Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: You're listening to a live recording from Westside Church in Bend, Oregon.
[00:00:04] Speaker B: Thanks for joining us.
[00:00:06] Speaker A: I'm not preaching, but I do get to give you present to you a bit of a special treat today.
But let me tell you a story first. You know what? Maybe I will preach. Actually feeling like it. No. About 10 years ago, I was working at a foursquare church in Klamath Falls just down the highway, and I read a book called Beautiful Battlefields by. By a woman named Bo Stern.
And then shortly after I read the book, I found her blog, which was a blog that was detailing her journey through her husband being diagnosed with als.
And it was the most raw and honest walk in Christianity from anyone that I had ever seen before. For someone to be so authentic and to share the doubts and the difficulties of what she was going through, it was really an introduction to me for how to walk through this life when we're dealing with deep, deep, deep suffering.
I was so inspired. I came to learn that Bo Stern was actually employed here at Westside Church. And about a year after that, when Westside asked me to speak at their youth camp at Washington Family Ranch, I went up and spoke. And at the beginning of the second session, I saw Bo Stern walk into the room. And I was horrified with nerves.
I literally said to a friend that was standing next to me, I said, if she's going to come here and stand in the room, she should probably be speaking.
And I still to this day have so, so much respect for her, a lot less fear as we developed a friendship over time.
She is so encouraging and generous with her thought, and her process has cared so deeply and well for this church. In her time here, that was 22 years.
And then she still is just so valuable in relationship to Evan and I as we continue to try to lead this church. She got married in 2019 and became Beau Brady. And then since 2023, she's been leading Beaverton Four Square Church over in the Portland area. And she is with us again here today. So would you guys give it up for Bo? Brad.
[00:02:15] Speaker B: Hi. I'm so glad to be here. This is so fun for me.
I. You. You do know, like, when people say when she walked into the room, I was horrified with fear or nerves or whatever that you've gotten old. That's what that means. You've gotten very old. But I want to skip to the good part, which is the message. I'm so excited about it. We're in Ephesians in this series. Our church actually went through Ephesians Last summer, so, so when they asked me to come to this one, I was like, oh, I bet I can pull a message out of the file and do that one. But it happened to be on a portion of text I didn't cover in our series, so I had to study for it, which was good for me. And what I found here has been really smacking me in the face. It's been a, it's been a big deal. What I discovered as I looked into this passage, which is Ephesians 3:1 12.
And it.
There are truths inside this passage that I think if we let them sink into the soils of our soul, they will be life changing. In fact, I'm going to go further and say that there are truths inside of this passage that are bigger than the whole world and everything in it. I mean, I'm selling it hard, but I mean it. The truths inside this passage are so big.
And so I want to jump in because it's a moment where we get to sit at the feet of Apostle Paul and listen to what he has to say to us in Ephesians 3. It starts like this.
For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus, for the sake of you Gentiles, surely you've heard about the administration of God's grace that was given to me for you. That is the mystery made known to me by revelation. As I have already written briefly now, any English teachers in the, in the room are going to feel like this is frustrating because for this reason I, Paul the prisoner of Christ Jesus, for the sake of you Gentiles, dash.
And then he says, surely you've heard about the administration of God's grace. He interrupts himself, which Paul actually does. A lot of times he interrupts himself because he thinks thought of something else he needs to tell you before he can tell you what he wants to tell you and what he wants to tell you. After the for this reason is Pastor Evans text for next week.
So but before he gets there, he's going to go 13 sentences. You can do that when you're Paul. You go 13 sentences on a cul de sac, a swerve out, he swerves out. And he gives us these 13 truth packed dense sentences filled with something so powerful and beautiful. I want to understand it, I want to know it, I want to make it my own. And so he says in reading this, then you will be able to understand my insight into the mystery of Christ.
In reading this, you'll be able to stand my insight into the mystery of Christ. That's what I want to know. I want to understand it, which was not made known to people in other generations, as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to God's holy apostles and prophets. So he says, I've received a mystery. I've received something really important. But I'm not the only one. Because if someone tells you I've received this special mystery from God and no one else has run from that person, but what Paul says is all the holy apostles and prophets have received this truth. And you can also understand it. It's not too high. It's not too. You can understand it. This is something you can get. And so we want to understand it. He says, this 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.
