To me, less than the least of all saints, hath this grace been given, to announce among the nations the gospel of the unsearchable riches of the Christ.
To me, less than the least of all the saints, hath this grace been given, to announce among the nations the gospel of the unsearchable riches of the Christ.
Let’s pray together.
Lord, we continue to worship You. We continue to behold You. Lord, fill this place continually right now with the riches of Your Word and Your grace. Bring us into a discovery of some of these unsearchable riches of Christ right now.
Lord, we look to You. Fill our hearts. Fill this time, Lord. We pursue after You right now. In Jesus’ name, amen.
So I imagine some of us, when we read this verse, notice something different. I might notice that he has been given grace to announce the gospel to the nations. I know especially that I noticed that my first times reading the book of Ephesians. I could see that he was called to preach the gospel, and this is just part of his package.
Now, almost all the verses afterward that talk about this mystery—all this mystery that we’re talking about this weekend—remained a mystery to me, probably through many readings of the book of Ephesians. But I saw this. Sometimes when you read this, you notice that grace was given to preach the gospel.
But you might also notice, especially gearing up for this weekend and thinking of the purpose from the ages, or this mystery that is revealed in this time period—this thing that God has had on His heart from eternity—you might notice this phrase, which is all glorious: the unsearchable riches of the Christ.
There are some riches of Christ that you haven’t searched out yet. There are some riches of Christ that are meant to be searched out. Now, “unsearchable” does not mean they cannot be searched. It means they are inexhaustible. You do not search and find the riches of Christ and then have all the riches of Christ. You keep searching, and you find more of the riches of Christ.
Those who have been saved for a minute, then saved for a week, then saved for some years, keep discovering the riches of His grace. More and more, these discoveries keep coming to us. It is like the more we see of Christ, the more we see that we are just getting to know Him.
That is why a very mature believer like the Apostle Paul could say in Philippians 3, “I want to know Him.” He was in a pursuit. He said, “I know not all of you have this pursuit, but whoever is mature, think this way. Pursue after this.” You are toward a goal; you are for the prize of a calling. But you are actually after knowing Christ.
So whatever things used to be gain to you, it is easy to drop them. It is easy to consider them nothing because you found Christ, and you found that you can find more of Him. So, “I want to know Him,” even though I do know Him. I am after more of Him.
There is a richness of Christ that those who have been born again have found. The riches of His grace have come upon you. We will read some Scriptures where we see that part of these riches is redemption through His blood, and some of these riches are that we have been accepted in the Beloved. There are so many riches.
Just from people’s singing voices tonight, there are some riches of Christ that we have discovered which enable us to praise Him and say that He is worthy of everything. Some of the riches that you have discovered, others in this room have not discovered yet.
This is part of the richness in Christ: in the body of Christ, He deposits His riches in a variety of ways. Then He releases them through one member of the body, then another. Some of our discovery of the riches of Christ happens through other believers. It happens when we are fellowshipping with each other.
Even our fellowship with each other turns into, “I want to know the Lord,” and then I start talking with a brother or a sister, and I find the Lord in that person.
Some of the riches are grand enlightenments—discoveries of revelation. Light bulbs click; Scriptures get opened up, and you have never seen it like that before. You just sit back and say, “Whoa, Christ is amazing.”
And some of the riches are when your feet hit the ground and it is time to do something. Through tears and cross and hardship, you experience the Lord’s grace bringing you through the roughest time—even a time when you barely had a moment to open your Bible or do all the disciplines that you really want to do.
But somehow, in that time period, God carries you through. A lot of the broken moms know about this. God somehow carries them through. On the other side, in a time when they seem to have no time and are just hanging on to some word they had five years ago, some richness of Christ starts to shine through these sisters.
It happens with all of us, though. As we go through different things, we discover some riches of Christ.
Something I was not expecting—and a few others have talked to me about this—is that as we read these passages, even as we prepared for this weekend, we see some of this all jumbled up together.
You do not expect the verses right before Paul gets into the grand things of the purpose of the ages to be such a simple thing: there is no division anymore between Jews and Gentiles, and he is able to share with those Gentiles this glorious gospel of the unsearchable riches of Christ.
Let me just read what happens after this. I am following along in Ephesians 3. I am all about preaching the gospel to unsaved souls. But with this gospel preacher, Paul, he does not just say, “Preach the gospel to the Gentiles.” He says, “The gospel of the unsearchable riches of Christ.”
To enlighten all with the knowledge of what is the administration of the mystery hidden throughout the ages in God, Who created all things; in order that now, to the principalities and authorities in the heavenlies, might be made known through the church the all-various wisdom of God, according to the purpose of the ages.
These are the grandest possible things that you could ever hear about: the purpose of the ages, which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord.
As soon as Paul touches the unsearchable riches of Christ, it is like an explosion. He takes a step back and sees from the past this purpose from eternity, before anything ever started. This purpose, which He purposed in Christ and which is now revealed, is this mystery unloaded—this secret that was kept in God’s heart through all the ages.
Now that Christ has shown up, the secret is made known to us. This huge package—basically everything that matters in the universe—is included as he announces the gospel to the Gentiles, to the nations, to anybody.
