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The mission of Church & Family Life is to proclaim the sufficiency of Scripture for both church and family life.
The Unsearchable Riches of Christ
Nov. 10, 2017
00:00
-16:22
Transcription

To kind of just say amen to just about everything I've heard here on this podium this afternoon. I've really appreciated it. I'd like to just read one verse in Ephesians 3. The Apostle Paul said, "'Unto me who am less than the least of all saints is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ. And I didn't know what Pastor Jeff would say.

I didn't know what Carlos would do. Carlos got up here and preached the Gospel. That's what you did. You know, you're preaching the Gospel to a bunch of preachers. And while you were doing that, that Gospel was ministering to the needs of our hearts.

And I just want to encourage you to preach the unsearchable riches of Christ and this is what Paul is saying here but let me talk about my mom she calls herself mama with two M's ma mma and she's a Florida girl and her parents were Floridians so I'm a Floridian from way back, although my dad's from the Ohio side. But she became a believer, And I'm so thankful that God worked His grace in her life. And I grew up with a mom who preached the gospel. And preached it with zeal. And she's a better preacher than all of you.

For me. No, she's not a preacher, but She was a mom and a housewife, and she loved Christ. She's 88 years old now, and she's teaching a Bible class in an independent Baptist church up in Caravelle, Florida, over in Caravelle, Florida, up above, or down below you guys in Tallahassee. And my mom at 88 years old is teaching a Bible class to 60s, 70s, and possibly 80 year old women. She says she teaches the young ladies class.

She's 88, she's the oldest one in the class. But my mom says to me, when I call her on the phone, I try to call her at least once a week and sometimes more, but she says to me, Frank, he is so real. He is so precious. And she preaches to me on the phone. And this is what I grew up with.

And I thank God for that. I thank God for Mom who lived the Gospel and preached the Gospel. And I thank God for Paul who said, Unto me who am less than the least of all saints is this grace given, this gift, this grace gift given that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ. Well, let's ask Paul. Paul, what did you preach?

Paul preached the unsearchable riches of Christ. In verse 2, he calls it the dispensation of the grace of God. Dispensation is economy or stewardship. The Gospel was given to him as a stewardship of his grace. He calls it in verse 3, the mystery.

In verse 4, he calls it the mystery of Christ. And we know it's no longer, as it were, a secret. It's a revealed secret, and that's what a mystery is in the New Covenant. The mystery of Christ. That which only God could reveal of Christ His Son.

You can't see it in nature. You can't find it in the rocks and the trees and the sky and the beauties of creation, but it's revealed in the Word of God. In verse 6, he calls it the Gospel. It's the euangelion. So Paul preached the Gospel.

That's what Paul preached. And I just ask us today, what do we preach? What are we preaching? Someone said that you can't get saved without the gospel. It is so true.

You can't get saved without the gospel. And we need to be preaching the gospel of Christ. We need to be preaching that dispensation of the grace of God, that stewardship of the grace of God. We need to be preaching the mystery of Christ. We need to be preaching the unsearchable riches of Christ.

Well I asked Paul what he preached and now I'm asking, Paul, you say you proclaim unsearchable riches. You proclaim. He said that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ to preach is to declare It's to declare the evangel the It's it's to declare the gospel the glad tidings it's to proclaim it. Well, you're proclaiming something That's unsearchable You can't you can't search it out Isn't that a paradox? How can you proclaim something that's unsearchable?

Well, I tell you this afternoon, you can proclaim something that's unsearchable because there is enough revealed in that and enough that you can understand that you can proclaim it. For instance, have you ever seen the universe? Well yeah. I look up at the stars and I see the moon, I see the stars, and I see the beauty and the glory of it all, and I see the universe. But you know, there's a universe beyond what you can just see on the surface that is just broad and fast.

And you can't come to the end of it. And scientists or astronomers are still out there looking at all of that and trying to find new things. And they're finding them because they've never seen them before. And I ask you, have you seen the ocean? Have you seen the seas?

I was listening to some young men talking and I think there was a young man here who's never been to the beach or only been to the beach maybe one time. Isn't that amazing? So have you seen the ocean? Have you seen the ocean? You haven't?

Have you seen the surface of it? Amazing. But Carlos, have you seen the ocean? I'm looking for somebody to see the ocean here. Okay, Carlos has seen the ocean.

But Carlos has never really seen the fullness of the depths of the ocean. So what is Paul saying here? He's announcing something that is vast, something that you can't get to the depths of. And my mom, all of my growing up years, was talking about Christ, and talking about how Christ had saved her and satisfied the need of her heart. And here she is, 88 years old, And she's saying, oh, he's so wonderful.

He's so precious. And she loves him more than she's ever loved him. And she spends, my father passed away in 2011, and my mom is just all alone in that house, communing with Christ. And here's how she lives her life she eats breakfast lunch and summer she drinks her coffee in the morning and she goes through her day she feeds her little chihuahuas and she goes to church on Wednesday night and she goes to church on Sunday morning and she goes to an old folks dinner on Thursdays and that's her whole life unless we visit her on Saturday or somebody goes and sees her some of the family but she's communing with Christ and spending time with him and she's talking about him. What a what a glorious thing that is.

