Now let us look together at the portion we have been reading. In the letter to the Ephesians in chapter 3, we may read again at verse 8 and through to verse 10. Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ. and to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world has been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ, to the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God. Now, this letter to the Ephesians begins with a meditation in chapter 1 of the believer's indebtedness to God's grace in the sense that Paul is centering upon the spiritual blessings that accrue to the believer in Christ Jesus. And in the first fourteen verses of that chapter, glorious verses, he centers particularly on that theme. Now what that leads them to is to prayer, the meditation of indebtedness on the grace of God. And you see that prayer is there particularly from verse 17 onwards, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of them. The eyes of your understanding being enlightened. Beautiful prayers. Now you see the same thing in chapter 2. Again, Paul is meditating upon his indebtedness, the believer's indebtedness to the grace of God. He is centering particularly on the theme of salvation by grace alone, and he is also centering upon the theme that the gospel is not to the Jew only, but also to the Gentile, that the middle wall of partition has been broken down, and that this gospel, this glorious gospel of salvation by grace, goes out worldwide. And again, that meditation leads up to prayer. But you don't find the prayer in chapter 2, you find it as it were, it begins in chapter 3. Of course there were no chapters when this letter was written. But it's there in the beginning of chapter 3, it's as if he was beginning the prayer there with the words, for this cause I call the prisoner of Jesus Christ for you gentiles, and we would have expected the prayer to have begun there. But the prayer doesn't actually begin until verse 14 where you find the same words for this cause. The cause of this sense of indebtedness to the grace of God that I have been bringing before you. And then the prayer comes. And again, a beautiful prayer. That He would grant you according to the riches of His glory to be strengthened with might by His Spirit that Christ may dwell in your heart, that you may be able to comprehend with all sense what is the breadth and length and depth and height, and to know the love of Christ. So in both cases, the meditation on his indebtedness to the grace of God has led him into this spirit of prayer, and particularly intercessory prayer. But what about this portion of chapter 3 in which our text is placed? Well, what you have there is an afterthought, as it were. It's a portion in parenthesis. Paul had begun the prayer in verse 1, but then other things crept into his mind, and these other things that came to him, these are what is centered upon in this portion in parenthesis from verse 2 of chapter 3 up to verse 13. he is in straitened circumstances as he writes this letter to the Ephesians and there are certain things that bear upon him, upon his thoughts, about his own circumstances that comes into this parenthesis. But it's not, although it's his own circumstances that trigger off the thought as it were, There's nothing of self-pity in it. There's nothing of self-boasting in this portion in parenthesis. Rather, it is... Everything of self is burned out, as it were, by its Christ-centeredness and by its God-glorifying spirit. And that is what you find in this portion of her text as well. Although it begins, unto me, it is nevertheless not me centred, it's not Paul centred, but Christ centred and God glorifying. Now we'll look at this text under two strands of thought today. First of all, in this text also, Paul is meditating upon his indebtedness to the grace of God. And that's the first strand of thought that we shall seek to follow through. And then the second strand of thought following from that is the effect that this has upon him by the enabling of the Spirit. First then, Paul meditates on his indebtedness to the grace of God. The first portion that shows that is he speaks of himself, well it's there implicit in the text at least, maybe explicit, I am a saint. That's the first thing that Paul is saying as he considers indebtedness to the grace of God. And again there's nothing boastful about what he's saying. He's not speaking here of progressive sanctification so much as definitive sanctification. If he was speaking in terms of progressive sanctification, you would find him saying so often, All right should man that I am who shall deliver me from the body of this death. But he's speaking here of that definitive sanctification that takes place in the very moment of regeneration. It is that initial cleansing that takes place in the life of the sinner at that point of being born again. Initial cleansing in the sense that he is given new desires that were not there before. Desire to serve God, not in order to put God in his debt, that may be how it would have been before, salvation by his own works, but out of a spirit of thankfulness for what the Lord has done to him, that he might serve the Lord. What shall I render to the Lord for all his goodness to me? And also the desire not only to serve the Lord in the keeping of his commandments, but also the desire to have fellowship with the Lord. You find it put best of best by the psalmist in Psalm 27, that I, the beauty of the Lord, behold me and obtain, and that I in his holy place may dwell. The desire for fellowship, not just to know him, but to have experimental knowledge of him in his truth. There's these desires that were not there before and in that sense there's that initial cleansing that takes place at the moment of regeneration. We're speaking of the definitive sanctification in the sense of the coming of the Holy Spirit to inhabit the person of that synagogue and to inhabit our person as his cathedral. To be there and to be saying, this is my rest, here still I'll stay for I do like it well. And to be saying