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And good morning. As you may have heard, I think, in the announcements, maybe, that our pastor is on sabbatical. He began his seven-week sabbatical this week, so he is going to be out of the pulpit for a little bit, but it's always a privilege to fill the pulpit for him and share God's word with you all and study it together.

And so, if you'd please turn in your Bibles to the book of Ephesians, as usual, when I'm up here, and we're going to look at chapter 3, still in chapter 3, won't finish it this morning, but we will look at a couple of more verses. The last two times we were together, we looked at verses 1 through 6.

This morning we're going to be focusing on verses 7 through 9. But as I've said before, this passage is really one unit of thought that extends all the way to verse 13. And so, as we begin our study this morning, I just want to read that entire passage for us.

And so, if you would follow along with me, beginning in verse 1 says, 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 in 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. I pray that God blesses the reading of his word this morning.

Well, as we mentioned last time we were together, at the beginning of this passage, Paul begins a prayer, but he immediately stops his prayer in mid-sentence, and he gives us these 13 verses that I just read before picking back up with his prayer in verse 14. And these 13 verses in between are sort of this parenthesis, this interruption in his prayer, and he uses them to describe his unique perspective on life and on ministry.

That's what these, if you could summarize these verses, is Paul's perspective on life and ministry. And you may be wondering, well, why does he do this? Why does he feel compelled to pause his prayer and share these things with these Ephesian believers? And verse 13, the very end, gives us that reason.

It says, Therefore, here's his reason. I ask you not to lose heart at my tribulations on your behalf, for they are your glory. Paul is concerned that the believers there in Ephesus, when they hear of his tribulations, when they hear of his imprisonment, They might become discouraged or depressed about these tribulations that Paul was facing on their behalf.

And Paul doesn't want them to be discouraged. He doesn't want us to be discouraged. And he wanted them to see how these trials and these tribulations were actually God bringing about their glory, bringing them into glory. And so he shares this unique perspective, Paul. He shares it with them so that they could begin to understand how Paul's life and ultimately their lives, and I might add, our lives, fit into the eternal plan and purposes of God.

That's why he's writing. That's why he interrupts his prayer and gives us this passage. And the first perspective that Paul shared with them was that he considered himself to be the prisoner of Christ. The prisoner of Christ. We saw this in verse 1. As he wrote this letter, he was sitting inside of a Roman prison, bound to a Roman guard, literally bound in chains.

But those circumstances had not defined Paul's life. He didn't let them define his life. He didn't consider himself a prisoner of Rome or of Nero or of the Jews. Rather, he saw himself as. One bound to Christ, one bound to the person of Christ, bound for the people that Christ died for.

That was his perspective. As the prisoner of Christ, he was willing to go wherever the Lord Jesus Christ took him, even if that meant to prison or even death for the sake of the Gentiles. And so he shares this with the believers there in Ephesus so that they would not be discouraged.

But there's a second perspective that we looked at last time that Paul wanted them to see, the second perspective, and that was that his life and ministry was a stewardship of God's grace. Again, if you were here with us last time, we looked at that in verses 2 through 6.

Here we saw that this stewardship had been given to Paul in the form of divine revelation. God had chosen to reveal a mystery to Paul. And he revealed it to Paul and the other apostles and prophets, as it says there. And it was written down so that others might read it and understand it and believe it.

And Paul wanted them to see that his imprisonment in Rome was directly connected to the stewardship that he had been given by God. And that stewardship was a good deal of the words Stewardship was an expression of God's grace. That was Paul's perspective of his imprisonment. He was a steward of God's grace.

But there's a third perspective that I want to look at this morning, and I want to show it to you. It's in verses 7 through 9. And it is here where Paul describes himself as a minister of the gospel. A minister of the gospel. This is where I want to focus our time here this morning.

What is a faithful minister of the gospel? How are we to know what they are? How are we to identify them? Well, I want to show you three characteristics from Paul's life and from Paul's ministry so that you will become a faithful minister of the gospel and engaged in fruitful gospel ministry.

That's my prayer for us here at Emmanuel Baptist Church, that we would all be faithful ministers of the gospel wherever we are and whatever circumstances God brings about in each of our lives. So let's begin this study together beginning in verse 7. It says, of which I was made a minister.

