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Thank you worship team.

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

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

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

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

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

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assuming that you have heard of the stewardship of God's grace that was given to me for you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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I don't do that. Just kidding.

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

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

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

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

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making some general observations about this passage,

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

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After our journey through the first two chapters of Ephesians,

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

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

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

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

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He also tends to use long sentences.

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

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He begins with this new section with these words,

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

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

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

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

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because in verse fourteen he writes,

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for this reason I kneel before the Father.

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

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

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The first one is for this reason.

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This is one of those connecting phrases.

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He's connecting something here.

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

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This is what he's doing.

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

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and look back to what was previously written.

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

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

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into this new creation that God calls the church.

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

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

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and prays for his readers.

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

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

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So that's that.

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And then he says, as I have written briefly,

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

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

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He could be referring to the letter in Colossians.

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

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

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

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

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In Colossians one verse twenty five, Paul says,

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

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

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but now revealed to his saints.

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

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which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

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So Paul could be referring to the book of Colossians.

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He could also be referring to another letter.

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

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and never made their way into the Bible.

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

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

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

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because in chapter one Paul says,

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

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

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What he has done for us.

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

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

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

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

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It is God who has given us his grace.

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It is God who has made known the mystery.

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

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

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

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So don't get confused.

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

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Revelation from God should lead to a response.

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

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

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Now I'm a big fan of mysteries.

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

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

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

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I'd like to understand how things work.

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I like the problem solving process.

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I enjoy that.

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

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

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The way Paul uses the word mystery here in Ephesians,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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.

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

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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,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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.

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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.

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

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Revelation always calls for a response.

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

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

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But I have called you friends.

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

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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.

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

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He's revealed himself to them.

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He's revealed himself to us.

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

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

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God's revelation is never just for our information.

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It's never just for our benefit.

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It always requires us to respond in some way.

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

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

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always requires a response every single week.

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Here's the second thing we need to take.

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God's grace is not just for our benefit.

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God's grace is not just for our benefit.

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

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The key word in that verse is the word stewardship.

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Now other translations translate the word administration.

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

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

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

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

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

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So it certainly does include our finances.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Paul emphasizes that responsibility in 1 Corinthians chapter 4.

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

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

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

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

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We need to pay it forward.

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Peter also reinforces this concept in 1 Peter chapter 4.

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

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

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And we do that by paying it forward.

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

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We all know what re-gifting is.

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

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

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

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

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We give them to you, right?

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

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

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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.

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

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Now, that looks a lot of different ways.

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

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

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

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as they shared their cardboard testimony.

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And it was a powerful moment.

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It caused an emotional response.

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

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

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They were sharing the gift that God had given them.

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

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

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and help them experience the goodness of God.

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

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

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

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I will outlast Pastor Scott if you let me.

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

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But I am already thinking of my successor.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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But most importantly, we want them to learn about Jesus

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so they have the opportunity to become children of God

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

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God gave us the idea of hosting Compassion Sunday,

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

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

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Amen.

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Compassion Sunday.

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Now, Abby, you set a goal, right?

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

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Ten to twelve kids.

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Ten to twelve kids.

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

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

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Abby, why did y'all choose this one?

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Why did y'all choose Compassion Sunday?

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We want to help kids get out of poverty.

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

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

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Can y'all give her a round of applause?

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

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It's for others.

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That's why we have pregnancy resources here today.

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

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Number three, God ordains so I must obey.

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God ordains so I must obey.

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

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

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

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

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

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We like our freedom too much.

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

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are 100% dependent on this third principle.

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

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

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

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

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He calls himself a prisoner of Jesus Christ.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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An accusation that was false.

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

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

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the mostly Jewish crowd quieted down and listened intently to Paul

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

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

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

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

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

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or because the Jewish leaders had conspired to kill him,

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

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

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he was spiritually a prisoner of the Lord.

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

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It basically means that you lose all your freedoms.

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

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Someone else is going to determine your schedule.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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it is that bears much fruit.

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For apart from me, you can do nothing.

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

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

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Or maybe you lack how Jesus says it better.

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We need to remain in him, abide in him.

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

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

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

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I must be willing to surrender to him.

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

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

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

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

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You've been given grace.

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You've been given grace upon grace upon grace.

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How have you used it to pay it forward?

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How have you used it to bless others?

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Do you keep it to yourself?

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Or are you a good steward of his grace?

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Are you a good manager of his grace?

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

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

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

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Have I re-gifted it to somebody else?

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

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

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

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

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

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Let's pray.

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Father, I pray right now that you will speak.

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Pray that you will speak.

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And we thank you for the grace given to us.

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

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the grace of money in the bank.

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

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That we will not hoard it.

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That we will not keep it to ourselves.

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

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God, help us be good re-gifters.

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Help us not be stingy.

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

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

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You'll reveal where we're hoarding grace.

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

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That hasn't called upon you as Savior.

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I pray, Father, for their salvation.

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I pray that you speak.

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I pray that you bring them to their knees.

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Because your grace is so, so good.

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So, Father, I pray that you speak.

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I pray.

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Amen.

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We've received revelation.

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We've received it.

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How are we going to respond?

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

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I'm just going to ask that you obey.

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Obey the Lord.

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Whatever He's calling you to do.

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But respond this morning.