to the book of Ephesians chapter
3. In verse 8, the Apostle Paul says, Although
I am less than the least of all God's people." God, the word
actually there is saints. You know, there is a progression
in the life of Paul as he spoke of himself, because they kind
of know when each of these books were written. I believe it's
in one of the Corinthian epistles, he said, I am the least of all
the apostles and not worthy to be called an apostle. And then here, as he writes the
Ephesians, he says, I am less than the least of all the saints. And then in his letter to Timothy,
as he's very near his departure to be with Christ, He says, I
am the chief of sinners. You know, growth in grace is
not a growth in the estimation of yourself. Brother Spurgeon
said, if you want to grow, prepare to grow down. Because spiritual
growth always involves an ever-increasing realization of one's own sinfulness. Now I'm not talking about a morbid
preoccupation with sin. But growth in grace and in the
knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ always points out ever more clearly
to us how sinful and unworthy we are. We knew it at the very beginning.
We know it better now. But he says, this grace was given
to me to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ. I have been in church all my
life. I don't mean actually in a church
building. My earliest memories are of going to church. I've
heard a lot of preachers, some good, some bad, some excellent,
some awful. I've heard those who can speak
and communicate well, and I've listened to some that I wouldn't
ask them directions to the post office because I don't think
they could give me a clear set of instructions. But having preached now for over
40 years, this is one thing that amazes
me. I say amaze, I can understand
this theologically, but still, it just amazes me that preachers
will preach anything other than the unsearchable riches of Christ. What could be a better subject
to preach than Christ himself? And when will we ever come to
the point that we will have exhausted that subject? Were I to preach unceasingly
from now until I drop dead? I imagine there's a few Sundays
you thought that's what I was going to do. But if I did that,
I wouldn't exhaust the subject of Christ. I would not come to
the end of the depths of the riches of wisdom and knowledge
in Him. I may come to the end of whatever
treasury of knowledge I have about Him, but I would never
come to the end of the riches of himself. Impossible. It is not my job to judge other
preachers. I mean, any believer is qualified
to judge whether or not a man's telling the truth. But I am not
the master of any other preacher and they do not answer to me.
But it seems to me that most of these celebrated preachers
of our day are preaching something other
than Christ most of the time, and sadly for some of them, all
of the time. And it makes you wonder, do they
know Christ? Do they have any perception of
the riches of His glory? Of the riches of His grace? If they've come to the end of
what they could say about Him, and now they've gone on to preaching
against this sin or that sin, or as some say, they want to
impact the culture, Of course, when they say they
want to impact the culture, I think what better way to impact the
culture than to tell them about the one person they really don't
know? But even if we could impact the
culture, if I could preach, I'd find some messages and preach
them and people would suddenly get an ear to listen to what
I had to say and they began doing things more right than they had
done them before. If we were able to cure what
religion seems to think are the severest problems in our culture,
if we cured them all, do you know what would still be true? We'd still have a nation full
of lost people. They would be nicer to live with, but they'd still be lost. This grace was given to Paul,
not that he could go among the Gentiles and preach to them a
moral system. Not that he could go among the
Gentiles and engage them politically and tell them about the rights
of men. That grace wasn't given to him.
He was given this grace that he could go among the Gentiles,
who for, well, since there ever was such a thing as Jew and Gentile,
had lived in darkness. Paul described these Gentiles
in chapter two. We generally apply that universally. And of course, it applies to
us because as far as I know, every one of us here is a Gentile.
