btqKUkSg_kg

0:42School's out. It's usually cold. It's not really that cold right now. But yeah, there's nothing a whole lot going on. Usually the kids are bored. And when they were younger, they would come in and say, Mom, Dad, we don't have anything to do. We're bored. And so we'd tell them, why don't you go put a puzzle together? Go find a puzzle and put one together. And so our kids kind of grew up putting puzzles together. They enjoy putting those together. And even to this day, if you were to go into our house right now, we've got, I think, three puzzles, one on every table in the house, and another one on our dining room with a thousand pieces spread out everywhere.

1:28And so they enjoy. Putting puzzles together. And now, imagine for a moment that you're putting a puzzle, one of these thousand-plus pieces together, and you're spending all these hours, these little bitty pieces, turning them every which way, trying to complete the puzzle. And you reach into the box, you get the last piece that's in there, and you put it in, and you begin to realize that your worst nightmare is coming to reality, and that is we don't have all the pieces. We don't have all the pieces, we just spent all these hours, and now I can't finish the puzzle. We're missing a few things. I think you can imagine that would be quite frustrating, quite disheartening, or discouraging to find out that those final pieces were not there. And the temptation would be to just throw it all into the trash can, right? Because you can't finish it. And that would be frustrating. But now imagine that someone comes along and says, don't throw away the puzzle just yet. Don't throw it away. In fact, I reach into my pocket. I have those missing pieces that you are looking for. Now, I think that would change your perspective on the puzzle.

2:57It would turn your discouragement into... Excitement and joy because you can finish the puzzle. And so instead of throwing it all away, you finish the puzzle and you want to frame it and hang it on the wall so that everybody walking by can marvel at this great picture in the puzzle. And if, I don't know about you, but if you're like me, this is the most enjoyable part, right? Putting those last pieces in into place. And it's because those final pieces is really what helps us see the whole picture. You can see the whole picture, and once all the pieces are in there, you can step back and say, oh, I see this over here, and I see that over there, and I can see how this whole story is coming together inside the picture of this puzzle. And these final pieces change our perspective because we can see the details and how they all fit together, and we can step back and enjoy it. And I think our text this morning is kind of like that. Paul is putting some of the final pieces together, some of the final pieces in place, so that the Ephesians would see the entire picture of what God was doing in the world, what he was doing on a universal scale. And so if you would, turn in your Bibles to the book of Ephesians. We're going to be starting a new chapter. If you've been with us in the past, when I'm preaching, we're just working our way through Ephesians. Finally made it through chapter 2. We're starting chapter 3 today. And I'd like to read the first 13 verses of chapter 3. They form kind of the next unit of thought. And so I want to read all of those together.

4:54Ephesians 3, chapter 1 says, This, 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.

6:00Me, the very least of all the 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.

6:55May God bless the reading of his word. Well, obviously, there's a lot there. There's no way we can adequately cover all of these verses in one sermon, so I intend to break these up into several sermons. But what I want to accomplish this morning for us is to give you sort of the overall structure and the framework of this passage so that you can see Paul's flow of thought and you can understand where he's going in his mind.

7:23And then I want to begin working through the text. I will probably only get through the first verse this morning. But I think it will be profitable. Let me begin by putting some of those edge pieces in around the text, if you will. See if I can frame this in for us. The beginning in verse 1. Notice that the passage begins with the phrase, for this reason. For this reason. Now, I love when passages like this start with these what I call connector phrases, because they're like road signs. And they really point us in the direction of the author's thought. And so, if you recall that Paul has just finished explaining to the Ephesians the significance of what Christ had accomplished on behalf of the Gentiles, that's what he's been talking about all of chapter 2, specifically verses 11 through the end of the chapter. You may remember, if you've been with us, that verses 11 and 12 describe the Gentiles' desperate need to be united in Christ. It's verses 11 and 12. They needed to be united in Christ, the Gentiles did, and that's us, by the way. We are the Gentiles. We are non-Jews. And Paul says that we needed to be united in Christ because we had been separate from Christ. That is how we existed. We were separated from Christ, we were excluded from Israel. Strangers to the covenants of promise, and we had no hope as Gentiles. We were without God in the world. That's what he says in verses 11 and 12. Not only were we dead in our sins individually, but we were separated from Christ corporately as the Gentiles. And so Paul reminds them of this. He reminds them of their need. And then he moves on to verses 13 and 18 of chapter 2. And he describes for them what made this union possible. How in the world could we be united to Christ?

