The Mystery, the Ministry, and Me, Part 1

Imagine what it was like for first century Jews to realize that their favored status with God had been broadened to include Gentiles. Through His death, burial, and resurrection, Jesus broke down the walls that kept Gentiles outside the family. This was good news to the Gentiles, but a personal threat to some of the religious leaders in the temple.

Today on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindoll helps us understand the cultural conflict between Jews and Gentiles, and how the New World Order impacts our lives today. Chuck titled his message, The Mystery, the Ministry, and Me. I want to read for you from the first part of the third chapter of the letter to the Ephesians. If you have a Bible, please locate that third chapter and let me read the first 13 verses of it. For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus, for the sake of you Gentiles, 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. 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 to me, the very least of all saints, this grace was given. To preach to the Gentiles the unfathomable riches of Christ, and to bring to light what is the administration of the mystery, which for ages has been hidden in God who created all things, so that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places.

This was in accordance with the eternal purpose which he carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and confident access through faith in him. Therefore, I ask you not to lose heart at my tribulations on your behalf, for they are your glory. You see what we just read in verse 12, in whom we have boldness and confident access through faith. Let's enjoy that privileged position of bold and confident access as we join together in prayer. Let's have just a few moments of complete silence, since I don't know your needs, and couldn't possibly represent them in these few moments I lead us in prayer.

This is your opportunity to do that. What a great privilege provided by amazing grace, your amazing grace, that we can have this kind of access and bold confidence to come to you, our Father, our Father. You have, as our Father, provided all things for us richly to enjoy. As our Father, you have put your arms around us, and you have comforted us when it seems like everything was coming apart.

As our Father, you have cautioned us about the speed of our lives, and the superficiality of our relationships, and your counsel always being the wise counsel of our Father has caught us up short and reminded us that life is more than moving faster, and making more money, and getting involved in more activities. Sometime the best things you have for us come in solitude and quietness, and you're there for us as our Father when we are all alone and need time to think things through. Thank you for the mystery now being made known to us, how you have drawn together, whether Jew or Gentile, all into one body to be unified in the family over which Christ is our head, our Lord, our Master.

We find great comfort in that because as our Master, He will never take advantage of us, will never abuse us, will never violate us. Thank you for your tender mercies, your compassions that are new every morning. In this unusual place to meet, we find great joy, Lord, as a body of your people, some here for the very first time, some having traveled hundreds of miles, some living within walking distance.

We come of various color and background and struggles and sins and, yes, different kinds of conversions. We come on the level plane at the foot of the cross, and we have this great desire that whoever is in this place who doesn't know the Lord Jesus, they might know Him before they leave. May our fellowship be so genuine and our hearts so winsome and warm that they without Christ might find themselves one to your Son, whom we love and adore. And Lord, as our Father, we count it a privilege to give in gratitude to you how seldom we pause to thank you for all you do for us. You have provided for our every needs, every one of those needs, and thank you for that. And now we want you to know these gifts are yours. Since you own it all, this is just a portion of what you've entrusted to us, but we give to you gratefully, joyfully, because of Jesus.

In whose name we pray. I had an interesting question asked me at Dallas Seminary this week by one of our students. He said, of all the things that the Lord has taught you, does something stand out more than any other?

And I had to think back over more than 60 years here and consider what would be that statement. And I will tell you what I told him, and I still, after a few days of thinking about it, believe it is one of the greatest things the Lord ever taught me. Nothing touches us that has not first passed through the fingers of God. Nothing. Peter says in 1 Peter chapter 5 verse 6, Humble yourself under the mighty hand of God. Humble yourself under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in proper time, casting all your anxieties on him because he cares for you. That means that I live my life as a child of God under his mighty hand, so that nothing I go through do I go through without his permission.

Isn't that a great thought? You say, well it's great if it's good what I'm going through, but that's not the whole picture. See, as long as I can know he is behind it, I can endure it.

That helps me. It was Dr. Victor Frankel, name made famous following the horrible Nazi Holocaust in years past, who was taken into the prison camp during that time. He's a Jewish physician. His practice was taken from him, his family was taken from him, his possessions, everything, every strip of clothing. And he endured. He was able to go through it all. And in a book he wrote following the horrors of his experience, he said that we can endure any what as long as we have a why. Whatever it is I go through under this hand, I can go through it because I know it has come from him or been allowed by him. That's why Job, after losing all ten children, can you imagine?