As the gospel is preached, Paul is not just preaching a basic beginning section or doctrine of Christian understanding, practice, or discovery. It is not just to get you started so you can grow into really big things that matter. In the Scripture’s way of phrasing it, it is different than how I have always thought of it.
What he is actually preaching is this package of Christ. Throughout Scripture, sometimes it says they preached the gospel; sometimes it says Philip the evangelist preached Christ to them. As they preach Christ, and someone receives Christ, they are receiving the good news.
They are believing a basic understanding of what Christ has done on the cross. They are believing in His resurrection; they are repenting; they are having their sins forgiven. But what is actually happening—if you see it from God’s point of view—is that Christ is being received by that soul, by that person.
As Christ is received, He is unsearchable. There are riches that come with Christ that you do not even know about. I do not know what you all knew about when you got saved, but you actually received so much when you got saved. It is like an explosion that happens inside of us, but it slowly unravels.
It is not that later, after you received that seed of the gospel, we need to bring in a new seed to help you grow as a disciple, or extra good news about walking as a Christian and overcoming your sins, or some new teaching about what God cares about in creation and His eternal purpose.
Instead, all these things are embedded right at the very beginning. As you announce the gospel, the whole package is received right there. Not the whole package is understood, but it is all there because the whole thing is in Christ.
Even the purpose that He purposed from eternity past, before He started creation, before He created the heavens and the earth—He purposed that purpose in Christ. The reason it is purposed in Christ is so that wherever Christ shows up, the whole thing is actually right there.
We are going to see this as we go through some Scriptures, but I just want to say, hallelujah. I also want to say, I have not known this. I have just been like a brand-new student of the Lord, making a brand-new discovery, and I want to let you know in all excitement and joy that this stuff is so wonderful.
In my case especially, when I got saved, I was saved while I was learning how to preach the gospel. I was reading a tract that I was training to share with unsaved people, but I was not saved yet. While I was training, I got saved.
After I got saved, I told some people, and then I told some more. Some of the others got saved. It was so exciting to see other souls saved. Besides my own salvation, it was like the biggest joy in the world. I was like, “This is something.”
It has always been something. Sometimes, depending on your environment, you may not be around gospel preaching much. It was not that I was around it much. It was just so exciting when someone got saved.
I got my hands on every book I could find about gospel preaching. But I can tell you, I never read anything that talked about preaching the gospel of the unsearchable riches of Christ.
It is okay that I never read that, because whatever everybody was talking about was actually preaching the gospel of the unsearchable riches of Christ. There is no separate thing. Even though all of us were dummies—even though I was a total dummy, teaching people, “Let me give you some ABCs. Let me give you some John 3:16 diagrams and some Romans Road”—what was actually happening as people received Christ was an explosion of some unsearchable richness found in Christ.
That life starts to grow, as you have seen with some who become Christians. Things just change, even despite us and despite our failures in helping people.
A struggle I have had because of my heart for preaching the gospel is that I have not preached the gospel enough. I think I have repented. I feel like I have repented more than anybody I know for not preaching the gospel. I am the king of repenting for not preaching the gospel—the king of not preaching the gospel.
The Lord is always bringing it back to me in different ways. When I saw something more, I saw a growth of the gospel: Christ is not only my Savior, but Christ is saving me from my sin problem. He is delivering me so I can walk with the Lord and actually overcome sins.
The good news just got gooder. It was not that I had to stop preaching the good news. Sometimes I accidentally share with an unbeliever, “It is so good that you can actually stop sinning.” It is okay, because whatever is fresh upon you—if it is Christ, and you just discovered Christ—you can share that with an unbeliever.
It is totally okay to share the bare bones. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15:
Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures;
And He was buried;
And He hath been raised on the third day according to the Scriptures;
And He appeared to many.
That is so basic and amazing, and it is actually unsearchable. If you have walked with the Lord some, you know it means more than you thought it meant that He died on the cross. It means more than you thought it meant that He rose from the dead. It means more than we thought it meant that He ascended.
There are so many layers on top of this. It has changed my whole life because He rose from the dead. I have risen from the dead, and I have resurrection life.
Even in the book of Romans, Paul says, “I am ready to preach the gospel to you who are in Rome,” and then he unloads it as he writes the letter. He shares what we would say is the gospel: everyone has sinned, no one has done everything right, and everyone has fallen short of the glory of God.
Then there is salvation—being justified freely by believing on the Lord Jesus. Here is the good news. But he keeps going. On top of Jesus dying on the cross for you, he says in Romans 6 that your old man is crucified.
He is not telling them, “Let me add something to your salvation in baptism.” He says, “Do you not remember that you got baptized?” Everyone who has been baptized has been identified with Christ. If you have been identified with Him in His death and burial, then you are also identified with Him in His resurrection.
You have a brand-new life. You should not go on sinning so grace may abound, because now your life is different. That is something more: a richness of His grace larger than what we typically discover when we are first overwhelmed by the riches of grace that forgive our sins and save us from hell.
But as the gospel keeps unfolding, it is more and more.
All right, I am not supposed to talk about that. I just needed to. Okay, one of these verses—this is one of my favorite verses that I noticed back in the day in Ephesians 1.
I was all about getting saved and all about my salvation because I was just discovering it. You have to know, I did not get help that well. Even though I had my sins forgiven and my life was changed, I did not know how to be cleansed as a believer.