9:40And he goes on to say that it was by the blood of Christ that we were united to him, or that it was made possible. It was through the death of Christ on the cross that changed everything in that regard. You see, Jesus' death on the cross is what brought those who had been far off, that was us as Gentiles, and he brought us near to God, and he brought us near to his people. And he explains to us in chapter 2 that the death of Christ on the cross actually tore down all the barriers that separated us from God and from his people. And he went on to establish peace for us by reconciling us, both Jew and Gentile, into one. New man, he says, one body, one new man, the church. And he puts us all into the church so that we both have access to the Father through one Spirit. And that's what he is telling them in verses 13 through 18. He tells them that this union was made possible through the death of Jesus Christ on the cross.

10:57The last time we were together, we looked through verses 19 through 22, and here he begins to explain to them or illustrate for them the reality of this truth: that they are no longer strangers and aliens to God. They are no longer separated from Christ because of what Christ has done. And he gives us three illustrations. You remember? The first, he says that we are all citizens in God's kingdom. We're all citizens together. That's what the church is. He describes it that way: citizens in God's kingdom. Number two, we are all children in God's family. That's how we are to think of the church and the union that has taken place in the church. And then, lastly, he said that we were choice stones in God's temple.

11:52All these stones being fitted together, joined together, placed uniquely by Christ so that. That we would become a dwelling place for God in the Spirit. So that's chapter 2, right? In a flying over at 30,000 feet, right? That's what we've been covering in chapter 2. And these are the truths that God, that Paul had been unpacking for the Ephesians and for us. And then he comes to chapter 3, verse 1, and he says, for this reason, or because of these truths about being united to God and being united to his people, because of these things, I, Paul, the prisoner, for the sake of you Gentiles.

12:39And then he pauses. Perhaps your translation in your Bible has a dash. I think most of them do. It's as if the sentence just gets cut off. Naturally, we'd read this, and we're expecting Paul to tell us, what is it that you're going to do? What is it these truths prompted Paul to do? And he sort of just stops. And it's actually, it can be a little confusing if you're just reading it at first glance. And certainly as I was studying it, I was trying to understand what he was doing. But he does pick back up. Notice down in verse 14. Skip down to chapter 3, verse 14.

13:25Let me show you this. Notice what he begins verse 14 with. For this reason, right? That's. Same phrase that was at the beginning of the chapter. So he starts in chapter in verse 1 and he picks up in verse 14 and he says, This, for this reason, I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. He prays for them. That's what he does. You see that? You see the connection? The truths of chapter 2 had prompted Paul to pray for the Ephesian believers.

14:03See, God was uniting them through Christ into the church, into one body, one family, one dwelling place of God, and it's for that reason that he prays. And you can see him finishing the rest of the chapter with a prayer that they would understand these truths. And this really is Paul's pattern throughout the book of Ephesians, really. He's already done this once before in chapter 1. The first half of chapter 1, he presents truth about the gospel, about God's plan for salvation, and then he moves into a prayer and says, For this reason I pray that you would understand these truths about the gospel. And he does this very same thing in chapter 3, 2 and 3. He preaches the truth about our unity in Christ, and then he prays that they would understand it. Now you may be thinking, what about the verse? Verses in between.

15:02What about those verses between the for this reason in verse 1 and the for this reason in verse 14? How are we to think of those? Well, I think you can imagine some parentheses, one big parentheses around those verses. If you write in your Bibles, you could draw one at the beginning of verse 2 and maybe at the end of verse 13. And you could think of those in these ways. And so, again, in verse 1, it's as if he started to pray. He was wanting to pray in verse 1. For this reason, I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus, for the sake of you Gentiles, but he stops. He stops before his prayer even starts, and he gives a little more instruction, just a little more teaching, a little more detail, a little more pieces of truth that he felt they needed to know.

15:57Well, why does he do this? Well, obviously, there was something that triggered a thought in his mind. There was something that was important enough for him to stop in the middle of his prayer and in mid-sentence. Something he felt he needed to address. And that is what we have in our text this morning. You may have noticed as we read them together just a moment ago that these 13 verses are fairly personal in nature. This is Paul talking to them very personally. And he describes for them and for us his personal circumstances as well as his unique role as an apostle and minister of the gospel.

