Ephesians chapter 6. I think
this will be a blessing to us today. Ephesians 6 verse 19. I guess this will be our last
lesson in Ephesians. Verse 19. And for me, and for
me. You know what he's saying there,
don't you? He just got through saying pray. Pray always. Pray for one another, he said
in verse 18. Always pray. And then he adds
this, and for me, I like that. And for me, that utterance may
be given unto me, that I may open my mouth boldly to make
known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador
in bonds, that therein I may speak boldly as I ought to speak,
but that ye also may know my affairs and how I do. Tychicus,
a beloved brother and faithful minister in the Lord, shall make
known to you all things." We want to know about one another,
don't we? Why would they care what's going on with Paul? Because
they loved him. They loved him. I like to stay in touch with
those that I love, don't you? We've got a lot of ways to do
that in this day and age, don't we? It's a blessing to me to
be able to do that. He said, I've sent him to you
for the same purpose, that you might know our affairs and that
he might comfort your hearts. Peace be to the brethren and
love with faith from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Grace be with all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity. That goes pretty good with what
Dee read this morning, doesn't it? Grace be unto all those that
love him. Well, we'll look mainly at just
verses 19 through 20. Really 19 and 20. Paul says,
especially here, he makes a special request. Pray for me. Pray for
me. He himself would have been included
in verse 18, wouldn't he? He said, prayer with prayer and
supplication, the spirit watching there unto, with all perseverance
and supplication for all saints. That's Paul too. But that wasn't good enough. And I'll tell you why. I'll tell
you why. Just a general request for prayer
for everybody wasn't good enough. And there's a reason for that.
It's not that Paul is selfish. It's not that he regards himself
higher or more important than anybody else. We know this from
his other writings, and he didn't think like that. But Paul was used of God, I think everybody would agree,
in an unusual way. Greatly used of the Lord. And so he was confronted by devils
and men, wasn't he? More than your average person.
Met with a lot of opposition. No question about that, but he
doesn't mention that here. He had a personal thorn in the
flesh. That must have been grievous. It must have been a terrible
thing. You know that word thorn? You know what it really means?
We think of a thorn, you know, a little splinter or something.
The word means a pointed piece of wood, comma, a stake. He had a stake in his side. Can you imagine walking around
like that? We just read in this same context
recently regarding the warfare that a believer is engaged in
in this life. And Paul had sustained some injuries
in that war. One in particular, he said, I
asked the Lord three times to heal it for me. And he did, didn't he? He just
didn't do it the way Paul expected him to. He didn't take it away.
He said, my grace is sufficient. And it is. It is. spiritual war, spiritual injuries,
not physical. But he asks here, and for me,
and for me, pray for me, specifically, especially pray for me, not as
a victim, he doesn't ask as a victim, but as a man, he asks as a man
who has a heavy, daunting, impossible, wonderful, terrifying burden
to bear, a monumental responsibility. He said one time, Who is sufficient?
Who is sufficient for these things? Look at the language of verses
19 and 20. Let's read it together again. And for me that utterance may
be given unto me that I may open my mouth boldly to make known
the mystery of the gospel for which I am an ambassador in bonds
that therein I may speak boldly as I ought to speak. Now, let's
take this whole request generally, first of all, and then kind of
look at specific aspects of it. Generally, he's asking for prayer
that he might do what God sent him to do. that I may open my
mouth boldly, that I may speak, preach the gospel boldly. That's
what God sent him to do. And the truth is, God has sent
all of us to do that now. I want to always remind us of
that. God has sent all of us as witnesses of himself in one
capacity or another. We all are responsible in our
households to raise our children in the fear and admonition of
the Lord. We're responsible in the church one way or another.
We all have something to do in the church. There are certain
aspects of the church that fall upon
each one of us. In every relationship we have,
we're responsible now to be witnesses and privileged. Don't even think
of it as a responsibility. Do you think of your marriage
as a responsibility, Jimmy? Is that how it is? It's my duty
to love Sarah and take care of her. No, that's not my duty. It may be. I'm sure it is. I
don't look at it that way. Do you? Not a bit. Not a bit. It's a privilege. It's a blessing. It's a joy.
