The Least of all Saints

Well, where do I start by saying it's great to be here? It's really great to be here, and I mean it. And I was going to say it's a blessing that you're going to get to listen to me in English tonight, but that doesn't sound very good. What I'm trying to say is it's a blessing that at least I get to speak once in English and not all in Spanish, because I don't know how much you'll get out of my Spanish messages.

So that's what I was trying to say. But it's really great to be here, and I just want to make one correction that Brother Roberto made in his opening remarks. And he was saying, for those of you who maybe didn't understand, that he was welcoming, giving thanks to various ones that have been participating and will be, those who are cooking and other assemblies who are helping and Christians in general for this and that and the other thing.

And then he said, and especially the servants who have come to open the Word of God. I think what our brother meant to say was finally the servants, because there's nothing special. Sorry, Tom.

There's nothing special about the servants that have come to minister the Word of God this weekend. We're all together in this. We're all on the same plane and the same level.

And, in fact, we're here to help and to serve. If you need somebody to wash dishes tomorrow, just talk to Brother Tom. But last summer, when Seed Sowers was at Grand Island, Nebraska, we came across a Sala de Evangelica, which is a gospel hall.

They're a group of believers from Guatemala. None of us had ever met them before. So Chad Sluder and I went around the first prayer meeting night and at least met them.

And they were praying for a conference that they had coming up shortly after. And so they ended up borrowing the tent that we had for a kitchen for their conference. And so some of us went back on the Friday of their conference for the morning and the afternoon sessions.

And they had five preachers there from Guatemala. And they were called servants. And it was a hot day, probably over 100 degrees.

And so I had the big gospel tent set up outside their meeting place. And that's where they were going to eat the meals. Inside was nice air conditioning.

Well, come time for lunch, one of the elders came to me and says, Now we want you to come. And there's two or three of us. We want you to come and eat with the servants.

So we went into this little room adjacent to the big tent that was dripping with sweat. And when I saw what was taking place, I said, No, no, brother, no. No, I'm not going in and eating in an air-conditioned room.

And the others are out here sweating it out. No, no, no. He says, Come in here.

He says, It's good. We got this prepared for you. So in I went and we went.

Little air-conditioned room while the others were sweating it out. Those of us inside this little wee room, we had fish and all the accompaniments that go with it. Great, great meal.

And the others in the tent were eating spaghetti. Nothing wrong with spaghetti. But they were making a big difference between what they called the servants and those who were the servants.

And so I trust then that we'll all enjoy a great time of fellowship, whether you're a servant or a servant. Because we all are servants. But, brother, thanks very much for the warm welcome.

And I'd like to read from Ephesians, Chapter 3. Ephesians, Chapter 3. Now, I do have a problem. And the problem is my glasses. The problem is my eyes.

If I wear my glasses, I can read. But I can't see you. If I don't wear my glasses, I can see you, but I can't see my notes.

So I'm sure by the time you're done speaking, you'll probably say, Ross, please use your glasses. But anyways, I'd like to read from Ephesians, Chapter 3. And just one verse. Verse number 8. 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.

I'll read it one more time. Unto me, whom less than the least of all saints, is this grace given that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ. I was noticing here how that Paul had a right view or a right estimation of three different things or three different people.

I'm thinking, first of all, he had a right view of himself. He said, unto me, whom less than the least of all saints. A right view of himself.

And if ever we're going to be useful in the service of God, we're going to have to have this correct view of ourselves. Less than the least of all saints. He had a correct vision for the world.

He says, is this grace given that I should preach among the Gentiles. And so he looked at the world as a world that was going to be recipient to the gospel. And as a world that was going to need the gospel, and he was going to be one that was going to preach it to them.

So he had a right vision for the world. And then he had a right value of Christ. That I might preach the unsearchable riches of Christ.

And if we lose our value of who Christ is, we will become grumblers and complainers. We will become carnal and worldly. We will lose the spiritual focus that God designs for us.

And it's only Christ that will preserve us. And it's only Christ that will make us useful. And maintain a right spirit within our own lives that we might be of help to anybody else.