it of a sinner such as I am, the wonder of it. But it is that initial cleansing, it is that initial inhabitation by the spirit of the sinner. It is also, this definitive sanctification is where the sinner is set apart by God for God's service and for God's use. That's the root meaning of sanctification, to be set apart. And sanctification is speaking of sainthood, of holiness. Set apart in the same way that the cups or the vessels were set apart in the sanctuary as being for the Lord's use. The sinner is set apart for the Lord's use, to be a vessel, to be set apart for holiness and for the Lord's service. And He is also sealed of the Spirit. The inhabitation of the Holy Spirit is in order not only to set him apart, but to seal him. And the seal is the mark of ownership, the Lord saying, this is my property. The Lord setting him apart as one who is within the covenant and in union with Christ, a child of God, the property of God. And also sealed with the Spirit in the sense that he is to be protected in the same way that a partial, if I could speak like that, was sealed in the old days, it was to remain inviolate from anyone breaking into it. The seal of the Spirit marking him as to be inviolate from the assaults of Satan in the sense that where a good work has been begun in him and the Lord is going to bring it to completion. and Satan will not be allowed to violate that soul or to destroy that which the Lord has begun. Every believer is a saint in that sense, of being set apart by the Lord for that purpose of being indwelt by the Spirit and of being sealed by the Spirit to that end. And you find Paul is very careful of that, even when I think writing to the... I need to check this, but you can check it yourselves. You find, for example, when he's writing to the likes of the Corinthians, and the Corinthians needed to be rebuked, but nevertheless he would speak of them as those who were the saints of God. Where they have where there is that union with Christ, where there is that indwelling of the Holy Spirit, where that work, where that setting apart is there, where the initial cleansing of the Spirit has begun. He speaks of them as saints. I am a saint. It's something for every believer to meditate upon. how the psalmist can say, for example, in Psalm 86, because I am holy, let my soul by thee preserved be, set apart within the covenant. He also meditates in the sense that he says, you see it in verse 2 of this chapter, I have received a special dispensation of the grace of God. A particular dispensation of the grace of God had been given to Paul. And he meditates on his indebtedness in that area also. He's speaking there that he had been called to apostleship. And again, when you look at the different letters that come to us through his pen, you find how often he speaks of that apostleship. For example, speaking to the Galatians whom he needed to rebuke very strongly for heretical thinking coming into their life, he needed to remind them that his The message that he was bringing to them was as one who had the authority of being called by God, by Christ as his Apostle. He was bringing the message of Christ himself. I am an Apostle of God, he says. The Apostle, as you know, being one who is sent of Christ, He was a witness of the resurrection of the risen Christ. Paul was unlike the twelve apostles, the eleven apostles in that sense. They had been with Christ in the days of his humiliation and they were with Christ in the forty days after his resurrection also. But Paul was not with them like that. But he had received, we don't know exactly when he received his commission, but the commission to be an apostle had been given to him by Christ alone. The risen Christ had made himself known to him, whether it was on the road to Damascus, or whether it was some time afterwards, we don't particularly know. But he had received his commission from the risen Christ himself. and he was sent, he was chosen of Christ, a chosen vessel unto me and he was to bring the word of God to the nations. Now when he speaks, why does he speak of himself as having a special, well that's the sense of the verse, a special dispensation of the grace of God, the grace of God being apostleship? What was particular about it? You see that when you look at the words of our text? Unto me who am less than the least of all saints is this grace given, this privilege given, this calling given, this calling of apostleship given, and what was special about it? That I should preach among the Gentiles. He was to be the apostle of the Gentiles. He was the one by whom the gospel was to go beyond the confines of the commonwealth of Israel and to reach out to the nations. Hitherto the gospel had been confined largely to the commonwealth of Israel. Even in the days of Christ himself, as you remember in his words to the widow of Sidon, I am but sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, he had said. The Gospel was in those days particularly within these confines. But Paul was to be the one through whom the Gospel was to begin to go out towards the nations. The apostle of the Gentiles. He never lost his love for his own people, the Jews. And you find that particularly in chapter 9 of the letter to the Romans. love for them, that he would even, he says, be a cousin rather than that he should not be serving and loving his people. But it was this calling to the Gentiles that was particularly his. And as he meditated upon that and as he thought, this is something, see he speaks of it as Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, this privilege given, this calling given, that I should preach among the Gentiles, and, in verse 9, to make known to all men what is the fellowship of the mystery. Now that word mystery, it's not a mystery as in Nagatha Christie, who done it, where you have to work out, to think out, Who is the one that is spoken of? And you don't know to the end. You have to work it out yourself as it were. The mystery here is the sense of something that was known in the mind of God but was not yet revealed. That's the