If you will remember back to our coverage of verse one, you know that Paul called himself ‘prisoner of Jesus Christ’, and then he broke from what he seemed about to say, and began a rather lengthy qualification for that terminology.
When we read verses 2-7 we find that he is reiterating information that he gave them earlier and which we have already covered, in reference to the mystery from ages past, that has now been revealed through the gospel; that all things should be summed up in Christ to the Father’s glory, and that Jew and Gentile alike were to be recipients of His grace and co-inheritors of the promise.
Paul has a slightly different emphasis here in chapter 3, for bringing this topic up once more.
See in verse 3 where he says, “...by revelation there was made known to me the mystery, as I wrote before in brief” He is referring, of course, back to chapter 1 verses 9 and following. But see the difference? In 1:9 he says “He made known to us the mystery of His will...” and here in 3:3 he says, “by revelation there was made known to me the mystery...”
The reason for this shift in emphasis is that he wants to give comfort to them, that although he is in Rome’s chains, he is there for Christ’s purpose, and he is there as a minister of the gospel, just as he has been, everywhere.
Some of you may have heard of Brother Lawrence, who in the 15th century penned the work “Practice the Presence of God”. When he was dying, he was asked, “What are you doing, Brother Lawrence?” His reply, “I’m doing what I plan to do through all eternity - worship God. When I die I won’t change my occupation. I have just been worshiping God for forty years on earth, and when I get to heaven I’ll just keep right on doing what I am doing.” (from “The Counselor” by A. W. Tozer, pg 110/111)
Anyone who has given his life to serve Christ should never be pitied or fretted over, whatever his circumstances, as long as he is continuing in what he has been called and empowered to do. Because nothing, including death, can stop him from his service to God, nor separate him from his master.
Brother Lawrence himself spoke the heart of every faithful servant of Christ when he said,
“Good when He gives, supremely good;
Nor less when He denies:
Afflictions, from His sovereign hand,
Are blessings in disguise.”
Paul’s message in this long parenthesis from verses 2 thru 13 of chapter 3, is just that. Don’t fret for me. Don’t be concerned. I have been blessed to receive revelation of the mysteries of God and empowered by His grace to preach the unsearchable riches of Christ, and even my tribulations will work out to your benefit and the spreading of the gospel.
No, never pity the faithful servant of Christ, unless he quits. Then he is to be pitied most of all.
But what is suffering, what Paul himself called ‘momentary light affliction’, to one who has had direct revelation from the risen Christ? One who knows he was called according to God’s grace and empowered by the Holy Spirit for the work of ministry, and by that same power has seen healings and deliverances and many souls won for the Kingdom, and many new churches spring up all over as a result of the preaching of the gospel?
People, I submit to you that much of our unrest, much of our dissatisfaction with our circumstances, much of our discontentedness with our lot in life is directly due to the absence of the Holy Spirit’s power in our life. And that is precisely what I want to talk to you about today.
Now I want to read these verses once more, to have the passage fresh in our minds, then I want to narrow our focus very sharply to one phrase in verse 7 and talk about it’s implications and it’s application for us.
“...if indeed you have heard of the stewardship of God’s grace which was given to me for you, that by revelation there was made known to me the mystery, as I wrote before in brief. And by referring to this, when you read you can understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, which in other generations was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed to His holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit; 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.”
MADE A MINISTER
The first thing I want to impress upon you as we begin, is that just because we’re talking about the Apostle Paul does not mean that you or I or any other believer is excluded from receiving these truths, and having them applied to the life.
In verse 8 of this chapter Paul calls himself ‘the very least of all saints’. This is not false humility coming from Paul. Of course, you and I would not agree that he was the least of all saints. But we are reminded when we read those words that Paul never forgot his persecution of the church, or the self-pride and hypocrisy of his former life.
That is not to say that the guilt remained, and that he carried this great weight on his shoulders for the rest of his life. No, if anyone understood the grace of God and the complete forgiveness and cleansing of his sin that Christ’s blood provided, it was Paul.