I did not know how simply, as in 1 John 1, to confess my sins as soon as they happened and be cleansed. We can be cleansed tonight as believers. If you are a believer in this room and there is something in your heart, and you are saying, “Ah, I know I have been failing. I know I have been walking halfway,” remember Christ.
It is this simple because all the complexities and all the amazing backflips that had to happen have already happened on the cross. Everything that was impossible happened on the cross. So it is as simple as confessing your sins.
As believers, we can confess our sins because God is faithful and righteous. Jesus Christ, the Righteous One, stands before the Father because He died for us. The Father sees us, forgives us our sins, and cleanses us from all unrighteousness.
If you are a believer and you have something going on right now, it is as simple as saying, “Lord, I am sorry. This is a sin.” The blood of God’s Son right now will wash you clean as if you have never sinned. All the riches of His forgiveness that you experienced when you got saved are right back. You have found Christ again. You are back in His presence.
For me, when I first got saved, I did not know this. In worship, I only occasionally found that place. But whenever I found it, I was like, “Oh yes, I just got cleansed.” I did not know how it happened. I just knew I remembered Christ, forgot about my sins, and repented a lot of times.
As I was saved and forgiven, this verse in Ephesians 1 stood out to me. Let me back up to Ephesians 1:6, because it says that we have been accepted in the Beloved, or taken into favor in the Beloved. This is an amazing thing.
In Whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of offenses, according to the riches of His grace.
Here we are at the bare-bones basic: yes, I have redemption through His blood. This is how we begin as believers. You have repented, you have believed, and the blood of God’s Son, Jesus Christ, has cleansed you from all your sins.
Whatever your Christian background is, this is where it begins. You see something of Christ. I knew something of the gospel, but I did not know something of my own forgiveness. Then I found it. I confessed my sins to the Lord personally, and my own sins became this experience: in Christ, I had redemption through His blood.
Have you had redemption in His blood? This is not an old story. It is a current story. At the same time, it is the oldest story.
This is a gospel verse, right? But if you take one little step back in discovering what you have in Christ, you find that we have been accepted in the Beloved. We have been taken into favor in the Beloved. What you find is that your salvation is actually found in Christ.
It is like the story of the prodigal son in Luke 15. The father runs, grabs him, and brings him home. The son is dirty, he smells, and he has all that pig stuff upon him. But the father wraps him in the best robe in the house.
The fragrance of that robe is pleasing to the father. He sees the son now, all clean. God the Father accepts us in His beloved Son. When we were saved, we were brought into Christ. Our salvation is found there.
This is one of the riches of Christ that we discover. Maybe some of us discovered this when we were first saved. That is awesome. But a lot of us discovered getting saved, and later found out, “Where is my salvation?”
As you try to please the Lord and then you fail, somehow you find your way back and get cleansed. But eventually you find out that all of your salvation is not in some spot inside of you. All your salvation is embedded in Christ.
Where the Father accepts me is not because I did well today. It is because Christ is accepted. It is because Christ is the Beloved. My job as a believer—my response as a believer—is to hide myself in Christ. Everything is okay then.
If I sin, I need to confess those sins because they step me into the mud outside of fellowship. I do not step outside of my salvation. I am in Christ, but I cannot see Him because I am covered in the mud of sin.
So I repent. I say, “I am not supposed to be in the mud. This is sin. This is not right.” Then suddenly the mud is washed clean because I am surrounded with Christ. The blood cleanses me, and I realize, “Whoa, I am in my salvation, which is Christ.”
There are all these riches to discover. Somebody taught me, “You are justified now. You are right before God.” I was like, “Oh, you do not know.” But they said, “You are right before God because you are accepted in the Beloved.”
I am not trying to preach the gospel tonight, but I love to preach the gospel to believers too. Even when we say things that we think are small, what we are saying is the unsearchable riches of Christ.
We have more to discover about being accepted in the Beloved. If we all just stepped back in our chairs for a moment and realized, “God has totally accepted me in Christ right now,” how has He done this? How does He smile at me? He sees Christ.
He has placed eternal life inside of me, but He has also placed me in eternity in Christ. If we just sit back for a moment, there are some riches for us to glean, both in discovery and in experience.
Sometimes something in our hearts feels like it is missing or wrong. The Lord is almost trying to draw us back, saying, “That is not where I am going to accept you. I am not going to accept you over here or over there. You are already accepted in the Beloved.”
There is just so much more.
Let me take another step back. In Ephesians 1, Paul begins by praising the Lord:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who hath blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ.
Do you see what is going on with this guy? He has found the unsearchable riches of Christ. He says all of us have been blessed with all these blessings. He has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ.
This is a guy who knows we have something in the Beloved, and it is everything. There are a lot of spiritual blessings out there, and a lot of us are hungry for them and after them. But where are they? He has already blessed us.
When you received that package of the gospel, the unsearchable riches of Christ came with it. You are surrounded with the Beloved. He has already blessed us with every spiritual blessing. You just have to find them. You have to search them out.
These unsearchable riches are something to mine—some gold to discover together. This is an adventure that we are on together.
All these blessings He has blessed us with in Christ are embedded in the church, in different souls and different believers. Some spiritual blessing to you will come from another believer whom God uses to bring a blessing to you.