So three simple things. A right view of himself. A right vision for the world.

And a right value of Christ. I don't know just what we all think about ourselves, but we are living in an age when a whole lot is made of who we are. We are encouraged to find ourselves and to lift ourselves up and to be somebody.

We are encouraged to not be trampled under by anybody. We are encouraged to be out in the front and in the center. We are encouraged to be the top dog.

The most successful person in the corporate world is the CEO, supposedly. But says who? Now I understand that there's a lot in the audience, some in the audience here, that come from the corporate world and know what it is. To have to climb the ladder and to get pushed down and the struggles and the conflict that's out there.

But success in our world is measured by how high you get on the ladder corporately or your success as a business person. That, in the terms of this world, is success. But when it comes to God, when it comes to spiritual things, we're going to find out that success spiritually is really the one that's going to get the lowest.

It says Paul here, he says, And I'm sure your mind is already going to 1 Timothy chapter 1, where he says when it comes to the sinners, he was the biggest. And now it says when it comes to the saints, I'm the least, I'm the smallest. And what a great estimation to maintain for ourselves all through life.

Never to forget that when it comes to the sinners and those without Christ, without God, without salvation, there is nobody who is a bigger sinner than I was. I'm so thankful I don't have to stand here tonight and confess my sins. You know, just today going into the airport in Winnipeg, we took a different route.

The folks who were taking me in went by a place. I never said anything to them, but it went by a place in Winnipeg. I live an hour away from Winnipeg.

And as I went by that place, my mind went to one night that I was at that place. And a night I wished I could forget the chief of sinners. And every one of us fall into this same category.

Now, grandpa and grandma are not going to think the little kids amongst us are the chief of sinners. Now, I don't know, maybe after three months on the road, they might be changing their mind. I don't know.

I don't think so. And moms and dads, you know, and the little angels are just first. I mean, don't dare go there, okay? Talking about the chief of sinners.

Don't dare. We don't need many years of life behind us before this category can be put over us for all to see. The chief of sinners.

Paul never forgot who he was. And I would hope that as believers today, as we reflect on our unsaved days, it would only fill us with thankfulness. As we recall who we used to be, but what God did for us.

And I'm so thankful for a night when I was 19 years old, when God reached down and saved my soul. So thankful. And I'm sure that every one of you here in the meeting that's saved tonight can look back to the time when you got saved and are so thankful that God by His matchless grace reached into your life and picked you out of a world of sinners and sinfulness and put purpose into your life and put eternal life into your being and gave you His Spirit to live with.

But we should never forget the chief of sinners. Paul now says when it comes to the saints, he says, I'm the least amongst them. Now, did Paul actually think that? Or is he just being superficially modest and humble? No, I believe Paul actually believed this.

Now, if any of the believers back in the first century, the first few decades of Christianity had any reason to boast or to say, you know, I'm just a little bit better than that person, than that believer, I wouldn't be surprised Paul would have fallen into this category. I mean, I'm a little bit better than Barnabas. I'm a little bit better than John Mark, after all, look what happened to him.

Imagine going to the work and turning back, not me, you know, and he goes on through what he did. The great preacher that took the gospel to so many places and wrote so many letters for us that we're living in the blessing of today. Now, if anybody could have said, I think I'm one of the better believers around.

Don't you think it could have been Paul? No, he says unto me who am less than the least of all saints. Now, what makes the difference? How can a person that is so big in so many ways, I mean, if Paul came walking into this meeting tonight, guess who would be the first one to sit down? Yeah, I'd be sitting down and say, Paul, please. I mean, if Paul came walking in here tonight, we would look at him as somebody that was one of the greatest believers of all time.

How could he be so humble and so small in his own thinking? Now, we get into problems when we start comparing ourselves to other Christians. It's easy to look at another believer and say, well, you know what? Guess what? I'm a little bit better than he. I mean, I can do this better.

I can do the other thing better. And when we start comparing ourselves, we're catering to the flesh because when we compare ourselves, we're not honest. We're only going to pick out the points where we know we're going to be better than the other person, the person to whom we're comparing ourself.