Now, we're kind of picking up in the middle of a thought, so it's not really a complete sentence, of which I was made a minister. The words of which refer back to the gospel, the gospel that was mentioned at the very end of verse 6. You can see it there.

It was the gospel that was revealed by God. It was the gospel that was revealed to Paul and to the other apostles and to the prophets. It was the gospel that was written down at the right time in history when God determined. And it was written down and revealed to communicate the gospel message, specifically that the Gentiles were included in God's plan of salvation.

This would have been big news in Paul's day, the Gentiles being included. And it was good news. And it's good news for them, and it's good news for us, right? Because we're Gentiles. I think probably for the most of us, we're Gentiles. We're not Jews. And so the gospel is the good news that in Christ, both Jews and Gentiles can be reconciled and united to God.

That's what the gospel declares. We can be united to God, and we can be united to each other. And we see that again in verse 6. Paul says, we're made fellow heirs, fellow members of the body, fellow partakers of the promise in Christ through the gospel. That's the gospel message.

Message. And it's this gospel message of which Paul says, he was made a minister. Paul was made a minister of the gospel. So, what is a minister? What is a minister? Well, I think for many of us, when we hear the word minister, maybe a variety of images come to your mind.

Perhaps when you hear the word minister, you think of someone in a long robe with a white collar, you know, standing up here on a platform. Maybe others think of someone who performs the function of marrying and burying somebody, right? A pastor that marries and buries. That's apparently all pastors do, by the way.

Or someone who preaches sermons or makes hospital visits, right? Maybe that's what you think of when you think of a minister. But the word used here for minister is the word diakonos. It's the same word we use for deacons, which, as you heard this morning, we're in the process of identifying deacons and elders.

But a minister is a deacon in a general sense. It is translated as servant. That's what it means. That's the intended meaning here, is the general idea of a servant. That's what a minister is. And what do servants mean? Do? Let me ask you: what do servants do?

They serve, right? It's not a trick question. They serve. A servant is one who has submitted themselves in the service of others. They are involved in serving others. They embrace the position of a servant. They take that posture of a servant. Perhaps the best illustration that I could find in Scripture of embracing the role of a servant would be from our Lord in John chapter 13.

Turn with me there. John chapter 13. It's one of my favorite pictures of Christ while he walked on earth. In John chapter 13, it's the feast of Passover before. And he's sitting with his disciples around the table. And in verse 3, it says, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and this is right before his crucifixion, he had given all things into his hands, and that he had come forth from God and was going back to God, he got up from supper and he laid aside his garments, and taking a towel, he girded himself.

Now, this would be familiar to those in this culture, this act of laying aside the garments, taking a towel, and wrapping it around you. It's what the servants did. It was customary for them, and it was customary for them to wash their feet when coming into a home.

And the servant's job was to do that. And so here you have this picture of the one who has come forth from God, Jesus Christ, the one who had been given all things, and you see him performing and embracing the posture and the position of a servant, a traditional servant.

And in verse 5, it says, again, this picture of the Lord of lords and the king of kings taking the position of a servant and washing the disciples' feet. Certainly not a customary thing for someone like Christ, a teacher of his disciples, to perform this task. And yet he does it.

And that's why Peter is astonished. Lord, why? No, you. Can't wash my feet. And of course, Jesus responds and says, No, I must, or you have no part in me. And so in verse 12, it says, He washed, when he had washed their feet and taken his garments and reclined at the table again, he said to them, Do you know what I've done to you?

You call me teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. If I then, the Lord and the teacher, wash your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I gave you an example that you also should do as I did to you. Truly, truly, I say to you, a slave is not greater than his master, nor is one who sent greater than the one who sent him.

You are blessed if you do these things. You see, the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. He was the true suffering servant, the true picture of a minister. And if he can embrace the position of God's servant, so must we.

So must we. And that is what a minister does. It is a servant, and they embrace that position of serving. And when you and I do that, we... Become like Christ in that way. We become a servant. And so Christ was the suffering servant, and he's the one who met Paul on that road to Damascus, was he not?

