Everyday Church
The Power of Grace (replay)
(upbeat music) - Hello friend, welcome to today's podcast, Everyday Church with Pastor Jason Keefer. Everyday Church is a daily podcast where believers learn together, grow together, and serve together. Now let's join Pastor Jason in a verse by verse study through the book of Ephesia. - Hello friends, well it's great to be with you today. Again, on the Everyday Church podcast. And man, I hope you're having a great day in the Lord. And man, I'm loving going through these verses and Ephesians with you. And I hope it's helped you. And I hope it's an encouragement to you. And I do hope that a couple of things, I hope that you're able, you know, to kind of follow along with your Bible. You know, if you're not driving or doing whatever, if you're not busy. If you are, you know, listening to this while you're driving and or you're busy or something like that, man, it maybe would help later if you can go back and just kind of reread some of the things that we're going through. And man, it's such an encouragement. And man, I tell you, as I read through this, there's just a whole lot that the Lord's done for us. I think you just, our minds can't really even comprehend the reality of what God has done for us and how good he's been to us. But going through these verses, verse by verse, these passages, going through these passages, verse by verse, and just taking it kind of slow. I think this kind of helps your mind to kind of soak in just the good things of God. And so today, as we pick up in verse six, man, he's just continuing to talk about how that God has brought two people together, the Jews and the Gentiles and how he's brought us together in Christ Jesus. And he's revealed some things to us by his word. You know, last time we were together, we talked about the responsibility that Paul had in the word of God and how God had given him that responsibility. And in this time, as we go through verses six to eight, you're gonna see it a little more specific. And I think what we see in here is the reality of the power of the gospel, the gospel message, the good news, right? That's what the gospel is. It's the good news of Jesus Christ. It's his work through his death, his burial and his resurrection that brings us redemption and ultimately restoration. And so Paul says in Ephesians four, or three, I'm sorry, in verse six, he said that the Gentiles should be fellow heirs and of the same body and partakers of his promise in Christ by the gospel. And so immediately one of the things that we understand is in kind of continuing the thought here is the power of the gospel breaks down those ethnic and racial barriers oftentimes that develop in cultures. This would have been true for these cultures. This would have been true in this time in Ephesians where the Jews and the Gentiles, there were barriers there. There were racial barriers and just cultural barriers that were over time developed. And remember, we talked about how when they would go to the temple, the Jews had a place to go and the Gentiles had a different place to go. And anytime you felt like you're on the outside looking in, man, resentment can be built up in your heart and hard feelings and bitter feelings. And certainly this would have been the case here too. And so Paul is saying, he said, look, man, the gospel, the word that he's revealing, the mystery that is being revealed through the gospel, it's breaking that down and it's causing us to be joint heirs in Christ with the Jewish people. And so what do we know is as one of the ways that it breaks that barrier down is the gospel just, it says that all men are all men, essentially they're evil. Right? All men are essentially without God and we're hopeless and we're sinners, I guess would be the best way to say. That's why Roman says it for all of sin and come short of the glory of God. I think of what Galatians 3.22 says, but the scripture has concluded all under sin that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe. And so what does the gospel do? The gospel breaks that barrier down by saying this, all men are guilty, that there's none that aren't guilty. And so for them, it was the Jew or the Gentile, we're all guilty before God. You know, I think if today, I think in our culture, how sometimes racial tensions flare up from time to time and the government's not the answer, social programs aren't the answer. And we can't repay wrongs that have been done in the past, we just can't. And where would that even end at, right? So what it brings us to is all men are guilty before God and the remedy for that is the gospel. And I believe today in our culture, the remedy to bring peace in a culture is the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. He's the one that brings us together. And that's what's going on in these passages. And so the gospel also shows that we're guilty, but it doesn't stop there. The gospel gives us access through the grace of God, right? He said the Gentiles, they should be fellow heirs and of the same body and partakers of his promise in Christ by the gospel. So the gospel makes us partakers. The gospel gives us access into the goodness of God, into the riches, into the promises of God. In fact, being a partaker of God, the idea of being a partaker, there is someone that would take possession of those promises and to think that it wasn't always that way. There was a time where the promises of God were to the nation of Israel. And through the promise to Israel, you and I, we now have access to that, to the goodness of God, to the riches of God. I love what Romans 5 and 1 says, therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we also have access by faith into this grace, wherein we stand and rejoice in the hope of God of glory. And so God's grace gives us access into the goodness of God. And how amazing, and Paul knew this, nobody knew this more than Paul did. Someone who had just opposed God