Unlimited Grace

Bryan Chapell: I know what it means. We must say to others to be standing before God on my own goodness, and I realized that was not going to work. But God changed me. He put a U-turn in my life. He made me dependent upon him. I'm now humbled before God, not made right by my merit or my goodness. He loved me. He changed me. He put the U-turn in my life.

Guest (Male): So glad you joined us for today's Unlimited Grace, the audio broadcast ministry of pastor and author Bryan Chapell. In today's episode, Pastor Bryan shares the second half of a lesson from Ephesians 1. You can find this lesson and many others when you visit UnlimitedGrace.com. And while you're there, check out the new daily devotional podcast called Daily Grace.

Pastor Bryan will guide you through a devotion each day to help focus your attention on God's grace as you study his word. Watch and listen to each episode when you visit UnlimitedGrace.com today. And now, let's hear from Dr. Bryan Chapell as he shares the second half of the lesson from Ephesians 1, U-Turn Letters.

Bryan Chapell: This day we’re going to begin looking at the book of Ephesians, which is one of those early churches where God was explaining to his people through the apostle Paul how he would use the weak and sinful, frail and filthy, to build hope for the world. Let’s stand as we read these opening verses of the apostle Paul to the church at Ephesus as he begins to explain to them their role and his in changing our world.

The apostle Paul says this: Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Do you remember what happened? Paul tells us in Acts 9, remember about going along on his road, and suddenly there is thunder and lightning. He is struck blind, and he wonders why, and the Lord Jesus speaks to him and says, "You, Paul, are persecuting me."

Paul is left blind until he meets a prophet of the Lord Jesus who explains that he is now to be an apostle to the Gentiles. He’s to take the message to the Gentiles. You know why it’s so appropriate that he would become an apostle to the Gentiles and not to the Jews, that is his background? Because of what he tells us in Acts 22 was actually his testimony.

What does it mean to be a persecutor of Christians? You know, we can kind of put that in Sunday school terms that are so sanitized that we do not recognize what it really means. He says in Acts 22 that he persecuted the way of Jesus to the death.

But Paul was showing what he believed, that what had happened in him could happen in others too. It’s our great hope too, that we would believe that past does not determine future. That what God has done in the life of Paul, what he believed could happen in others, could happen in our lives too.

We look at past that we are ashamed of, at families that are fractured, of difficulties that we’ve gone through, and we believe that will mark us forever. And what the apostle does with the change of name and the new title and the new mission and the expectation that the will of God, not just the opinion of man, not just what was in us, but that the will of God could change people eternally, is willing to speak the truth of the gospel.

And he says so, as we must say so as well. I know what it means. We must say to others to be standing before God on my own goodness, and I realized that was not going to work. But God changed me. He put a U-turn in my life. He made me dependent upon him. I'm now humble. I'm small, Paul too, humbled before God, not made right by my merit or my goodness. He loved me. He changed me. He put the U-turn in my life.

And the fact that Paul believes that that can happen for others is plain not only in the return address, who he is, but in his understanding of those to whom he is writing. Who, after all, are the readers of this letter? He says, still verse one, that he is writing to the saints. Now when we hear that language, well, this doesn’t apply to me. To saints? Well, that’s not me.

But we have to keep reading. To the saints who are in Ephesus. Now this is the next U-turn. We should be saying, "What? Say what?" To the saints who are in Ephesus? I mean, that’s kind of like saying, "To all the violinists in the heavy metal band." Now Joshua tells me that Metallica has violinists, but that’s not the norm. To all the polar bears in the Sahara. To all the Cub fans in St. Louis. Okay, all the Cardinal fans in Chicago. You’re just saying this doesn’t fit. This doesn’t go together. It’s to all the saints in Ephesus? What are you talking about?

I mean, the people who were reading these letters knew what went on in Ephesus. Some of you may have been on some tour already in the part of the world where Ephesus is there in Northern Turkey, and you might recognize that even now, if you walk the streets of Ephesus and you come from where the sailors in this great port city of the ancient world would have come, they would have walked from the port up into the center town. And even now, etched in stone in the streets of Ephesus are the directions to the brothels, so the sailors couldn’t miss them.

But it wasn’t just the sailors who visited them. The greatest building that you will see if you go to Ephesus and its restored state even now is the library. Because the assumption of the cults that were in Ephesus is that superior knowledge, knowledge more than ordinary people, would get you merit and understanding of the higher state of whatever God they worshiped.

And so you needed the great knowledge that you could gain in the library at Ephesus. But there are tunnels under the street that connect the library to the brothels because you might not know your God only by greater knowledge but by ecstatic experience. And so the way to God was by greater knowledge or by greater immorality, either would work.