sense of it and Paul was the one who was privileged. to make known that which had been in the mind of God from the beginning, indeed from the unbeginning, and yet was not known until now, that the gospel would go out beyond the confines of the commonwealth of Israel and even to the Gentiles. That the middle wall of partition, as he speaks of it in chapter 2, has now been broken, and that he is the one chosen of God to be the instrument that the gospel should go out in greater width. And Paul saw that as such a privilege, such a grace, unto me who am less than the least of all saints is this grace given. But he also meditates further. It's not just that he says, I am a saint. It's not just that he says, I have been given this particular calling to be an apostle and to be the apostle of the Gentiles and to be the one who is the instrument of God to make known what was hidden in his mind until now, but that I am the instrument for the revelation of it, for the making known of it. But he also speaks, I have been called to preach the unsearchable riches of Christ. Notice that calling must be there with all ministers. The calling of God, not just the effectual call when they are called from the darkness of sin, but a particular calling into this office as with apostleship, so today with ministry. But that, by the way, I have been called to preach the unsearchable riches of Christ." Notice it's the Gospel of Christ that he's called to. The Gospel is not a matter so much of propositions as centered upon a person. It is Christ-centered. We preach Christ to survive, he says, elsewhere. But he speaks of the unsearchable riches of Christ. And by unsearchable it means untrackable, like something that cannot, it's so vast that you cannot, you lose track. Infinite riches. The infinite riches of Christ, and who can measure infinity? And these riches, infinite, in their They are infinite in their extent. Paul begins to make a list of them as it were in chapter 1 of this letter. But he runs out of vocabulary. And elsewhere in Scripture it is summed up that these blessings are God Himself is the blessing. God is of our inheritance and cup the portion. God is the portion of the believer in Christ. God in all His attributes at our disposal, all His power, His wisdom, His energy, the energy of the triune God infested for our regeneration, for our sanctification step by step, and ultimately for our glorification. Infinite in its extent. Infinite in its intensity. The blessings, they flow out of the love of God, and who can measure that? It can only be described in the words of John, so love, that He gave His only begotten Son, immeasurable, the one that He gave, and therefore the love that He has for His people, beyond measure, beyond computation, and infinite and unsearchable in the mode in which it is worked out, these blessings, the blessings of the Gospel. In God taking human nature into union with himself. God in Christ reconciling the world unto himself. The world made flesh. Great is the mystery of godliness. And again beyond computation. And infinite in the manner of its appropriation. These blessings. by a power accepted which is beyond resistance and yet without compulsion. Neither is there any destruction of our moral freedom and yet it is without denial without any breach of our undeniable responsibility. Amazingly made willing in a day of His power, we are enabled in accordance with the faculties of our being by the power of the Spirit to be closed in with the Christ of the Gospel and to know these blessings. These blessings then, the infinitude of them in their extent, in the intensity of the quality of the blessings, in the manner in which they are worked out, in the manner in which they are appropriated. Infinite blessings. We can never reach to exhaustion but the Lord has purposed in Christ for His people. And that is what Paul considers, I have been made a minister chosen of Christ to make known this great, great gospel. Notice there is another aspect that you might say is an aspect of the unsearchableness It hints at least of the unsearchableness of the blessings of the Gospel. Where he speaks in verse 9, and to make known, to make all men know what is the fellowship, sorry, verse 10, to the intent that now unto the principalities and powers and heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God. Manifold wisdom of God. And the word manifold there is the sense of intricate. It's like you might look at a piece of embroidery and you see how intricate, how manifold, how many aspects there are to the beauty of this wisdom. And Paul was called to make known in the preaching of the Gospel something of the manifold wisdom of God. And He was to be the instrument, as every preacher is, called of the Spirit, to make known that Gospel and to see men and women converted through the Gospel, to see men and women growing in grace through the Gospel, growing in sanctification through the Gospel, but not just that he himself would see that, but that this effect of the preached Gospel in the lives of men and women and boys and children would be a cause of wonder to angels and principalities and powers in heavenly places. that the angels would be looking in upon that preached Gospel, seeing the effect of it in lives being changed, in men being drawn from the mighty clay and established in the ways of God, justified by the righteousness of Christ imputed to them, that the angels and principalities would Through the effects of that preached gospel would be seeing the sanctification, the ongoing sanctification of those who were polluted in sin. Every step of sanctification in your life, believer. Every single step of repentance. Every tear of repentance. The angels looking into it and seeing something of the wonder of the grace of God. and Paul meditates, I have had a hand. I have been used as an instrument in God to this end. That that Gospel would not just have the effect on the lives of men and women, but that angels would be looking into the effect of it. As Peter puts it elsewhere, which things the angels desire