Ephesians, 3:6-8
Randy Peterman · Apr 5, 2009
Ephesians (2009), No. 14
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/492612978081

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Well, this morning we're going to be taking a look at the continuation of Chapter 3. Paul has been building his case, and Brad started last week, for why the Jews should stop worrying about the distinction that they've grown up having between themselves and the Gentiles. But he's building up beyond this issue of Jew and Gentile into the important development that is the climax of Chapter 3 and the first half of, maybe not the first half of the book, because I think Chapter 1 is kind of its own self-contained thing being a long run-on sentence. but where he talks about the family of God and how that's going to impact the believers. But we're in the middle of the first two-thirds of chapter three which talk about the Jews and the Gentiles and how they should interact with one another. I'm going to go ahead and read out loud 3, 6 through 8 and then we'll proceed to dig in.

Paul says, To be specific, that the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. of which I was made a minister according to the gift of God's grace, which was given to me according to the working of His power. To me, the very least of all saints, this grace was given to preach to the Gentiles the unfathomable riches of Christ." And it's a cliffhanger there at the end. As you'll note on the whiteboard here, I've actually got a Greek word here. If you're familiar with Greek, it's It's just three letters, but those three letters are really, really important to verse 6.

Paul starts out here and he says that he's writing specifically to the Hebrew believers who have grown up with this idea that the Jews are supposed to stay separated from the nations. Okay? If you grew up a Jew, you would have been told your whole life, make sure you stay separate because you're God's people. They didn't always do a very good job of being separated, but that was what they would have grown up in a conservative Hebrew household.

And so Paul, he uses this word fellow. He says, the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus. This word soon is where we get that English translated word fellow. But it was really significant as I was studying this passage I was taking a look at this one word that Paul creates compound words and that's part of the power of Paul's writing. Shakespeare is maybe not quite the right word, but he's definitely a robust writer in his Greek. But he creates these compound words or uses these compound words where they start with soon. Now, soon is a word that could be translated with, but that you would be doing injustice to the potential of the word.

So we don't want to just take with as what this means, because Sun carries with it a sense of intimacy. So Paul, when he's writing to these Hebrews who have been told, hey, stay separate, stay separate. You be over here, you Hebrews, and you be over here, Greeks and Gentiles, because we don't want to have any intermixing of God's holy people and the riffraff. But Paul uses Sun here to say, fellow heirs. Now, if we're talking about intimacy here, Paul could have used if he wanted to just convey with the Greek word meta which would have been like alongside or juxtaposed but he uses soon which again has to do with intimacy.

If you're familiar with the word symphony this is actually a word that has a prefix which is derived from soon as well. How many of you have heard a solo and then heard a symphony? When you hear a solo, you hear, wow, that is one instrument, hopefully played masterfully or very well. And you say, wow, that was amazing. On the way here, I actually listened to a Brazilian symphony, Bacchianus Brasilialis No. 5.

And it's got this beautiful female soloist that just has this really wonderful, raising, high soprano melody and these cellos playing along in a quartet of cellos playing this lower range and it's gorgeous but together they work together to make something that is much more rich than you could have as a solo and so when we when we see soon being used we need to think of that in the at when Paul talks about fellow errors fellow members of the body and fellow partakers he's talking about intimacy here he's talking about an intertwining Something that is the sum of the parts is greater than the whole.

So let's take a look at it with a little bit more depth here when he says fellow errors. An error would be a co-assignee of something. It is not as if, let's do this mathematically. I'm not much of a mathematician, even though I'm in software development. But mathematically speaking, this is not referring to we're going to divide this into thirds and you get a third and so-and-so gets a third and somebody else gets a third.

You are co-recipients of that section. You're not dividing it amongst yourselves. You are all receiving this one thing. So there's not division happening here. As co-heirs, you're getting together the whole. So when the Jews who are used to, you know, let's take the recipient, the Hebrews receiving the promised land. When the Hebrews received the promised land, was it divided? Were they told, here's your allotment, this family is going to receive this part of the promised land, and this family is going to receive this. And then they had to subdivide it and they had everybody, you know, well you've got your piece and then you're going to have kids and they're going to break it all up into small pieces. That's not the concept here.

If you're an heir of God's blessing, how much of God's blessing, according to Ephesians 1.3, have we been given? Everything. Every spiritual blessing.