But he talks about us being dead in our transgressions and sins. And he says that, excuse me, we were
without hope We were without Christ, and we were without God
in this world. All of us were born that way. But the Gentiles were not, that
is until the gospel, as it were, escaped the boundaries of Israel,
and God began to spread it across the world, the Gentiles not only
did not have Christ, hope, and God, They didn't even know about
it. They didn't know there was a
God named Jehovah who, by the word of His mouth, brought the
worlds into being. They didn't know how our race
fell into sin and condemnation, and His judgment was passed upon
all men. They didn't know that there was
a promise made of one who would come. and who would defeat that
evil spirit that had dragged our first parents into rebellion
against God. They hadn't heard that there
was a babe born in Bethlehem who was indeed a human being,
but also the living God. They didn't know what he preached. They didn't know what he did. Not until God sent Paul to them. And what a glorious message that
must have been to some of those Gentiles when they first heard
it. What a glorious message it was
to you when you first heard it. And what a wonderful thing it
is, is it not, when by God's Spirit and through the preaching
of His Word, we hear once again of the unsearchable riches of
Christ. May God preserve me and you from
ever preaching or being willing to listen to preaching that is
not drawn from the exhaustless well of Christ. Now the gospel is not a plan,
unless we want to say it's God's plan, but it's not a plan that's
offered for men to fulfill. You know, step one, step two,
and step three. Now that was a kind of evangelizing
the church I was raised in. That's how they did it. The Romans
rode and Four spiritual laws and, you know, they would say,
well, step one, acknowledge your sinner. You know, step two, pray
this prayer after me. Step three, believe that God
is saved. You know, this kind of stuff. The gospel's not that
kind of plan. The gospel was planned, planned
before the world began. But the one who carried out the
plan, it's not us. It's Jesus Christ. He's the one
who fulfilled the plan. He's the one who accomplished
what God had determined. Everything that God required,
Jesus Christ performed and performed to perfection. And in so doing,
he redeemed his people. In so doing, he atoned for their
sins. And all that the rest of time
is occupied with is for God's elect to be born and then for
God to arrange them coming under the sound of the gospel and the
Spirit of God entering their hearts and giving them spiritual
life and spiritual understanding that they might perceive the
kingdom of God and might enter it by faith. That's all that's
going on now. The rest of it is just background. And the preaching of the gospel
is not a preaching of a one, two, three plan. It is a setting
forth of the unsearchable riches of Jesus Christ. If you set forward
Christ, if you tell people who he is and what he did, they're not going to have to
ask you what they need to do. They'll know. They'll know that they need to
seek His mercy. You won't have to recite a prayer
for them to recite after you. I was raised in that kind of
religion, you know, and they would give the invitation at
the end, and we'd sing Rock of Ages or something, and that's
a good hymn. They misuse it, but we'd sing
it over and over and over again, and then if it was an evangelist,
he'd say, well, we're just gonna, I'm gonna ask the choir to just
hum it. You know, they're doing everything
they can to get you to make this decision for Jesus. And they might say, Maybe you
don't know what to do. Well, in your heart, you pray
this prayer after me. Dear God, dear God, I know I'm
a sinner. I know I'm a sinner. You don't
have to do that. I'm thinking of Peter walking
on the water there. He starts to sink. Did anybody
have to tell Peter what to say? Peter, acknowledge that you're
sinking. I'm sinking. Now pray this prayer
after me. Lord, Lord, save me, save me. Didn't have to do that. Peter
knew that he was in a pickle. He was in a problem he couldn't
get himself out of. And it was gonna end in his death
unless somebody did something about it. And he knew the only
one who could do anything about it was Jesus Christ. And so he
just instinctively turned to him and said, Lord, save me.
And the Lord reached down and pulled him out. And sinners,
when they are told of Christ, when they are properly instructed
in the things of Christ, they know not only who He is,
they discover who they are and what they need. Now, whether
or not they'll ask for it is another matter. That's up to
the working of the Spirit of God. The unsearchable riches of Christ We have a hope, don't we? You
and I here, and we're the older generation of
this congregation. And we realize, as the song said,
death is coming, hell is moving. And it's not that far away. Saw someone on Facebook once,
just you put up there. I didn't know it was going to
take, or I didn't know that I would get old this fast. It's amazing, is it not, to ponder
on the fact that here we are. Every one of us is at least in
our 60s. And we look forward to something. We don't believe that when we
die, that's the end of things. What are we looking for? What
is it you're hoping for? A couple of disciples began to
follow the Lord. They had been disciples of John
the Baptist, But once John pointed out the Lord Jesus and said,
behold, the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world,
these two disciples of John the Baptist left him and started
following Christ, which was what was supposed to happen. And their
following somewhat behind, he turned around and said, what
are you looking for? That's a good question. It's a good question for, particularly
for religious people. In all of your religion, what
are you looking for? And I hear people talk about,
well, when I die, I wanna go to heaven. Well, good. Describe
heaven to me. Oh, it's got a pearly gate, you
know, and it's got a street of gold, and I'm gonna get me a
mansion. That's what you're looking for? Oh my. That may be some astronomical
riches, but they're measurable. Do you know what the reward of
the believer is? Christ. Christ himself. Oh, what riches are there. God said to Abraham, I am your
shield, and your exceeding great reward." Abraham, what you got? I see you got some pretty big
flocks out there. Is that your reward from your
God? No, no. Well, I see that you, a 100-year-old
man and your 90-year-old wife. Now, it's an amazing, miraculous
thing to me. You all just got your firstborn
son. Is that your reward from God? No. Well, you're taking up more and
more territory here in this land, which was not the land you were
brought up in. It's not as though you're inheriting
this from your father, but your possessions and your influence
and your household just keeps growing. Is that God's reward
to you? No. What is God's reward to you
then, Abraham? Himself. What more could you want? What more could our hearts desire?