So please pay special attention to the word heirs. It is the linchpin word in this passage. It if you don't remember anything else that I say for this whole three hours, it oh, wait, I got that wrong. If you don't remember anything else I say, the word heirs is what I want you to remember.
So he says, you are heirs. Then he says, I became a servant of this gospel by the gift of God's grace given to me through the working of his power. So he's gotten this by grace. He wants you to know that. We'll talk about it in a minute. Although I am less than the least of all God's people, this grace was given to me to preach to the Gentiles the boundless riches of Christ and to make plain to everyone the administration of this mystery, which for ages past was kept hidden in God who created all things.
So this is important.
Paul is a really good Jewish.
He's a really, really good one. In fact, in his letter to the Church of Philippi, he says, frankly, I'm better than all of you. I'm better at doing than you are at doing. I can do this better. I've memorized.
I'm a part of the school. I did all the things. I've amassed the knowledge. I've gotten the degrees. I've got the letters behind my name. I've done everything it takes to be the best one. And still he says that didn't qualify him for salvation.
He's saying here, if anyone could have earned salvation through their pedigree or their work ethic or their ability to memorize Scripture and know the law and persecute people who didn't know the law, it's me. If anyone could Earn it. It's me, but I couldn't earn it. It is only a gift of grace. That's how I got this. That's how I'm saved.
And this is actually a really huge relief.
This is really good news for us because here's the. You're not good enough either.
I'm not good enough either. We're not good enough. We can't earn it. We're just loved enough.
We're plenty loved. We're extravagantly loved. We're embarrassingly loved.
But we're not good enough.
And that's awesome. And so get it out of your head. Not good enough to receive salvation.
So how do we receive it? That's an interesting thing.
There are two words in this part of the passage that drive me kind of crazy. I don't love them. I think they seem very opposed to one another. And the words are the administration of this mystery.
As a lover of words, I love the word mystery. It's like, ethereal and beautiful and mysterious. It's all these beautiful, deep things. When I was in, like, my preteen years, I read every single Nancy Drew book there ever was. I mean, I'm old enough that I think she was just freshly writing them then and putting them out. And I would like. There's nothing better for an Oregonian preteen on a rainy Saturday than to curl up with Nancy Drew and her friends Bess and George and her sometimes boyfriend, Ned Nickerson, and. And let them solve a mystery. I remember them. The mystery of the old clock. The mystery in the big attic. All the things. It's a mystery. It's captivating, it's compelling. I think mystery is one of maybe my favorite words. You know what's not a captivating word?
Administration.
It's not. Sorry. For those of us who live our lives as administrators, it's not super captivating. It's orderly and utilitarian.
Safe.
Mystery is wild and enticing and dangerous.
Movies are made about men of mystery, not men of administration.
I mean, have you seen the new 007 movie where we watch James Bond file his taxes? He does it on time. His receipts are in order. He's such an administrator. No, we don't love that.
It's mystery that we love. And yet Paul brings these two words together that seem to be opposed to one another.
And he puts them together twice in this chapter alone, in verse two, he says, you've heard about the administration of God's grace, the mystery made known to me by revelation. And he uses this term also in his letter to the church at Corinth, he says, regard us as administrators of the mysteries of God.
So as we look at this more closely, we start to see something really lovely happening in the deep water of this text.
Administration is the Greek word oikonomous, and it's the administration of a household or a state, especially a religious economy.
Dispensation, stewardship. As I was studying this in my office, I read that definition and I said out loud, religious economy.
That's interesting. Is there a religious economy like what's in our bank account?
What do we have? What's the economy made of? Because I don't know, probably like me, you've been watching the economy in our country over the last couple of months or weeks. Maybe you've been watching your 401k dance the dance of up and down and all the things. But when I'm. When we talk about the economy, we're not talking about my individual 401k, of which I am the only administrator.