16:42But in these verses, I don't think he was intending to just merely give us a history lesson on the life of Paul. That's not what he was trying to do here to make sure his name got recorded in history. No, what Paul wanted to show them was how his life and how his ministry fit into the eternal plan of purposes of God. That was what he was trying to show them. He wanted to ensure that they had all the pieces they needed to see the big picture of what God was doing in the world and in their lives and how they as Gentiles fit into that picture.

17:23And in order for them to see it, they had to have the right perspective. And so he stops his prayer in the middle of a sentence and he pauses to explain these truths just a little more clearly. And as we begin a new year for us in 2025, I hope that you will see Paul's perspective on his life and his ministry so that it will begin to shape your perspective on your life and your ministry. Friends, don't miss the big picture of what God is doing. Doing today in the world. And again, if you're going to see that, if you're going to have eyes to see that, you have to have the right perspective.

18:10Now, I realize that Paul's life was quite different than ours, but I think as we work our way through this, you're going to find that the principles that govern Paul's life are very applicable today. So let's begin my outline this morning by looking at the rest of verse 1. And that's really all we're going to cover today is verse 1. But the first thing I want you to see is that Paul saw himself as one who was bound to the person of Christ. That's the first thing I want you to see about Paul's perspective. He saw himself as one who is bound to the person of Christ. Notice that Paul sort of reintroduces himself here in this text. He says, I, Paul, he gives a personal pronoun and then his name. Now, it's kind of interesting. He's already introduced himself at the very beginning of this letter, chapter 1, verse 1. He says, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God. But now, here we are in the middle of his letter, and he sort of reintroduces himself.

19:30Why does he do this? Does he think that the Ephesians maybe forgot who he was or forgot who was writing to them? No, I don't think so. That's not why he does this. In fact, if you were to read through many of Paul's letters, he does this quite often, and he does it right before he explains something important. And so he kind of does it to get their attention and to stress the emphasis of what he's about to say. It would be as if I've just paused in the middle of my sermon and said, I, Matthew Gentry, as one of the pastors here at Emmanuel Baptist Church, I have something to tell you. You can kind of think of it in that way. It kind of gets your attention, right? It gets you to wake up if you've already fallen asleep. And it causes you to listen to what I'm about to say. And that's really, I think, what Paul's doing here. He says, I, Paul. And he says, I, Paul, the prisoner. That's how he identifies himself. He identifies himself as the prisoner. Now, the word for prisoner means one who is bound or one who is bound in chains. He describes himself in these terms, really, two other times. In this letter in particular, chapter 4, verse 1, he says, I, the prisoner of the Lord. Then again, in chapter 6, verse 20, he says that he is an ambassador in chains. And so he identifies himself. As the prisoner, one bound in chains, because he was in fact writing as a prisoner. He was in prison when he wrote the letter to Ephesians. This is one of the prison epistles. And he probably wrote this letter along with Colossians and Philippians and probably a Philemon as well. And it was most likely written during his first Roman imprisonment. So when the first time that Paul was in prison in Rome. Now, I don't have time this morning really to recount that entire story, but let me just give you a few of the details so you can sort of visualize what Paul's circumstances were as he was writing this letter and these words. See, by the time that he wrote Ephesians, he probably had been in prison for about five years. Five years in prison. Acts records for us that he spent about two years in Caesarea, and then he was, you remember, he was transported from there to Rome, and that whole transportation process took roughly a year. Remember, he was put on a ship, and that ship was shipwrecked. They almost all died. But they eventually make it to Rome. And then when they make it to Rome, it says at the end of Acts that he lived in a Roman prison or house arrest, essentially, for two full years, waiting. To have his hearing before the emperor. And that's basically how the book of Acts ends. Chapter 28 says, again, that when they finally entered Rome, he spent two years in his own rented quarters. So he wasn't in a dungeon cell. He had his own rented quarters. These were places that the Roman government had set up for things like this. And so he had relative freedom in that people were able to come see him. He wasn't necessarily able to go out. He wasn't free to go out on the town, but people were able to come see him in his own rented space.

23:13And he was able to freely share the gospel with anyone who came there during this time. It was an equivalent to a house arrest, if you will. And he was assigned a guard. And so he would have had a soldier that would have been chained to him all of the time, night and day. He had a soldier guarding him. And this was their custom. They would put a shackle around the wrist of the prisoner. And then they would take a chain and attach it from the prisoner's wrist to another shackle on the guard. And that chain would connect the two. And of course, the idea was that they make escape impossible, especially if you're attached to a well-trained Roman. Soldier.