And I ask that question, it's a rhetorical question. Sadly,
we're yet in the flesh and there's plenty of other things our hearts
desire. But I know this, when push comes to shove, if you could get into the very
heart of the heart of a believer, There is this desire as expressed
by Paul, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him. That's what
he wanted. Right now, if you could ask for anything, and
know of a certainty that you would get it. And that's something
for this life. What would it be? I can tell you what it would
be for me. And I bet you when I say it, you'll say, yeah, no,
I think that's what I'd want too. The absolute certainty that I
am His. and He is mine. That doesn't mean I would never
be sad in this world. That doesn't mean there's not
other things that I desire and find satisfaction with. But there's nothing that can
compare in this life with the knowledge that He calls you His,
and you can call Him yours. Christ, that's riches right there. Unspeakable, unsearchable riches. There are blessings. unsearchable
blessings in him. If you just turn back probably
one page in your Bible, maybe not have to turn back at all.
Ephesians chapter one, verse three, praise be to God
or to the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed
us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing. in Christ. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 1,
verse 20, no matter how many promises God has made, they are,
yes, in Christ. Now, outside Christ, there's
nothing to them. In fact, there are no promises outside of Christ.
All of God's good promises, I mean, the kind of promise you'd like,
all of them are in Christ. Every last one of them. Everything God has for the sinner
is in Christ. That's why it's a waste of time
to look anywhere else for it. He is the depository of all God's
blessings and everyone who has been called of God and has believed
the gospel is an heir of God. a joint heir of Christ Jesus,
he has, as it were, a chest of everlasting blessings, all of
God's spiritual blessings awaiting him in glory. That's riches. Now, the world
doesn't see much in that because, understandably, all they can
set their eyes on are physical blessings. Even when they try
to describe eternal blessings, they'll describe them in terms
of natural riches and natural blessings,
spiritual blessings. You say, well, what are spiritual
blessings? Well, let me name a few. To see Christ face to
face. You want that? I sure do. I hear people say, when I die,
boy, I'm gonna see mom in heaven. That's fine. But is that who
you're really gonna look for first? Do you think anybody's up in
heaven singing hymns to mom? I had one of the best moms ever
walk the face of the earth. She's in glory now. I won't be looking for her. I'll know who she is, but both
of us will be utterly occupied with Jesus Christ. To be able to see him, to look into his eyes, to hug his neck, to fall at his feet and worship
And there's another spiritual blessing. We've gathered this
morning and we're doing what we can to worship, aren't we?
What will it be like when we can worship without distraction
and interference? will be without sin. Now, I'm
already without sin so far as my record in the eyes of the
God, the judge of all. But I'll tell you this, I'm not
without sin when it comes to what I am inside and what I do. I'm like Paul, I don't understand
what I do. I can't make any sense out of this, that a person who
should on the one hand hate sin so much, should also love it
so much at the same time. then that won't be a problem.
We could go on. Spiritual blessings. There are
riches of grace in Christ. Now of all the blessings that
we receive, here's the one that we can probably come closest
to measuring it. And if you look back at Romans
chapter five, that talks about unsearchable riches in Christ.
And so I'm gonna, you know, we'll have to consent. We're not gonna
be able to measure His grace, but we can probably, of all the
things we possess now, we can probably get a closer idea of
the measure of the grace given to us. It says in Romans chapter
five, beginning in verse 20, I'm gonna have to get me a Bible
with letters that big. The law was added so that the
trespass might increase. The law was added to what? The
promise. Now the law that God gave to
Israel on Mount Sinai is not an eternal thing. It was added
later. And it was added for this purpose,
that the trespass might increase. They say, you mean it was added
so that people would sin more? Well, here's the interesting
thing. You put people under law, you will make them more wicked.