We're talking about the big economy on which I have no impact.
It's a bigger economy than just what I have.
It's something that the government stewards. And the government, everything they do and every decision they make, every word they speak, every tweet they let out affects the economy.
It's theirs to steward and administrate. And they can't just print more money because they want it. They have a limited amount to work with and they have to steward it. But this connection of the mystery of Christ to the stewardship of an economy comes up time and time again in the New Testament. And when something comes up time and time again, we should look at it, we should understand it. Paul is saying to the Jews, and especially the gentiles here, you're rich.
You're rich.
That's what he's telling them. You are part of a crazy good economy.
Dollar strong, stock market's bullish, everything's up and to the right. You're a part of a great economy. Your bank account is stashed full of cash. Real estate portfolio is bursting at the seams. You're rich.
You didn't earn it, but it's got your name on it.
In the early aughts, there was a man named Luis Carlos and he was an unmarried nobleman in Portugal and he didn't have any heirs at all. And he had a fortune. And so he stood in front of his lawyer and two witnesses and he picked them out of a phone book. He just phone book rouletted his heirs and he put them in his will. And 13 years later he died. And these people, 70 people he chose, got phone calls saying you just inherited a fortune.
They thought they were being scammed because that doesn't happen to regular people.
There's no reason that ought to happen. And when they interviewed one of these people, the article that I read called her heiress Helena. And I thought, well, that's a really noble title for someone who just won phone book roulette. That's how. Oh, she's an heiress now, is she? But that's what we call her. She inherited a legal phone fortune. That's the only word for it. She didn't know him, but she became legally entitled to his fortune. The day he picked her name out of a phone book and wrote it down in his will.
Paul is saying to us, kind of your heiress Helena, you got picked.
You didn't earn. It wasn't random, but you got picked not out of a phone book, but from the foundations of the world. Psalm 139 tells us you were chosen with nothing that you have brought to the game.
Nothing you bring to this did it. You were just chosen and you stumbled into a windfall. You have a bunch. Paul is telling us you've inherited something huge. And when somebody tells me they. They got an inheritance, somebody left him some money. And especially if they say somebody left him a lot of money. You know what I want to know first thing, how much?
How much money? How big is big? How huge is huge? How rich is rich? I want to know that. And you do too, even if you're more polite and don't ask. But we want to know, what does rich really look like? And Paul tells us exactly how rich is rich. He says, this grace was given me to preach to the gentiles.
The boundless riches of Christ.
Some translations say the unsearchable riches of Christ.
This is bottomless, unending.
My husband and I stopped on our way here on Thursday in Salem at Red Robin. Don't judge. And it's all there was in Salem, you guys. It's really all there was to find. And so we went in there and all the servers were wearing T shirts that said bottomless on them. That's all they said because of the fries. And someone in between services informed me that it's also bottomless broccoli, if you want that.
Talk about a bummer of an inheritance. That is bad news. And we were looking at it thinking, oh, the boundless fries of Red Robin, they're boundless. The unsearchable amount of fries of Red Robin. I'm so thankful that we have inherited bottomless resources from God when we choose him, when we choose him to be our Savior. We have an inheritance. And now our inheritance, we know, includes a home in heaven that is part of the inheritance. But we don't have to administrate that. I mean, how would you even do it if you wanted to? How do I do? I? I want to make some renovations. You don't get to it. That's Jesus job. That's in fact what he went to do. I go to prepare, administrate, steward a place for you.
But what Paul is saying is you have things to administrate here and now are things in your account that you are called to invest and to spend wisely.
This is your bank account. What will you do with it? Paul is going to help us identify some of what is in this big hall of treasure that we have in our relationship with Jesus. If you picture it like a big pickup truck just filled to overflowing with beautifully wrapped gifts, and each one is a little bit different, but each one is useful and beautiful and desirable. And that's what it's like. Paul is saying, this is unsearchable. There is so much at your available to you.