And isn't it a joy to have this gospel to tell? What a wonderful
thing. But generally, he asked for that,
and we must, too, to honor him. Lord, help us to honor you as
your witnesses. to tell it like it is, to be
faithful witnesses. And this is our primary business
in this world. This is our primary business
in this world. And I can't think of a better
or more appropriate text, seeing that we're about to enter a new
year, than this one here, where Paul and I ask you, as Paul did then, and
for me. When you're praying for everybody
else, and for me, pray for me. You know, I have some plans for
the coming year, just like I'm sure you do, when we think about
this year that's coming up, 2016. You know, I've got some plans to
make a few home renovations maybe this year. When we moved into
our house, there were still a lot of builder grade Fixtures and
features of the house and just some of them just aren't holding
up, you know Have some home improvement plans got to do it Well got to
is kind of strong in it hope to may very well We have a vacation plan I'm kind
of looking forward to We didn't really get a vacation the last
year or so, or several years even, maybe. So that's kind of
a big deal to me. I'm looking forward to that. My point is this, we all have
plans that are important to us. Should, it's fine, it's good. To some degree or another, they're
important. They're priorities to us. But
above and beyond all of that, we have to remember what our
business is in this world. And we have to always attend
to that business first, foremost. It's got to take priority over
everything else. And I don't care if you never
step behind a pulpit in your life to read or to pray or to
teach or anything. If you never come behind a pulpit
in your life or into a Sunday school classroom to teach. When
our Lord said to his disciples, go and preach, he said, you go
and preach what I've taught you. The things that I've said to
you, you go and teach them, all of them. And whoever believes
you, I'll save them. Isn't that a wonderful promise? But a very solemn one too, because
he said, whoever doesn't believe you, I'm gonna damn them. That's
why Paul said who is sufficient for these things are sufficiencies
of God. That's what That's what But when
he said that to his disciples he gave every one of us the very
direction of our lives He gave every one of his sheep purpose
that transcends all other priorities. I All of the church are called
upon to support the gospel ministry by giving for one thing, everyone.
If that's all you ever do, and I say all, not to minimize that,
but if that's all you do, you're just as important as I am. If
you don't ever do anything else, ever write anything, say anything
in the church, Do any work of any kind. If all you do is, you're
just as important as I am. You say, no, Chris, that's not
true. You know, the Lord can raise up anybody to support the
church. Yeah, you think he can't get
you another preacher? If he wants to. We're all important to one another.
And the way the Lord uses us is important. Each has an important
role. But let me tell you something,
God don't need any of us. He threatened to raise up a rock
to honor and praise him one time. And when he gave you me, that's
pretty much what he gave you, a rock to preach the gospel to
you. We need to understand that too
now. He don't need us, we need him. But I thank him for you. And I don't want to minimize
that either. You're precious to me and you are important in this
church. As long as we understand that in the right sense. He gave us to one another. Our Lord doesn't need anybody,
but what a privilege. What a blessing that he would
use such as we. And we need to honor him, don't
we? In this, we need to be in on
this. Is that optional for you? Yeah,
me neither. We need to do what he sent us
to do. And that's what Paul's required, where his request comes
from here. And for me, that I would be enabled by him and strengthened
by him. Without him, I can do nothing and I know it. I'm going
to cast the net now by his grace. He gave me a net, didn't he?
The best net in the world, the perfect net. He gave me the strength
and the will to throw it And I just pray that when it's cast
that he speaks, I pray his blessing is upon him because I know the
difference. I see the difference, don't you? In my strength, the strength
of the flesh, and the power of his might, the power of his grace. It's night and day. But you see
why he's asking, generally speaking, oh, what a task we have. What
a privilege we have. What a work we have before us. And then notice this specifically
though, it's got to be done boldly. If we're gonna do it at all.
If we're gonna be in on it at all. It's got to be done boldly. Now there's some things in life
that I'm not too sure about sometimes. You know what I mean? I'm just
not real confident about it. And the way I do them will reflect
that. The way I say them will reflect
that. Uncertainty breeds hesitancy,
doesn't it? And timidity. This gospel, I'm
sure of. And you know I am, don't you?
I'm sure of it. I have no question about it.
Christ, I'm sure of. I'm confident in him. If he tells
me to preach to dead bones, I'm not going to question him, are
you? If he tells me that the way he
saves sinners is by the preaching of himself. And I'm not going
to look for clever ways to entice sinners. By his grace, I'm going
to do what he said. And that's what preaching boldly
is now, to preach him as he is. Because he's not popular. He's
not well accepted by this world. And I'll tell you this, we have
a wonderful gospel to preach. No wonder most who pass themselves
off as preachers are so mealy-mouthed. And they tell jokes and they
avoid, like the plague, any serious Bible study. The reason they
do that is because they don't have a message. Everything they
say contradicts everything else they say. How embarrassing to
have to tell... You think about this. How embarrassing
to have to tell sinners that God has done a lot of wonderful
things. He's written a lot of nice things. But everything in
the end boils down to you saving yourself. I'd show movies too if that's
all I have for a gospel. And they know that down deep
inside somehow. They don't really have anything
to say. But when you speak of the victorious son of God who
came to save sinners and did it, came to save them and saved
everybody he came to save, you can't mince words. When you speak
of the power of his precious blood to redeem all for whom
he shed it, you can speak loud and clear. We're confident in
this gospel. We preach it boldly. When you
preach Christ and Him crucified, there's nothing to explain away.
