Rochester Conference Part 3: The Mystery Revealed (1996)

The words that you want to look at here are the words “For this reason…” (Ephesians 3:1), and then you have to ask what he’s talking about. For what reason? What’s the “this”? And it’s very difficult to figure out what “this” is. Is it His eternal purpose, or is it for the building? Is it for salvation? Is it for the church? Why don’t you just spend a little time on the word “this”, would you? Anybody got some spare time today? For this reason, Chapter 3.

For this reason, I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus, for the sake of you Gentiles. Now, before I read any further on, I want you to know that what we’re about to read doesn’t make sense and is incredibly beautiful. Remember, he’s never seen these people. How can I say that Paul feels so connected to a church that even though he is a non-local worker and he travels, he feels that what happens to them happens to him, and what happens to him happens to them? This is so beautiful, saints. And when I was in Denver two weeks ago, I said to them, I want you to look at the romance between church and church planter. There’s not as much of that in Ephesians as there is in Colossians, but there is a romance going on between church and church planter. It’s beautiful. Their care for one another, their thoughtfulness for one another, and their failures toward one another, and they do both fail. Paul had to apologize to Corinth several times because he felt he had not kept his word with them, although he had defended himself. I’d like to go a little further and say this to you. You need me. Except I’m using words now (Paul’s), accept me into your heart as part of your life. You need me. There are only a few of us, and we are literally the spice of your life.

You would marry, you would have children, you would have a job, you would get fired, get another job, you would save some money to retire, you would live, and then you would die. We don’t do that. We just get fired and fired and fired and fired, or we have to work solo for a living because we don’t fit in. Some of you have gone with me to England, some of you went with me to Scotland, and some of you went with me to Albania. You’ve gone with me to Romania, and you’ve gone with me to Hungary, and you’ve gone with me to other churches and other places and pioneer situations, and you just had so much fun you would have never had if you’d not met me. I am a spice to your life. I’m keeping you from living a mundane vanilla life.

Now, then, the brothers and sisters in Philadelphia poked fun about this one time, and I really enjoyed that, but they have a song that they sang to brother Tim that went something like this: And why are you running around with that old man, and between the two of you, you’re spending all our money? Doesn’t it go something like that? You’re getting it right because we are the spice of your life. We get in trouble; you get to pray for us. We do something wrong; you get to have fun. We get blasted somewhere; you get to giggle. You get to have a vicarious experience of fun with us, and you get to go with us. You get to hear our wild tales. Yes, you get to help us, and we, in turn, rejoice in you, and we watch some of the crises you get into and just go through the ceiling when we see that you, with the Lord, have worked your way through her.

It is so exciting, and the church is exciting. It’s far more fun to be in the church than it is to just have two neighbors you gossip about all the time but be with once or twice a month, you know, and you really love them, and then you get home and say Mary and John are about to get a divorce. Did you see that little idiot kid of his, who went out and stuck beans up his nose? What you don’t know is that all of our little children stick beans up their noses, and everybody’s about to divorce their wives or they’re having problems. And in the church, we get a taste of a lot of this on a wider scale, and in some way or another, it helps us become more natural. I don’t know what I’m saying here, but I’m telling you it’s more fun to be in the church. And you get to live with us, and we get to live with you, and it’s fun, and now we’re moving into that kind of a passage right here. Again, I’m seeking to get a flavor of what these letters really said.

For this reason, I, Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ, for the sake of you Gentiles, I’m in jail, in prison at Rome, a town you’ve never seen, never been to, only heard about. You’re in a little town about 5,000 down here in the south-central corner of Asia Minor. And this next word could be “since”; not if, but since. Since indeed you have heard of the stewardship of God’s grace, which…Brother David, wake up, that’s 69. If indeed you have heard of the stewardship of God’s grace which was given to me for you. Thank you, brother. I have been given a stewardship of God’s grace for you, and yet I’ve never even met you. That’s amazing.

That by revelation there was made known to me the mystery, as I wrote before in brief. Alright, now, why don’t scholars notice this little appendage here? Do you know what that’s referring to? Yes. So, why don’t we call this second Colossians? Exactly, the other letter, Colossians. Okay. Paul has, by revelation, been allowed to know the mystery, and by referring to this, then you, 71, when you read it, you can understand my insight into the mystery of Christ.

Brothers and sisters, one of the indications in my judgment of whether or not a man is really a church planter is whether or not he preaches on the mystery and whether or not he has insight into it. Try to find that guy; he is as scary as molars in a chicken mouth. Okay. And by referring to this, then, when you read this, 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 been revealed to His holy apostles and prophets by means of the Holy Spirit. In other words, the apostles and the prophets who are speaking on this day have, by the Spirit, seen the mystery.

Now, let me explain to you what I mean. That’s verse six. That the heathens, I don’t know whether to count that one or not. So, you don’t want to count that one. The heathen are fellow heirs. Fellow heirs and fellow members, fellow members of the body. This brother has a mind totally different from our own, fellow heirs and fellow members.

Now, this is part of the mystery that somewhere in this, you who are uncircumcised and unclean, you get to inherit something, and you’re part of a body. And fellow partakers, that’s got an “S” on the end of it, doesn’t it…of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. We’re in verse six. So, we get that we’re partakers, we’re inheritors, and we’re part of a body. We partake together. We heir together, that’s H E I R, and we also are part of a body. I don’t inherit; we do. I don’t partake; we partake. I am not the body, and I am not the greatest thing on this earth that ever happened; I am not a solo Lindbergh out here, I am a part of the body of the Lord Jesus Christ of which I was made a minister and I think the of which I was made refers to the gospel but it also refers to the mystery but brothers and sisters the gospel is not Jesus saves. The gospel is Jesus Christ. And included within the gospel, which is Jesus Christ, and He has been called to proclaim Jesus Christ, within that is the mystery, the inheritance, the body, and the partaking. And you could spend a year talking about partaking of Christ, inheriting Christ, and being part of the body of Christ, but you probably won’t do that unless you’ve been called to proclaim this incredible universal cosmological Jesus Christ.

I was, for this, made a minister, according to the gift of God’s grace which has been given to me according to the working of His power, and rather than get off on power, here I would just like to say that against His will or totally apart from His will, God chose Paul of Tarsus to have a certain ability and that ability is to preach this incredible Christ. And Paul considered it a grace. And for those of you who might rejoice in your gift, please remember that the brother who made that statement’s gift was not to plant the church in his flesh. His gift was to destroy the church, and God broke that, and God will break your natural gift. That was a gifted man who had brought down the church in Jerusalem, saying, and then God blinded him, broke him, turned him around, and headed him in the exact opposite direction of his gift. For those of you who say, “Well, God’s gift for me is singing,” then may you have laryngitis all your life.