Do you know that you have it? It's time. If you know you have it, you're going to spend it, right? So he says he was called to make plain to everyone the administration of this mystery, which for ages past was kept hidden by God who creates all things. His intent was that now through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms. According to this eternal purpose that he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord. In him and through faith in him, we may approach God with freedom and confidence. So that's a whole lot of words. I know it that that passage, three verses. It's just words, words, words, words, words. But I'm going to tell you get, get used to seeing it and knowing it and loving it because it is so stocked full of resources for you. He tells us a couple of the things, specifically three things that are included in our relationship with God that are ours to administrate. He's going to tell us some more things in the next passage, but that's Pastor Evans to talk about next week. So today we're going to look at the three we see here. The first one is grace.
We are called to be administrators, stewards, investors of the grace of God in our world.
It's not just, I Got saved by grace. And now I don't need it anymore.
I'm done.
We need grace both for our own lives and for the people around us.
We've talked about it already.
Grace means you didn't earn this, you stumbled into it. Grace reaches to us before we ever reach for it. Grace comes to the expressly unqualified and undeserving.
And I could give you 17 scriptures right now on Grace. You could give me 17 scriptures on Grace? You can do your own word study on it. I'd rather tell you a story.
You know that saying, keep Portland weird?
It is. It still is. It's working.
Whoever puts that on bumper stickers, they're doing it because they're keeping it weird.
And so we live in a suburb of Portland, but we have in our youth group at before about a dozen kids that are just really struggling. Some of them struggling so much that it's a matter of life and death and mental health issues, gender confusion, and just a plethora of things that have been really hard for our youth leaders to, to know how to deal with and to know how to deal with them and their parents and all the watching world that wants to have answers to all the issues.
And so I was in a meeting with them one day and they were just literally crying over these kids and saying, we don't know what to do next.
And I tell our staff all the time, we're not psychologists, we're not counselors. That's not who we are. I mean, like, if somebody comes to you and they say, I, I am at a 10 in terms of emotional turmoil, I can't go on. I'm so, I, I just always say, I, I, I'm a theologian. I can do like a four. Like, I, I don't have the training for that thing. You need a counselor. And. But our lane is spiritual, so we run in our lane. But the thing is, our lane being spiritual is not nothing.
Our lane being spiritual is huge if we'll take it.
And so in my mind, I've been seeing us like, you know, those relay runners that they run or long distance runners on the track, and they have a way of running so that they kind of shut other people out and get them moved because they want to win. That's the way I want to occupy our spiritual lane. Not so we knock other people up, but so that we knock off demons and powers and principalities as we occupy the lane that says, something is after you and it is bigger than us. But we have resources. We have a bank account we have something we can bring to this fight and it's not nothing.
I will pray for you is not a token idea.
This is something.
And so I called a day of prayer and fasting for our staff.
So there are about 35 of us that got together last Monday and fasted and then prayed and we just, there was nothing fancy about it. I said, we are just going to pound on heaven's door. We're just going to pound, we are going to bombard and we're just going to say, I mean, however we can say it. Not on my watch, like I've been entrusted with these souls, I'm going to stand for them. And so we were praying and a lot had come up about, especially about the gender confusion issue. And people have a lot of opinions about that and where that issue kind of lands inside the church. And I am not here to talk about that, but I was, while I was praying, literally face on the floor in one of our prayer rooms at the church, I saw a vision so clear of one of our kids. He's 14 and he struggles deeply with his identity. And because of his struggle it makes his his parent. It's hard for them to love him and, and it's so hard in fact for them to love him that he has voluntarily checked himself into foster care, had some suicide attempts. Just.
It's a lot. He's broken and sad and I was praying for him and I clearly saw him sitting in a chair in a dark room by himself. Just sitting, not talking, not anything, just sitting, just tears running down his face, but nothing else.
And then I saw Jesus come into the room and Jesus just pulled up a chair and just sat by him.
Didn't talk, didn't preach, didn't have answers, didn't say change your ways, didn't say turn or burn, didn't say anything, just sat by him.
And in my vision it was like he was there for hours without any words spelled. And then at that moment, the boy just put his head on Jesus shoulder.