And so it shouldn't surprise us that when Paul meets the suffering servant, that he gets transformed and placed into ministry of service. And that is exactly how Paul viewed himself. That was his perspective on his life and his ministry. It was one of service. He was a minister of the gospel, and he was willing to suffer great links for it.

And friends, when you can see your life and your ministry the way Paul sees it, it changes the way that you view the circumstances of your life. It did for Paul. As he sat there in prison, he joyfully embraced those tribulations as a part of his service in gospel ministry.

And this is what he desired for the Ephesians to see. Listen, I think oftentimes we get in our minds that a minister is someone that's reserved for an elite group, someone that has been to seminary or holding. Holds a position of leadership in the church. But in the general sense, that is speaking of here, a minister is just someone who serves and serves the gospel.

And so I would submit to you: if you're here this morning and you are in Christ, you have bowed the knee to Christ, then you have been placed into gospel ministry. You are called to be a minister, to serve. You know, sometimes I get asked, because I serve here as a pastor, I get asked, well, when did you get called into the ministry?

Like, when was that? And my answer to them is always this: It is the day that I bowed my knees to the Lord Jesus Christ. That is the day that I entered the ministry because it's the day that I stopped serving myself and started serving Christ and became a servant of the gospel.

And that is true of every person here this morning who has bowed the knee to Christ. You are a minister of the gospel. And so the question is not: Are you in ministry? The question is, have you embraced the role of a servant? I guess I better use my PowerPoint.

It's the first point, right? A faithful minister of the gospel embraces the position. As God's servant. Have you done that? Does that describe you? Is that your perspective on your life and your ministry? Maybe a better question: is that how other people see you? Do other people see you and identify you as a servant, as a minister of the gospel?

Think for a moment of the spheres of influence that God has given each and every one of us. I see these areas of influence as areas of gospel ministry where we are to minister the gospel. For example, a lot of married folks in here, right? Husbands and wives.

Does your spouse see you as a servant in the marriage? As one who is there to serve and minister the gospel to your spouse? Is that how your spouse sees you? Or do they see you as one demanding to be served? Kids, what about in the home? How about your siblings, your brothers and sisters, your parents?

Do they see you as one walking around demanding for the whole house to operate around your needs and your desires and your demands? Or are you seen as a servant, one seeking to serve those in the home? Same could be asked in the workplace or in the church.

Do you come here to be served or to use the gifts that God has given you to serve others for the work of ministry? Well, this is where all true gospel ministry begins. It begins with embracing the position of a servant. That's what a minister does. He says, I am here to serve.

I am here for the benefit of others because I have been made a minister of the gospel. That was certainly Paul's perspective, and it must become ours also. Well, there's a second characteristic that I'm going to look at, and it's found in the remainder of verse 7. Look back at the text.

It says, 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. If there was one thing that Paul recognized about his life in ministry, it was that God had been gracious to him.

In fact, the entirety of his life in ministry he saw as the result of God's gift of grace. And that's the 2 Catholic. Characteristic that I want you to see this morning. A faithful minister of the gospel recognizes the gift of God's grace in their life. Now, grace, if you've been in church long enough, you've probably heard a definition of grace.

It simply means favor or good pleasure. Favor, good pleasure. And in this context, it's referring to God's favor and God's good pleasure specifically towards those who do not deserve it. That's what grace is. Grace is God's divine pleasure gifted to undeserving sinners like you and me. That's what grace is.

And this theme of grace, Paul has been reiterating it throughout his letter thus far. Let me show this to you. Starting all the way back in chapter 1, all the way back in chapter 1, verse 2. It says, Paul recognizes that grace comes from God alone. 1, verse 2, he greets them, grace to you and peace from where?

From God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace comes from God. There is favor that comes from God. Chapter 1, verses 5 through 8. Paul recognizes that grace is freely bestowed on us. Notice what he says in verse 5, In love he predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to himself, according to the kind intention of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, which he freely bestowed on us.

Not only does grace come from God, it comes from God freely. God is not under obligation to show his favor on any one of us. And yet he gives it freely. He gives it freely, not obligated, but gives it freely. And he goes on to say that he gives it lavishly.