So thankful for a mom that loves the Lord Jesus. But that's that's what we need to be doing in ministry is we need to be declaring the unsearchable riches of Christ. We have a message so great, so vast, that we will always be making new discoveries. Isn't it amazing? Aren't you finding out new things as you read the Scriptures?

Aren't you finding out new things? Isn't it wonderful? The unsearchable riches of Christ. The Gospel is the food of the church. What are you feeding your people?

The law? The law will condemn them. Prophecy? They need to hear the righteousness of God in the law. They need to hear prophecy.

I had an old Southern Baptist preacher when I was a teenager who I think the church wasn't tithing. I think the church was really really backward in their giving because week after week after week he would preach on tithing. And I thought there was no end to preaching on tithing. That's the first time in my Christian life where I came across preaching that wearied me. That just wore me out.

Preaching on tithing. Are you preaching on tithing every Sunday? You need to feed your people. Somewhere in that tithing you need to find Christ. Give him to him.

A special hobby horse. Maybe you're preaching... I think it's a great temptation to see the faults of our people. I'm just speaking as a missionary who is speaking out to pastors. I'm not a pastor right now, but people have faults and Your people are full of faults.

You have faults, too. I won't say you're full of them, but you've got faults, too. But there's a great temptation when we see the faults of our people to just labor on preaching on those faults. Your people need Christ. They need food for their soul.

They need to know their faults and they need to understand biblical sanctification. They need Christ. Sometimes I think we preach our insecurities. We go up there and we're feeling insecure with the people and we get up there and we just preach out of our insecurities. I've actually seen in a church where elders who disagreed with each other on something would preach against each other's position from the pulpit.

It's not good. It's off balance. When you do that, you're preaching one side of truth against the other side and no one's ever giving the full balance of truth. We need to preach Christ. Brother Pollard came to our church in Williston and he said, he preached this same series of messages, he said, many of our churches are starving to death because they do not feast upon Christ.

I wrote it down. I've kept it. I've sent it out to a few people. And why are our people starving to death because they do not feast upon Christ? Because they are not being served Christ from the pulpits and that's our place to preach Christ now here I am standing up here you know preaching this to a bunch of preachers who are preaching Christ And Pastor Mala preached Christ last night, and Brother Jeff preached Christ last night, and Brother Carlos preached Christ from this pulpit just a minute ago.

But I just want to encourage us to continue to preach the unsearchable riches of Christ. Isn't this the secret behind the phenomenal ministry of C. H. Spurgeon? He was greatly gifted, a greatly gifted man, an intellect far greater than probably anyone in this room.

Being able to read a book and then close the book and quote page after page in the book and tell you where to find certain things and what page it's on. We can't even remember what it was, but he could remember the page it was on. But he preached the unsearchable riches of Christ. You go in that room back there and Spurgeon is preaching Christ. Almost every tract.

It's Christ everywhere. This is the great emphasis of the Reformation and Puritan theology, it's Christ. A resurgence of the gospel and preaching Christ. And even though we don't always agree with Anglican and Presbyterian men as our brother's friend J.C. Ryle on everything, we love to read them when they preach the gospel.

We love to read them when they're exalting Christ. So preach Christ. Preach Christ's unsearchable love and mercy and grace. Preach Christ's unsearchable person as the God-man who is fully God and fully man in one eternal person. He's God.

He's fully God. Preach His unsearchable person. Preach Christ's unsearchable works. His work in creation. His work in providence.

His work in redemption. Going to the cross of Calvary. Preach those unsearchable riches, taking our sins upon Himself and bearing the guilt of those sins and paying the penalty for those sins and then giving us his perfect righteousness. Preach Christ. Preach the glorious results of Christ's unsearchable person and works that he's adopted us as sons that were accepted by the Father in the Beloved, that we're washed, we're cleansed.

Just this past week I was reading Spurgeon again and he reminded me of Jesus' words in John 15 to the disciples, Now are ye clean, now are you clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. That was spoken to men who were right on the verge of abandoning him. You know Peter with all of his difficulties. Yet Christ said, Now are you clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. Preach the unsearchable riches of our glorious hope, the eternal state, seeing Him, being with Him forever.

Let us join Paul in preaching Christ. That's what we're hearing today, isn't it? Preach Christ. Preach Christ on the streets. Preach Christ in your home.

Preach Christ in the church. Preach Christ wherever you go. Some of you are not preachers, but you can preach Christ. You're not, what I mean by that is you are not in an office of preaching in a local assembly but you have a responsibility to go and to declare the gospel of the grace of God. Preach Christ.

Amen. God bless you.

Speaker

Frank Maxson is a church planting missionary. He served in Zambia and Malawi from 1999 to 2015. Frank married Evelyn in 1979, and they are blessed with 12 children. Frank is presently seeking church planting opportunities in the States. 

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