But he never stopped being amazed at that grace and mercy that saved him and called him as Apostle to the gentiles. So when Paul says ‘the very least of all saints’, he may as well be saying, ‘the most blessed of all saints’. Each of us should feel that way, when we think back to where we have been, and realize where God has brought us. No one is blessed more than any other in reality, but each of us should feel as though we are blessed the most; and the appreciation that wells up in us should make us at the same time, feel as though we are the very least of all saints.
“Would He devote that sacred head for such a worm as I?”
-Watts
So as we progress I want to ask you to keep in mind, that any one of us may at any time be a recipient of the grace and calling of God that was bestowed upon Paul.
Are you a believer? Are you born from above and do you have the Holy Spirit of God given to you as a pledge of your greater inheritance? Is the love of God poured out within your heart through the Holy Spirit who was given to you?
Then you have the same filling and the same power available to you as to the Apostle. Please remember that as we continue.
Paul was made a minister. He was made a minister.
He did not just ‘become’ a minister. He did not wake up one day and tell himself, “Today I’m going to take on a new vocation; I’m going to be a minister”. He was going his own way, doing his own will according to the flesh, or so he thought.
But as he told the Galatians, “...He who had set me apart, even from my mother’s womb, and called me through His grace, was pleased to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the gentiles...” (1:15,16)
Believer, what has God made you, that perhaps you are not even aware of yet? How do you classify yourself? What is the label you give you? Teacher? Lab Technologist? Builder? Florist? Lawyer? Dispatcher? Homemaker? Student?
We have lots of labels, don’t we? If we like what we do and we know we do it well then we take a certain amount of pride in it; and that is good. But our labels are not God’s labels. He doesn’t categorize us according to what we do to put food on the table and pay the rent.
When Gideon hid behind the wine press to thresh wheat out of sight of the occupying Midianites, the Angel of the Lord didn’t greet him with “The Lord is with you, O wheat thresher behind the wine press”. He said, “The Lord is with you, O valiant warrior”!
He didn’t see Gideon as Gideon saw Gideon. He saw what He had made Gideon for, and what would become manifest in Gideon’s life when the Holy Spirit had his way.
I promise you, when God speaks to you He will not be speaking to a Lab Tech or an Engineer or a Homemaker or a Plumber or a Policeman. He will be speaking to what you are by the power of His Holy Spirit, and that label will not be anything that is of this world.
“The Lord is with you, O saint of the Lord!” “The Lord is with you, O prayer warrior!” “The Lord is with you O servant of the true and living God!” “The Lord is with you, O...” What? If you are His, you have an entirely different identity than this world can offer. It is an identity in Christ, and it comes, always, with a calling.
Did you hear me? If you are His, you have a calling. What is it? Have you found it? Can you say, “...I was made a __________ according to the gift of God’s grace which was given to me”, and fill in the blank? Because I assure you, there is something to fill in that blank, and if you haven’t realized it yet, then He is waiting for you to ask Him for it.
You weren’t made a Christian so you could be a better whatever your vocation is; you were made a Christian to serve Him spiritually, within the context of that vocation, and your family life and your most private moments, wherever you are in this world and whatever you present circumstances are.
Paul was chained to a dirty prison wall with probably no more than a candle or dim sunlight filtering down from a high window or from an adjacent corridor, writing these words; but by God’s grace and the working of His power, he was a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
In God’s plan, what is your spiritual occupation?
THE HOLY SPIRIT AND MINISTRY
Simply put, apart from the Holy Spirit there is no ministry. What is done according to the flesh is as powerless and temporary and weak as the flesh is. We can all relate to those words concerning the flesh, can’t we?
It is temporary. None of us would deny that if we are left on this earth, eventually our flesh will die.
“All flesh is grass”, wrote Isaiah, (40:6,7) “...and all its loveliness is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades...”
The flesh is temporary. It is also weak. The strongest man alive would have to admit, if he is honest, that he knows weakness. He gets the flu, and he is rendered powerless. We hear often about young, healthy, strong athletes who succumb to cancer, or drop down with a sudden heart attack.
