This is God's holy word. For this reason I, Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles, assuming that you have heard of the stewardship of God's grace that was given to me for you, how the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I have written briefly. When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations, as it has now been revealed to His holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. Of this gospel I was made a minister, according to the gift of God's grace, which was given me by the working of His power. To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given. to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things, so that through the Church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him. So I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory." Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, this is your holy word. Your Holy Spirit inspired the Apostle Paul to write these words 2,000 years ago, and it is your Holy Spirit who has gathered us together this morning to hear it. We pray that you would prepare our hearts to receive your word with faith and love, prepare our minds to receive your word with understanding and insight, and prepare our lives to receive your word with loving obedience. and a response that would bring you glory. We need your grace and we need your Holy Spirit to do this work. This is not the work that any man can do. So we look to you and we ask for this in Jesus' name. Amen. You may be seated. Well, we're back in Ephesians this morning. It's been a month and we're back in the exact same passage we looked at a month ago. And you might be thinking, we already did this one. But last time we looked at this with a particular focus on the word mystery. And what was the mystery that Paul was talking about? And at that time we focused in particular on verse 6. The mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. We said that the mystery is how in Christ are the fulfillment of all of God's promises and all of God's plan for the people of Israel. And so in Christ is the true image of God, in Christ is God's firstborn Son and the light to the nations, and so that all those who are united by faith to Christ are brought into the true people of God because Christ is the fulfillment of the true people of God. And so the mystery is how everything God was doing with Israel for years and years and years throughout what we call the Old Testament found its fulfillment in Christ, and it's by coming to Christ that we're made a part of spiritual Israel, we're made a part of the covenant people of God, and we receive all of God's covenant promises. Whether we're Jewish or Gentile by ethnicity, we are all one in Christ. This morning we want to go back here and look at a different M word. Instead of mystery, we want to focus in on verse 7 where Paul talks about being made a minister according to the gift of God's grace. So we're going to talk about Paul's gospel ministry and the call to ministry. Now I know as soon as I say that, some of you are starting to tune out because you're thinking, I'm not a minister. I'm not called to gospel ministry, so this talk has nothing to do with me. I guess I'll just daydream or doodle or anticipate watching football this afternoon. But here's the truth. Your ministry calling may be very different from the Apostle Paul's ministry calling. All of us have a different ministry calling than the Apostle Paul, because none of us are apostles. But all of us, if you believe in the Lord Jesus, we all have a ministry calling. We all have something that's been given to us as a way of serving others and as a way of advancing the gospel in this world that God has given to you. Some of you have a ministry as a homeschool mom, and you're teaching your children, and you're running the household, and you're making the meals, and you're disciplining and intervening when World War III breaks out in the basement. And you may not think of that as a ministry, but that is your ministry that God has given to you for the advancement of the gospel in this world. You may be retired. You may be working 60 hours a week at 70 hours a week. You may be a police officer. God has given you some aspect of your life, or maybe multiple aspects of your life, where he has called you to be engaged in ministry. And so we want to look at the Apostle Paul and how he viewed his ministry, not for professional ministers, but for all professing Christians to say, how has God called me to ministry? And how should my approach to ministry be like the Apostle Paul's? So hopefully this will have something to say for all of us. And the very first thing we want to notice about the Apostle Paul and his call to ministry is that he viewed it as a gift of God's grace. Look at verses seven and eight. Twice in these two verses, he says, I was made a minister according to the gift of God's grace. And then he says, to me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given to preach to the Gentiles, the unsearchable riches of Christ. Now, we're used to the word grace in combination with salvation. You know what grace is? Grace is God's undeserved favor and kindness to people who actually deserve the opposite. So, when God is kind to you, when you deserve his discipline and judgment, when God is showing favor to you, when you actually deserve his condemnation, that is grace. And if we know the gospel at all, we know that we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. And if you're a Christian, you're very comfortable saying, yes, I'm saved by grace. It's not my own works. It's not my own deserving. God's been gracious to me and has saved me. But then we can easily slip into thinking that ministry is what we do for God. You know, God saved us by grace, and now we're going to serve him in