There's no need to equivocate. If I had to preach to a lame
man that he had to take the first step, that's just insulting, isn't
it? You're talking to a lame man and telling him you need
to take the first step and God will meet you. That's mockery. I would have to apologize for
such a gospel. But if I, by the gospel of God's
grace, which God, by the way, calls the power of God unto salvation,
if I can say to sinners by that gospel, Christ can heal sinners
such as thyself. And if he, as he has promised
to do, if he speaks to sinners by that gospel and says to them,
rise and take up your bed and walk, You're not just going to take
the first step. You're going to leap and dance and praise
his holy name. That's what they did when Christ
healed them. That's what they still do. They're not about a
step. If you can take one step, you
can take all the steps. You can't take any steps without
his grace, without his power, without him saving you in every
sense of the word. I have no confidence in my flesh.
And I think about that quite a bit because here I am in this
flesh trying to do what I do. I have no confidence about his
grace and don't want to ever have any. I pray I never will
have any confidence in my ability to do anything. But we don't
preach ourselves. We don't get anybody saved. We
just sit in the table. Anybody hungry? Anybody hungry
this morning? We don't give people steps to
salvation. You know, that sounds like some
Buddhist something or the other. The five easy steps to salvation. No, we just say, look, there's
God's lamb that takes away sin. There he is right there. There
he is. There he is. Look and live. I can do that with freedom. I
do that freely. You know what the word there
means, boldness? With freedom. I've heard preachers
say that, Lord, give me freedom. You ever wondered about that?
I've never seen that in the Bible. Yeah, you have. You used to know
it was there. And Paul said, oh, pray for me that I could
preach the gospel boldly. That word means with freedom.
with freedom. To speak, it means unreservedly
to not hold anything back. Paul said in Acts 20, 27, I have
not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God. You see,
that's a problem if you don't have the gospel we have, because
preaching. And I've witnessed a lot of it
now, I've witnessed a lot of being real close to it at times.
Most who call themselves preachers, they like to cherry pick things,
you know. Well, that kind of goes along
with what we believe. So I'll preach on that this week. And
here's something else that kind of goes along. Oh no, to preach
boldly is to preach verse by verse by verse by verse. And let's find out what God said,
whether we like it or not. How about that? And the only reason that most
preachers preach at all from anywhere is because they figured
out a way to separate it from its context and to pervert it
somehow. To not say what God said. Oh,
the whole counsel of God. May God give me grace. Pray that
he'd give me grace to preach the whole counsel of God unreservedly. Freely. And to preach boldly
now. is to preach the offense of the
cross. The offense of the cross. Paul said, if I preach circumcision,
if I preach what you need to do to be saved, then why is everybody
so mad at me? He said, if I preach that, if
I preach here's what you need to do to be saved, if I preach
to you the five easy steps of salvation, nobody got a problem
with that. He said, then is the offense
of the cross ceased and everybody would love me. But the reason
they're trying to kill me, and the reason everywhere I go there
is a division because of him, is because of the offense of
the cross. It's because of the gospel of
Jesus Christ. And let me tell you, do you know
what the offense of the cross is? It's very simple. I don't have to, you know, have
five points in a poem to tell you what the offense is. You
know what the offense of the cross is? The offense of the cross
is Christ. What in the world do you mean
by that, Chris? Well, here's what I mean by that. If a well-meaning
martyr died on the cross to give us a chance to be saved, then
nobody's going to be offended by that cross. But if the infallible Son of
God died there and actually redeemed all for whom he died, then everybody
will be offended, except those for whom he died. And they will,
too, until they know that he died for them. To preach boldly is to be confident
in the message, to know that the message will accomplish what
God sends it forth to accomplish. And the message is Christ. We're
confident in Him, not in ourselves. I don't have any doubts, though,
about Him. Do you? I know that if we, and I say
we, I'm just up here talking, saying what you would say if
you were up here, those of you who know him. And I'm doing it
because of you. By his grace, through his instrumentation,
he uses us as the means to support this mission. This is all of
us, speaker. This is all of us doing what God sent us to do,
which is preach the gospel. And we can do it without reservation,
without being timid about it, without being mealy-mouthed about
it, without contradiction. And here's why now. Do you remember
what Paul said in 2 Timothy 1? I think this expresses it best.
He said, I know whom I have believed. I know that the gospel is a whom
and not a what. It's not some doctrinal points
that we have on the wall over here. The gospel's a person.