And so naturally, we're going to come up looking better and smelling like roses. Mind you, if we're honest, maybe we'd find there's more ways that we're less than the other person than better than the other person. So please never compare yourself to another believer to find out just how you rank in God's family.

Do what Paul did. Paul compared himself to Christ. The unsearchable riches of Christ.

And when Paul got alongside of the greatness and the glory of Christ, it had the automatic effect in his life of bringing him down. Sort of like Baha'i Subi. A teeter-totter.

Sort of like a teeter-totter. One end is down and the other end is up. When one end goes down, the other end... I imagine there's still teeter-totters, aren't there? There used to be.

You know, both can't be up. And both won't be down. And so it is in our estimation of who we really are as believers.

If we're going to be down, it's going to be that Christ is going to come up. Paul goes on to talk about his value of Christ. And he talks about the unsearchable riches of Christ.

Have you ever stopped to think about how great Christ is? Now if somebody at school stopped and asked you believers, can you tell me, you follow Jesus Christ, right? Right. Tell me a little bit about him. Who is he? What does he mean to you? What has he done in your life? Why are you following Jesus rather than some other person? I wonder just how much you'd be stuttering and stammering so we'll tell you, I'll come back tomorrow and let you know.

Paul was a man that was consumed with the greatness and the unsearchable riches of Christ. And it kept him down in his own thinking. Romans chapter 11, the unfathomable depths of the wisdom and knowledge of God.

Oh, how deep they are, said Paul. The unsearchable judgments, the inexplicable ways of God and of Christ. His ways are past finding out.

2 Corinthians chapter 4, the inextinguishable glory of Christ. Paul says, If our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost, in whom the God of this world hath blinded the minds of them that believe not, lest, and I'm changing the translation a little bit, lest the radiancy of the glad tidings of the glory of the Christ who is the image of the God. It's a verse that's not taken up with adjectives and superlatives.

It's a verse that's taken up with noun after noun after noun. The great glory of Christ. Chapter 9, verse 15, he says, thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift.

See, that's the unsearchable riches of Christ. Things that are unexplainable, things that are unspeakable. There was a man at a bus stop in McAllen back in the first week of January.

Reluctantly, he received a packet that had a calendar and a couple Bible posters and a Via magazine in it. First, he didn't want it. But then, the person giving it to him said to him, God loved Jesus, but he sent Jesus to die on the cross for your sins.

He said, okay, I'll take the packet. A week or so later, Seed Sower website gets an email from him. And unfortunately, there was no phone number attached and no email that we could reply to, no address other than Alamo, Texas, right in the area of McAllen.

He says this with regret that, I have to tell you about my treatment of a fellow at a bus stop the other day in McAllen. I was very rude. And the guy offered me a packet.

But he says, I took it. He said, I was just in the process of walking away from my wife and my kids without telling them. I was a failure in my marriage.

I was a failure in business. He said, then I read the contents of the packet and I thought I should get a Bible. So I went to a store and bought a Bible.

I was reading my Bible just last Sunday. And it said something like, God's gift that's too wonderful for words, the unspeakable gift, the unsearchable riches of Christ. He said, I just want to thank you for what you did.

We've never had contact with a man since. I trust that he's truly found in his own heart something in the unspeakableness. The gift that's too wonderful for words, you just can't describe it, can't describe him.

And then Paul goes on, pardon me, the writer of Hebrews, talks about the great salvation, talks about the invaluable blood of 1 Peter, not redeemed with things of silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ. We're thankful that the value of the blood of Christ, the one we follow, will never lose its value, will never lose its power. That's why we follow Christ, the unsearchable riches.

When we come back to our letter here in Ephesians, in chapter 1, Paul is going to talk about the innumerable blessings of Christ, blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places, in Christ Jesus. He's going to talk about the inexhaustible power that's available to each one of us. He says that you might find out that same power that worked in Christ when he rose, rose Christ from the dead.