Okay, so this co-heirship, the Jews who are used to the separation and used to the division have been told, no, you and the Gentiles, you have this co-heirship. That's not a Zeppelin. You have this co-heirship and you're intertwined together, the Jews and the Gentiles. But then he says that you're fellow members of the body and Paul creates this word that isn't used anywhere else.

Sue Somos is the Sun prefix and then the word Soma. Brad's not here right now, but Brad Mastin actually leads a Bible study that is called Soma, which means body. It's just an opportunity for various believers from various organizations to get together And it's called body. My first exposure to the Greek word soma was chatting with Brad and he was telling me about this Bible study that he had. Turns out that everywhere else in the New Testament that Paul writes body, he writes soma. But here, oh he's just gotten here, but here he says sum soma or co-body, intertwined body, together body.

He doesn't use the word body that is normally there. He creates something that is only in the New Testament once, and he uses it right here. See, if you're a Jew and you've come from the separatist mindset, what do you think Paul is doing by creating this new word? Any guesses as to what this might do to create this new word, to emphasize this?

I think what he's trying to put across is that he's absorbing it at the time. All bets are off. End the segregation. We're in this together. Yeah. The emphasis is tremendous. He could have said body and that would have gotten the point across. In fact, other places he does.

But here he says soon, soma, or that's not the literal Greek, but that's the concept is we have the two words, the compound word coming together. Hey, you're really intertwined. Don't be separate because it's not going to work. That's not what God's created here. And then he continues on and he says that they're fellow partakers. Again, we see the sun prefix, to join or partake of something together. It's used here and then in 5.7 as well. But the concept of intimacy is different.

I'm going to flip over to Ephesians 5.7 and you can see, I'll start in 6. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.

In verse 7, therefore do not be partakers with them. If the concept of intimacy is there, we see here, hey, you're fellow partakers, awesome, this intimacy, this being together, this intertwined. And then in 5.7 he says, hey, this intimacy concept, not a good one. Don't be fellow partakers and intimate with these fleshly people. But this sun prefix, this intimacy, Paul uses it three words in a row, or three concepts in a row, right in this one verse. It's packed together. So if you haven't figured out, 6 is telling us we ought to be intimate.

The Hebrews needed to understand intimacy, and the Gentiles did. Now if you're a Gentile, you probably might have stood off just a little bit, because these weird Hebrews were doing things like circumcising, you know, and had weird food rituals you know you're enjoying your steak and lobster and they can only have the steak and you know I got all the things that that were part of the Hebrew culture that the Jews or that the Gentiles didn't understand but they were called to intimacy Paul emphasized this as well and I think pretty much everybody that's in the room this morning was also in the in the series that was done in the main service when my dad went through Colossians and Ephesians at the same time and went through them together. But Paul reiterates this in Colossians chapter 3 verses 10 through 11 and I've got it on the handout there. Would somebody mind, it's at the bottom of page 1 and the top of page 2, would somebody mind reading that out loud for the class?

Not all at once. "...and have put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created him, a renewal, in which there is no distinction between Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian and secular, slave and free man, but Christ is all and in all. All right. Thank you, Brad. Okay, so I jumped ahead. How is it that this distinguishment or this division is done away with? as Paul emphasized in Colossians 3 as well. How did God deal with that? He didn't just die for the sins of only the Jews. He took care of everyone. He did.

What did our identification with Christ make us? new creatures. So if you were formerly a Jew or formerly a Gentile, that was an earthly distinction and it's done away with. So you've been made this new creation in Christ so that there is no Jew or Gentile, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or freeman. They're not there. You went to church to see your brothers and sisters in Christ of which you are the new creation together. They're gone. So the intimacy and the soon that is part of that could be had without any concern about social differences.

I've got some questions for discussion, and this is one of those things that I personally do, but it's probably part of my personality type as well. Do we come together with anticipation of intimacy? Do we come together hoping for soon? Not, I hope the church service is done soon, so I can get out of here. But, do we come together to know one another?

Honestly, when somebody new shows up to Sunday school or Bible study and I don't know them yet, I get a little nervous because I don't have intimacy with them. I don't know them. And I'm like, oh shoot. I don't want to offend that person because I offend people all the time and I have to apologize regularly for it. But if I know you, I can know who you are and I can communicate with you more effectively, hopefully.