Even at his best, a strong and healthy man will eventually come up against an opponent or some set of circumstances that he is unable to overcome with his strength.
In addition to physical weakness, the flesh is weak due to sin.
In a book compiling A. W. Tozer’s sermons on the Holy Spirit (which I quoted earlier), Tozer was talking about Paul’s illustration of the body in relation to the church. He said he had read in an issue of Harper’s Bazaar magazine that what ages us is that the individual members one by one stop cooperating with one another. Unity is lost, organs start to lose their proper function and eventually the body shuts down for lack of cooperation. A very good illustration of the church from whom the Holy Spirit has withdrawn His aid, or was never invited in to begin with. Members, striving by the flesh to do the work of ministry, by their very nature lose any sense of unity with one another. They each want their own way and insist on their own will being done, and eventually, attributable to a lack of unity, the church falls apart.
The flesh always succumbs to the temptation to serve itself; to make itself the highest priority. That’s why Paul said “The mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God, for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so; and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.”
There in Romans 8:7,8 he is talking about unbelievers; those without the Spirit of God. But it is a fact that the Christian attempting to accomplish anything according to the flesh will be equally impotent. For anything done in the flesh is not according to faith, and without faith it will be impossible to please Him.
To the opposite extreme however, when the Holy Spirit of God is at work, there is evidence of His presence and His power.
Whether a church or an individual, if anyone claims that the Holy Spirit is behind their work the proof will be the fruit. If there is no fruit; if the unction and power of the Spirit of Christ is not clearly in evidence, then we must come to the conclusion that they are in error in their claims.
Look at the scriptures, and find me a place where it says, “The Holy Spirit was moving, but no one noticed”.
Listen:
Hebrews 2:2,4 “After it (the message of salvation) was at the first spoken through the Lord, it was confirmed to us by those who heard, God also bearing witness with them, both by signs and wonders, and by various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit according to His own will.”
In Acts 4, verse 8 tells us that Peter, being filled with the Holy Spirit, began to talk to the High Priest. Then if you go to verse 13 with that in mind, you’ll see the evidence of that unction of the Holy Spirit when it says, “Now as they observed the confidence of Peter and John, and understood that they were uneducated and untrained men, they were marveling, and began to recognize them as having been with Jesus. And seeing the man who had been healed standing with them, they had nothing to say in reply.”
The Acts of the Apostles is filled with examples such as this. In Acts 19:2 we see where Paul came across some believers in Ephesus, and he asked them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” And they said to him, “No we have not even heard whether there is a Holy Spirit.” And he said, “Into what then were you baptized?” And they said, “Into John’s baptism.” And Paul said, “John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in Him who was coming after him, that is, in Jesus” And when they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they began speaking with tongues and prophesying. And there were in all about twelve men.”
When the Holy Spirit is at work, there is evidence. Always. He is sent from Christ to comfort, to lead to truth, and to point to Christ. That is the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the world, Christians, and when He moves, whether He is moving in an individual, or in a church body, there is change. There is evidence. There is Godly fruit.
As we will see in future weeks, when the Holy Spirit’s power worked in and through Paul, there was revelation, there was fruit in ministry, the church was increased, and God was using that church to display His wisdom to the ‘rulers and authorities in the heavenly places’. There was something going on. The church wasn’t stagnating; it wasn’t standing still; it was powerful, and it was powerful with the power of God. It wasn’t powerful only to send out missionaries. It wasn’t powerful only to draw large crowds and have big classes and give free clothes and food to the poor. It wasn’t powerful only to speak out against immorality and social injustice, and to have a strong political impact in government. It wasn’t powerful to amass wealth and make its ministers rich.
It was powerful in the Spirit. It was God’s demonstration to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places, of His own wisdom, manifested through this plan of salvation, which had been a mystery until the cross of Christ, but was now revealed by the gift of God’s grace through His servants, in power.
THE WORKING OF HIS POWER, IN US?