Not only rose Christ from the dead, but the power that's set in heavenly places at the right hand of God. That same power, inexhaustible powers available to every believer tonight. He talks about the, the love that's immeasurable, that you might know the breadth and the length of it, the depth and the height of it.

He says you can't, but that you might. Oh, thank God for the immeasurable love. All of this is summed up in these simple words, the unsearchable riches of Christ.

That's why I'm suggesting to you that Paul had a low value of himself, a low vision of himself. He looked at himself as the least of all the saints because he saw himself alongside of the incomparable Christ. And I would trust that at this conference throughout the weekend, whether it's in English or in Spanish, that Christ might be ministered to our souls.

And that we might leave this conference Sunday evening, Lord willing, saying, what a Savior. You know, it's a tragedy sometimes that we reserve those words for Sunday morning. Hallelujah, what a Savior.

We should be saying it or at least saying it every day of our lives. Hallelujah. The unsearchable riches of Christ.

But then Paul's going to bring the two of them together. The vision, the view of himself, along with the value of Christ who saved him. And he's gonna put it into action.

He says, unto me is this grace given that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ. I love this term, the Gentiles. Of course, we know that the Gentiles are those who are not Jews.

So basically, the world is made up of two categories, those who are Jews and those who are Gentiles. The Gentiles very often were a despised people. After God called Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldees and promised to make of him a great nation, a great tribe, said, your blessings are gonna be more than the stars of the heaven and the sands of the seashore.

And so the Jewish nation, the Jewish people became into existence. And God blessed them with blessing after blessing. But what about those who are not Jews? Oh, the Gentiles.

Where were their blessings? As a rule, they couldn't come into the camp of Israel and partake of the blessings the Jews were partaking of. It wasn't that God was saying, I don't want anything to do with the Jews. But God was focusing now, with the Gentiles, pardon me, God is focusing on the Jews.

Saying, I'm gonna bless them immensely. So the Gentiles, at times were despised by the Jews. Look at them.

Hey, don't you dare come into our camp. What do you think you're doing? Get away from us. Don't walk in our streets.

You see, the Jews have become a proud race. They thought they were better than the others. So sometimes referred to those who are not a Jew as the Gentile dogs.

You see, the Gentiles had a problem. They were just not part of God's current plan at that point. They were left out of all the blessings that the Jews were getting.

Well, they were still blessed immensely. But they just weren't part of God's chosen race and people. And as Ephesians says, they were without God and without hope in this world, without Christ.

And they were a long ways off. By the way, how many Gentiles do we have here tonight? But not only did they have a problem, I want to get to the point. They had a place now in God's program.

And I love this. We can see that the individual Gentile had a place. 1 Corinthians chapter 6. Paul writing to them says, big list of sins and sinners.

Awful sins. Awful people apparently. He says, such were some of you, but you're washed.

He says, God cleaned you. You're sanctified. God claimed you.

You're justified. God cleared you. And now the individual Gentile has a part in God's great plan, the church.

Oh, what a wonderful thing. The Gentiles. But I see that not only the individual, but families had a part in God's great plan.

We go to Matthew chapter 1. And of course, right away, you're going to think about four ladies that very often we say shouldn't really be part of this genealogy. I just want to think of the last three that are mentioned. And I'm wondering if I can prove from Matthew chapter 1 that God now is going to involve families.

Gentile families. In his great plan of grace. We call up Solomon.

Solomon, can you tell us anything about the Gentiles being included in God's great plan and purposes? Well, he said, you know, my my mother, she was, she was a Jew, but she was a sinner. She definitely should not have been part of Genesis chapter 1. And my great, great grandmother, I think it is. Her name was Ruth.

Now she was, we could say, maybe part Jew and part Gentile because she was a Gentile by birth, but married a Jew. And yet she's here on this list. And then there's the other lady, he'd say, my great, great, great grandmother.

Her name was Rahab. Remember the story of Jericho? How Israel surrounded the city, walked around it so many times. Rescued one lady.

A Gentile that had no Jewish connection whatsoever. Says Solomon, what a blessed family I'm living in. God now has brought blessings into the whole family.