The riches of Christ are part of His saints too. It is the largeness of Christ in the body of Christ. He blesses us in all these different ways. Suddenly you are surrounded with the Beloved—not just in the heavenlies, but He has brought the heavenlies down upon the church.
You are surrounded with the Beloved right now because Christ is in the believers. The life of Christ is hidden in these saints. Sometimes we see each other according to the flesh; we see each other when we step outside of Christ and walk in flesh or carnality.
But there is gold inside of there. There is Christ inside of there. We are called, as 2 Corinthians 5 says, not to know each other after the flesh.
If any one is in Christ, there is a new creation; the old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.
If you are in Christ, if you have been accepted in the Beloved, you are part of this new creation. In this new creation in Christ, every single thing God is after is actually inside this package.
If you get to the end of the Bible, there is a new heaven and a new earth. Everything has been immersed by fire, but it is not just normal fire. It is like the fire of having to go through Christ. The cross has crossed out all the old creation.
If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation. You start to discover the new heavens and the new earth. They sum up together, and all the universe shines Christ. There is the glory of the Lord upon the new creation at the very end.
Then you see the New Jerusalem coming down. It is not only shining Christ; it is super-shining Christ. It is like the body of Christ, the house of God, the temple of God. It is something amazing. This is the new creation.
If you are in Christ, this is your spot. This is our sweet spot. Everything God is doing in the universe—everything He is purposing toward in the new creation—is all here, where we have been brought.
Now I have not even gotten to the cool verses in Ephesians 1, where it talks about His eternal purpose.
According as He hath chosen us in Him before the world’s foundation, that we should be holy and blameless before Him in love.
He chose us. When did He choose us? Before the world’s foundation. The spiritual blessings in the heavenlies that all of us have in Christ are according to a plan He had before He founded the earth.
Before He started creation—before “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth”—He purposed something. In His purpose, He wanted to bring us into something. He chose us in Him before the world’s foundation.
This is straight Scripture. I am not making this up. I just do not always notice it. I noticed Ephesians 1:7: “I have redemption through His blood,” because so much of what I am looking at is, “What do I got? What do I got? What do I got?” But because of that, I miss, “What do I really got?”
From God’s viewpoint, you have no idea. He knew your name before He said, “Heavens and earth, get created.” Before He started to speak and create, He had this thought, this idea, and He decided something: He chose you.
You know that you chose Him. When you got saved, you had to choose Christ. You had to call on His name, however you did it, whatever you prayed. There is a choosing that goes on.
But when you take a step back and look around you in Christ, you are like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Before the world was founded, He actually chose me in Christ.” He knew all this stuff was going to happen.
He did not choose me just to get out of hell. He chose me to be blameless. That seems impossible, except if I am accepted in the Beloved, except if He clothes me with Christ: to be holy and blameless in Christ, in love.
Having marked us out beforehand for adoption through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will.
What are we talking about? We are talking about His will—the good pleasure of His will. This is what God actually wanted to do. Before there was anything to even be right about as far as creatures go, He had a pleasure in mind.
He had something that He actually wanted, something that was the good pleasure of His will. It has to do with you and me. It is crazy to think about this, but according to the good pleasure of His will, He marked you out ahead of time.
How far ahead of time? He chose you before the world’s foundation. Knowing your story, He knew what He would have to do. This is why Scripture says the Lord Jesus is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.
If God decided to create and to create man, He knew the cross would have to happen. With foreknowledge, understanding what would happen, God saw this. But He did it, and He marked you out ahead of time.
I am not trying to get into, “How do I understand how God could do this?” It is more like this: we are part of something huge, the largest thing in the universe. Actually, it is larger than the universe, because it includes the spiritual things beyond us and the physical things of the universe.
It includes the good pleasure of God’s heart. There is something on His heart, and then He creates. That something is, “I want you to be brought into Christ.” He is going to do something all glorious.
This package of the gospel of the unsearchable riches of Christ goes way back to eternity. It shows up before the earth was founded. God embedded all these riches in Christ.
Before Jesus was crucified—even while He was alive on the earth—so many things pointed to His going to the cross. In the first gospel messages, John the Baptist is preaching, Jesus walks by, and John says:
Behold, the Lamb of God, Who taketh away the sin of the world.
Even then, it was all pointing to what would happen at the cross. All those Old Testament prophecies about the cross show that God had this plan all along. He knew what He would have to do.
At the fullness of time, when the cross happened, He could go all the way back in time. All those blood sacrifices of animals added up and pointed right to the cross.
In Romans 3, through His forbearance, God was able to save and cleanse them by the blood of animals because they all pointed to the cross. God was just in doing this because of that fullness-of-time moment.
Now, by believing on the Lord Jesus, He is able to save us and justify us.
To the praise of the glory of His grace, wherein He hath taken us into favor in the Beloved; in Whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of offenses, according to the riches of His grace.
The first riches of His grace that come to us are redemption through His blood. Then we are accepted into favor in the Beloved.
According to the riches of His grace, which He hath caused to abound toward us in all wisdom and intelligence, having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself, for the administration of the fullness of times, to sum up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens and the things upon the earth.