So what about the church today? What about us?
How much of what we attribute to the working of the Holy Spirit is really only due to good administration, the charisma of men, careful planning, clever use of talent; things that would pretty much guarantee success in any worldly business?
Where is the fire of that early church? Where even, is the fire of the great revivals of the past century? Why is the church so weak today ~ and it is weak, you know~ ?
Why are we weak?
Why, for most Christians, is their faith and the work of ministry something they exercise if they have the time and energy after their worldly pursuits have been satisfied, instead of the other way around?
Is it maybe because we don’t expect power? We don’t expect the Holy Spirit to do anything in our midst, and so He does not?
Is it maybe because we’ve gone to extremes and most of us belong to one camp or the other? One, emphasizing tongues, which Paul called the least of all the gifts, as though their manifestation was the prerequisite to any real Christian service, and emphasizing emotion and zeal; and at the other end, those of that camp insisting that the spiritual gifts are not in operation anymore, and the Spirit is not moving that way any more, and we should all just be exercising some cerebral kind of ‘faith’, and enjoy the free ride to heaven...but don’t get all emotional about it...and certainly don’t cram it down anyone’s throat.
Now people, doctrine is good. Doctrine is essential. It is my duty and delight to teach you doctrine. Furthermore, that is another thing that I believe is sorely lacking in our churches today. People are being fed ear candy. Many sermons are as shallow as the slogans on t-shirts, and Christians are weak and shallow because the teaching they receive, if from the Word at all, is weak and shallow.
But there is another dimension to the church that is at least as vitally important. We must have doctrine, and we must have the Spirit of Christ, putting that doctrine to work in our lives and in our churches.
All the head knowledge of the scriptures that we can absorb in a lifetime will not do us or anyone else any good, if our teaching, our service, our daily lives do not have the power of the Holy Spirit in them.
It was for a reason that Paul asked the early Ephesian disciples, ‘Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed”.
People, let’s put aside all the debates of recent decades, about whether the Pentecostals are right, or whether the Non-Pentecostals are right. Let’s stop being mired down by arguments over what the term ‘baptized in the Spirit’ means to one and what it means to another.
Let’s stop fighting like nursery children over whether any of the gifts of the Spirit are still in use or whether they stopped with the first century church.
I’ll tell you this with confidence. That issue is a moot one, if we’re so busy fighting that the Holy Spirit cannot function in and through us anyway!
Let me present this challenge to you, this invitation to you.
Let’s let God be God. Let’s ask Him to search our hearts, reveal our sin to us and grant us repentance so that we might turn from it, and truly be pure and yielded vessels for His use.
I say that first, because He will not use an un-yielded vessel, and He certainly cannot use an unclean one.
Then let’s forget everything we ever learned about what God will or will not do, and ask Him to do what He wants, using us to do it.
Let’s obey Christ in His command to daily deny self, take up His cross and follow. And let’s ask the Holy Spirit, daily to fill us and use us in power, to further the Kingdom, in our church, and in our world.
Paul attributed his own worth, the extent of his ministry, the accomplishment of anything worthwhile in his life, to the gift of God’s grace and the working of His power.
Can we be bold enough, place enough confidence in God and in His Word, to honestly yield ourselves entirely to Him, and without hypocrisy say, “Lord, fill me with your Holy Spirit, and manifest your wisdom through me”?
Young person, you’re not too young to give yourself entirely to Him. Old person, your life isn’t over until He takes you home, and He has the power to do more through you in a year than you have ever imagined He could do in a lifetime, if your heart is willing and your members are yielded.
Christians, I believe there are wonders God is yearning to show us that we haven’t even dreamed about, and all He’s waiting for is for us to say, “Give me all that you have for me, Lord, whatever it is, and fill me with your Holy Spirit and fire.”
Do you trust Him that much? Can you let go of all your pre-conceived notions and doubts and tendencies toward self-preservation, and let Him be your all?
If you can, if we can, we’d better hold on to our hats; because He will rend the heavens and come down.
I believe that with all my heart.
