely given to you and not give it to somebody else. That's actually a mis-stewardship, okay? That's actually acting like you're the owner. Oh, I've been given this free grace. Thank you, Lord. I'll put that on my shelf. I will stare at it when I need some encouragement.

It'll be great. Put it in my little museum. Museum of grace. It's made for more than that. And maybe it's putting a too fine a point on it, but I think it's helpful. The way that somebody comes to know the saving power of Jesus is because somebody approaches them with the gospel. Because somebody stewards the grace of God to them. That's the only way you became a Christian. Because somebody stewarded God's grace to you in many forms, in many ways, and at many times. It's really the way that somebody comes to know the saving power of Jesus. And we know this. We know this. I can say this with absolute clarity and authority. We know this because it's exactly what God did. It's exactly what God did.

God did not pass out gospel literature and cross his fingers. God didn't just say, like, okay, I'm gonna take the gospel message, and I'm just gonna invent the radio out of nowhere, and I'm gonna just put a radio everywhere, and people are just gonna hear the gospel and be like, oh yeah, I know the gospel now. I'm following Jesus. Why didn't God do that? That seems pretty obvious, right? Maybe God wasn't thinking hard enough. Maybe he needed a little bit of creativity. Of course, I'm being facetious.

Borderline blasphemous. What I am saying, though, is that you must think about what God did and why he did it. What did he do? He sent himself to steward his own grace in his own power to people so that they could see the gospel demonstrated and believe and be made new spiritually. What in the world do you think he's calling you to do? You think it's some different plan for you?

No, not even close. This is God investing himself in people. Jesus came and invested himself in the lives of a few, and he called us to do the exact same. Look, man, it's a great Instagram post whenever you start talking about, like, let's save Burleson. Let's save Johnson County. Let's see the whole country of America do whatever. Okay, cool, that's great. Why don't you start with your coworker? Why don't you start with somebody that lives close to you, lives next to you? Why don't you start reaching out? Why don't you bake some cookies for the neighbor that you maybe, you have a nice relationship with, but really, you feel like the Lord's calling you to minister to that person. Man, make him some cookies. Come up with a reason to go over to their house, right? Begin to pray for them, okay? I'm not asking all of you to hit a street corner with a sandwich board and a megaphone, okay?

I'm not asking you to be street preacher guy, okay? I do believe that that is a gifting. I got a good friend, Jeremy, who does that. He's very effective. The man just, he's a beautiful man. He's got like a wife and kids and everything, but he definitely goes to college campuses and argues with people and stands on street corners with megaphones and the whole bit, that's cool. You don't have to be Jeremy, okay? I understand, I'm not Jeremy, okay? I don't do that, it's fine, but you are made, you are gifted, specifically made, and you are made, generally, you are made to be a steward of God's grace, not a owner of God's grace. It is yours only, insofar, as you give it out.

And what you find in scripture is that people who tend to hold it in, it changes them for the worse. It hurts them. Today, as we just look at God's clarion call, as we look at the fact that he equips normal people, me and you, okay, normal people to demonstrate his grace and power to other people, I just wanna focus two things. I wanna focus your mind on two things. Number one, both of them are how we're gonna do that. I want you to begin to pray. I want you to take time to pray, even as we're singing our last worship song, I want you to pray today, I want you to pray this week. And I want you to pray this. Lord, who? Just who? Who, who's around you? Who needs to see God's outlandish grace that's given to you, free grace that's given to you, given to them? Who needs to see it? Maybe somebody's popping up in your mind right now. That's fine. But take time, think about that.

Sleep on it tonight, pray about it. Look around, see who's there. Who needs to hear and see the love of God? Here's your second prayer. God, give me a spot. Give me a moment. Give me just an obvious, and look, be absolutely selfish on this, okay? You have my permission, be absolutely selfish on this, right, pray to the Lord. God, I need a flashing neon sign. Like I need it to be super obvious. I need to know, this is what you're calling me to do in this moment right here. Make my moment super obvious. Let it be like an Ethiopian chariot writer who happens to be reading Isaiah, okay? Let it be something like that, just something super obvious. And you just kind of waltz up and you're like, okay. The other day, I was at the coffee shop and one of the baristas was like, and this is out of nowhere, barista says, so you're a pastor, what do you think about Catholicism?

Like, okay, I mean, it's 8.30, so let's go, I guess. And so we talked about it and she's got kind of a, great girl, kind of a weird kind of spiritual background, it was a lot to untangle really for her, but it was a great kind of first step. And I had to get really creative, like how am I gonna show the gospel whenever she's asking me just about religion. We got there, it was good, but it was a bright flashing sign. Just in case I was getting coffee at 8.30 thinking I was only supposed to get coffee. Just in case I was oblivious to that, God was like, here, right here, big arrow, you know, over this girl's head, you know, right here. That's my encouragement to you. God does not deserve, you don't deserve to have that, so you're asking for a little bit more, but ask. I mean, what could have hurt, right? Hey, Lord, I wanna do your will, help me do your will and make it super obvious.

Okay, I mean, I feel like that's an okay prayer to pray. So that's it, that's your homework. Look, begin to pray about who and begin to ask for just an obvious big fat neon sign. Somebody in your life needs to hear the gospel. Also, just be ready. You are gonna feel horrible about how it all went. You're gonna feel like you fumbled the ball. You're gonna feel like, aw, she was at this. And you're not gonna sleep well that night, potentially, like you're gonna be kind of excited, but then kind of like nervous a little bit, that's fine. That's normal, that's what happens. That's why ministry is draining, because you feel like you could have done it better every time. You think I don't lose sleep over preaching a bad sermon? You think I don't lose sleep over, like maybe our church should have done this and not that, maybe we should have led this way and not that way.

Yes, of course, of course. But that's what we're made to do. These are the throws that we are made to be in. And this is what the Lord God in heaven wants to give us. This is why it's a stewardship of grace. He wants to give us grace, power, and authority to do those things. Some of you feel spiritually stopped up. You're not doing those things, but you are more than equipped to do it. You have everything you need and then some. Let's pray. Lord, we ask that as you are showing us that we are equipped,

as you're showing us that we have more ability than we thought, that you are calling us to more, maybe, than we even suspected. Lord, I pray that you would help us to speak the words, ask for help, ask for the big flashing sign. Show us the next step to take. It is all available to us. Lord, we love you and we thank you. We pray, amen. Would you please stay in this music?