Then you start to read, and the package opens up. Suddenly there is the mystery of His purpose. At the fullness of times, He is accomplishing that purpose. What He is after in the future, with all the things in the heavens and on the earth, is that He is summing them all up in Christ.
This is what God is after. Love is the sum of the whole law. In the same way, to sum up all things in Christ does not mean you add them all and they equal Christ. With Christ comes all that stuff. He is the summation of it all.
Sometimes, as we discover the riches of His grace, it is like kid puzzles. Kid puzzles are better than adult puzzles because adult puzzles become a mess and you lose all the pieces. Kid puzzles have a board, and you put the pieces on the board where they go.
There are pieces we keep mining and discovering as we search out the unsearchable riches of Christ. I have this piece of the blood. I have this piece of His life that can live through me, so I can overcome sin. I have this piece: God has something larger than just me; He has something for all creation.
In the New Jerusalem, there are angels at all the gates. God is doing something larger than even humans. There is all this stuff.
Unfortunately, among us Christians, as we grab puzzle pieces, we huddle together with everyone who has similar puzzle pieces. Maybe your puzzle pieces connect with my puzzle pieces, and we say, “That is my kind of believer.”
But if we put the puzzle pieces on the board where they go, they start falling into place. God’s purpose from all eternity past is not one of these puzzle pieces. It is like the board that holds all the puzzle pieces.
The thing that unites us is that He unites us under the headship of Christ. That is the only sweet spot where we can all hang out. You have discovered something I have never discovered. If we had to talk it out in our flesh, we might argue.
But if you have really discovered a richness of Christ, I want to find it. Even if you are half wrong, you are half right. You are half Christ, you know what I mean? There are riches there.
In 1 Corinthians 3, Paul says to see how you build in the church. But as a wise architect, he laid a foundation, and no one can move that foundation. It is Christ. He is the solid rock.
This is the sweet spot where all the good things we find in Christ show up. In that spot, you can see how He can do something glorious with the church and with us, and how He can get us out of our petty stuff and bring us into something higher and better.
When we get into God’s will from the ages, we are not adding a new teaching. We are not adding something that dismisses any treasure you have found in Christ. We are saying there are unsearchable riches of Christ, and what we have found is just the beginning.
From God’s perspective, there is something larger than any of us knows about. We want to mine that thing. We want to discover it and see it. Sometimes we see a glimpse, and it is life-changing.
Any insight of Christ changes your life, no matter how it happens. The more you see of Christ, the more it affects how you walk.
I was talking about preaching the gospel and how this verse in Ephesians 3 almost seems like it should be in a different chapter or another book. He could talk about preaching the gospel to the nations somewhere else. But in Ephesians, as he talks about the mystery of God’s will and the purpose from the ages, you would expect him simply to be huddling with believers talking about this.
But instead, he says he is preaching the gospel of the unsearchable riches of Christ. These things should not be together, but they are together because announcing the glad tidings is part of the whole package.
As you stand and see this whole thing of what God is doing—His purpose for all things—and if you can squint your eyes and imagine the riches that you have heard about from other people, or all the Christians who see something you do not quite see, imagine they are treasures, embedded treasures.
Preaching and announcing Christ is like letting God’s purpose flow through us. It is a glorious experience of the purpose of God flowing in us and flowing out of us, because it is Christ.
When you announce Christ, you are not announcing your limited knowledge about God. You are announcing the unsearchable riches of Christ. When we preach the gospel, we share the life of Christ with someone, and that life is beyond you. It is beyond what you know about, but you have it because it is in Christ.
What you have is something you do not even know you have. As you preach it, as you share the unsearchable riches of Christ, you do not even know that you have given someone something way beyond what you have ever discovered, because you shared Christ.
Embedded in Christ is all of His purpose, all of the new creation, everything He has. It is all right there. So as you announce Christ, even to an unbeliever, you are sharing Christ. And of course, you share Christ with believers too. That is what Paul does in Ephesians—he announces more and more of all this.
As we share Christ with one another, we share the life of Christ. It is like an explosion of something more than what you have even got.
Have you ever talked to somebody after a halfway bad message, and they were just like, “Wow, did you hear that?” Sometimes you endure a message thinking, “Maybe I can get something out of this.” But somebody else is exploding with light bulbs and life bulbs—whatever you call them. They found Christ.
I do not even know if it had to do with the message, but somehow what they received was beyond what I thought came out in the message. Every time we preach the gospel, every time we share Christ with one another in fellowship, it is like this.
Even if you do the best job you can do, you are a broken, cracked vessel—a jar with treasure inside. You are a cracked jar of clay, but Christ comes through you, and it is all glorious.
What you know of Christ going through you is wonderful, but it is limited because Christ is unsearchable. But what you share as you share Christ is the whole package. Hallelujah. This is just so cool.
Another gospel verse in Ephesians 2 was my favorite as I got saved. It took me years to get saved because I was trying to get saved by changing my life.
For by grace ye are saved through faith; and this not of yourselves: it is God’s gift: not on the principle of works, that no one might boast.
This is a good gospel understanding. It is a treasure, a grace, a richness of Christ that you find. But then I read Ephesians 2:10, and it was a game changer.
For we are His workmanship, having been created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God hath before prepared that we should walk in them.