And the city itself, the fifth largest city of the ancient world, was consumed with different nationalities, different languages, different religions, but everybody pursuing the dollar. How much can we make and how fast? I mean, the whole city was oriented toward making more and to control it. The Romans came and took control as well, at a time that the emperor cult was also strong. That the way that you would get to God, if it wasn’t your local religion, was through the emperor of Rome, who was the God who would get you to your God.

Even now, as you go through the gates of Ephesus in its reconstructed state, you will find this remnant of a great statue to the Roman emperor Trajan. It’s a large globe on a pedestal with just the foot of Trajan remaining, saying, "My foot is over all the world." Two things from that example: one, even the ancients knew that the world was round, don't believe the myths that they didn't know. Second, they believed that the way to God was by the power and might of the Roman emperor and actually many believed and taught that he was a God too.

To be a saint in Ephesus had to be terribly hard. And to recognize that the Christians who gathered, gathered in little not churches like this, but little house churches in different places of the city, it must have been so discouraging and so hard. And yet the apostle Paul goes on and he says to the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus.

Now if it says faithful for Christ Jesus, I’d be worried. He’s writing to saints whose faithfulness is extraordinary. But he says to the faithful in Christ Jesus. Some of you will recognize that "in Christ Jesus" is one of the apostle Paul’s favorite expressions, used over 200 times in his epistles in the Bible. As he is reminding us what makes us faithful. It’s not what you do. It’s being faithful in Christ Jesus.

If you have a smartphone that you recharge at night by putting it in a cradle, you recognize that that cradle surrounds the phone and gives it power at the very same moment. And when the apostle Paul talks about our union with Christ, about being in Christ Jesus, he means both things. That we are surrounded, as it were, by the character and the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

That I am not faithful because I have been faithful enough. I am faithful because of my faith of the righteousness of Christ that surrounds me. I'm in him. I’m perceived as a saint, not because I’m saintly in every way, but because I’m in Christ Jesus. I’m surrounded by his righteousness, clothed in robes that are not my own, existing in the provision of Christ’s blood. That’s who I am, made right by the blood that washes away my sin and faith in that.

But at the very same moment that I am surrounded by the righteousness of Christ, I am receiving the power that comes from him. I am in Christ Jesus and he in me, so that the energy, the power, the strength that I need to be faithful is from him at the very same moment.

I couldn’t help but think of it just a few weeks ago when I was in Australia ministering in your behalf and met an old friend again. His name is Malcolm Gill, he’s a church leader in Australia, and I had not heard from him before the account of his own path of faith. He said that he was raised in a Christian home but it didn’t mean much to him until the time when his father, who was a policeman, in breaking up a robbery, was shot four times.

The man and son who shot him were imprisoned. And Malcolm’s father, the policeman, began to visit them in prison to say, "You can have a U-turn. The things that are wrong, the guilt that is yours, Christ Jesus can put away." I must tell you that that father and son who had shot him wondered what in the world is this policeman doing visiting us in prison, and were hugely suspicious and did not want to listen to him.

Until Malcolm’s mother began to care for the wife and mother of the two who had shot her husband. And as she began to care for those who had tried to kill her own husband, the two who were in prison began to listen to Malcolm’s father. Today Malcolm says there are two families who worship the Lord together: his family and the family of those who tried to shoot his father. They’re all believers. They’re all together in worshiping God.

But the sweetness of the story, as Malcolm explained it to me, you have to kind of say this in Australian, whatever that means. He said, "Bryan, what really moved me," he said, "my father is just an ordinary punter." I don't know what an ordinary punter is. It means an ordinary guy. "My father’s just an ordinary guy in whom Jesus showed himself strong." He was in Christ Jesus. Not made right by his doing, but believing that God had saved him. His life from the shooting, but also his heart for eternity.

He became empowered to do this extraordinary thing of caring for those who had tried to kill him. And then for the wife and mother of those who had tried to kill him. And the Lord used that because he was in Christ Jesus to change people. It’s the hope that we have too, isn’t it? That we look at people around us and sometimes we write them off and we say their lives are too bad or they’ve hurt me or they’ve wronged me in some way. There’s no way that I have something to say to them. But if you are in Christ Jesus, you recognize the righteousness you have is not your own. And the power you need is truly yours because you are in Christ Jesus.