But do you come expecting intimacy? Do you come to Holly Hills or any other Bible study? I know there's other Bible studies that people come to go to expecting intimacy. Hopefully, yes. Here at this church, I think we do. I'm not sure we would in a regular church. A regular church. Yeah, I know what you mean. Not a Bible church. Sure. Bob? Yeah, I've got a question first before. Sure. Okay. Great question, by the way, and I'd like to address it, too.

But the question is, what's the unique use here in verse 6? Is it the same body, the two terms merge together? Is that what's unique? Yes, soon soma. I'm not sure I see that in your hand, and I want to make sure I understood that. So same body is really one term? Yes, fellow members of the body. Yes, the only time that compound word in the Greek is created. So the way you have it here, fellow air, fellow members of the body, fellow partakers, fellow members of the body, is same body used uniquely? Yes, everywhere else he uses soma. And in this case, he uses susomos. So that's the distinction there.

So actually, Randy, this is more like we're sharing the same head, shoulders, feet, as opposed to being a head or a shoulder or a foot. Well, Paul uses the illustration in his letter to the Corinth that we're each an individual part of the body. But this is something that is more sharing than that. Yeah, well I guess the way I might consider describing this is that Paul is emphasizing that we're definitely interconnected rather than, you know, we shouldn't think of it as this is where I end and where you start. but more unity. Yeah, but there's, you know, the connection is intimacy, or the intimate connection is there where he's not emphasizing that we...

Well, yes, basically I'll answer your question instead of being wordy. Yeah, we're one together. One throughout. Yeah, we're all unique, just like everybody else. But yeah, it's that sense of together. I couldn't help myself, I apologize. Bob? So back to the point. Sure. I think, you know in Denver, what do you have, 5,000 churches to choose from? Oh geez, I don't know. I have no idea.

So why do people come here to gather? And I think God envisioned the intimacy you have in a local body as for the entire body, right? The entire church. Those are partakers of his promise in Christ by the gospel. But does that intimacy exist? It should.

But does it, in other words, If you randomly take every church now and distribute its members elsewhere, would that intimacy be the same? And I would claim that it wouldn't be, and that's largely because of the power of the sinful man that relates to denominational differences and various degrees of emphasis on various aspects of the scripture. But that's not what God intended, right? God intended for the entire body to have the intimacy that you share in a local mind.

Yeah. And that's one of the next questions, is why not? So, Jeremy's got... Well, along the lines, it seems like in America, I don't know if it's like this in the rest of the world, but in America there's such an emphasis on individuality. And the more you emphasize individuality, It's almost the more sectarian culture becomes, because you're trying, well, where do I fit in? Let me find others that are like me, and I'm going to fit in with that group. And that's kind of what happens in, I think, our denominations.

You're so focused on your own self, and your personality, and what you like and don't like, that rather than seeing yourself as a member of the body, you're trying to think, OK, where do I fit in the best? Who likes the music I like? What happens more often is that rather than going to church seeking intimacy, you're thinking, OK, what can I get out of this service? And it's so self-centered that you're not looking at the body as a whole.

You're just, rather than saying, OK, this is the body, let me fellowship with others, you think, where do I fit in? Where do I have the most fun? Where is worship the most exciting? Or where is the most intellectually stimulating? Or whatever the thing is, it's so individual.

And I think what you see in Paul's writings, in answer to her question, Both are important. We're one body, but we're also different parts of that body. And you can't overemphasize one. You have to understand that both are happening. We're part of one body, but also we each have an individual role in playing the body. So there's the idea of the corporate nature, but also understanding that I have a role to play in the lives of others there.

Well, and in spiritual growth at Holly Hills, we've done a phenomenal job historically of emphasizing personal spiritual growth. I mean, once I moved here in 2004, it was like amazing. Suddenly I was getting taught theology that involved my spiritual growth and how that would happen in my walk with the Lord. It was amazing. I hope that some of you can testify that the Lord has grown me in that regard.

But that spiritual growth doesn't happen by itself. I came here and I was taught that by other people that understood that. So, individually I grew, but corporately we grow together. And those should not happen separately. They should be happening together. Where we all grow individually, but we all grow together. And that's an important thing. The next question I've got on here, and this is an important one, and Bob hit on this, what keeps us from intimacy with one another? I think Bob answered that question, but let's make sure.