I thought we were just talking about the basics of getting saved by grace and not by my works. That is true. But when you get saved, God is creating you in Christ Jesus. You are now His workmanship.
Remember: what He purposed was for you to be holy and blameless in Christ and in His love. His purpose is something grand. I am saved by grace, not by works, but what is going on is that I am in Christ Jesus; I am created in Christ Jesus.
Remember 2 Corinthians 5: if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation. This is what He is doing. He has brought you into the new creation. He is creating Christ in you layer upon layer, letting you discover riches and riches and riches.
He has created you in Christ Jesus to do good works. These good works are not brand new, as though God had never thought of them before.
Sometimes I have taught a class with kids without knowing I would be teaching the class. I get thrown in, and I say, “All right, class, today we are…” Then I make something up in the moment. Usually, I do a filler icebreaker to give myself enough time to figure out what I am doing. This is a terrible way to do kids’ classes.
These kids’ things tonight have been planned out beforehand. But not like God’s beforehand. God beforehand, as He marked you out before the creation of the world, had in mind some things for you to walk in—some good works for you to walk in.
This changes everything. It changes questions like, “God, what is Your will for me to do today? What is Your will for me? Where do You want me to go to school? Where do You want me to work? Who do You want me to marry? What am I to do right now? What is Your project for me?”
Take a step back and realize that God is creating you in Christ Jesus. He has this huge will of bringing in the new creation. Lord, I am up for whatever small thing You want me to do, because every small thing He created for you to do in Christ Jesus is part of the really large thing that He is doing.
All the minor wills of God that we discover, as we try to practice His will and do His will, are a bigger deal than we realize. It is also a bigger deal when we do not do the will of God.
When we neglect the will of God and delay the will of God, it is such a cut into the heart of God when we are not willing to do His will. It makes obedience that much more wonderful and that much more serious. Let me actually do this.
I never thought it was such a big deal not to do God’s will because I could repent and be forgiven.
Especially with gospel preaching, you have to know I am so scared of people. Unsaved people scare me unnaturally. So I neglected it. Sometimes I did it if I felt good, if I ate the right meal, and stuff like that.
If I was having a great day, I would jump up on a picnic table and tell everybody about Jesus because I was just in love with Jesus. But other times, somebody would walk by who was way cooler than me, and I would feel that quiet voice in my heart say, “Go ahead and talk to them.” I would say, “No, Lord, not right now. No.”
So many times. Then I was praying, and the Lord brought to mind praying for my friends. There was a work He had prepared for me to do with my best friend that I grew up with: to go and share with him the gospel of the unsearchable riches of Christ.
I did not even know it was the unsearchable riches of Christ, but I knew some riches of His grace that I could share. I knew Christ, and He wanted me to share this. I was praying for my friend, working up to it, saying, “Someday I am going to go share with my friend.” This was the scariest thing for me.
Months later, after I had been praying, working up, and training—but still sensing the Lord say, “Go and share with your friend”—I got the news that my friend had died of cocaine use or something. My friend was dead.
This was a work that I knew God was calling me to walk in. I do not want to make this only about evangelism, but I felt it was a work that God had prepared for me to do.
When I saw my friend in the coffin—I can see him right now—I was like, “Lord, I do not want to do this ever again. I want to do Your will.” At that time, I had no clue, with God’s largeness of will, how much this stuff really means.
You might think Jeffrey was good from there on, but I was not good from there on. One more time, with my grandmother, it happened again. Same thing happened, and when I saw her, again I repented.
I ended up in Memphis, Tennessee. Some of these guys are from Memphis. I did it again with some random guy in a restaurant. I felt nudged, but now it was serious. I was like, “I am not doing this again. I need to stop being scared.”
In Memphis, I started preaching the gospel every day, finding whoever I could find—talking to police officers and every homeless person I could find. Every night, I would go share at least one time, just to get over my fear.
All I want to say is that we have no idea how much it matters, what a privilege it is to do the will of God, and what a privilege it is to share the unsearchable riches of Christ with anybody.
It is a privilege to share with believers. Some of us have discovered this. But it is a glorious thing to unload the life of Christ to an unbeliever and watch that explosion of life happen. They receive something more than what we have.
Now I want to turn to Romans 10 and talk about this concept. We have been looking at a salvation verse and taking a step back to see it from God’s perspective. This has to do with His will, and He is bringing you into His will.
In Romans 10, Paul takes Scripture from Deuteronomy and says not to say, “Who shall ascend into heaven?” or “Who shall descend into the abyss?” He interprets it with the gospel.
Who ascended to heaven? That is to bring Christ down. Do not say this, asking who will do this to save us, because He actually came down. The hard part is over with. Do not ask who will bring something up from the abyss, because He actually rose from the dead.
The word is near thee, in thy mouth and in thy heart.
This is the word of faith which we preach. This is our gospel message.
If thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and shalt believe in thy heart that God hath raised Him from among the dead, thou shalt be saved.
This is the gospel in a sentence. Paul might easily preach this message. With your heart you believe, and it is counted as righteousness, because it is a righteous thing for you to be made right with God. God found a righteous way when Christ was crucified and rose from the dead.
You believe in your heart that Jesus died on the cross, was buried, and rose from the dead. But what makes it an actual salvation thing is that you open your mouth and say, “Jesus is Lord.”