I know whom I have believed. By His grace, I know who He is.
I know if He came to save somebody, they're saved. I know that. I
know if He shed His precious blood to redeem somebody, they're
redeemed. I know that. I know who He is. I know He's
the infallible Son of God. He's the victorious Savior of
sinners. I know whom I have believed.
And he said, I'm persuaded that he's able. I'm persuaded, aren't you? Daniel, is your God able? Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Do you believe that I'm able
to do this? Oh, yay, Lord, we believe. I'm persuaded that he
is able to keep that which I've committed unto him. What have we committed to him?
What have we not committed to him? If we've committed any,
you commit yourself, commit your heart, your soul, your body,
your cause, your purpose, your life, such it is as it is. To keep that which I've committed
unto him against that day, he's able to do what he said he could
do. He said, you come to me, I'll give you life. He has. He
said, you come to me, I'll give you rest. He has. He does. He
said, you believe on me, I'll save you. He has. He is. He will. And I can say to you. Because
I can say that with Paul, I can say to you without reservation,
you come to him and he'll save you. You come to this Christ. You trust in his precious blood.
You believe on this Savior and you'll be saved. Rest your soul. He's your righteousness. He's
your sin offering. He's all in all, Paul said, and
he wasn't exaggerating. And then thirdly, let's think
about this for just a minute. It's given to us. You see that in the text, that
utterance, pray this, that utterance may be given. After all of the studying, and all of the listening, and all of the learning, and
the accumulation, I think God, when I hear one of these preachers
that faithfully preaches the gospel, I hear them speak and
they've been preaching the gospel for 30, 40 years, I think about
an accumulation of a lifetime of study, and I'm sitting there
and in 45 minutes benefiting from that, and I bless God for
that. But after all of that, the studying, the learning, the
listening, the accumulation of a lifetime of commitment to Christ
and the gospel, if God doesn't give that preacher utterance,
we're gonna be wasting our time. They'll have absolutely nothing
to show for it. Nothing. And Paul understood
that. He understood that. And this
word utterance, you know, it simply means speech, speaking,
saying something. May God give me something to
say. But I'll tell you something else about this word. The original
word is logos. And it's the same word used in
John 1 in the beginning was The Logos. And he was with God. And he was God. May God give
me Logos. You see, it has two meanings,
doesn't it? May God give me something to say, but that something to
say, you know what it is? It's Him. May it be Him. If I'm going to open my mouth,
And that's what Paul said he does. That's my business right
there. Just to open my mouth. Doesn't sound like there's much
to that, does it? There's not if God's not in it. There's not. You know what he
said in verse 19 there? And for me, that utterance may
be given unto me that I may open my mouth. And if I'm gonna open my mouth,
you know, John said, I'm just a voice crying in the wilderness,
just an open mouth. But before I ever open my mouth,
may God give me Logos, Christ, the word, because that's what
I want to give you. That's what I want to give you. If I don't, you need to go find
somebody that will, by God's grace. He just uses these means to do
it. I pray that he will. One final word here. In 2016, and my how the time goes then,
2016, Old people used to talk about
that when I was young, and I didn't much listen to them. And now
I'm one of them. And I'm telling you young people,
it won't be long. It won't be long. It's just a little while. May God grant this to us if we're
here for another year. May God grant us utterance. A
voice, something to say, Christ to preach. And may we do so with
boldness. You just can't preach Him any
other way. You just can't. Confidence. Freedom. And give us the gospel. Did you
notice there in the text too? The mystery. The mystery. May He give us to preach the
mystery of Christ crucified. boldness to declare him and Because of one other word
in our text It's especially urgent that we pray this for one another
He said there in verse 20 for which I am an ambassador in bonds
that therefore I may speak boldly as I ought That word all It means necessary. Christ, the message of Christ,
what he did for sinners. Necessary. It's necessary for the lost.
It's necessary for believers. Paul said before I preach of
necessity, didn't he? Woe is unto me if I preach not
the gospel of Jesus Christ. And that's what he's saying here.
That I may preach boldly as is necessary. You look it up. And here's my advice. But more than that, I believe
it's the word of God. My advice to any who suffer anything,
to any and all who have any need whatsoever, to any and all who lack wisdom, to any and all who are lost,
and that pretty much covers every one of those, doesn't it? One
of those. I got you somewhere in there. And here's my advice
to us. In 2016, be faithful to hear
the word of God. Christ will comfort you by his
word. He'll teach you by his doctrine. He'll give rest to
your very soul by his gospel. And Christ will honor those that
honor him. That's his promise. That's not my promise, that's
his promise. Them that honor me will I honor. May God give us grace in this
coming year to honor his precious son. Let's pray.