in every way, opposed to believers, he was a threat to believers. And yet here he is, by the grace of God, and we'll get to that in a minute, how God's grace uses him, but God's grace tears down those barriers and families and a culture, sometimes they develop within churches in relationships, man, the gospel can bring us together in Christ, it unifies us, it's Christ that unifies. I think of what one man said, he said, "This religions are man's search for God. "The gospel is God's search for man. "There are many religions, but one gospel." And so religion is searching for a God, but yet here in the gospel, we see God coming after us and pursuing us. Man, what a great thing that he can bring us into unity, bring us into peace, and what a great work in the gospel. And then the other thing in verse seven is the gospel, the power of the gospel is God's grace given to undeserving people. Look what Paul says in verse seven, "Wherefore I was made a minister, "according to the gift of the grace of God." Think about the word gift for a moment. It's by grace that we're saved, it's a gift given to us. When you're gifted something, you don't deserve it, you don't, you've done nothing to earn it, someone has given you something out of their love for you, someone has overlooked oftentimes, maybe you're in abilities, maybe you failed in some areas, right, done wrong. I remember early on, my wife and I got married, I remember, man, I was not good with money, probably not the greatest now. I mean, I think we've learned a lot, and we try to steward things wisely for the Lord, but early on I was just, I was really, be honest with you, it's pretty dumb when it come to money. And I was very irresponsible. And I remember, I had some car problems and had I been responsible with money, probably wouldn't have been in the situation I was in. And I remember an individual close to me and gave me a thousand dollars and said, "Here, use this as a down payment for a car." And they knew, they knew that I was irresponsible with money and they knew that I kind of probably was reaping the consequences of my being irresponsible. And yet they gifted me, they gifted me, in spite of that, to get me to a better place. They would just help me. We're willing to have basically compassion on me, really. It was an act of grace. They enabled me to do something that I otherwise wouldn't have been able to do. And that's God's grace. God's grace is so good to us. And that it empowers us, that it helps us to, it accomplishes in us what God wants to accomplish. And so it's given to undeserving people. It's not, it's a gift that is given to people who do not deserve God's grace. We have offended God, we have rebelled against God. Listen, in every way, we have just pushed back against God's plan and yet God pursues us through the gospel. And we see that going on here. And Paul specifically says, I was made a minister, think about this, according to the gift of the grace of God, given unto me by the effectual working of his power. Man, if anybody in that time, I guess you could say, didn't deserve it, it would have been Paul. Again, he was the one that had people persecuted and stoned and put to death because they were preaching the gospel. Well, he was the enemy of the gospel, you could say. And yet here God chooses to pour his grace out upon him and bestow his grace upon him, changing his life, saving him, but also calling him to be, man, perhaps, I guess, outside Christ, the greatest advocate for the gospel. And what an amazing thing that we see. So we understand the gift of grace was essential in God's work in and through Paul. So God's grace was essential to change Paul's life, but it was also essential in enabling Paul to do the things that he'd done. He'd become a minister of the gospel. He'd become one who served in the gospel and was given the responsibility of revealing the mystery of God's work through his writings. I wonder if Paul, even when this was happening, I would guess that Paul didn't even understand the magnitude of what was going on. And yet today, here you and I are thousands of years later, we're reading the scriptures because of God's grace and a man's life and what a difference the power of God's grace makes. And it just, it changed Paul immediately. They're on that road to Damascus. And I think back in my life how the gospel changed my life. And I hope the gospels changed your life. And that is the power of the gospel. And so the gift of grace is essential to God's work in and through us. God's doing the work in you. And if you're saved and he's gonna do a work through you, but it's gonna be dependent on God's grace. It has to be dependent on God's grace. And man that helps us to understand that is the effectual working. It is a work that is effective in our life and in the lives of others based on God's power, based on God's power. How many things that you and I need changed in our life and we can't change it. We've tried and yet the power of God works in us to change our life. And then he says in verse eight, he says unto me who am less than the least of all these saints. And unto me from the least, well, I'm back up, it's a little tongue twister there, unto me who am less than the least. I guess you could say he was the leastest. I don't think that's the right way to say that leastest. We don't use that that way, but that's what he's saying. Like there's, I'm the least of the least of all the saints. But this grace was given to me that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of God's grace. And it was evident that what had happened to Paul was the gospel, the power of the gospel had changed the mindset of Paul. And it changed the way he thought about himself, the way he saw himself. Here is Saul walking down the road to Damascus and he's hit with blindness, he falls on the ground. I mean, he can't even move, and he's trying to figure out what's going on. And I love when you read that