ministry by our own efforts. It's our work, right? But that's not what Paul says. Yes, ministry is how we serve the Lord. Yes, ministry is what we are called to do. But Paul puts it in a way that I think changes our outlook on it. He says ministry is what we are given by God's grace for others, for the advancement of His grace in the world. And so it's not something we do for God, it's something God gives to us, and it's as much a gift of His grace as is our salvation. We'll look at that and see what Paul means by that step by step. But it would help to see his perspective, to turn real quick to 1 Timothy, where he talks about this In 1 Timothy 1, he uses very similar language to describe his call to ministry when he says this, 1 Timothy 1.12, I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord. because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service. Though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent, but I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me. with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. This saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example for those who were to believe on him for eternal life. In Paul's mind, the grace of salvation and the grace of ministry are inseparable, and we need to see that. When God calls us to himself, he calls us not only to be a recipient of his grace, but then to be a vessel through whom his grace flows out to meet others. You can't have one without the other. You can't be brought in without also being sent out. And it's the same grace that brings you into God's presence and into a relationship with him which sends you out to a world in need with the grace of the gospel. And so Paul viewed his calling as a gospel minister as a high privilege, as a gracious gift. And if you look at Paul's ministry, it's amazing to think of the places he went, the things that he suffered, the things that he did in a relatively short amount of time in a day and age when it was very, very difficult to do those things. You know, if you set out on a ship to cross the Mediterranean Sea back in Paul's day, you weren't really sure if you were going to make it to the other destination, and Paul experienced shipwreck. And yet he traveled all around the eastern side of the Mediterranean from what we call Turkey and Greece and all that area, so that within about a 10 to 12 year time period, he could say, There's no more room for me here, because the gospel has been taken everywhere. And we can think, wow, Paul was amazing. He was just the man. I mean, there's never been another Christian like him. He's just tireless, and Paul would say, no. I'm the least of all the saints, and I'm the chief of all the sinners, but God's grace has abounded to me. You see, when we're doing ministry, let's just get real for a minute. When we're doing life and we're doing ministry, if we think of what we are doing as a duty or an obligation or a requirement or something that we are doing for God or for others, we will very quickly lose our energy. and we will very quickly feel sorry for ourselves, and we will very quickly feel like we're being put out. How come I'm being asked to do this again? But if we look at our lives as a gift, and we look at service as a privilege that's given to us by the grace of God, and that the same God who calls us is the God who equips us for that service, we can be constantly renewed with an attitude that is marked by humility, who am I that God would call me to serve him in this way? And gratitude, thank you, Lord, for giving me this opportunity of service. And we'll have much more perseverance in the work that God calls us to do. And I think everything in our lives would be transformed if we got Paul's mindset. Paul's mindset, first of all, as a gift of grace in verse 2, is that what he has is a stewardship that's been given to him. Now, we don't have stewards in our society today, and so you might think of the word stewardship as being a strange one. Another way to translate that word is an administration. So being called to be an administrator of God's grace. What does it mean to be an administrator? Well, if you're approaching administration properly, there is a world of difference between being an administrator and being an owner. In my professional career, I've spent over 10 years as a school administrator. And hopefully, throughout those 10 years of school administration, I never viewed the school as belonging to me. This is my school, and I'm going to run it the way I want to run it. People who are in administration and who confuse that with ownership are usually very difficult to work with and work for. And so as an administrator, I felt like this is not my school. It's God's school. It's been entrusted to the care of the Board, and I've been given a trust that I need to take care of this the way that God and the Board would want me to take care of it. That should be our approach to ministry. It's given to us as a stewardship. and it's a stewardship of grace. And this is the wonderful thing. God gives us grace by which we're saved and by which he puts us into work and ministry, and then he gives us that same grace as a stewardship to extend to others. Places in the Bible is referred to as the keys of the kingdom, but we're given real authority and real opportunity to extend the grace of the gospel and the grace of the kingdom to somebody or to withhold it. But it's not ultimately ours, and we will have to give an account for how we exercise that stewardship. Every year that I was a school administrator, I was subject to review about how am I doing with my administration, how am I doing with my stewardship. And Paul says the same thing about ministry. In 1 Corinthians 4, he says, this is how one should regard us as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. He says, moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found faithful. But with me, it's a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. In fact, I don't even judge myself, for I'm not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me. Therefore, do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then each one will receive his commendation from God." Why do politicians get in trouble with issues of embezzlement of the public funds? I mean, you see it in the headlines, right? This mayor so-and-so is removed from office because he took public funds for his own use, or governor so-and-so abused the budget in this way by using this for his personal, you know, Sheila Dixon, who was mayor of Baltimore and is running for mayor of Baltimore again, she got in trouble because she took gift cards that were given to her to give to the poor, and she spent them on herself. What's going on there? Why do they get themselves in trouble? They forget that they're stewards and not owners, and that they are stewards who have to give an account. Our lives and our ministry are that way. Our lives are not our own. Our ministry opportunity, which includes the way we bring up our children, the way we treat our spouses, the way we interact with people at work, these are all ministry opportunities we've been given. It's not for us to decide that we're going to do what we want to do for ourselves, because the day of accounting is coming. And in a way that's very freeing, and in a way it's very sobering. For Paul, he said, look, I don't need to be judged by you. I don't even judge myself. God's going to judge me one day. So back off, in other words. It gives you a little bit of liberty to say, look, I know who I'm accountable to. But then there's also a sobriety to it because we will give an account. We will give an account. Now the second thing, in addition to this being a stewardship, is that Paul says very clearly that he is given his gift of ministry according to the gift of God's grace. Now, this not only means that it's a privilege for us to be called into ministry and that it's something God gives us that we don't deserve, but it also means that God doesn't call the qualified. He qualifies those whom he calls. We may feel very inadequate. We may feel very weak. We may feel very much not up to the task. But God, who calls, equips you according to the grace by which he calls you. So, it's right for us to say, I don't know what the answer is, I don't know how to do this, I don't have the answers, I don't have the resources, because God wants us to be driven back to our knees in prayer, to go back to the source of the one who gave us the ministry to begin with. Yes, life is bigger than we are, but it's not bigger than God who gave it to us. Now, one of my favorite verses to think about in this area of life is 1 Peter 4, 10 and 11. And if you have a minute to turn there, 1 Peter 4, 10 and 11 makes it very clear that all of us are called to be stewards of God's grace. It's not just apostles. And it also makes it very clear how we are supposed to be stewards of God's grace. So 1 Peter 4, says this, as each has received a gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of God's varied grace. whoever speaks as one who speaks the oracles of God, whoever serves as one who serves by the strength that God supplies, in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to him be the glory and dominion forever and ever, amen. You ever known someone, and don't look around or point fingers or shove elbows, have you ever known someone who served tirelessly, selflessly, with a martyr complex. In other words, I guess nobody else will do it, so I'll just have to do it again. Well, somebody's gotta step up and get it done, I guess it'll be me. And it's the martyr complex that I'm going to serve, and I'm going to make sure that everybody notices that I'm serving, and everyone feels a little bit sorry for me that I'm having to serve in this way again. Now, I say that, have you ever known somebody? If you haven't, you're looking at one, because I've done it. I've had those 16, 17-hour days when I was a school administrator, and there were times when I let it be known. yeah I've been here since 630 this morning you know it just comes with the territory and I'm really wanting someone to feel sorry for me and also admire me that I've you know here I am what what is going on in our hearts when we do that are we serving with the strength that he supplies so that he would be glorified or are we serving on our own strength and making very well sure that everybody knows how we're serving in our own strength that we would be glorified two very, very different outlooks. And by the way, one will exhaust you. So whether you speak or serve, however you speak or serve, I love that Paul in his letters will give us lists of spiritual gifts. Peter makes it very simple. He says, if you've received a gift, use it to serve. It might be speaking, so speak the words of God. It might be serving, so serve in the strength that God gives. And really, if you think about anything you do in life, it either involves talking or doing something. And so Peter just captures it all without a long list and just says, whatever it is, do it for the glory of God as a steward of God's varied grace. I love that picture though. We're going to get some pictures here in Ephesians 3 that Christ's riches are inexhaustible, unsearchable riches, and that God's wisdom is manifold, which is multifaceted. God's grace is varied. God is not doing just one thing in the world. God is not just all about sermons being preached and being preached well, and so there's one thing that God is doing in the world. God is at work in a thousand different ways through millions of different people who are speaking and serving in a variety of different capacities all the time. And so you are a steward of God's varied grace. By your words and by your actions, you have the ability to extend to someone else the very grace of God. which is inexhaustible in its riches." Next, in verse 8, we see Paul's attitude as an attitude of humility. He says, to me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given to preach to the Gentiles. Paul identifies himself as the very least of all the saints, and he's not doing this to put on airs. He's not doing this to be melodramatic. In 1 Timothy, we read, he referred to himself as the chief of sinners. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the chief." Paul really looked at himself as being the chief of sinners and the least of all the saints. And there was really one reason that's very clearly behind both of these passages, and that is Paul was a violent persecutor of Christians. He was going from town to town, rounding up Christians so that they could be put to death, or put in prison, or have their homes and property stolen. Paul was there when Stephen, the first martyr, was stoned to death, and he held the coats of the guys who stoned him to death. He was very well aware of who he was in and of himself, in other words. And he never lost sight of that fact because he never wanted to forget that whatever God was doing in him and through him, God was doing in him and through him. And so I think in church tradition, we've kind of gotten things out of whack and we make superheroes and giants out of people like the Apostle Paul. And Paul would say, no, don't do that. I'm the least of all the saints. I'm the chief of all the sinners. it's God's grace that's done anything good through me. If I was left on my own, I went from holding the coats of people who stoned Christians to riding out to arrest the Christians myself. He was like an ISIS guy, okay? Violent in his opposition to the truth. What about you? What about me? We might not have a testimony. I mean, I've never stoned anybody to death. I've never stood by while somebody was being stoned to death, so, you know, it doesn't apply to me. What would we be if God's grace was not at work in our lives? Where would we be if God's grace was not at work in our lives? I would be dead. And that's not an overstatement. I would be dead. I've had two or three times in my life before the Lord worked in me that I was so overwhelmed by the circumstances of life and the pain that I carried around inside that I wanted to die. And that I would have gone through with it if God hadn't stopped me. And it's important for me to never lose sight of that fact. On days when my wonderful children can get under my skin and I can feel sorry for myself, I need to remember it's a gift of God's grace. It's a gift of God's grace. Where would we be without the Lord? And then we know that everything he's given us is his grace, and that leads to a humility that allows us to persevere in ministry without pride or selfishness. So what was Paul doing in his ministry? he was gospel preaching to the Gentiles, the unsearchable riches of Christ. He uses a great verb here when he says, to me who are the very least of all the saints, this grace was given to me to preach to the Gentiles. This preach word is actually, there's a word that just means proclaim to cry out, to announce, to declare. And then there's a uniquely Christian word that means to gospel preach. It's when you take the word gospel and you sort of make it into a verb, to gospelize. And there's no good English word for it, so I just say to gospel preach. And so he's called to gospel preach, and what he gospel preaches is the unsearchable riches of Christ. And I said earlier that if we serve in our own strength, and we're serving for our own glory, we will burn out. We will run out. Because we have a limited gas tank, and in fact, it's very small. And we may think that every stroke that somebody gives our ego puts a little more gas back in the tank, but at some point in time, we're gonna burn out. but Christ alone has unsearchable, inexhaustible riches. But how do you proclaim the unsearchable riches of Christ? This has got to be the most challenging verse in the Bible for me as a preacher. How do you preach the unsearchable riches of Christ? It's like, how do you describe the indescribable? Or how do you understand the incomprehensible? One of my favorite gospel words, I'm a vocabulary nerd, you can add that to the list of nerds that I am. But I love the word ineffable. And the word ineffable means too great or too extreme to be described in words. It's ineffable. It cannot be put into words. It's too great and it's too extreme. And that's God. I mean, think about the ways that we talk about God. You might be able to think, well, we've got definitions of God, do we? What do we say about God? I mean, what we say about God is true enough, but what do we say? He's omnipotent. He's all powerful. That means what? There's nothing that he cannot do, okay? He's omniscient, he's all-knowing. What does that mean? That means there's nothing that he does not know. Well, he's all-present, he's omnipresent, yes. That means there's nowhere where he is not. Ultimately, what we're doing is we're saying, whatever limitations there are that we're aware of, he's not subject to any of them. God is immortal, which means he doesn't die. He is infinite, which means he's not finite. He is unchanging, which means he doesn't change. Really, the only ways we have of defining God is saying he's not limited in any way. What is that exactly? Well, he's God, you know? And we're left without the words because he is ineffable. And yet we're called to love him and to proclaim him. And he has, in truth, revealed himself to us in ways that are true and right and good. So it is with the riches of Christ. The