You know, people, and I used to think this too, till I started
reading the Old Testament a little more carefully. We think, well,
God gave that law to Israel and that restrained them. Really? Have you ever read what those
people did? Well, they behaved just like all the nations around
them and they did that with the light. The nations were in darkness
and didn't know any better than what they were doing. Israel
knew better and they still acted like that. But I believe that what's actually
meant here is that the law was added because it became like
a light that increased the awareness of sin. As Paul said, the law
is written to those who are under the law, that every mouth may
be stopped and the whole world become guilty before God. People
that want to say, well, you know, I'm not so bad. Now, you know, I'm not going to try to
rule people by the law. So it didn't work in Israel.
It's not going to work anywhere else. But somebody tells me they don't
sin. I said, well, listen to this list. And this is just kind
of a sample list. Do you love the Lord God with
all your heart? No. Do you have any idols? Why, no. Well, you know, I'm having a
little tough time making ends meet. Could you spare me $1,000?
What do you mean? That's mine. Paul says covetousness
is idolatry. So the first two were guilty. And we could go on. Well, I've
never murdered anybody. Have you ever wanted to? Say, have you, preacher? I remember
one time, I was mad at somebody, upset. They made me upset. And
just a thought went through my mind. The world would be a better
place if they weren't in it. About two seconds later, I realized
what I'd just said. I never shot anybody. I've never
tried to carry out those ideas, but our Lord says to have the
idea, which is a hateful idea, you've murdered somebody in your
heart. So the law makes it more evident what sinners we are. And we can
find no excuse. We can find nowhere to hide under the light of the law. But now we go on back, we're
still in Romans 5, trespass increased now. But where sin increased,
Grace increased all the more. Now, you who believe, I think
everybody here professes to believe, but you think you could come
up with a count on your sins? Do you think you could dig deep
enough to get to the depth of your depravity? Do you think
you could climb high enough to show us how high a mountain the
pile of your sin is? And I'm not talking about the
sins back quote before you were saved. I'm talking about the
ones still going on. Can you measure that? I can. But however great my sin is,
grace is greater." Oh, what a wonderful bit of math
Paul told us there. Whatever your sin is, add at
least one, and that's how much grace you have in Christ Jesus.
There's always going to be more grace than there is sin. You
say, well, that's going to be a lot of grace. Yes, it is. Unsearchable
riches of grace in Christ Jesus. There's riches of power. Paul
said that by God's grace, He had been given power. He'd been
enabled to preach the truth. And especially when you consider
that up until God saved him, he was one of the greatest persecutors
and deniers of the truth. And then, you know, people said
about him, he's begun to build that which he formerly tore down. What grace. You say I'm weak. Yes, you are. But that doesn't
matter. It doesn't. But I fail. Doesn't matter. Because you will
never do anything worthwhile in your own strength, in your
own energy. Everything that we do from the
flesh is going to get burned up. The only thing that will last. is what God empowers us to do,
which means it's really God doing it. There is that old saying,
only one life will soon be passed, only what's done for Christ will
last. And I understand the meaning
of it, and Paul even implied that when he said, you know that
your labor in the Lord is not in vain. But here's a more accurate
rendering of that statement, that old saying. Only one life
will soon be passed. Only what's done by Christ will
last. Riches of grace. Riches of revelation and truth.
Paul said that he was told about things that hadn't been known
before. In particular, that through the gospel, the Gentiles are
heirs together with Israel. This is verse 6 of Ephesians
3. Members together of one body
and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus. So here's, in
Christ, riches of knowledge. Now he's only mentioning one
thing. But boy, that's a great thing. In fact, do you want to
know how great that is? Apart from that, you and I'd
be lost. We'd be separate from the Commonwealth
of Israel. The law made a distinction between
the Jew and the Gentile. The gospel doesn't. The gospel's
by grace, so it doesn't matter who your daddy is. It's irrelevant. Believers from every kindred,
tribe, tongue, and nation, from every race, from both genders,
from every imaginable fleshly description that they are gathered
together in one body over which Christ is the head. When we find this revelation
in Christ, we find the revelation of the Father in him. Philip
said, Lord, show us the Father and that'll be enough for us.
And he said, Have I been with you so long and you still don't
understand? If you've seen me, you've seen
the father. That old southern phrase, he's
the spitting image of his dad. And if you, of course, I don't
know if you ever heard that phrase until I said it to you at one
point, but if you did, you probably, like most of us in the South,
we wonder what's spitting image? You know, what's spit got to
do with image? Well, the word or the phrase is actually the
spirit and image. Then you go down south and it
comes out as the spit and image. So it got shortened to spit and
image. But literally, Jesus Christ is
the spirit and image of his father. To know him is to know the father. All the treasures of wisdom and
knowledge Says Paul, this is in Colossians 2, all the treasures
of wisdom and knowledge are in him. And in Christ there's riches
of accomplishment. There's going to be a graduation
here shortly. Every year they have a graduation. And it's exciting
to those who are being graduated and the people involved in the
educational system and all the moms and dads do all they can
to encourage these new graduates.