to look into. And this is something that fills Paul with marvel. He meditates then on his indebtedness to the grace of God in bringing him to the status of sainthood, the way that we have tried to define, in bringing him to have this special calling, not just of apostleship, which he esteemed so highly, but particular apostleship to the Gentile nations. Something that was hidden hitherto to the nations which had been in the mind of God nevertheless and which Paul was now to be the instrument, the called instrument of God to make known in the world. But also that he had been called to preach this unsearchable gospel of Christ. that it might be effective in the lives of men and women, that it might have this cause of wonder even in heaven. And know secondly what is the effect of that meditation in Paul's life. I am less than the least of all saints. I am less than the least of all saints. That's the effect of it. But as he puts it elsewhere, I who was injurious to the gospel, a persecutor, called to be an apostle of Christ, called to preach the unsearchable riches of Christ, I who was so unworthy, ah, what debt to the grace of God! And you see, that is the teaching that we have here. That's the application that is there to you and me. The more that we are enabled to meditate on our indebtedness to the grace of God in Christ, the more that we shall experience humility. That is the way towards this grace. But notice that the humility of Paul was not a false humility. There is a false humility of those who will say, oh, I am nothing, in a very Uriah Heepish way. But when Paul spoke in this way, he also, when he said, when he spoke, when he would speak of himself as being nothing, and that would be true, less than the least of all sins. But he also could say, by grace I am what I am. I am a saint. I have been called into this apostleship. I have been called to preach the gospel. And so, believer, you too. It's in the meditation of what you are through grace, and by grace you are what you are, that you see you're undeserving in yourself and that the humility accrues. It's not a Uriah Heepish humility, it's a godly humility. And this is the way into it. And indeed the more we come to know, the more we come to know our indebtedness, and we can never know our indebtedness enough, the more we come to know it, the more we grow in humility. You see that with Paul himself, and I don't have the quotations in front of me, but there are three of them where he speaks of himself. I can remember two of them offhand, and one of them is in this chapter, I am less than the least of all saints, but you find the third of them when he was on the threshold of glory writing to Timothy, an elderly Paul, and there he speaks of himself as the chief of sinners. The more he had grown in a sense of indebtedness, the more he grew in a sense of well-his-own unworthiness also. That must be there in the life of the believer, my emptiness, his fullness. And just another word on that. The more through grace we grow in our sense of our indebtedness to the grace of God, the more we shall love the Lord. We often speak of the poverty of my love. This is the way into it, that we should be centered upon Himself. Our love, faint and pale as it is, must always be in reciprocation to His greater love for us. It is His love that will constrain us into loving Him. This is the way into it. May the Lord enable us to meditate more deeply in the Scriptures on our indebtedness to the grace of God in Christ. It is the way into service It's the way into a spirit of worship. It's the way into repentance. It's the way into Christlikeness. You see, this meditation that is centered upon our indebtedness to the grace of God is through the exercise of faith. We look by faith to what God has done for me in Christ. It is God-centered. It is Christ-centered. And the more we come to realize the indebtedness there, Ah, that is where we come to a spirit of repentance also, just as famous as humility. Ah, how shocked I come in the face of what He has done for me, when there ought to be such thankfulness. This is the way whereby we come to a true spirit of worship, which we so often say we cannot come to ourselves and we cannot of our own manufacture make it. We look to what He has done. You look, for example, to the intercession. You feel, oh, how can I bring a true prayer to the Lord? How can I bring through worship to the Lord in prayer. My prayers are so paltry. Look to the One and seek through grace to look to the One who is making intercession at God's right hand and who is taking the services of His people, the paltry prayers of His people, the paltry ministry of His ministers and bringing it and putting it through the golden censer of His own intercession. and giving to these poor words of yours as you see them the dialect of heaven and making them acceptable before the fathers. Meditate. Seek grace to meditate there and find a spirit of worship being evoked in reciprocation to that in your heart by the Spirit. The teaching is simple here today. The believer is to seek to meditate more and more through grace upon his indebtedness to grace. And that is the way into all the graces of the Spirit being wrought in our lives by Christ Jesus. The grace of humility, the grace of worship, the grace of repentance, the path of service, It's all through grace in Him. May the Lord enable us to be found in that path of meditation upon what He has done. Let us pray. O Lord, we spend so little time in meditation of what Thou has brought Our lives are so world-centered and self-centered. Oh, won't Thou enable us to be more engaged in meditation upon Thy truth, more immersed in Thy truth, more dependent upon Thee to lead us in that word, to enlighten our sin-darkened minds in our knowledge of that truth as it is in Christ, and thereto Come more and more to realize the indebtedness that is ours with Him. We pray that Thou would guide us and direct us, enable us to meditate more and more on the portion that we have looked at. Lead us more into its truth. For Thy name's glory. Amen.