With the mouth confession is made unto salvation.
There has to be a stance, a step, a receiving, a confessing. When we believe, that salvation transition happens as we receive the glorious unsearchable riches of Christ. It is as simple as the words in our heart that we believe and the words in our mouth.
We open our mouth and say, “Jesus is Lord,” and suddenly we are saved.
Every one whosoever, who shall call on the name of the Lord, shall be saved.
This is what happens. You believe, but you also call out to Him. You say, “Jesus is Lord.”
Now, we may feel like, “All right, I know about this.” But let me say again: this is the unsearchable riches of Christ. How much of these riches have you discovered? How much is an old basic of the gospel, and how much have you discovered layers upon it?
Have you ever sensed that you were getting overpowered and defeated by something, but you believed in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead? Remember the good news from Romans 6: we were buried with Him in baptism, but we were also raised with Him. There is no need to go on sinning because your old man has been crucified with Christ.
Now you have this newness of life to live by. If you believe as a believer that God raised Him from the dead, you know you have resurrection life inside you.
As you are getting defeated by something and feel under something, open your mouth and confess, “Jesus is my Lord.” As you confess, you are delivered. You are not getting saved from hell for the first time, but you are discovering a layer of the riches of the Lord.
Sometimes you have to make Him Lord over some area, and then you are delivered. Sometimes it is as simple as that because all the hard work of the cross has already happened.
I do not know everybody in the room, but I know there are a lot of gospel lovers in the room. If you love this glorious good news, I do not think you would mind confessing Jesus as Lord with me.
In case there is somebody who is not in the good of Jesus being their Lord, I want to give us an opportunity. I think there is belief in the room and in all our hearts that God raised Him from the dead. The belief is right there. It is so easy. It is near your heart.
There is another thing that is so easy: at your mouth, you are able to say, “Jesus is Lord.” It is right there.
I feel this love for the good news, this love for Christ, the unsearchable riches of Christ. I feel like we will mine a richness of Christ even right now. He is so good, and He is our Lord. We are meant to bring all our stuff to Him.
If you have something where you feel Jesus is not actually your Lord, and you feel defeated in this, remember that He has put His resurrection life in you. You believe that He raised from the dead. You believe it is possible.
If you have a sin you cannot repent of because you think it is impossible, do you believe that God raised Jesus from the dead? That is all you have to believe. If that is possible, then the life that raised Jesus from the dead will raise you out of this muck and mire and out of these sins, to overcome and conquer them.
All that is needed right now is to believe and confess, “Jesus is Lord,” and He is Lord even over this defeat. So I am going to count down from three down to nothing, and we are going to say, “Jesus is Lord,” together, if you are okay with that.
Three, two, one.
Jesus is Lord.
The Bible says in Romans 10:13, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved”—shall be delivered.
How then shall they call on Him in Whom they have not believed?
We have believed that God raised Him from the dead, hallelujah. We believed that, so we were able to call on Him. Whoever called on Him shall be saved, shall be delivered. But how can they do that unless they believe? Belief has to happen first.
And how shall they believe on Him of Whom they have not heard?
If you have not heard the Word, what can you believe in? You need to hear the word of faith, the word of the gospel, this glorious gospel of the unsearchable riches of Christ.
And how shall they hear without one who preaches?
How can they hear that wonderful word unless someone opens their mouth and preaches the unsearchable riches of Christ? Unless someone opens their mouth and shares Christ—even the basics:
Confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in thy heart that God hath raised Him from among the dead, and thou shalt be saved.
Jesus died on the cross, He was buried, He rose from the dead, and He is alive right now. If someone opens their mouth and shares even those basic things, someone can believe. Then they can call on the Lord, and they can be saved and delivered.
And how shall they preach unless they have been sent?
According as it is written:
How beautiful the feet of those that announce the glad tidings of peace, of those that announce the glad tidings of good things!
This is kind of a strange verse, but there is a person sent. As they walk with those feet—like in Ephesians 6, equipped with the gospel of peace—those are beautiful feet.
According to His purpose from the ages, God has works prepared ahead of time for those created in Christ Jesus. He says, “Share Christ with this person.” You take your steps, open your mouth, and share Christ with someone. Your feet are so beautiful.
It might be that you are just beginning. You may have just gotten saved, but you can say, “This is what happened to me. I once was blind; now I see. Let me tell you what I have seen and heard. Let me tell you what I believed and how my sins were forgiven.”
You may have no idea what you are talking about. You barely know that it happened to you. It is like the man in the Gospels saying, “I once was blind; now I see.” They ask, “What is His name?” He says, “I do not know, but I know what happened to me.”
Right away, even the Apostle Paul, when he was first saved, was able to turn around and share the gospel. He did not know much of the gospel. Later, he knew he was sharing the unsearchable riches of Christ. But at the beginning, you have no idea what you are sharing. Yet you are sharing the unsearchable riches of Christ.
From God’s perspective, as you open your mouth in fellowship or to share with someone, He is sending you with beautiful feet to share the unsearchable riches of Christ.
We have no idea what path the Lord has given us or how glorious this calling is. The flow of His purpose is meant to flow out of our mouths as we share Christ.