In addition to what Bob said, there's a level at which you can go to the scripture and read them each day without the anticipation that you're going to be transformed. And you won't get as much out of it. That's an intellectual or ritualistic thing. Yeah, and it's a waste of your time for all practical purposes.

Similarly, I think, we've been given this intimacy, we've been given this in Christ, but just like if you, I don't know, the future from 40 years ago, and you didn't realize what power windows were, you might never figure out how to get the windows down on your car, because you didn't know you had them. So here we are, we come here, we don't know we've got power windows on our car, we don't know we've got Christ's intimacy holding us together, or we don't believe it. So we don't come with that anticipation, and thereby, even though that intimacy is there, we don't partake in it, we don't share it. I think that's in complement to a power syndrome. Either ignorance or carnal things can lead to that lack of intimacy. It's interesting, and I'm going to share a little personal story.

In my own walk, the Lord has shown me my flesh. when it comes to intimacy with various folks. Back in 2001, when my parents moved here, I believe it was, we came and visited right the weekend before 9-11. And Hal Malloy said, Randy, it's nice to meet you. When are you going to move here? And I looked around and I said, I am the youngest person in this room. And I thought, never. I came up with as kind an answer as I could on the fly, basically, you know, I got a new job, it's great, la la la.

And I'm embarrassed to say that I was being carnal. The idea of intimacy with people who are older than me was just like, whoo! I need people who are in my demographic. And the Lord has shown me since being here, one, that boy was that arrogant. Boy did I ever think that in my youth I must have known something. But two, had we not moved here, I would have missed out on some really neat folks. And intimacy with some really neat folks. And it's been a tremendous blessing to understand more deeply the Sun concept, the intimacy that's there. And when I've had, there have been times when I've had kind of a tough time getting to know somebody or understand somebody.

The Lord has always shown me the hardness in my own heart that's been blocking me from soon and instead said hey do you know this person is really also growing and also I'm dealing with them right here and I'm dealing with you right here so before you get too arrogant about who you are you know this person is you know at one point in time I was and Doug I'm gonna pick on you okay this is this is a compliment Doug had said something about driving.

I thought he wants to drive slow and at a speed that he's comfortable with. And I was young and I like whatever the speed limit is plus five. And I thought, man, why does he want to go so slow? And then It was during the how to study the Bible class Doug shared a prayer request You know, I just pray the Lord would take my wife so that she could stop suffering and brother it broke my heart. I You know, I thought why do I care about speed limits? Why would my hard heart care about plus or minus five miles an hour? when my brother has such a deep heart.

And it was convicting. It was like, whoo, hey, I don't have NMC with Doug because I'm a dork. You know, and he's a sweet brother and why would I be concerned about, you know, and that's a mild thing. It wasn't like it was a stumbling block and I was angry at Doug for driving whatever he drove. But it was just something where it was the Lord broke my heart that I would even be concerned about his accelerometer. not accelerometer, acceleration. Accelerometers and computers.

And we've already talked about the next question and so that we don't kill our time, we'll keep going. Paul continues on to say that he's worked, the Lord has used this, we're partakers of the promise through in Christ Jesus through the gospel which he was made a minister of. Obviously the gospel is how we become a new creature in Christ. The gospel is how we could be made under a new federal head.

And Paul was made a minister of that. Paul grew up a very rigorous, legalistic Jew. And here he is, he's been given this ministry of the gospel. It was 180 degrees opposite of anything that he grew up trying to understand and do. But here's this gospel, and I've been made a minister of that gospel. I've got a question on here.

Given the simple message of the gospel that Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 15, 3-4, that Christ died on the cross, was buried according to scripture, and rose on the third day according to scripture, how do we deal with the complexity that some people have put into their gospel presentation? How do we deal with either an oversimplification of the gospel, we just need to believe that Jesus existed, which is way, way oversimplified, because there's more to who Christ was than just a guy that once walked the earth, to people who tack on, we've got to believe this, and you've got to believe this, and you've got to believe this, all together, before you can be saved, or you've got people arguing about the order of salvation, and did you actually believe before you were regenerated, or did you get regenerated, and then you believed, and then you had faith, and then... So how do we deal with the complexity that theologians, and I'm guilty of this in the past, have added or legalistic teachers have added to the gospel. How do we deal with that?