And they're, oh, they're full of hope, they're full of expectation,
you know, and we send them out there and I've seen some of them,
you know, like the valedictorian in speech, you know. Okay, now
it's our turn, you know, and they're going to fix everything
that hadn't been fixed up to that point, you know. And then they get to be our age.
Well, we didn't get much done, did we? We didn't accomplish
anything. We took up space for the last
40, 50 years. We went out and thought we had
the world by the tail and found out we were just one more human
being walking the path from the cradle to the grave. But in Christ, there's riches
of accomplishment. It says, that the manifold wisdom of God
should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly
realms according to his eternal purpose which he accomplished
in Christ Jesus our Lord. That vision John had in Revelation
4 and 5 speaks of him who sits upon the throne, that's God,
and he has in his hand a scroll written on both sides and sealed
with seven seals. And the call goes out, who is
worthy? to take the scroll and to loosen the seals. And the
idea was, who's worthy to take that scroll, which was the scroll
of divine providence and purpose? Scroll of salvation. Who's worthy
to take that from the hand of God and make it happen? And John
says, I wept and I wept, because there was no one found who was
worthy. And then he said an angel came
up and said, don't weep, don't weep. The lion of the tribe of
Judah has prevailed and he is worthy to take the scroll and
to loosen the seals. And John said, I turned and looked
and what he was looking for was a lion. You know what he saw?
A lamb looking as if it had been slain. He saw Christ and Him
crucified, and saw in that exactly what our Lord meant when He said,
it's finished, it is accomplished. Everything accomplished. Churches say, salvation's by
grace, but you gotta, and as soon as they say, but you gotta,
Salvation out of the realm of grace. Well, one last thing. In Jesus Christ, there is unsearchable
riches of access to God. Verse 12, in Him, in Christ,
and through faith in Him, we may approach God with freedom
and confidence. Now there are a lot of people
that presumptuously approach God. And they march up to God
thinking they've done a good job and God's gonna be tickled
to death with them. If I approach God in myself,
I know exactly what would happen. He would kill me in that forever.
He would consign me to eternal death, and it'd be the right
thing for Him to do. It would. But it says, through Him, through
Christ, and by faith in Him, people like you and me, us abounding sinners, us worthless,
wretched, lawbreakers, we can march right
into the presence of God with freedom. No one will stop us. No one will say, you don't have
any right to go in there. With confidence. Confidence of
what? That when we approach our God, he hears us. He will not
turn a deaf ear to us. He will not consign us to judgment. Why? Well, we came through the
right door, Jesus Christ. Come through any other door,
you're a goner. You come through that door. You have full access to God. In politics, because people aren't
trustworthy, Everybody that gets an audience with the president,
they write their name in a book. That way they can go back and
check whether maybe there was some undue influence or something.
But people want to have access to the president because he's
got so much power. He doesn't have any power except
the power God gives him. But God has all power. And you
and I don't even have to make an appointment Our name's already
written in the book. We just go in. Paul said, let
us boldly approach the throne of grace that we may find mercy
to help us in our time of need. You know, when we find ourselves
all tripped up in what seems to us to be a more notable sin
than other sins, And our conscience begins to shower us with guilt. And the accuser of the brethren
begins to whisper in our ear, no, you better wait before you
go talk to him. Put some time here, maybe he'll
cool down. And then you can talk to God. David eventually went in and
talked to God, confessed his sin to God. You know when it
would have been best for him to do that? The moment he got out of the
bed with Bathsheba. And you know something? The door
to God's throne was as open to David then as it was later on
when Nathan confronted him with his sin and he confessed it.
The door to God's presence is never shut to one of his people. It's always open. Unsearchable
riches. Ponder on what you have. 401K, well, it's going to run
out or you're going to pass it on to somebody else. The unsearchable riches of Christ,
you can just keep reaching, keep dipping into that, keep spending
as it were, and you will never, ever come to the end of it. Heavenly Father, bless your word. Comfort our hearts with your
grace. In the name of Christ, we pray, amen.