24:04And so, this, of course, they would have a rotation of guards, right? So, he would be chained to a guard. And I read in my study this week that it was likely that they would take shifts maybe every four hours, right? So, they would switch off guards and they would unshackle from one guard, and the next guard would reconnect to Paul. And this is how he lived, right, for a couple of years there in Rome. And we know from the letter of Ephesians that this particular guard was from the Praetorian Guard, right? These were an elite group of guards, and he was chained to them night and day as he was writing this letter. And so, you can sort of imagine the circumstances, right? As he's trying to write, maybe the chains that were attached to him, he heard the chains clanking, and it reminded him, I'm a prisoner. I, Paul, the prisoner. Prisoner. Now, let me ask you: whose prisoner was he? Whose prisoner was he?

25:14See, the Jews were the ones that had gotten all upset and sent him to prison. That's how all this started. And then he sat before the council, right? And then he sat before Felix, and then he sat before Festus, and then he sat. Before King Agrippa, and he kept getting transferred around, and eventually he gets transferred here to Rome as a prisoner of Rome. But that is not how Paul saw it, is it? That was not Paul's perspective. Who did it say here in the text that Paul says he belonged to? It says, I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus. Of, speaks of possession. I'm the prisoner of Christ Jesus. He was not a prisoner of the Jews, he was not a prisoner of Rome. He was not a prisoner of emperor himself. And though he may have been chained to a Roman guard, Paul's perspective was that he was the prisoner of Christ Jesus. He was bound to the person of Christ. Of Christ. Now, don't forget that the word Christ, that is not like Jesus' first name. It doesn't work like that. Christ Jesus. Christ is a title. And it means Messiah. It means the anointed one. And it speaks of a king.

26:42Paul says he was not bound to the emperor of Rome. He was bound to the king of kings, to the king of the universe, to the one whom all authority had been given both in heaven and on earth. That's who he was bound to. He was bound to the one that God raised. From the dead and seated far above all rule and all authority and all power and all dominion and every name that is named not only in this age but in the one to come. That's who he was bound to. And he put all things in subjection to his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body.

27:25See, he was the prisoner of Christ. And the prisoner of Christ, Jesus, that was the king's name, Jesus. He is both Lord and Savior. That's what Jesus means, by the way, Savior. Paul didn't need anyone to come save him or bail him out of prison because he was bound to Christ Jesus, the Lord and the Savior. Listen, if Jesus wanted to save Paul from his imprisonment, he certainly could have done that at any moment, at any time. He could have changed Paul's circumstances like that in an instant. In fact, he had already proven that once before. Do you remember chapter 16 of Acts? Remember Paul and Silas? They were in prison, chained in prison, and in the inner prison. They had just been severely beaten. And it says that while they were singing hymns with their feet in stocks, God caused an earthquake to shake the entire. Entire place, the entire prison where they were staying. And it says that immediately all the doors were opened and everyone's chains were unfastened.

28:40See, Paul had the right perspective. He knew who was in control of his imprisonment. He knew who he was ultimately bound to. It wasn't that Roman guard that was standing next to him. And it didn't matter how many times he was beaten or how many times he was stoned. It didn't matter how many times he was thrown into prison or how bad his circumstances got, or even if it led to his death, which it eventually did. Paul knew that he was bound to the person of Christ. He was a prisoner of Christ Jesus, and he was willing to go wherever that took him.

29:24So this morning I asked, is that how you view yourself? Is that your perspective? Do you see yourself as one being bound to the person of Christ? That's how Paul saw himself. But there's something else I want you to see. Not only was he bound to the person of Christ, but he was also bound for the people of Christ. He's bound for the people of Christ. It says, I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus, for the sake of you Gentiles. For the sake of the Gentiles. Notice the word. 4. This indicates a cause or a purpose. Do you remember what caused Paul to go to prison? You remember that story? We touched on it several sermons ago when we were looking at chapter 2. But turn with me back to Acts chapter 21. Keep your finger in Ephesians 3. We'll come back to it. But Acts chapter 21 records this narrative for us.

