Our Beliefs : Sermons : Sermon Archive - 2008 : January 6, 2008

Theme: God Wants You, Sinner!

Church year occasion: Epiphany

Everyone loves a good mystery from time to time. Whether it's reading an Agatha Christie novel or a story about Sherlock Holmes, or even if it's waiting to see if Indiana Jones is actually going to find the Holy Grail or the Ark of the Covenant, we are intrigued by mystery.

Here's a couple of examples of short mysteries:

1) It is well known that the hearty Emperor penguin inhabits the sub-zero temperatures of the Antarctic. Ironically, however, when they are imported to zoos in the temperate regions, they often catch cold and die. Why? (The Antarctic is so cold that it's practically antiseptic, which means that the penguins haven't built up immunities to many common germs.)

2) A version of this riddle has stumped mathematicians for centuries:
On my way to the fair, I met 7 jugglers and a bear
Every juggler had 3 cats, Every cat had 3 rats,
Every rat had 2 mice, All the mice had nine lice,
Lice, mice, rats and cats, 7 jugglers and a bear,
How many in all were going to the fair?
(One. Only I was going to the fair. I met them coming out.)

Mysteries are fun -- especially when you know the secret or the solution. The Apostle Paul wants to share a mystery with you this morning. He talks about it in Ephesians 3:2-12.

If you could think of God inviting a person into his family of believers, the last person you would think of that happening to is the man who eventually became the Apostle Paul. Why? Because before he came to know Christ as his Savior, he hated Christ and he hated Christians. Of course, any unbeliever hates Christ whether he realizes it or not. But in Paul's case it was that hate, fueled by the zeal of a self-righteous Pharisee, that resulted in Paul dedicating his life to destroying the fledgling Christian church. Listen to how he described his own life before he came to know Jesus: "I was convinced that I ought to do all that was possible to oppose the name of Jesus of Nazareth." (Acts 26:9) Then he described how he put many Christians in prison and voted to have them put to death. He persecuted God's saints, and even tortured them.

This is why in verse 8 Paul says, "I am less than the least of all God's people." Even though he was now an apostle, he still considered himself the lowest person in God's kingdom. In fact, he even made up a word to describe it. He says literally that he is the "leaster" of all God's people. That's like you or me saying, "I am the worster volleyball player alive. I'm not just the worst, but I'm lower, I'm worse than the worst." What changed for Paul to take him from self-righteous Pharisee who was the leader in destroying the New Testament church to being its foremost spokesman? Jesus Christ happened to him.

How? It's basically the same way the army trains a civilian to be a soldier. They come into boot camp as a raw recruit, maybe even a little cocky. But the army demoralizes you, degrades you and breaks you down to the point that you think you're worthless. Then, and only then, can they build you up through training to show you that you aren't worthless; in fact, they train you to be a fighting machine, not just a soldier, but an elite fighting force of one. Put you together with other elite soldiers and you are part of the most powerful military machine ever to have walked this earth. It's the same with Christianity. God takes us, self-righteous sinners, who want nothing to do with God, and pummels us with this holy law that shows us we are worthless to stand before God in our sins. When we see that, then we are ready to hear the gospel that builds us up and shows us that we are saints. And, we're powerful in Christ to do God's will.

Imagine what Paul must have been thinking when Jesus said to him, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?" He knew it was the voice of God. I wonder how long it took for him to realize that his whole life had been a waste by persecuting Christians. No --worse -- he realized that he had been one of the devil's best agents without even knowing it! He had the blood of Christians on his hands. Paul was broken down.

But that made him the best candidate for the gospel. Since he knew how horrible a sinner he was, he could only see God's amazing grace in what God did for him by calling him to faith and then making him an apostle on top of it. You can't miss how he feels about it especially in verse 7: "I became a servant of this gospel by the gift of God's grace given me through the working of his power."

Do you sometimes feel like the worst of sinners? Good! If you don't, you haven't thought about your sins nearly enough. It was your sin of taking forgiveness for granted and putting it on the back burner that made your Savior die! It was your and my sin of not caring about others that caused God to send his own Son to the cross of shame! It was your and my lack of zeal for the gospel message that pounded those nails into his hands and caused him to cry out "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" when he suffered your and my hell! You and I are the worst of sinners. We are the worst possible excuses for followers of Jesus imaginable!

But guess what! That's why God sent his Son -- to save miserable wretches like you and me who often put ourselves before God and his will. Why did God do it? Now that's the mystery! In spite of how ugly we were with sin, God still loved us and made us his children.

Yes, God wanted you, sinner, to be a saint, a holy one, in his eyes through faith in Christ. Why? Because he wanted to invite you into God's family. Now you're in that family through faith. But that wasn't the only reason God wants you, sinner (now saint), in Christ. Because he also now wants you to invite others into God's family.

That's exactly what God wanted for Paul and brought about for Paul by his grace. Who better to talk about God's grace than Paul himself? Now Paul had a wonderful mystery to proclaim. He had a message that talked about the salvation of mankind -- "the unsearchable riches of Christ." Unsearchable is a fascinating way to explain God's grace. It pictures a man following a set of footprints, tracking down the one who made them. But then as he's going, another set of footprints crosses the first, and then another, and another. Pretty soon, it's impossible to find the original set of footprints because there are so many other ones there. That's how it is with God's grace. When we think that we know all there is to know about God's grace, another aspect of that grace comes to mind, and another, and another. We think of God electing us to salvation, then how he gave us life, then spiritual life through faith, made you a member of his family, and the list goes on and on.

Paul here focuses on one aspect of his ministry that made his role of revealing the mystery about Christ even more glorious. He says, "This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus." To understand how remarkable this is, we have to put ourselves in the shoes of first century Christians. The Old Testament clearly taught that believing Gentiles would be saved along with believing Jews. We have such a passage from Isaiah 60:3 -- "Nations will come to your light." But that was a little known fact in the Old Testament. Only a few Jews understood it correctly. Most of them looked at Gentiles as having no chance at all of being part of God's family of believers. Gentiles especially wouldn't have known about God's salvation also being for them because they didn't have contact with God and his word as the Jews did. Most of them were worshipping their own pagan gods. But now the apostles were told that it was time to let one more aspect of God's plan of salvation be known -- that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus. Don't take that for granted, fellow Gentile believer. God could have chosen only Jews to be saved, or chosen someone else to be a believer instead of you. But he didn't. He wanted you. He chose you.

Is this exciting! You bet! If you're not excited about it, listen to verses 10-11: "His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, according to his eternal purpose which he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord." You know what that means? Rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms are angels! God tells us that angels, "who long to look into [God's plan of salvation]" (1 Peter 1:12) and who rejoice over one sinner who repents (Luke 15:7), marvel that Gentiles are part of God's family. If the holy angels marvel at the fact that you as a Gentile have been made part of God's family, that he wants you now and always wanted you all the way back in eternity, shouldn't you marvel at that fact also? Epiphany is all about God revealing the mystery of salvation. That mystery is no longer a mystery to you. God wanted you, a sinner, to be a member of his family. Now you are. God continues to want you, a saved sinner, to invite others into that family. So what are you waiting for? It's time to make others mystery lovers like you are. Amen.