And then my vision ended.
And what struck me in it is that Jesus didn't come and sit down next to pronouns.
He didn't sit down next to a political issue. He didn't sit down next to a sin. He sat down next to a child that he created. A child who is really, truly has a very narrow, limited looking future unless Jesus steps in in a way that is going to change him. And Jesus wastes all this time just sitting with him, just with him.
He doesn't leave because it's not effective.
He doesn't ghost him.
He doesn't preach it. He just sits with him.
And I was thinking, like, that kid, he can't see Jesus right now. He really can't. He is just so. He's so stuck in his own turmoil and trauma, and he can't see Jesus. But what he can see is his youth pastor, who every week sits with him, every week cares for him. In fact, when we got in a circle to pray at the end, his youth pastor was standing in that circle, and she just was weeping over the vision, just weeping over him. And I was like, that's. That's grace.
That's what grace looks like.
You know what else grace looks like? His youth pastor, who will also tell him the truth about his identity, which she will.
But first, it looks like this.
I sit with you in your pain and in your sorrow and in your heartache, and I love you.
Manifold wisdom is a part of what we have in Jesus. I love the word manifold. It means many multicolored looks. Such a weird thing. Many multicolored. It's like a kaleidoscope or a tapestry. Many colors and shapes and sizes of wisdom. Thank God, because look at our world. We need many sizes and colors and shapes of wisdom. Manifold wisdom speaks beyond our human wisdom because we do have a little. We. We have a little bucket full of human wisdom, too. And sometimes it serves us well, and sometimes it just won't.
I had a child. I actually have a lot of childs. I have 10.
But one of my kids was in college years and years ago. And she called me one day, and she was really upset, and she said, I don't have my tuition, and I only have a week to get it or I have to drop out, and I just don't know where I'm going to get it. And I was like, babe, you just. You. You need to just trust Jesus. And I said that because I knew I was gonna send her a check. I knew it. I was like, problem solved. Jesus to the rescue.
And as soon as I hung up the phone, I knew Jesus was very clearly speaking to me. Do you want her to trust you all her life, or do you want her to trust me all her life? You get to pick. You certainly can send her the check.
And I was like, I certainly don't want her to trust me all her life. I want her to trust Jesus. So I did. And then she called me a couple days later and said, I can't believe it. My employer did my paycheck wrong for, like, eight weeks. And they just Gave me the makeup pay and it's exactly what I needed for my tuition.
And it was so cool. And she goes, but I can't eat her, I don't have gas. But that's okay, I can pay my tuition. And I was like, don't, don't just trust Jesus. Because I did know I am going to send her a check for that. And I did.
But honestly, my human wisdom said something that was not going to be good enough for what God wanted to do in her life.
The manifold wisdom of God speaks beyond our wisdom, beyond our wisdom which is faulty and frail so much of the time.
Freedom and confidence. This is a really lovely one. It says, in him and through faith in him, we, we may approach God with freedom and confidence.
This is big. The Greek reads more literally that in Christ and through faith in him, we have freedom of speech and freedom of access.
Last week I had to get that star put on my driver's license, that special id so I can fly in two weeks.
And I went in and they, I went right when it opened so I could get right in and right out.
It was 8 o' clock in the morning and there was a line already around the building. Took me an hour just to get into the building to get a number. And then when I got there, My number was 284 and they were now serving 217.
So I was like, okay, this is going to be a bit of a wait. And at no time during my two and a half hour wait did I ever rush the counter and say, you know what? I just feel like I have access here. I feel like I ought to be able to talk to you. Now. I'm a, I'm a citizen, I ought to be able to talk. Nope, I. They would have. There was a security guard there. I would have. And when I finally did get there, you know what the first thing is? She wanted to see my ticket. Like, they don't play. They want the ticket. They want to make sure you, you, this is your appointment and no one else's. And then there's partition between you and them. You don't get access, you just get a minute and you get to be there for one thing.
And that is not our relationship with God.