His provision, not yours. If you know that, what does it mean you can actually say to people? You know, if you’re going to have the letter that gets through, you not only need the writer, return address, and the right address of the one to whom you’re sending, you need a stamp, right? And it has to be purchased and from the right authority. Did you notice the stamp that the apostle Paul puts on his letter? It’s right at the beginning. Verse two says, "Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ."

What is the grace? Well, it’s what Paul’s life exemplifies. I was going this way and God turned me around and brought me this way. All of this characterized my life: murder and sin and hatred. That was me. And now I’m talking to you about the grace and the peace that are from Christ. That he can take the sin away. And when the sin is gone, when I know I’m right with God, what happens and then there is peace. No longer striving, no longer trying to make it right, but to actually believe by the work of God, he makes me right with him and therefore I have peace.

Is there any reason to believe that? Well, yes, because the word comes from the right authority. Who says there’s grace and peace? God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Where does the grace and peace come from? But from your Heavenly Father who is over all things and from your eternal brother who has made a way to the grace and the peace that God intended him to give.

One of my father’s finest moments came at one of the extreme lows of his life. It was that moment when he learned that his son was going to go to prison. And I can remember when the family was called in to a little cell and it was just those last moments that the family would have with my brother before he was sent to prison for years. What would you say? What would you do?

What my father did through tears is said to my brother the words of "How Firm a Foundation." You’ll know these words. "When through fiery trials your pathway shall lie, my grace, all-sufficient, shall be your supply. The flames shall not hurt you; I only design your dross to consume and your gold to refine."

Even there in that cell, my father believed that a U-turn was possible. That the prison itself could be God consuming the dross and refining the gold in my brother’s heart and life. We saw a little of that gold refinement this last week. A number of you prayed, thank you for doing so, that my brother in prison would be released in time to come to my father’s funeral. Even the temporary out was not allowed ultimately because he would have had to cross state lines, and we learned that was not going to be possible.

And so we had to make the call to my brother to let him know he would not be allowed out. And we dreaded it. What it would be like, just the emotion and the hurt of not being able to attend your own father’s funeral. But when we called and told him that he would not be able to come, in our tears, my brother in prison began to comfort us.

"It’s okay. Dad is with the Lord and he’s not hurting anymore and the cancer’s gone and we will all be together again." And there was gold in there. As God was completing the U-turn and was saying to us, to my brother and to others: Grace to you and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Can you say it to others? So much depends upon knowing who you are. You’re the one who needs the grace. And knowing to whom you talk. They are just like you. Just bound toward hell and hurt apart from what you would say and the way the Lord would use you.

And so what we do in all of our weakness and all of our sin and all of our fallibility is we say, "But I’m in Christ Jesus. I’m robed in his righteousness, not mine. He shed his blood for me. That’s what I believe. And that’s why I’m speaking to you, so that you could know it too." It’s what makes our letters heard. That we know who the sender is and we know who the receiver is. They are the same ones who need to know: Grace and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

If you’re a person who needs that this day, I pray you will know. Those who are seated here, they are not right by their doing, but by the will of God who sent his son to save. And we believe that. Grace to you and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. This is our hope and our joy. Receive it in Jesus' name.

Father, would you work your word into our hearts yet again? That we who have heard the word might be the senders of it, not because we are worthy by our works but even in our humility are the best senders of the message of Jesus. We're in him. If there are those here, Father, who aren't, help them to know they can be.

If Paul the murderer of Christians could be saved by Jesus, so can the people who are here. If we’ve had these wonderful testimonies in recent weeks of people who’ve been down dark paths but you have put the U-turn into their lives and they now can be beyond their past looking to a future walk with Jesus. If my brother could have his gold refined, Father, it’s what you do by a great grace.

Help us each to claim it, even this day. That we might lift our eyes in the freedom of the gospel, not bound by prison walls, not bound by our sin, but set free by the grace and the peace that is in Christ Jesus. So give us these blessings we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

Friends, before you continue with your day, I'd love the opportunity to pray for you. Let's do that together now. Lord, thank you for delivering us from slavery to sin. Help us really to believe in that deliverance so that we continue through this day presenting ourselves to you as ones who have been brought from death to life in Christ. May the privileges of grace grant us the power of love to live for you. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

Guest (Male): That’s Pastor Bryan Chapell, and you’ve been listening to Unlimited Grace. If this message has been an encouragement to you, you can find a collection of more valuable resources at UnlimitedGrace.com. When you visit, you will find today’s message and many others from Pastor Bryan. Please be sure to join us next time as once again we endeavor to put Christ at the center of our efforts so that lives might be transformed by his unlimited grace. This ministry is brought to you by Unlimited Grace Media and continues to be made possible with your generous financial support.