You could take them to the book of Acts and see here's what happened. It was a simple presentation and this is what they believed and it said thousands were added to their numbers. When I look at this, Paul was made a minister and he went to places. The gospel is simple enough that a child can understand the gospel. The gospel is simple enough that if you've only got a short period of time with somebody at an airport or walking along the road in biblical times, that you could present it. And if you got to your city first, you could have communicated it. Is the gospel simple enough that people can know they're saved with confidence?

Yes. It's important. So Paul says here, through this gospel, which he was made a minister of, according to the gift of God's grace, according to the working of his power, the gift of God's grace, you know, grace We've defined it in the operating system with which we lived, with the unlimited unmerited blessings of God through the totally adequate work of Christ. But grace also carries with it a sense of pleasure. It pleased God according to the gift of God's pleasure. to work in the life of Paul. Can you imagine? I like to think that God has a good sense of humor. Maybe you don't like to imagine God with a good sense of humor, but I think in his infinite wisdom and his infinite character, somewhere in there, he's got a sense of humor.

Here you take somebody who's a legalistic jerk. I hate to call Paul a jerk, but let's be honest. If he was holding coats so people could stone people, not the nicest thing you could do. Paul is a legalistic jerk, and he's basically the epitome of not grace. He is not gracious at all. He wants to wipe it off the face of the planet. It's an offense to him in every way possible. And in God's pleasure, he takes him and turns him opposite.

Here we go. Now you're on the other side. Now you're going to be preaching grace. Now you're going to be reaching out to the Gentiles that you really couldn't stand before. And he does it with the working of his power. And that's an interesting two words in the Greek there, energeia and dunamis. Energeia is active, effective power. And dunamis is almighty power.

So the way I like to think of this is, how many of you are familiar with the hybrid cars, the battery cars? The efficiency on those is still pretty stinky. Let's be honest, the efficiency isn't there. Wayne, you work at the power company, I bet you can tell us about power efficiency.

But God's power efficiency, this is active. I'm sorry, I want Marilyn to be able to see me. I can see everybody else's face, but she keeps moving back and forth and I'm moving. Now I got, I blocked Jeremy. Anyways, but with Energia Dunamis. We have a concept of focused, active, supernatural power being used to its fullest with a very specific and accurate outcome.

This is the working of His power. When God works with His power, is there an inefficiency? No, it's the difference between a straight H-bomb and a neutron bomb which only does certain things. which you have to explain. That's not my area of expertise, but I imagine that there's an efficiency there.

How does this convey God's ability to impact change in our lives? If God can be so efficient and He can choose in the working of His power in one person to change that person's life and use them as a very effective tool, how does that impact our thinking about God's work and impact and change in our own lives, in your life, in your life into my life? through the work of Christ's life in our lives. To use the word life too many times. I use commas too often. But how does this passage reflect God's ability to wrought changes in our lives? Or our perception of that?

He's totally adequate. He's totally adequate. Even on the toughest of cases. Yeah, on the toughest cases. question is what's the metric of all this and I sense that you know that grace is the most difficult term for all of us to understand. Absolutely. I mean clearly people outside the body of Christ have no concept of grace and there are many people within the body who have very little concept of grace and sometimes I think I know very little of that myself.

But you know the grace of God and his effectual working through his power is a concept by which by faith we're asked to respond out his life in us. And this isn't like, you know, a lightning bolt that's coming down by his demonstrable power. This, in fact, is a working out of our faith by God's great grace in our lives. And this demands our response. This just isn't automatic.

His power is automatic, but our response to it must be by faith. Yeah, we submit in faith and we abide. So it begins with citizenship, right? And when we see ourselves positioned above in Him, then that power becomes more evident because in fact that's where we see ourselves by faith. So our condition then becomes, by His power, more consistent with our position in our active faith. So that power is ongoing and active. We fall short because we don't live by faith much of the time.

Again, you keep pre-answering these questions. No, that's good. The next question I've got on here, and this is one that really is something I come into, especially the older I get, the more I understand my impatience. How does this passage call us to look at God's work and timing? Have you ever been waiting on God to do something and He takes His sweet time? And you don't have patience. You're out of patience. You're out of patience miles ago. And you're waiting.