30:33You may recall in chapter 20, Paul had said goodbye to the elders there in Ephesus. He was leaving them. They were all crying because he had told them that they would never see him again. And so then Paul leaves and he goes on sailing and off on a mission and he makes his way back towards Jerusalem. And in chapter 21, he picks this up as he's coming back to Jerusalem. And in verse 17 of chapter 21, it says, After we arrived in Jerusalem, the brethren received us gladly. And the following day, Paul went in with us to James, and all the elders were present. And after he had greeted them, he began to relate one by one the things which God had done among the Gentiles through his ministry. So again, Paul went there, he began explaining to them all these great things that. God was doing in the world and these wonderful things that God was doing among the Gentiles, right? That the gospel had gone forth, that the Gentiles were receiving the gospel, believing the gospel, and being wonderfully saved, and that God was placing them into the church, both with Jews and Gentiles together into one body. And so he comes to Jerusalem and he begins recounting all of these things to them. And verse 20, it says, And when they heard it, they began glorifying God. Wow, Paul, this is great. This is exciting.

32:06Glad that God is using you. But there's kind of a problem. You see, brother, how many, verse 20, you see, brother, how many thousands there are among the Jews of those who have believed, and they're all zealous for the law. They're zealous for the law. And they have been told about you that you're teaching all the Jews who are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children and to walk away or walk according to the customs. And so they kind of took issue with this. This very truth that Paul had been explaining about Jews and Gentiles being united together into the body of Christ and being saved into one body. The Jews, the believing Jews there in Jerusalem, were having a hard time with this. And. And so they say, in verse 22, what is to be done? And I'll kind of summarize it for you. They basically tell him, look, Paul, go and take a vow. We've got these four Jews over here. They're about to perform a vow. Why don't you go do that with them? Kind of show them that you're still a Jew and that you're still, you know, you're not telling them to abandon everything. And so that's what he does.

33:26He goes and submits himself to this vow. And we pick up in verse 27, and it says, when the seven days were almost over, the Jews from Asia, upon seeing him in the temple, began to stir up all the crowd and laid hands on him. So he finishes this vow, or he's about to, and he's in the temple as a part of completing this vow. And the Jews from Asia that had seen what Paul had been doing among the Gentiles came and stirred up the crowd. And verse 28, they began crying out, Men of Israel, come to our aid. This is the man that preaches to all men everywhere against our people and the law and this place, this temple. And besides, he has even brought Greeks or Gentiles into the temple and defiled this holy place. For they had previously seen Trophimus, the Ephesian, in the city with him, and they supposed that Paul had brought him into. The temple. Now you remember the temple, we talked about this before. The temple had this wall that was around the temple, this wall of separation, and there was a sign on it that was very clear, and it was to keep the Gentiles out of the temple. And if anyone, any Gentile, came in past that gate, they were to be killed and stoned on the spot. And these Jews basically stirred up the crowd by lying and saying, well, we saw Paul bringing Trophimus into the temple, past that wall. And he didn't actually do that, but that's what they told the crowd. He stirred up the crowd. In verse 30, it says, Then all the city was provoked, and the people rushed together, and they took hold of Paul, and they dragged him out of the temple, and immediately the doors were shut. And while they were seeking to kill him, a report came to the commanders of the Roman cohort that everybody was in confusion. And in verse 33, it says, the commander came up and took a hold of him, and he ordered him to be bound in chains. So what caused Paul to be imprisoned? Back to our text over in Ephesians chapter 3. The cause, according to the Acts, was the Gentiles. Right? It was Trophimus. It was the fact that Paul affiliated with the Gentiles. That was the cause. That was why he was thrown into prison or chained. And Paul could have easily looked at these circumstances and said, you know what?

36:11This is unjust. I don't deserve to be in prison. I haven't done anything wrong. And it's clear. They're making this up. I haven't done anything wrong. I am in prison here suffering injustice. And it's all because of you, Gentiles. It's your fault. He could have said that. He could have put the blame and the cause of his suffering on the Gentiles and said, you are the reason for my suffering. You are the reason that the Jews hate me and want to kill me. You are the reason that I wasted five years of my life in prison. And he could have taken that perspective and it would have led him down a path of great discouragement, great despair, great depression, anger, resentment, bitterness, unforgiveness. That's where that path leads. But that was not Paul's perspective. You see, Paul understood that to be bound to the person of Christ meant that he was also bound in service for the people of Christ, especially from among the Gentiles. Especially from among the Gentiles. Listen to how. He puts it to the Ephilippians in a letter to the Ephilippians regarding his imprisonment. He says, Now I want you to know, brothers, that my circumstances have turned out for the greater progress of the gospel, so that my imprisonment in the cause of Christ has become well known throughout the whole Praetorian Guard and to everyone else, and that most of the brethren, trusting the Lord because of my imprisonment, have far more courage to speak the word of God without fear.

