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Paul says of this gospel,

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

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

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The grace, this grace was given to preach to the Gentiles, the unsearchable riches of Christ,

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and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages and God,

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who created all things. Now, the gospel,

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

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

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

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

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

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Paul was not on staff at Ephesus Baptist Church.

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

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

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

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

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at your job, in your community.

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

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

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Now, my boys are playing baseball right now.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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That's how the Lord works.

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

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

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

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

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Sanctification is a continuous process.

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

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

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

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

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

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It's a continuous process.

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

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

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

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

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

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We are justified by Jesus.

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

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

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

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We are talking about how we are hopeless without it.

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We aren't good enough to earn it.

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

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

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Think about that.

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Justifying grace gives us a clean slate.

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It gives us a fresh start.

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It makes us a new creation.

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

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But I didn't know it at the time.

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I wasn't happy about it at the time.

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It is prevenient grace.

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

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

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

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

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

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I've done prison ministry.

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I have friends with really rough backgrounds.

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

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in miraculous ways.

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I didn't have that story.

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I grew up in the church.

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

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

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His grace protected me from it.

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That is my testimony.

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

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I would be all in.

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The Lord protected me from that.

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He knew I couldn't handle it.

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He knew I would have wrecked my life.

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

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

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

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wished they had my testimony and not theirs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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how he has saved, how he has redeemed.

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

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

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

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This dude healed people.

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He spoke with authority.

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

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

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

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But that's about it.

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I am two generations away from being forgotten forever.

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

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

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

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Why? Why does he see himself that way?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Sorry.

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

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and we shared a common interest that became a problem.

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

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Have you ever seen it?

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

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

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

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

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

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We just would laugh about it.

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Here's what it is.

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

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

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

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

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The dude proposes to this girl through a wall.

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It's awesome.

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It was dramatic and we loved it.

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

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

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He's shorter than I thought.

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She has a nose problem.

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His teeth are too big.

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

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Scripture says that God is light.

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And in him there's no darkness at all.

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

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

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

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The more we realize our need for sanctifying grace.

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

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

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Look how awesome I am.

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

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Please slap me upside the head.

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Please fire me.

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Because that means I've lost perspective.

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

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

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

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

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

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At least I got my life together compared to them.

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I still consistently need His sanctifying grace in my life.

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And grace comes to the humble.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Or numbers on a power ball.

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

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

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It's impossible to measure.

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

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We know how we're going to spend it.

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

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I'll do that.

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

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Lord, I will do so much good with it.

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

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

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Like I will do so much good with it.

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

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That is measurable.

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The riches in Christ cannot be measured.

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I'll give you a couple of examples.

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One of the riches in Christ is knowledge.

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The greatest piece of information that you can have.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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It would eliminate life on earth.

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

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in just the right place to sustain us.

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

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This is why we're having Compassion Sunday today.

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

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I have a lot of useless knowledge in my head.

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

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

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

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How in the world does that help me?

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

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

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

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It can't fix the broken world around me.

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

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

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and are called according to his purpose.

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

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

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More grace.

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

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

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

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but her biggest struggle is what do I make?

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What are we going to have today?

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

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

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

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I have running water.

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

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

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

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Those are all aspects of common grace.

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

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

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

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and I will live forever with him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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There isn't any trust in their marriage.

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

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There isn't any peace in it.

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

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than having a nicer car or a bigger home.

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God's grace is like an ocean.

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

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you'll get hit by waves, right?

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You'll just get hit by waves.

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They are constant.

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One after another after another.

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God's grace is the same way.

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It is one of the riches of being in Christ.

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Grace upon grace upon grace every single day.

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

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

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

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

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Think about what that means.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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My kids have been disappointed in me.

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

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

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

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The gospel is that I am fully pleasing to God.

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

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I don't have to impress him.

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I don't have to try harder.

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

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He is just fully pleased with who I am.

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Some of you need to come to that understanding.

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

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

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

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

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That's something of value to me.

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Because I don't have to perform.

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I don't have to earn.

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Because the reality is I don't deserve it.

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And you don't either.

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Fully pleasing.

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Totally accepted.

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Because of the cross and resurrection of Jesus.

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

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

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We need to give him thanks for that.

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

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

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

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

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We need to give him thanks for that.

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But most importantly we need to understand because of Jesus.

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We are fully pleasing.

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Fully pleasing.

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

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You're trying to earn it.

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You're trying to work for it.

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You're going through the motions.

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And you haven't surrendered to them yet.

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So I'm going to pray for us.

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I'm going to pray for you.

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

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That you'll acknowledge it.

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That you'll thank him for it.

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

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And may we all be ministers of that gospel.

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Of that gospel.

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It's not my job.

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Well, it's not just my job.

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

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

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

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With their life.

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With their family.

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

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And helping them understand that they are fully accepted.

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

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When he looks at you.

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He sees him.

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

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Let me pray for us.

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Father, I pray right now.

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And I thank you for your grace in my life.

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I thank you for the grace in this church.

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

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

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That you've called us.

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That you've anointed us.

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

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So God, help us be aware.

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

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

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

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

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Thank you for Jesus.

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Thank you for redemption.

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

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I pray God that we will acknowledge that today.

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I pray God that we will celebrate that today.

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

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

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I pray God that you bring salvation to their life.

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So God, I pray that you speak.

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I pray that you may pray.

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I pray that you respond however you like this morning.

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However you like.

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

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

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

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Respond how the Lord leads you to respond.

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Let's just walk in obedience. Amen.