Look at what he says next in verse 7. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished on us. God's grace comes from God, it's freely bestowed on us, and that rich grace is then lavished, it's then poured out in great measure upon us.

Look also in chapter 2. Chapter 2, verses 5 through 10, tell us that grace, this rich grace, is only found in Christ. It says that we were saved by grace, raised up with Him. Him, seated with him in the heavenly places in Christ, so that in the ages to come he might show the surpassing riches of his grace in kindness towards us in Christ.

You want to know where the favor of God, the rich, lavish favor of God, exists? It's in Christ. That is where God has placed his favor. And it is that grace, when we come to Christ, it is that grace that saves us. For by grace you have been saved through faith.

And that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, so that no one will boast. And so Paul picks up this theme, and then back in our text, in chapter 3, Paul yet again recognizes even more of the gift of grace from God. As we saw last time in chapter 3, verses 2 through 3, Paul recognized that this gift of grace, he saw it in the act of revealing the mystery of Christ.

Do you realize that God did not have to reveal Christ to us? Do you see that as an expression of God's grace? Tell us, we're told in this text that the mystery of Christ was a secret to a large degree, the full extent. Of it. And God could have kept it that way, but he didn't.

He revealed it again. He revealed it to Paul, and he preserved it through the written word, which we have a copy of. And all of that was an expression of God's grace to undeserving sinners like you and me. Oh, do you recognize the grace, the gift of grace that God has given?

Well, Paul recognizes one more thing, and that is that God's grace can be seen in the ministry that he was given. He was given a ministry. It says, 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.

Paul saw the very placement into ministry and his effectiveness in that ministry as a direct result of God's grace. In other words, he says, I can only minister because God's grace enables me to minister. He placed me in this role, and he enables me to fulfill it by the working of his power.

That was Paul's perspective. The entirety of his life and his ministry was a gift of God's grace. And if you and I are going to be faithful ministers of the gospel, we must. Recognize this gift of grace in our lives from beginning to end. That's what a faithful minister does.

Now, before I move on from this, let me say that in order to recognize the gift of God's grace in your life, you need to understand the true condition, your true condition, apart from that gift of grace. Say that again. If you're going to understand God's grace in your life, you have to understand what your life would be like apart from that grace.

And Paul understood that. He knew what he was before Christ saved him, before God showed favor upon him. He was the chief of sinners. Look how he articulates it here. To me, the very least of the saints, this grace was given. The very least, the lowest of the low, is how he saw himself.

You see, Paul, as Paul recognized God's grace in his life, the more he saw just how much he didn't deserve it. That's what true grace does. As grace comes into our life, it produces genuine humility. And it reveals the true condition of our souls apart from the Lord Jesus Christ.

And it's only then, in that position of humility, that we will be able to fully appreciate the grace that God has given to us. When I was studying this, I came across an illustration of a story. I'm not sure if it's a true story. It wasn't cited, but I thought it was a fitting illustration, so I will share it with you.

It was a story of a man walking through an art gallery, and he came upon a picture that someone had painted of Christ dying on the cross. And he stopped and he was mesmerized as he was looking at this beautiful painting of God's incredible love on display. And as he stared into this painting, the gallery guard, the attendant there, tapped him on the shoulder and said, Lower.

The artist painted this picture to be appreciated from a lower position. And so the man, looking at the picture, kind of bent down and looked back up at the picture. And from this new vantage point, he began to see some new beauties to behold and appreciate. That he hadn't seen before when he was standing upright.

And again, the attendant tapped him on the shoulder and says, No, lower, lower still. And so the man took one knee, got down on one knee, and looked again at the painting, and again was mesmerized and amazed at even more things that he saw from one knee. And as he turned again to the attendant, he was motioning with his hands, no, lower.

You must go lower. And so he got down on both knees and he again looked up at the painting. And it was only then that he could truly appreciate the picture of Christ on the cross and the beauty that was displayed there as the painter had intended. And I came across that and I think it beautifully illustrates what the Christian life is look like as recipients of God's grace.

We must go lower. We must go lower in our view of ourselves and in our understanding of our need of grace. And as we do, we begin to fully appreciate and see and recognize the magnitude of the gift of God's grace that He has given to us. That is the testimony of Paul, right?