38:04You see, Paul understood the bigger picture. He wasn't there because of the Gentiles, he was there for them. He was there for their sake and for their benefit. That's what he tells them: I, Paul, the prisoner, for the sake of you, Gentiles, for your benefit. What was that benefit? Skip down in chapter 3, skip down to verse 13. Verse 13 basically summarizes this point for us. He says, Therefore, therefore, in other words, here is my conclusion. Here's what I want you to know. Here's what you need to understand. Therefore, I ask that you do not lose heart at my tribulations on your Behalf.

39:02Look, you need to understand that my tribulations on your behalf, literally the pressures, that's what tribulations are, it means pressing in. The pressures that I'm enduring right now on your behalf should not cause you to despair, to lose heart. He says, yes, I know I'm in prison, but it's okay. Don't lose heart over this. Don't be depressed about this. Don't be discouraged about my imprisonment. Why? Because they are your glory. He says, My imprisonment is your glory. And this is what he wanted them to see. He wanted them to understand, and this is what caused Paul to pause in his prayer, right in the middle of a sentence. He wanted them to see that his very imprisonment was a part of God's plan to bring them as Gentiles into his glory.

40:04See, Paul saw the circumstances of his life. He saw the significance of his ministry as simply the unfolding of God's eternal plan of salvation. A plan that included the Gentiles. It included uniting them to God and to his people and placing them into the church. That's how he saw his life. And so this was what God was doing, and he was willing to share in the sufferings of Christ so that the Gentiles, and ultimately, so that you and I could share in the glories of Christ. That's why he did it. This was the fuel that kept Paul going day in and day out, beating after beating, prison after prison, and eventually death. So that whether in life or in death, he wanted to see the glory of Christ brought out in the people of Christ and in the ones, the very ones in whom Christ died. That was his perspective. Let me close by reading some of Paul's final words to Timothy, 2 Timothy 2. He's writing from his second Roman imprisonment.

41:27And he says these things. He says in verse 8, chapter 2, Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, descendant of David, according to my gospel. Remember him, according to the gospel, for which I suffer hardship, even to imprisonment as a criminal. But the word of God is not imprisoned. For this reason I endure all things for the sake of those who are chosen, for the sake of the elect. So that they may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus and with it eternal glory.

42:10You see, Paul's imprisonment was not a mistake. He had been sent there by Christ himself for a specific purpose, and that purpose was so that the Gentiles could obtain salvation and be brought into eternal glory. That was his perspective on life. He saw himself as the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of the Gentiles. So I ask you this morning: is that how you view your life? Is that your perspective? Are you bound to the Lord Jesus Christ? Does he shape the way you see things? Do you see him in control of your circumstances and in control of the trials in your life?

43:04Does Jesus Christ shape the way that you view yourself and your own spiritual life? Listen, there may be some of you here this morning that are bound to something other than the Lord Jesus Christ. Maybe you're bound to your own selfish desires. Maybe you're bound to your own addictions, your own fears, your own fears. Own anxieties, your own lust, and all these things have become a prison for you. You are bound in prison by these things.

43:41But I'm here to tell you this morning, the good news is that you can be set free from those. Christ Jesus has the power to release you from your own imprisonment, from yourself, but it's only found in being bound to Him. You must become a prisoner, the prisoner of Christ Jesus, and let Him have control of your life. And what about for the people for whom Christ died? How do you see them? Do you see yourself as one bound to Christ on their behalf, for them?

44:20Now, I realize that, again, we're not Paul. We weren't the apostle to the Gentiles. But we have been left here on this earth for a purpose. We have been given a commandment to go make disciples among the nations, among the Gentiles. And so I ask you this morning, is that how you see the purpose of your life? Are you bound to the person of Christ for the people of Christ? Well, as we begin this new year, my prayer is that you will see your life and your ministry through that perspective and that you would marvel at all. Of the glorious things that God is doing and will do in your life this year. Let's pray.

45:08Heavenly Father, again, we do marvel. We read of your plan that you are orchestrating in this world. We read of a plan of salvation that began before the foundation of the world and that is coming about in reality here in our very lives. God, and we trust that you have included us. And we give you thanks for that, that you have not left us to our own devices. You have not left us in prison to our own sins, but you have provided a way that we could be set free and be bound to you forever and to experience the glory of God forever and ever. God, I pray that you would do that for everyone here this morning. In Jesus' name, amen.