Okay, Lord, I want this thing or this event or whatever it's there. And yet His timing is perfect. The way He works out His power you know, his inner Gaea Dunamis. Together, it's a perfect thing. It caused me as I was looking at this to say, you know what, I underestimate God's power. I underestimate His timing. And instead, did you notice that I used the word I a lot in that sentence? It's a lot about me. It's a lot about how I'm understanding things rather than going before Him and saying, wow, this timing is fantastic.

Every time I think I found a chink somewhere, a hole in the armor, or a weakness of some thing, the Lord shows me, I'm going to use that. Have you figured out that I've got it figured out? That's God's faithfulness in His timing on things so that when we talk about the gift of His grace, I've got relatives that I pray for regularly. We deal with them.

When are they going to come to know you, Lord? And he goes, is it all over yet? You've already given up? You think I can't save them? You think that it's all done? And it may be that they don't come to know him. But for me to give up hope is ridiculous. It says, hey, the almighty power of God is insufficient. Really arrogant and dumb on my part. You'll notice that I have all my illustrations are my failures.

And I apologize for that, but eventually I'll come to a good one. And I think one of the wonderful things is that in the midst of thinking that, oh that person is never going to come to the Lord or something like that, then the Lord says, but wait. And he'll have some wonderful example of, such as your great-grandmother who accepted the Lord three weeks before she died. And so we know It's never too late until they die. Yep. And what a tremendous thing that is. Let's keep going because I am running out of time. We are running out of time before the next service will eventually start.

Ephesians 3.8, he says, To me, the very least of all saints, this grace was given to preach to the Gentiles the unfathomable riches of Christ. And this is the potential for this one is another class by itself. So you have to bear with me for we've got a short period of time.

Paul says to me, the very least of all the saints. I'm just going to reread Paul's own extension of that in greater detail, expanded and expounded from First Timothy 1, 11 through 15. He says, according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which was committed to my trust and I thank Christ Jesus our Lord who has enabled me for that he counted me faithful putting me into the ministry who was before a blasphemer and a persecutor and injurious but I obtained mercy because I did it ignorantly in unbelief and the grace of our Lord was exceeding abundant with faith and love which is in Christ Jesus. This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation. that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief.

By the way, Randy, it's my opinion that Ephesians 3.8 is one of the most outstanding verses in all of Scripture.

It is so tactfully true. It's tough. There's so many good verses. I always hate to say one is my favorite, but it is an awesome, awesome. I know. I mean stellar verses in the word of God. Sure. In terms of what it has and contains. Yeah, I mean the principles that Paul presents, and this is only the first half of a sentence. It's the cliffhanger. It brings you back next week. Yeah, I have to come back and find out what happens next.

But he says to me, the very least of all saints, you know, we think of Paul, I mean if we didn't have Paul, Maybe the Lord would have raised someone else to write much of the New Testament, but Paul wrote so many epistles. He traveled, had these crazy journeys, was chained to centurions and almost shipwrecked and died. Well, he didn't almost shipwreck, he was shipwrecked and almost died. He did die and was resurrected.

Wow! And he calls himself the least of the saints. Humbly. And I think, well, he didn't know me. So here we have Paul. What a tremendous thing. I've got a couple of questions here. We'll ask them rhetorically. We won't answer them because they're for meditation on your own time, I guess. Do we find our own testimonies bringing about a similar humility? Does your own testimony make you feel like you could say, hey, I'm not the very least of the saints. Paul already trademarked that. But I'm one of the lower saints. Do we have that humility?

Because when you hear sometimes, you'll hear people say, oh, that so-and-so, he's done this. And he's done that. And we think, man, look how awesome that guy is. What an amazing saint. He's like Superman for Jesus. It's bad. But Paul comes with humility. How about this?

Do we feel ashamed to share our testimony? Especially if you have to give your testimony after Superman. Well, my testimony isn't as good as that guy's because I was never doing drugs and didn't sleep with 700 people. Your testimony is the amazing, miraculous work of Jesus Christ. That's enough! The sufficiency of Christ is there so that it doesn't matter if you're the least of the saints or the greatest of the saints. You're a saint. Don't let your testimony be something that you're ashamed of because it's the testimony of the work of We're going to keep going, we're running out of time.