His entire ranch, all of his possessions, and finally his health. Job could say, shall we receive good at the hand of God and not also adversity? The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. I'll tell you that is quite an attitude for a man who finds himself standing alongside ten fresh graves with markers naming his children, with servants, with animals, with crops, with shelter, gone, and in a state of bankruptcy say, blessed be the name of the Lord. Now when I came to Ephesians chapter 3, and look closely, I thought I'd be digging right away into all 13 verses of this third chapter, and a word got stuck in my throat in the very first verse because it was so different. It was unexpected. And if you've never read the New Testament or if you've never studied Ephesians, when you come to this word and you see another name before it, you say they don't go together. If it began, for this reason I Paul the Apostle, you'd expect it and you'd read on.

Or for this reason I Paul, the church planter, the missionary, you could go on. But prisoner? Prisoner? I'm reading a letter from an inmate? I'm reading something that a man wrote from jail?

Literally he was under house arrest, but nevertheless a prisoner? And I don't read any pity party? I don't read any poor me? I don't read anything, but as we're going to see rejoicing and gratitude and on and on, I think, how does he do it?

We're back. Because Paul knew the why, he could endure the what? Without God's permission, nothing happens. See how he begins it? For this reason, there's the why.

For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner, not the prisoner of Rome, not the prisoner of angry Jews, not the prisoner of unfair circumstances, but I am the prisoner of Christ Jesus under whose banner I live my life regardless of my circumstances. You say that? That's your attitude? Could you? Could you say that?

Where you find yourself today? It was a man named F. R. Maltby who first said, Jesus promised his disciples three things, I always smile when I read them, that they will be absurdly happy, completely fearless, and in constant trouble. Isn't that great?

You don't expect it to come out like that. If they start with absurdly happy, that's a great adverb by the way, absurdly happy, completely fearless, but in constant trouble. You say, I qualify, that's where I am today. Well, you're in good company. I'm a prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles. If I wind up under arrest, it's no shock to God. It's all part of his plan, and especially if it is an unfair arrest.

It helps me if I know why, then I can go through the what. We've been pretty serious for the last several studies, so it's time to have a little fun. One of our members sent me a cute story. Al and Joe are bungee jumping one day. Al says to Joe, you know, we could make a lot of money running our own bungee jumping service down in Mexico. Joe thinks this is a great idea, so they pool their money and they buy everything they need, a tower, a platform, an elastic cord, the harness, insurance, the signs. They travel to Mexico and they begin to set up on the town square. As they're constructing the tower, a crowd begins to form.

More and more people are watching as they finish their work, and when they finally finish, there's such a crowd, they think this is our moment to give a demonstration. So Al jumps. He bounces to the end of the cord, and when he comes back up, Joe notices that he has a few cuts and scratches, and unfortunately, Joe isn't able to catch him, so he falls again, and this time he comes back up bruising and bleeding, and he misses him again, and the last time he goes back down, he comes back up.

He's really messed up. A couple of three broken bones and almost unconscious. Luckily, Joe reaches out and grabs him. He says, Al, what happened? Is the cord too long? He said, no. Barely able to speak, he gasps, no, bungee cord's fine. It's a crowd.

What in the world is a piñata? If you know why, you can handle the what, you know? If you know why, you don't set up a bungee jumping business in Guadalajara. Let's face it. Al, from the ridiculous back to the sublime here, I thought that would wake you up. Paul says, I am a prisoner of Christ Jesus, and I love it that there is no feel sorry for me in his line here or anywhere else in his writings.

I don't know of anyone who rose above his circumstances better in the New Testament, save Christ alone, than the Apostle Paul. There's a logical reason that he's in prison. See the words for this reason?

I've got in my mind an arrow that points straight up into chapter 2. What's the logical reason? Well, his message. He has had a message that was very unpopular among the Jews. They didn't want that message preached. All of their lives, certainly all of their religion, they had seen themselves as uniquely exclusive to God. They are God's people, and to them God's law was given, and from them God's truth was to be made known. They were to be the missionaries to the Gentiles.