story in the book of Acts and you should go back and read that sometime. I love, here's a man that was prideful, he was arrogant, he had authority, and he did not recognize the authority of God. And here's a man, when he's smitten on the road to Damascus, he cries out, Lord, Lord. He realizes in that moment, man, someone's going on, and this is more than me, I can't handle this. And in that moment, I mean, his life has changed. I mean, his life is changed by the power of the gospel, the power of Christ. And how did that happen? Well, I believe Paul saw who he was. I believe that because, I mean, he later, what does he say? He says, in 1 Timothy 1, 15, this is a faithful saying and worthy of all the expectation that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of who I am chief. Man, if you were to ask Paul when he was saw, if you were to ask him if he was the chief of sinners, I'm convinced he would have made no way. He would have showed you every reason why he had it right. All right, and in fact, he does that in some of his letters, he'll even expound on who he was before Christ kind of share him with us the things he had accomplished. He said, look, as touching the law, he said, I'm blameless. You know, he said, I've done it. He said, I'm a Pharisee of the Pharisees. Education wise, he had it. But yet here's Paul in Timothy. He's right in Timothy. He says, I'm the chiefest of all sinners. Oh, what happened with the gospel is like a mirror. The Bible says the word of God, it's like a mirror, James said. And we look into it and we see who we are and it helps us to understand. Well, that's the grace of God. That's the goodness of God that would set his word in front of you and show you who you are without Christ. Because without that, we just, we think we're good. I mean, our righteousness is filthy rags to God, but to us, our righteousness, it's righteousness. It's good, but it's not to God. And so God shows us that through his word. And so the gospel acts as a mirror showing us who he really are. And then the gospel is a light showing us who Jesus is. Here's Paul, his life is changed because of the gospel. And Paul goes on, he says, man, I quote this first all the time. I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless yet I live. And the life that I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God. That was a man who saw who Jesus was. That's a man who, through the gospel, not only saw who he was without Christ, but man who Christ is. And that really is what the hope of the gospel is. That's the mystery that Paul's talking about. It's the work of Christ in us. It's the work of Christ bringing us together as believers, enabling us to, enabling us to serve him and work together and to labor together. And so as you go throughout the day today, man, just what a great, great time just to stop and think about the power of the gospel, how it changed Paul's life, right? And if man, if it could change Paul that way, it undoubtedly has changed you in some way. And if it hasn't, it can change you. What a motivator, right? For us to be reminded of how God's changed our life. And then think about this, the power of the gospel going forward. What does that mean, right? So as I share the gospel, as I am, you know, Paul, Paul didn't, well, I'll tell you what, it was Peter actually. Peter in first Peter 4.10 says, as every man has received the gift, even so minister, the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. So just as Paul was a steward of the grace of God, Peter says that you and I are a steward of the grace of God. And if I've given something to steward, like, how can I not share the gospel? How can I not be engaged in sharing the hope and the power of God's word? And man, let's be engaged. Let's get up, let's, let's share the gospel with somebody. Let's get out there and help somebody, be a minister of the grace of God. Somebody, Paul and Romans said this, he said that we've been reconciled to Christ. And then he says, therefore we, we have this ministry of reconciliation. So we go on and we, we bring other people to Christ through the ministry of the gospel and the ministry of grace. And so God's been gracious to us. He's been good to us. And man, I hope you, I hope you can appreciate that. And I'm praying for you and I'd love to hear from you. I really would. And if this is a help to you or an encouragement to you, do this, like it, share it. You can leave a comment on the episode itself. And all those things do, it just helps other people come across it easier and be able to engage with this as well. And so, but I'd love to hear from you. You can email me at everydaychurch, ABC@gmail.com. And if you have questions or thoughts or comments or whatever, hey, let's talk together. Let's work together and communicate together. I mean, this is not, it's not a me thing. This is an us thing working together, just serving the Lord every single day. Let's pray and ask that the Lord will be with us. Father, we thank you for your mercies, for your goodness to us, for your love for us. And Lord, we just, we are so grateful for your grace and Father, for the power of your word and Father how you have blessed us and with all the riches of your grace and Father, how at one time we were looking on the outside end. And Lord, you have made us join heirs, you made us fellow heirs. Father, partakers of the promises of God, Lord, that's an amazing thing. And our mind just really can't even begin to comprehend that and what I just prayed today, or for whoever might be listening to this, that you would bless them, encourage them, God that you would walk them with them in your precious name we pray. Amen. (upbeat music) - Thank you for listening to Everyday Church, a daily podcast where believers learn together, grow together and serve together. If this episode was an encouragement to you, be sure to hit like, share it, and subscribe for future content. (upbeat music)