This grace was given to preach to the Gentiles. Again, as we mentioned earlier, the gospel with which I was made to minister, that his being a Gentile or a Jew would have made this pretty radical, would have made for some very tough times, and if you read Acts and the rest of his epistles, you see that he went through some exciting things. 2 Corinthians 11, basically all of chapter 11, but verses 5-33, read that on your own time. Paul goes into the things that the Lord had him go through. Those would have been Those would have been reasons for Paul to not be the least among the saints. And yet, he was humble, and he would go and preach. Here he is, a Hebrew of Hebrews, preaching to the lost.

Now, the thing is that God promised Abraham in Genesis 12, verse 3, that God would redeem the nations. And guess, I mean, how cool is that? That the Hebrews had looked up to Abraham. I mean, how many hundreds or thousands of generations of Hebrews were born and raised up here in the story of Abraham. Abraham. Abraham. And someday God's gonna fulfill this promise to Abraham and part of that promise gets to be fulfilled through Paul. Talk about humbling.

Hey, your whole life you grew up hearing about this and now you're part of the answer. That would be mind-blowingly awesome. No wonder he could go through all those things and be excited. Wow, God's using me and I'm part of this fulfillment. But here's the thing. Today, right now, We are also agents of the fulfillment of God's blessing the nations through Abraham's seed when we share the gospel. So you too can have that excitement.

I'm not saying that so that we'll have an evangelistic movement. I'm saying so that your life, the life of Christ living throughout you is an evangelistic movement. Whether you're going to go to Uganda, I know Roy has shared with me on multiple occasions, various things the Lord allowed him to use his technical knowledge to share the gospel internationally and in his own home. I'm not going to pick which one of those is better because each one of them is the gospel being shared and the love of Christ being lived through Roy.

I get to share the gospel with my co-workers and my six-year-old and my three-year-old. What a tremendous thing that is. So Paul preaching to the Gentiles But what's he preaching about? He's preaching about the unfathomable riches of Christ. And this right here could be, again, its own lesson. The unfathomable riches there is the concept, well, let's put it like this.

There's 306 million square miles in the United States, and you can fathom them. You can measure them. We have Google Earth maps and stuff. We have satellite images where we can do all these things and we can see them. Tom? You slipped a few decimals, but you got the raw numbers right. 306 million? No, it's more like 3,600,000 square miles. OK. Mississippi Valley is about 800,000 square miles and that covers a lot.

Okay. I'm sorry I got my decimals wrong there. I looked it up this morning because I wanted to have a stat like that. Got it wrong. But either way, it's a big place and the point is not the number of miles. I apologize for that. The point is not the number of miles, but it is that it can be known.

It can be fathomed. It can be measured. We can keep track of what's there. But when it comes to knowing the riches of God, the Greek word there is actually a compound of three different, it's a prefix and two words, which means something which cannot be paced out. You know, if you were building a house and you needed to measure out the foundation, we'll bring it a lot smaller than the size of the United States. If you're building a house and you need to measure it out, you can measure that out. It's a small space and you can figure it out. It can be paced out. This is impossible to pace out.

Now the thing is that Paul's, I'm going to build up for in the next coming weeks, we're going to hit the latter half of this chapter in verses 18 and 19. Well, I'm going to read it to you because it's one of my favorite passages to teach. The believers, and this is Ephesians 3, 18 and 19, that we may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that we may be filled up to all the fullness of God. The cool thing is whoever gets to teach this, I am?

Oh, hallelujah. I'm not kidding. I love this passage, so you're going to see some excitement. The breadth and length and height and depth that we get to together jointly... I'm serious now. I'm really excited. I was hoping I'd get to teach it. If the rapture happens, I'm sorry, I'll miss it. Or if the Lord picks me up. But either way, if I'm sick, I might still come in, even in a bubble, because I want to share this.

The breadth and height and length and depth of God's love there, we're to explore that together. There's no decimals to slip there. But we see here, even back here, this thing which is unfathomable or unmeasurable is something that, guess what, we're to explore together. Put your Lewis and Clark hat on because we're going. any of our lives, it's long enough to understand it all. Sure. If it's not measured, I don't know if eternity is long enough.