To me, the very least, the least deserving of all the saints, and none of us deserve it. And yet he gives it to us, and Paul saw that, and so must we. So we've seen that a faithful minister of the gospel not only embraces the position of God's servant and recognizes the gift of God's grace, but there's a third characteristic that I want to share with the time we have left this morning.

And you can see it in verses 8 and 9. And it is that a faithful minister of the gospel proclaims the message of God's Son. Let me read it. It says, To me, the very least of all the saints, this grace was given. Why? 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.

If Paul was placed into gospel ministry as a servant of the gospel, and then he was enabled and empowered to fulfill that service by the gifting of God's grace, then what was he to be doing? How was he to serve? How is he to fill that responsibility to serve?

Well, there were two ways that I think you may have noticed as I read them. Two specific activities of service that are mentioned in these verses, and you can easily identify them by the two verbs that Paul uses. A faithful minister is to preach and to bring to light.

You see those there in the text? To preach and to bring to light. Now, these are two different words that are used in the Greek here, but they are both related to the proclaiming of the message of God's Son. And so, if you're going to be a faithful minister of the gospel, you must be engaged in serving in these ways.

This is what true gospel ministry looks like. So, let's look at the first one together: to preach to the Gentiles the unfathomable riches of Christ. Now, I think probably for many of us, we hear the word preach, and you immediately say, well, that's not me. I'm not a preacher.

I didn't go to seminary. I've never been taught how to preach. I don't know how to preach. I can't do this, right? That's a part of ministry that I can't engage in. Well, not so fast. There are many words that are translated as to preach here. In the New Testament.

But the specific word used here is simply the verb form of the word gospel or good news. It's good news in action. We saw that same word, gospel, again back in verse 6, the good news. And it carries the idea of announcing good news, bringing good news. That's the idea of the word here.

Do you remember the angels coming before Christ's birth? What did they do when they arrived? They announced the good news. I bring you good news of great joy. It's the announcing of good news. That's what Paul identifies here as one area of faithful gospel ministry and how he was to serve.

He was to announce the good news. And he was to announce it to who? To the Gentiles. Now, this was a specific task given to Paul. It had been assigned to him by the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. You remember in Acts chapter 9 when he was there on the road to Damascus, and Paul was greeted by the Lord and blinded.

And then the Lord sent a man by the name of Ananias to him in Acts chapter 9. Chapter 9 and the Lord said this to him, to go to Paul, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to bear my name before the Gentiles and before kings and the sons of Israel, for I will show him how much he must suffer for my name's sake.

So again, Paul was commissioned to announce the good news of the gospel to the Gentiles. And he was to do it by announcing to the Gentiles the unfathomable riches of Christ. That's how Paul describes this good news that he was to announce, the unfathomable riches of Christ. Kind of hard to say.

That word is an interesting word. As you look through the commentaries and some of the translators, they sort of have a hard time agreeing upon how to translate that word. And so they come up with a number of translations. Perhaps your translation of the scriptures has one of these.

But many of them translate the riches of Christ as being unsearchable, inexplorable, untraceable, unfathomable, inexhaustible, illimitable, inscrutable, incalculable. Perhaps yours says, Infinite, right? All these synonyms. I like the word unfathomable, even though it's hard to say. It's a tongue twister. I like it because of the word picture that it gives in English.

Do you know what the word fathom means? You heard that word term? In the past, really before we had all this fancy equipment that we have today, if you wanted to know how deep water was, like in the ocean, you were sailing, and you want to know how deep the ocean was, then you would measure that water in fathoms.

And so a fathom is simply, if you were to stretch out your arms, right, from fingertip to fingertip, I'm smaller, so it may not get a true fathom, right? But approximately, on average, about six feet from fingertip to fingertip. That's the average distance of a fathom. And so in ancient times, when they would, well, not ancient times, but before we had all this equipment, they would measure the depth of the water in fathoms, and they would lower a rope with a weight on it all the way down, right?

They would lower it into the water. And they would lower it until that weight hit the bottom of the ocean or the sea. And then they begin to pull it up. And as they'd pull it up, you know, they'd get one body length. One fathom, about six feet.