riches of Christ are unsearchable. Now this is not talking about the riches that Christ owns, although he owns everything because he's the Lord. But it's the riches that are found in Christ with a treasury of grace that is in Christ. If you have Christ and Christ has you, then you have unsearchable riches and you will never truly lack for anything that you need or that your soul truly desires, if you have Christ. The parable of the unforgiving servant. from Matthew 18 is one of my favorites for understanding this, and I've explained this to you before, but in this one parable about forgiveness, Jesus talks about this servant who owed his master 10,000 talents of gold, and then he goes out and refuses to forgive a hundred denarii that somebody owes him. And I've talked about how The 100 denarii, we think of that as little. I've even heard some preachers say it's like $50. Somebody owes you $50. No, 100 denarii is not $50. 100 denarii is more than three months wages for a laborer, so it's more like $10,000. And if somebody owed you $10,000, I guarantee you would not forget it. But how do we get to the point where we can forgive to that level? Think of that again as sin. Someone's sinned against you with a $10,000 offense. How can you forgive that? How can you overlook that? It's only when you realize your debt and the 10,000 talents is about $4 billion. You know, there's a lot of people buying a lot of lottery tickets hoping to win a billion dollars. And God is saying that our debt that we owe Him because of our sin is like four billion dollars. And then you multiply that by all the believers in the world and throughout history. And what did we sing earlier? Jesus paid it all. That's what grace he has. He has sufficient grace and mercy to cover all of our sins, to pay all of our debts, to meet all of our needs out of himself. A billion dollars is not unsearchable. It's not inexhaustible. Our federal government spends $10.5 billion a day. A day! Our national debt is $19,000 billion. Think about that for a minute. $19,000 billion. And even that number is not inexhaustible. It's probably impossible for us to ever pay it off, but it's not inexhaustible. But Christ's riches are inexhaustible. You will never come to the end of the grace that is available to you through Jesus Christ. You may think you've gone too far. You may think you're beyond all hope. You may think that there's nothing that can be done for a heart like yours. You may think that the circumstances that you're facing are too dire and too extreme. You may think that your marriage is too broken. You may think that your children have wandered too far. The grace of Christ is unsearchable. It's inexhaustible. And we access it through the gospel, where we cling to Christ for everything. And finally, not only does Paul preach the unsearchable riches of Christ, but he does so for a reason. He does so, so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God may now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. This is a wonderful little purpose statement. This is why Paul's doing his ministry, and it should be the reason why all of us are doing our ministry, so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places." Who are these rulers and authorities in the heavenly places? Well, it's not clear exactly what Paul means. He could be referring to the heavenly hosts, the angels, or he could be referring to rulers and authorities in the heavenly places that are evil. In Ephesians 6.12, he uses very similar language to refer to the evil spiritual powers. He says, For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. So it could be them, same language, rulers and authorities, only here Paul doesn't say that they're evil, and so we can't say confidently that it's Satan and his demons that we're on display for. I actually think he means both and all, and here's why. In the gospel, God has done something for us as people that he did not do for the angels. The angels, part of them rebelled and fell from heaven. Satan was an angel of light, and he rebelled against God, and he fell from heaven, and based upon what Revelation says, we believe he took about a third of the angels with him. Those angels are lost forever. They're condemned forever. And the angels that remained faithful to God now are unalterably faithful to God. In other words, they don't have any free will. They are God's servants without any real choice in the matter. They do what God says instantly. So there is for angels a fall that is not restored. Jesus didn't become an angel. He wasn't incarnate as an angel. He was incarnate as a man, as a human being. Because by entering into our humanity, he is able to redeem our fallen humanity in himself. And in himself, he is able to unite humanity and divinity forever. 1 Peter tells us that the angels long to look into these things. They don't understand how that's possible. It's the mystery of the gospel, that God could enter into our humanity and redeem us and unite our humanity to his divinity forever. And so the angels long to look into that. And what they see when they see, is they see the church. And they see the church displaying the wisdom of God. Now, if you're familiar with churches, you might question that. Angels and demons look at the church and see the wisdom of God, the many-sided, the manifold, the many-colored, the splendid wisdom of God on display. Yes, God's wisdom, not ours. God's power, not ours. In fact, our foolishness and our weakness, the Bible says, magnifies God's strength and God's wisdom. It's God's wisdom that unfolds a plan that takes the apparent defeat of Christ on the cross and makes it his triumph over sin and hell. How does God win by submitting to defeat? It's the wisdom of God. The wisdom of God takes the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and