Well it's not, because Ephesians 2.7 tells us it's not.

Ephesians 2.7. That's an incredible thought. Yeah, so that in the ages to come, he might show us the surpassing riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. Forever. In the ages to come. How long is infinity?

Can't miss decimal points on that either. Roy? Right behind you, the words. It makes me think that we're united in this symphony. Oh, absolutely. And the glorious thought, the gates of hell will not prevail against God's church. His body is going to be glorified. He's going to present himself.

Yeah. This united group that we are a part of. Yeah. Well, I'd like to continue on with that thought. I've never been a bride before, but we're going to be a bride We're going to be the bride of Christ. And if God's preparing a bride for himself, and God's perfect, and God knows how to make a perfect bride, how glorious are we going to be jointly, as one? Sure.

There's such a perspective we have here on earth of disunity and of disharmony. But if we have God's eyes, there's perfect harmony. And he's working it together. By all of his energy to unite us, to present us perfectly. Yeah. Not only is it going to happen, but it's going to exceed any expectation that we could have. That's been the great good news to me. Forever. And that's exciting for me.

I'm like, woo! I remember the beauty of my bride coming down and her dad walking her down the aisle And he could have been invisible. I don't remember what he looked like. But man, I just remember, wow, that was amazing to me. And yet we're going to be that time's infinity. Infinitely more beautiful. Infinitely perfected in Christ. Being the perfect bride. And this is the unfathomable riches of Christ. That's only part of it. So, time is almost up. Let me ask this, there's three questions I've got here.

How can you help me more fully understand God's unfathomable riches? Not how can I help you, but how can you help me understand God's unfathomable riches? And that's obviously not something you can answer directly. But I can't understand God's unfathomable riches by myself.

I need you. Do you know I need you? Is intimacy clear enough in this passage that we need to be intimate with one another? Obviously I mean that in an emotional and not a physical way. But we need to be intimate with one another because I need to understand God's unfathomable riches and I need your help. And hopefully you need me. I'd like to think that I'm part of that. But how can I help you more fully understand God's unfathomable riches? What can I do to love you? You know, yesterday the wind was really severe and it ripped the screen door off the front of my house. And you know what I did?

I thought, I have so many people at Holly Hills that I know I could call and they could help me with that. But when I think about spiritual growth, I also think, I have so many people at Holly Hills that I could call and they could help me. What a tremendous blessing it is to be in this body with you as my brothers and sisters in Christ. The last question I've got on here is how will this unfathomable riches of Christ being lived out in our lives and being explored in our lives together impact the amount of light that the body of Christ emits? That may be some mixed metaphors there, I apologize. But if the Holy Spirit is working in our lives, if we're helping one another, if we're being intimate with one another, that's going to shock the world.

Me helping you, if I come over to your house and help you with something, or you come over to my house and help me with something, my neighbors see that. Your neighbors see that. Well, maybe not Bob's neighbors. But they might see it. If I get stuck on the driveway and it's muddy or something. I apologize. low-hanging fruit.

But as the body of Christ is working, that shows. I know various people in this body have a ministry that they don't know about. You're going places, doing things, and it's a ministry that you don't even know about. That's all of him then, right? Amen! We're not counting how many ducks we've shot today. We're lights under darkness. We should close in prayer to assembly because the class is over and technically we do have to go to the next service.

But I do want to say, hey, I genuinely love everybody in this room and it's been just a tremendous honor to learn from you and to be a co-heir with you and to be a co-partaker with you and a co-body member with you. Let's continue to grow in our walk with the Lord. The rest of this chapter blows my mind and it only gets better. So let's close in prayer and we'll go into the main service hopefully and we're into the foyer and maybe there'll be some cookies in the sugar room and we can get pumped up for the main service with fellowship and sugar. Heavenly Father, thank you for your love. Thank you for your grace and the amazing gift of the very least Saint Paul and the ministry that he had. Thank you that we can study his word and the amazing revelation which you gave him to share with us and have recorded for history.

We ask that you would open our hearts and eyes to areas where we're being grown and where we can help others grow. Lord, let us be in each other's business. Let us be invasive in a loving way and let us continue to grow together. We pray for your return so that we may see soon that spotless bride that we're going to be in you. And we praise you in Jesus' name, Amen.