One, two, three, right? They'd be counting the fathoms, and they'd count how many fathoms it was to the bottom. Now, suppose you threw out your rope, the weight goes and goes and goes and then stops, but it doesn't hit the bottom. The rope's not long enough to go to the bottom.

What would you say about the depth of that ocean or that part of the ocean? It's unfathomable. You can't measure it. That's the idea behind that image, that term that Paul used. It's unfathomable, unfathomable. Ugh. You can't measure it, right? And so he was to go and to announce to the Gentiles the good news about the riches in Christ, and that these riches couldn't be fathomed.

That it couldn't be measured. There's no instrument big enough, no rope long enough to measure the depth that exists in knowing Christ. Do you realize that? That a relationship with Christ is beyond measure. The richness of knowing God in Christ is measureless. So I ask you this morning, is that how you view Christ?

Is that your view of Christ? Is he of infinite value to you? Is that how you present him to the people in your life? Paul says that he was to announce the unfathomable riches of Christ to the Gentiles. Now there's a second activity, real quickly, the time we have left.

A second activity of service that Paul mentions, and that is to bring to light, to bring to light. The word here used carries the idea of illuminating something, illuminating, bringing to light something that has been in darkness. I've never done this. I'd love to do this one day.

Perhaps you've experienced it. Maybe you've gone on one of those cave tours. Anybody done that, where you take a tour down to the bottom of a cave and they go all the way to the bottom where there is complete and utter darkness, right? They turn off all the lights, and it's so dark, apparently you can't even see your face, your hand in front of your face, because there's just zero lumens in the cave down there.

No light whatsoever. Nothing to illuminate. That is until someone turns on a flashlight or a lamp. And as soon as that flashlight turns on and begins to shine around in the darkness, it invades the darkness. And it brings to light everything that the light touches. And it illumines the cave so that you can see what is around you, what's in front of you, what's happening.

And so Paul says, this is how he was to serve in gospel ministry. There was something that he had to bring to light so that everyone could see it. What was that he had to bring to light? It was the administration of the mystery which for ages had been hidden in God who created all things.

Now, let me just briefly see if I can bring that mouthful to light. There's a lot of words there. We've seen a couple of the words already. The words administration is the same word for stewardship, which we saw in verse 2. And if you recall, that stewardship is just the responsibility to manage and to oversee and to administer something.

You'll also recall that Paul used the word mystery in verses 3 and 4, which refers to something that's hidden or concealed. Specifically, it was a secret that couldn't be discovered by man. In fact, if it was ever to be discovered, or if it was ever to be known by anyone, it had to be revealed by God.

And he did. He did reveal it. He revealed it to Paul. And so, Paul had been given this great responsibility of knowing God's mystery, God's secret that had been hidden for ages, but it now had been revealed. And I'll be preaching the next few verses next week, and so we'll get more into this next week as we cover those verses.

But let me just conclude by saying that the mystery that Paul is referring to here is the church. It's the collection of individuals who have been saved by grace and placed into the body of Christ, into the church. This is the point that Paul has been making since chapter 2, verse 11.

That in Christ, both Jews and Gentiles have been united to God and united to each other and have been placed into this new community of believers called the church. That's the whole point that Paul has been making. And Paul, in service to the gospel, is to bring this to light in a way that everybody can see it and understand it and see what God is doing in the world and what he's doing in the church.

Paul says, that is my ministry. And I would submit to you that we share in that ministry. If we are to be a faith, Minister of the gospel. We must embrace the position of a servant. We must recognize the gift of God's grace that enables us to serve.

And we must be engaged in the announcing of the riches of Christ and bringing it to light so that all can see what God is doing by placing us into the church. And so, as we leave this morning, I just ask you: how are you doing in all of this?

Are you a faithful minister of the gospel? If you're like me, you've got some work to do. Got some work to do in our service of the gospel. And so I pray that God would challenge you this morning, this week, as you go out and go faithfully minister, be a minister of the gospel.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, God, we do recognize the grace that you have displayed. And we just ask that you continue to show us more clearly just how much we need that grace in our lives so that we might bring you glory each day that we live as we serve you and serve the gospel.

In Jesus' name.