We don't need a number, you don't need a ticket. You don't have to schedule an appointment. He is there. We have full access to him. And when we are with him, we can say whatever it is we need to say. We have freedom and confidence that he hears us, that we can say what we need to say, and we can also have freedom for him to speak back to us. We want to let him speak speak. We want to steward the account of freedom and confidence by choosing to also listen to him, to let him encourage and strengthen and tell you how you can encourage and strengthen someone else.
As the church becomes a family that doesn't just come and listen to words about Jesus, but hears words from Jesus themselves and shares his good words with each other, we become a family where the table is set, set and loaded with sustenance. The beef freezer is full. We all have something going on. We all have something to share that's going to encourage and strengthen. Our bank accounts are bursting and it's a bull market.
This is who we're called to be as those who follow God. In a world that is terrified of scarcity. Worship team, you can come back. In a world that's terrified of scarcity, we are heirs to a fortune.
How sad if we just bend it timidly our whole life.
My.
My husband and I don't have anybody that's going to leave us money.
We don't. And I've had friends who always knew through their whole lives, they known money's coming, a windfall is coming eventually. And they spend differently than I do because they're just like, we leave it on the field.
And I feel like when I read this scripture, just Jesus is saying to me, you've got a windfall, spend it, invest it, care about it, do something more than just protect it.
What are you doing with the grace of Jesus, it's big. It's important.
Together we steward this for ourselves and for one another.
Matthew 25, Jesus, it's always interesting to look at a principle like this, develop in a. In a God, in a letter, and then ask, what does Jesus have to say about it? So what Jesus has to say about it is, a man who's really wealthy goes away for a bit of time. We don't know where or when he went or why or how long, but he's leaving. And so he gives five, three people a sum of money. And it says he gives them money according to their ability. It doesn't tell us what ability to their ability. The rest of the parable is going to tell us. It's according to their ability to steward it, to administrate it. So he gives 15 and 12 and 11 talent each. And the guy with five makes five and the guy with two makes two, and the guy with one squirrels it away.
And he says, I knew you were a shrewd businessman and I know that you gather where you didn't sow. And so I was afraid to lose this money, so I kept it for you.
And every time I read that, because I've been in ministry a long time, so every time I read that parable, I identify with the guy with the five and the guy with the two.
And as I've studied this, I'm like, oh no, shoot. So many times I'm the guy with the one.
I'm squirreling it away, I'm hiding it. Oh no. What if I give too much grace?
What will happen?
What if I love too much?
What if I lay too much out here?
And Jesus calls that man not fearful. He calls him lazy and wicked.
And I just want to be someone who spends well the account she's been given.
I want to spend, spread it around like confetti. These riches.
We keep waiting for things to come in and fix our country's problems.
We're waiting for the things like laws and leaders and politicians and whatever. And I think that we have the answers we need.
We have it. We have grace and the manifold wisdom of God. We have confidence to freely approach him and ask him for what we need. We have healing and love and truth. And next week you're going to see, in fact, in a couple of minutes we're going to read the next passage that says we have power.
The problem is, I think though that we go straight to power and bypass grace and then our power destroys what our grace could have protected.
First, I want to know the grace and the wisdom of God and I want to be willing to bring that to a 14 year old kid who's not easy to love and be willing to sit and be willing to listen and be willing to care and refuse to ghost because that's grace and our world is dying for it.
We're honestly not dying for new laws, we're dying for more grace. We're dying for more wisdom. We're dying for the power of Jesus Christ.
So Holy Spirit, we do ask you, in fact we plead with you.
Would you open our hearts to see the accounts that you have stored up for us?
Would you help us to see the places where we feel out of grace? I even feel like prophetically someone has been working with someone for a long time and it's been a frustration and you just feel out of grace.
And I ask that today you would be able to see the grace that God has given you for this specific assignment.
For those who need wisdom, a different size or shape or color of wisdom would you show up today day? Reveal yourself. Reveal answers. Reveal truth. Reveal who you are.
God, we just want to sit with you and know you and understand that we are your heirs and we want to bring our wealth to the world.
We love you so dearly and we worship you. In your name we pray. Amen.
