This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

I want to welcome you to Daily Drive Time Devotions, Day 2 in our look together
at Ephesians Chapter 3. We're going to be looking at verses 2-6 today. You might
remember yesterday we began a look at how significant servants see themselves.

Starts with how I see myself. I don't see myself selfishly. I see myself, well
we looked at the first way yesterday, the example of Paul.

I see myself, Paul said, as a prisoner of Christ. What he's saying there is
whatever circumstances I'm in, Christ is in it. Christ is there.

That's how servants see themselves. There's a second way in these verses that
servants see themselves. And this one might be surprising to you.

Let me read for you Ephesians Chapter 3 verses 2-5. Listen for how servants see
themselves. Paul said, here's the second way I see myself as a servant.

I see myself as a manager of God's mystery. Now what am I talking about there? A
manager of God's mystery?

Well mystery in these verses and in the New Testament is the idea of something
formerly unknown that has been made known by God. Something revealed. God's
opened the door and now I see, ah, that's what it is.

A secret revealed. A package unwrapped. We'll talk about what that mystery is in
just a moment.

Paul felt like he was a manager of this mystery of God. A manager. That is
someone who is given responsibility to oversee something that belongs to
somebody else.

It's the word administration in verse 2. The administration of God's grace. I'm
a manager or the idea of stewardship is even in that word administration.

A steward of God's grace. What Paul is saying here is this. He was appointed a
manager by God's grace and then he became a manager of God's grace.

You see when it comes to God's grace, grace is given to us in Christ. We studied
this in chapter 2 in an overall way. By grace are we saved through faith.

But if you study the New Testament you see that it's also given to us in
specific ways. God's grace, God's gifts of grace come to us in specific ways
that we're to live out in our lives. I tend to think a lot about the overall way
that grace comes to me that I am forgiven because of what Jesus did and not
enough about the specific ways.

The gifts of grace that God has placed into my hand that I now need to be an
administrator of, a manager of, a steward of. Paul says I have a stewardship of
grace. And that stewardship of grace means I need to pass it along to other
people.

As Paul talked about this stewardship of grace that he had, he talked about the
word mystery. This wasn't a mystery that he discovered. It was a mystery that
was revealed to him.

In many ways the job description of a servant is to reveal a mystery. What
mystery is he talking about? He tells us very clearly.

He doesn't leave it a mystery. Ephesians chapter 3 verse 6. The mystery is that
through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together
of one body, and sharers together in the promise of Christ Jesus.

There it is. The mystery revealed. The message of grace, the message of God's
love is a message for all people.

Not just for the Jewish people. Not just for the people in the Old Testament who
were called the people of God. But for all people.

Now, God had always intended this but we didn't always know this. And so Paul
says it has been revealed to me that God has always attended for all people to
be included in his grace. It is the message of grace for all.

In fact, Paul makes that very clear. He says we're members together, we are
heirs together, we are sharers together. Fellow heirs of God, fellow members of
the body, fellow partakers of the promise.

We're fellow heirs of God. That means that we hope together. We are fellow
members of the body.

That means that we work together. And we are fellow partakers of the promise.
That means that we grow together.

We do all of these things together in Christ. And why are we able to do this?
Because God's grace has been made available to all.

You see, the mystery is the key that unlocks everything else. Once you know the
mystery, once you know the code, that makes everything else make sense. Now a
lot of people when they study the Bible and they talk about mysteries, they try
to make the code sound very mysterious.

Like it's something no one can figure out. Anytime you hear somebody saying
there's a mysterious way to figure out the Bible that only I can tell you about,
or that only a few people in human history have figured out, you can know
they're wrong. The historical name for that type of teaching is Gnosticism.

It's the idea that somehow I have a knowledge that's above and beyond what you
can think. And because of that, I can get closer to God than you could ever get.
That's what it means to be a Gnostic.

You see here in Ephesians chapter 3 that the apostle Paul says the mystery is
revealed. God's made it known to everybody. And I just get the privilege of
sharing it with other people.

The problem with Gnosticism is that it appeals to your human pride. Like I can
know something that someone else can't know. The truth of the Bible is we don't
come to God based on our pride.

We come to God based on the fact that all of us, the door has been opened to all
of us and all of us can come to him. And so we are, let me go back to those
words, we are fellow heirs of God, we are fellow members of his body, and we are
fellow partakers of the promise. You want to be a good manager of God's mystery?

You want to be a good manager of the gifts that God has put into your life?
Those are the three things to hold on to. Every person that you meet with that
has come to know Christ or that will come to know Christ, they are a fellow heir
of God.

We all inherit together the joy of eternity. We are all looking forward to that.
And we are all fellow members together and we are all fellow partakers in the
promise.

So as we talk today about you and I and what it means to be a significant
servant, I want to take a few moments in prayer to focus, to focus our thoughts
on seeing ourselves as God sees us. And as you pray today, you might need to
pray an honest prayer like this that I prayed a few days back. God, I find
myself allowing small, selfish pursuits to overwhelm my life these last few
days, not wrong things, just little things, just me things.

I find myself choosing neither focused effort for you nor focused rest in you. I
find myself choosing me. Lord, I want to choose you.

I want to choose differently. I want to choose to serve. And so I pray you'd
help me to see myself in a new way.

Help me to see that regardless of the circumstance, I am in Christ. That in my
business I'm in Christ, in my family I'm in Christ. You are there no matter
what.

And help me to see as we talked about today that God, you have put gifts into my
life. You've put incredible gifts into my life. And that I'm to enjoy those
gifts, yes, but I'm also to share those gifts.

It's an administration of God's grace. It's a stewardship of God's grace. It's a
dispensation of God's grace given into my life.

And I'm to share it with other people. God, show me who to share it with today.
Show me who to serve today.

And as you show me, give me the faith to follow you. I ask this, Jesus, in your
name, Amen. Well, join us tomorrow.

We're going to be looking again at what it means to be a significant servant of
Jesus Christ. And what it means to see yourself as the servant that God has made
you to be.