I can tell you, I have never known this. I have been discovering God’s purpose for some years now, and it is glorious from many different angles. I sit back all the time, and it has changed my life.
But I see from the Word what happened with these men in Scripture, and I see what has been happening with many believers even when we do not know it. As we share Christ, the purpose from the ages flows right through us. We become bearers and sharers of God’s purpose from the ages—of the unsearchable riches of Christ.
Let me tell you, I am almost done. There is a verse that came to me right at the beginning. It is Acts 20:24. This became a life verse to me as I was consecrating and starting to follow the Lord.
Paul was about to go to Jerusalem. He was going to get hurt and tied up. Prophecies were given to him, and he knew what would happen. Everybody was weeping, and he said, “Why are you breaking my heart?” He knew this was a path he was supposed to walk.
This path led him to jail, where he was when he wrote the book of Ephesians. It led him through this whole path, and others were saved as he preached.
But I make no account of my life as dear to myself, so that I may finish my course, and the ministry which I received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the glad tidings of the grace of God.
When I first read this, I did not know what my course was, but I knew God wanted me to share the gospel. So I thought, “This is my course. This is what I am after.” That is not wrong. It is just that I was scratching the surface of the unsearchable riches of Christ.
I make no account of my life as dear to myself. I give up old things. I give up things that would take me away from being able to finish my course in the ministry I received from the Lord Jesus.
What is that ministry? What is Paul’s ministry that he received from the Lord Jesus? If I were going to tell you without knowing this verse, I would talk much more about establishing churches, building up churches, writing glorious things, and making known the insights of God’s purpose.
But Paul says the ministry he was given from the Lord Jesus was to testify the gospel of the grace of God. What is the whole ministry the Apostle Paul was given? It sounds too basic for the Apostle Paul, but this is his course that he is trying to finish.
At the end of his life, he says, “I have finished the course.” There is a prize for him. He is going to see the Lord smile. The Lord is going to say, “Well done, good and faithful,” as in Matthew 25.
He knows this is his course. But what does he describe his course as? To testify the gospel of the grace of God. That seems too shallow.
Through the years, it was not shallow for me in the beginning. I was like, “Yes, this is what it is all about.” I was trying to preach the gospel, deny myself, and not account my life as more important than that.
Then I found there are all kinds of cool things. The course is that we are being conformed to the image of Christ, the church is going to be glorious, and there is all this more. I thought there was a higher calling than just testifying the gospel of the grace of God.
Even though Acts 20:24 was still my favorite verse, I almost tucked it away. I hid this verse. It was still like a life verse, but the Lord kept whispering it and bringing it back to me.
I thought, “Lord, I am finding out so much more stuff. My course is so much more.” I did not understand it anymore. It was like a big riddle to me.
The Lord is opening it up to me afresh right now and letting me know that everything is included when you testify the gospel of the grace of God. You are preaching the unsearchable riches of Christ.
I own this verse right now. This is a course that I want. I want to let the unsearchable riches of Christ come out of my mouth. I want to finish my course and have the Lord say, “You had no idea what you were sharing, but you were sharing it. You were sharing Christ. You were doing it.”
All of us, this is a normal course that God has set us on. It is the beginning, and it is the height. When you testify the gospel—this glorious gospel of Christ—and testify the gospel of the grace of God, you are sharing the unsearchable riches of Christ.
I have been repenting again, but it is like the Lord has not been condemning or convicting me. I was trying to repent, saying, “Oh, I just want to preach the gospel more. I feel like I have been neglecting this.”
The Lord was like, “No, no, no, no. There is no message tonight to convict anybody. There is a message tonight to call us to discover these riches.”
It is a message to call us to discover the riches even as we open our mouths and share Christ with others.
There is this little odd thing my kids have found me doing, and it is really fun: we have been answering spam calls on my phone. I get a lot of them.
I have been sharing the gospel of Christ with some of them because I do not have that many gospel friends anymore. Sometimes I cannot share with them because they hang up, but occasionally—maybe out of a hundred—I have talked to three who seemed open.
But I feel, even now, that this is so wonderful: just to talk about Jesus. Just right now, to be with you all and open my mouth. This is a privilege—to be in this room, for all of us to share Christ together.
I know that upon this room are the unsearchable riches of Christ. This is what we are about. This is what we are about this weekend. This is what we are pursuing after.
The Lord is calling us to pursue Him, to know Him more, and to know Him even as we open our mouths and testify the gospel of the unsearchable riches of Christ.
Let’s pray together.
Lord, I just thank You so much. I thank You for the grace, the riches of Your grace, that are upon us. I thank You for these treasures that are in this room right now.
Lord, I thank You for Your heart that is breaking wide open for us, as You have prayed for us, as You care for every soul in this room, as You are calling us and drawing us.
Lord, we delight to follow You. We say, “Yes, Lord, we follow You. We come.” Lord, we say, “Here I am; send me.”
Lord, if You have a spot for our feet to be beautiful in, send us so that we can be part of what You are doing, so that we can be part of Your eternal purpose—Your purpose from the ages.
Lord, flow us in this weekend. Flow us in our lives into this work that You are doing, that You created us in Christ Jesus to do.
We worship You, Lord, and we bow down. We say yes and amen, and Jesus is our Lord. In Jesus’ name, amen.