They forgot that. They missed that part of the course in God's curriculum, and finally God broke through and gave the Apostle Paul the revelation that whenever any Gentile or Jew converts to Christ, they become one great body in the family of God. So logically, logically the message would cause them to hate him. The message is set forth in verses 11 to 22 of chapter 2. So that's the reason he's in prison.

That's a logical reason. I'm proclaiming a revolutionary paradigm shift in the message of the gospel. Up till now, it's from the Jew to the Jew through the Jew that the message would be made known. Paul says, when you're a Gentile and you come to Christ, you're in the same family as a Jew who comes to Christ, which brings up the racial reason he was in prison, his enemies. Check Acts chapter 21, Acts chapter 22, Acts chapter 28, and you'll see that the Jews together made sure that he was out of circulation. We don't want this man to preach that message to these Gentiles. He's a hated man because he was doing it. Let me give you an illustration that hits close to home. Back in the 1950s, before the civil rights movement was really underway and before it became legislation in that long-awaited and long-needed piece of legislation, those who were whites and took the side of the black were marked men.

Not only were they not understood, they were hated by fellow whites, especially whites who were prejudiced all the way to the soles of their feet. Paul is in that category. Here he is, a Jew, one of the Jews telling the Gentiles you're in the same family through Christ. So they have him imprisoned. There's a theological reason. His Lord has made sure he's there. Stop and think. When else would Paul have had the time to write four letters if it hadn't been for two years in prison? Think about it. I mean, the man is like the energizer bunny all over the New Testament.

He's going from one place to another and he doesn't run down. He gets knocked down, he gets back up, he goes here and he gets stoned, he gets up, pushes the rocks aside, moves on, he founds this church and founds that church, and finally the Lord says, hold it, wait a minute, I gotta have some letters written. I mean, didn't quite say it like that, but think of the letters. He wrote Philemon, he wrote Colossians, he wrote Ephesians, and he wrote Philippians. He wrote all four of these letters during the two-year imprisonment, that's why they're called the prison epistles.

While in that house arrest, he wrote those letters. Furthermore, he was evangelizing Caesar's household. Isn't that a great thought?

I love that idea. Always, I always think it'd be so much fun to walk up to Caesar and say, we got the gospel right in the heart of your house while you hated it and you didn't want it there. Look at Philippians chapter 1 verse 12, just the next book after Ephesians, Philippians 1 12. I want you to know, brethren, that my circumstances, that's his imprisonment, have turned out for the greater progress of the gospel. Verse 13, so that my imprisonment in the cause of Christ has become well-known throughout the whole Praetorian Guard and to everyone else.

And look at this next one, in four, I think it's 4 22. All the saints greet you, especially those of Caesar's household. Isn't that great? You know how they heard? Well, you've got a prisoner chained right here. He can't get, I mean, you've got a guard chained to the prisoner. And Paul says, I'm going to tell you about Christ. The guard says, I don't want to hear it.

Well, a lot of luck. I'm going to tell you anyway, you're not going anywhere. And he tells him a Christ and he comes to know Christ. He receives the Lord Jesus. So he gets unshackled and he goes back to the barracks and he says, you guys, I never believed this, but I just met the most amazing man you'll ever meet. And people say, oh, are you kidding? That same guy told you about Christ.

Yeah, you're on duty tomorrow, by the way. And this guy goes the next day and he gets chained. And finally the word travels all across Caesar's household. I just think that's fantastic, man. Paul did it while he's imprisoned and they're under house arrest waiting for trial. I just think that's fantastic. That's part of God's plan.

Who would imagine a scenario like this one? Paul chained to a prison guard sharing the good news about Jesus. You're listening to the Bible teaching of pastor and author Chuck Swindoll, and this is Insight for Living. To learn more about this ministry, visit us online at insightworld.org.

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Be listening Friday when Chuck Swindoll continues his study in Ephesians called Becoming a People of Grace, right here on Insight for Living. The preceding message, The Mystery, The Ministry, and Me, was copyrighted in 2000, 2001, and 2009. And the sound recording was copyrighted in 2009 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. All rights are reserved worldwide. Duplication of copyrighted material for commercial use is strictly prohibited.