makes it the inauguration of a new creation, the dawning of a new heavens and a new earth which will last forever, which begin in the body of Christ resurrected from the dead. The wisdom of God takes the message of the gospel, words, words on a page, words from a mouth, about Jesus and makes it the power of God for salvation for everyone who believes. God is, Paul says elsewhere, God is pleased to use the foolishness of preaching to save those who are lost. That's the wisdom of God. God's wisdom is also pleased to take all that Christ is and has and count it as belonging to us through faith alone. So we put our faith in Christ and all of a sudden we are counted as righteous as Christ is. We put our faith in Christ and all of a sudden we are counted as co-heirs with Christ, inheritors of all of the riches that are in Christ. This is the wisdom of God. And the wisdom of God uses that very same gospel to reconcile very different kinds of people to each other, turning age-old enemies into brothers and sisters in the Lord. Let me give you just a couple of examples of the wisdom of God at work in the church today. I recently watched a report on the church in Indonesia. Are you guys aware of what's going on with the church in Indonesia? I may have mentioned it to you recently. Indonesia is the most populous Muslim country in the world. You may not think of it that way, because it's in Southeast Asia, and it's a bunch of islands. But there are 800 million people who live in Indonesia. It's like the third or fourth most populous country in the world. And it's a Muslim country. Only since the tsunami, remember the tsunami that hit Indonesia? since the tsunami, there has been such a revival and such an awakening and such a spread of missions that they estimate, some estimates are, that now 30% of Indonesians are Christian. In India, which has been one of the hardest places to take the gospel for years, there's been various mission strategies going all the way back to William Carey in the late 1700s of how do we get the gospel into India. And an interesting thing has happened recently, and that is traditionally mission strategies that were made according to the wisdom of man, I'll just say it, were, if we can only reach the rich and the powerful, and we can get them to come to Christ, they can then influence all of those below them. Because India is a very top-down, still has a caste society. There's a few rich, powerful people at the top, and then there's lots and lots of people who are actually not even classified as fully human. They're called the Dalit, or the Untouchables. They're kind of a subhuman class, and they make up 300 million people in India. Well, we've always been trying, as Christians, by human wisdom, to reach the rich and the powerful. So we set up schools, and have these people put their kids in our schools, and we'd come in with business programs. And you know what's happened in the last 15 to 20 years? We've started to identify with the delete, with the untouchables. And now it's estimated that 1,500 people per day are coming to Christ in India. And the church is growing by millions. It's growing so fast that they don't have enough pastors or church facilities to keep up with the growth. The power of God, the wisdom of God, says, I will take something small, something unimportant, something ordinary, something tragic, something the world has no regard for, and I will use it to bring in people to my kingdom and glorify my name so that every tribe, tongue, people, and nation may praise my name. That's what the wisdom of God does, and he does it through the church. He does it through the church. So here's our takeaway points. You have a ministry. That may be one. That may just be one. Maybe you get one thing out of the message. You have a ministry. How do you view that ministry? Are you viewing it as something you're doing for the Lord? Or are you viewing it as something God has given you by His grace that will benefit others as His grace flows through you and that will bring glory to His name? If that's how you view your ministry, how are you doing your ministry? Are you doing your ministry by your own strength, for your own glory, or are you doing your ministry with open and empty hands to receive the grace of God as a vessel through whom God can pour His grace? Is your ministry focused on the gospel of Jesus Christ? Paul, the heart of his ministry was to proclaim the gospel and to proclaim Christ, which means it's all about him and not about us. Is that the heartbeat of your ministry? And last, do you see your ministry as connected to the church and the church as God's plan for how he's going to glorify himself in the world? Or is church just something you kind of do on Sunday mornings and then you go home and you don't really think about it the rest of the week? We all have a ministry. We've all been given it by God's grace. We all can be empowered by God's grace to do it in His strength and not our own. And He can be glorified in profound ways through each one of our lives. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the gift of being called into ministry. We thank you that you have had mercy upon us, the least, the smallest, the weakest, sometimes the most filled with doubt and anxiety, sometimes the most overflowing with sin. You have had mercy on us. You have redeemed us. You have loved us and you have called us into your service to bless others. Let us serve with the strength that you provide. Whether we're speaking or serving, let us do it in a way that reflects the fullness of your Holy Spirit at work in us and not our own strength. And let us never do it for our own glory, but only that Christ would be exalted. and that men and women, boys and girls, would come to praise you as their Lord and Savior. I pray this in Jesus' name.