Started with a Gentile lady. God wants to bless Gentile families. And isn't it a wonderful thing when you see the gospel coming into families? I'm making the application.

And God reaches down and he saves a soul, maybe a teenager, out of a family. And then the gospel goes to mom and dad, and mom and dad get saved. And then the gospel spreads further throughout the families.

I don't know you all here. I don't know very many. I don't know your background.

I don't know how much the gospel is in your family. But I want to tell you something. God wants to bless your family, the Gentiles.

And then we can see in Acts chapter 10 that God is going to include the Gentiles and the nations of the Gentiles, the countries of the Gentiles. Remember the vision that Peter had? That sheep comes down from heaven, tied together in four corners. And it's full of, it's full of four-footed beasts it says, and wild beasts, and creeping things.

It's those creeping things I don't like. Especially those big long snakes that I've seen in Panama. And the fowls of the air.

And the command says, Peter, you're hungry, aren't you? Come on, have a, have a feast. Oh, no. Those are unclean things, Lord.

You should know that. The Lord says, Peter, I got a lesson for you. I want to teach you something about the Gentiles.

Those Gentile dogs that didn't have a part with us before. What I call clean, don't you dare call common. In other words, who I have accepted, you accept.

And who my, my overtures of grace are pouring out to. Make sure you become a vessel to translate and transport that message of grace to them. And so to the nations of this world, to the Gentiles, the gospel of God, not just the nations, but the whole globe.

Revelation chapter five. Remember that scene around the throne? From every kindred and every tribe and tongue and nation. Says Paul now, unto me who am less than the least of all saints is this grace given that I should preach among the Gentiles.

Those people, the drunks, the prostitutes, the idolaters, the ones that we look at and say, you know what? I, I think we'll just pass them by. Do you ever look at a person? Somebody said to me, this just the other day. She would really make a great Christian.

How do you know? Because they were looking at her appearance. You know, God says, the person that's right down at the bottom. They're the ones I'm going to reach out to and make a really great Christian out of.

So the Gentiles, well, they had a problem. We find out that now they got a part in God's plan. Paul says, I'm going to be a preacher to the Gentiles.

And so Paul went to the regions beyond. Paul went everywhere preaching the gospel. He says, woe is me if I preach not the gospel.

And I wonder what our attitude is when it comes to the preaching of the gospel. Have we become into such a comfort zone of coming to the meetings? Every Sunday we show up on the hour, every hour. We're here on time, we're dressed our best.

We have our gospel meeting Sunday night, and that's great. We have our Bible study and prayer meeting on a Wednesday night. That's awesome.

But what about the people out there, folks? What about those who are living on the street tonight? What about the lady that's been left by a husband who's gone off with another? And she's going to look after two or three kids. What about the man that's in jail tonight? And the list goes on and on. You know the people that we look at and say, well, I kind of hope they don't come to our meetings because they smell, they stink a little bit.

They haven't had a bath in two weeks. They haven't showered for ages. Wearing the same clothes now for months.

It says, Paul, that I should preach among the Gentiles. The unsearchable riches of Christ. My time is gone.

I trust that we will have the same three appreciations out of this verse that Paul had. A right view of ourselves. A right value of Christ.

But a right vision for the world. The Gentiles for whom Christ died. Our Father, we're very thankful that we've had this opportunity to meet together this evening.

Thanks, Father, for Thy great salvation. And we just would pray that we might leave here tonight rejoicing in this salvation and appreciating it like we've never done before. But just in a simple way that we might return to the cross and view the one who died for us.

And see something of His unsearchable riches. And Father, help us. Help us to target those who are not saved.

Father, we pray that at this conference this weekend we might see ourselves a little lower than we've ever done before. We pray that we might see Christ a little higher than we've ever done before. We pray that we might have the joy of seeing some sinful Gentile reached and saved.

We give thanks, then, for this first evening together and for those who are going to be coming here in the morning. We pray that they'll be brought along in safety. Once again, we ask for a nice time of fellowship.

In the name of the Lord Jesus. Amen. I assume maybe there's announcements or a hymn.

I don't just know.