Lesson 18.

UNSEARCHABLE RICHES

Although I am less than the least of all God's people, this grace was given to me: to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ (Ephesians 3:8)

These are remarkable words, when you consider who it was that wrote them. The writer was none other than the great apostle Paul, a leader of those Jewish Christians who, some twenty centuries ago, turned the world upside down by the message they preached and by the holiness of their lives! Such words from such people demand our attention!

There are three important things to notice here:

1.                What Paul says about himself ? less than the least of all God's people

2.                What Paul says of his authority to preach ? this grace was given to me

3.                What Paul preaches about ? the unsearchable riches of Christ

1. What Paul says about himself

He was the founder of many churches, the writer of fourteen inspired epistles', a worker of miracles, a man who suffered beatings, stonings, shipwreck and many other dangers for Christ's sake ? but what does Paul say of himself? `I am less than the least of God's people'. What a poor thing the least person is ? yet Paul thinks of himself as even lower!

This humility is beyond the comprehension of many who call themselves Christians, who are nevertheless without true Christian experience. They cannot understand .the conflicts, the fears, the hopes, the sorrows of the true Christian. Just as the blind cannot appreciate works of art and the deaf cannot enjoy music so the unconverted person - whether claiming to be Christian or not - cannot understand this sort of spiritual humility.

   

But Paul meant what he wrote. In other places he writes even more remarkably, I am the chief of sinners (1 Timothy 1:15). What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? (Romans 7:24). By the teaching of the Holy Spirit Paul saw things wrong in himself which the unconverted person never sees in themselves.

    And this spiritual humility is a feeling which every true believer is aware of. The more knowledge of God Christians have in their hearts the deeper is their sense of sin. The more they understand the holiness of God so the more they are conscious of their own unholiness, and the less likely they are to think themselves perfect. This is a humility to be sought!
    
    What have we to be proud of in ourselves? Of all the creatures born into this world, none are so dependent as are human beings. Physically who needs so much care and attention as we? Mentally how ignorant the greater portion of the human race is, and what misery we make for ourselves by our foolishness! Surely we ought to be the most humble of all the creatures on the earth. The more humility we have the more Christlike we shall be, for it is written of him that he made himself nothing ... he humbled himself (Philippians 2:6-8).
   Heaven, I suppose, will teach us fully how humble we ought to be. Once we understand more clearly how we have been saved, and led through life, and brought to enjoy such heavenly glory we shall completely realize the wonder of what God has so graciously done for us, his believing people, and then the sort of humility which Paul shows us will seem so right!
   
   2. What Paul says of his authority to preach
   
   It is evident that Paul regarded the main work of the apostles to be the passing on the good news of the Christian message by preaching. He makes this clear in other of his writings: I am appointed a preacher (1 Timothy 2:7); for the gospel I was appointed a preacher (2 Timothy 1:11). In another place he says Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel (1 Corinthians 1:17).
   I believe Paul understood that the principal work of a Christian minister is to be a preacher. Nowhere does he suggest that a Christian minister is ever to be a priest; indeed, nowhere in the New Testament is a Christian minister spoken of as a sacrificing priest, as the Roman Catholic church requires its ministers to be for the offering of the sacrifice of the Mass.' Paul's last instruction to Timothy, whom he had left in charge of a church, was `Preach the word!' (2 Timothy 4:2).
   
   a) Let us be clear in our minds that the work of preaching is required of a minister by the Scripture. This is clear from those passages of the New Testament which we have already noticed. No honest reader of the letters to Timothy and Titus can come to any other conclusion than that preaching is a biblical practice.
   
   b) Let us be clear in our minds that preachers are useful gifts wisely given to us from God. God is a God of order, who works by using human means; we have no right to expect him to work by a constant flow of miracles. There is no better plan for the continual preaching of God's truth and for maintaining God's requirements in the churches than that he should raise up those who are faithful preachers.
   
   c) Let us be clear in our minds that to be a preacher is a great privilege and also a serious responsibility. It is an honour for a person to be the ambassador for a king; how much greater the honour to be an ambassador for the King of kings! It is also a serious responsibility rightly to represent the one for whom they are ambassadors. To be unfaithful, to fail to deliver less, or to say more, than the true message these are faults that bring disgrace to an ambassador. I have caused you to be despised and humiliated before all the people because you have not followed my ways was the sad word God had to speak to some leaders in Israel (Malachi 2:9).
   
   How we need to pray earnestly for those who are preachers, that they should be faithful to God's word. And how we should often plead with God to raise up more and more faithful preachers!
   
   3. What Paul preaches about
   
   That Paul should preach about Christ is no surprise for it was Christ in all his glory that met him on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:3,4). After that Paul never wasted his time talking about anything else! But what did he mean when he spoke about `the unsearchable riches of Christ'?
   
   a) There are unsearchable riches in Christ as a person for he was both God and Man. This is a great mystery, no doubt. But the thoughtful Christian can never be ashamed to believe that Christ is both human and divine. If he had been only human then he could not save us from our sin. If he had been only divine then he could not have experienced our temptations and weaknesses. As God he is mighty to save; as Man he is exactly suited to be our representative. Though an inexhaustible truth, it is also a precious truth that Christ is both God and Man.
   
   b) What Christ has done for us by his death, resurrection and ascension is unsearchable. He completed the work his Father gave him to do (John 17:4): the work of atonement, reconciliation, redemption, substitution as ` the just for the unjust' and the complete satisfaction of God's righteous demands of us. Each of these words is so rich in meaning!
   
   c) There are unsearchable riches in the various ministries which Christ fulfills for his people. He is their mediator, their advocate, their high priest, their shepherd, their physician, their captain, their king, their master, their head, their forerunner, their elder brother! To those believers struggling to live the life of faith all these ministries are unsearchable riches!
   
   d) There are unsearchable riches in the names and titles that belong to Christ. I cannot here list them all, but the careful reader of Scripture will find there titles such as the Lamb of God, the bread of life, the door, the way and the truth and the life, the vine, the rock, the cornerstone. To the unbeliever these are all meaningless words; but to the believer unsearchable riches are here!
   
   e) What Christ intends for his people is something of unsearchable richness. There is richness of power to pardon, forgive, cleanse; a richness of patience, sympathy, strength and glory to come. The believer will know that there are no riches to equal these things in any other person than in Christ.
   
   And all these riches are unsearchable; they are like a mine where new treasures are constantly being discovered. The best of believers knows so little of this Saviour! But to know something of this Christ is life eternal. Those who have the Son of God have life; those who do not have the Son of God do not have life (1 John 5:12). When we come to glory we shall be astonished at how imperfectly we had known these unsearchable riches of Christ, and at how little we had really loved him. So let us seek to know him better now for this is the road to holiness.
   

' Inspiration. By `the inspiration of Scripture' we mean that the whole of Scripture has its source in God; it is `breathed out' by God (2 Timothy 3:16). This does not commit us to believing that God merely dictated the Scriptures. Rather, we understand that he created the writers with their different personalities and circumstances in order to use them in this task of writing the Scriptures as he wanted it written.

   

(From the Dictionary of Theological terns published by Grace Publications Trust.)

   
   2 The Mass. The word refers to the Lord's supper as celebrated by the Roman Catholic Church, in which the priest is considered to be participating in the sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ, by believing that the bread and the wine become them, thus making the r timeless and eternal sacrifice of Christ visible in the present here and now.
   

(From the Evangelical Dictionary of Theology published by Marshall Pickering.)