of Ephesians, even though it isn't the book of Ephesians. It's a circular letter, which means to all the churches. If you look in the original language, the word in Ephesus is not there. And even in your study Bibles, it should say the word in Ephesus is not in the old manuscripts. So this is a circular letter. We're going to talk about the riches of God right now, talk about His riches. What all does God own? What all does God own? God owns everything, doesn't He? He owns you and He owns me. He owns you and He owns me whether you're saved or not. Because He will put you in your eternal abode, which will either be heaven or hell, regardless whether you're saved or not. Now His riches are all things. If you go in the mountains, you see national monuments. You go to Yellowstone National Park, you see the different things there. All of that's God's. It might say it's the United States of America, but actually it's God's. If you look at all the different forests up here, you go to Yosemite, it's God's place. It's all God's land. My property that I live on here, it's God's land. It's His. He let me use it. After you leave this world, everything that you've got is no longer yours. It's no longer yours. I'm trying to, and I need your help in doing this financially and your prayers too. I'm at the last end of my life. In my later years, I don't know how much longer I'm going to last, but I keep on trying to preach as much as I can. I'm trying to leave a legacy behind in DiscoverTheWord.com, all the 70 some odd hundred messages out there, and YouTube sites. Trying to leave a trust with it to take care of it from now on. And thank some of you out there that have sent helpings and offerings, and I do need more, period. That's a legacy. We leave behind legacies. When God created the heavens and the earth, He created a perfect heaven and perfect earth. It says in Genesis 1 and 1, 1 and 2, it says in the translations that the earth was formless and void. The earth was not formless and void. It became that way. God doesn't create anything that's not perfect. He creates all things perfect. He doesn't create evil. He doesn't create to reprobate. He creates perfection. It may become reprobate, but it is not when it leaves his hands. The riches of God, all the lands, all the gold. You know, gold is up to about $3,000 an ounce in American money, in dollars, almost $3,000 an ounce. It may be even more today, I don't know. But gold's worth a lot of money. Silver's worth $31 an ounce or so. But all of that is God's. You know that gold will be paving material in heaven, the streets of gold. We're going to go in here and the Apostle Paul is talking about the untrackable riches of God. The untrackable. Now, I am a tracker. Marilyn, I am a tracker. Am I a tracker? Yes. Can I track? Yes. Yes, you are very much. was a cone hunter, a lion hunter, a bear hunter, and all of that. Foxes and whatever. And when I'm walking in the woods, I'm looking around, but I'm watching the trail, most of all. I'm watching for tracks. One time, I have a real good sense of smell. Marilyn and I were up here about 20 years ago, I believe. It was about 20 years ago, wasn't it, Marilyn? in the Fish Lake Valley, and we were up on Cottonwood Creek, and I had been swimming, and I always carry a gun with me normally, and almost always. Anyway, I had been swimming, my trunks were wet and everything, I didn't have a gun in my pocket. And I told Marilyn I wanted to walk up there, and I just had a t-shirt on. I might not even have a t-shirt on, but I had shoes on, but socks and shoes on. We started walking up Cottonwood Creek. And we got up there about a half a mile or so, and I said, I smell a lion. Remember that? I smell a lion. I said, there's a lion around here someplace. I smell a lion. And she went on like, I didn't know what I was talking about. We got on up there, and then she said, I'm tired. I want to go back. I don't want to go anymore. I'm tired. I want to go back. I said, OK. We walked back about a quarter of a mile, and what did we see? in the track on the road. There was some soft clay there. The lion tracks right on top of our tracks. Our tracks, lion tracks right on top of it. I said, well, there's a lion walking, what's been following us, he's been tracking us. The lion was tracking us. And I smelled the lion. Boy, you know what? Marilyn wasn't tired anymore at all. She got a burst of energy and started poofing it on. But all the time she said, you will never leave without a gun. I don't have a stick. I don't have a rock. Nothing to protect myself. And you don't have your gun. Is that what he said? Wasn't that? About 40 years ago, I lived east of Bakersfield a little bit. I lived out there in the country. And I had a service station and I had quite a little money in a box in the closet. About eight or ten thousand dollars. And I'd take it to the deal back and we had some white gangsters in the neighborhood that came in there and they were messing around. I didn't even leave my house unlocked back at that time. Trust his neighbors and everything. Neighbors pretty much watched what was going on. I came home and walked to the house and the back door was open. And I went in there in the bedroom and I looked in there. What's going on? I looked up in the closet and the box was down. And all the money was gone out of the box. What I didn't know was they had taken a gun also. There was a gun up there. Smith & Wesson Model 29 Dirty Harry Special. I didn't miss a gun. I went out in the, in the yard. And I started looking for tracks. And I found the tracks. And they were walking down the edge of the road. And I followed those tracks all the way down about a mile and a half. And I got down there and I saw where they went and I looked over there. And there they were out in the yard. They were out there. And so I called The sheriff's office, I said, I found people that robbed my house. And I said, my house had been robbed. I told them my house had been robbed. And I said, I have found them. I tracked them. I tracked them down. And they, I said, you want me to go get them, or do you want? I didn't know they had my gun. I didn't know, I never knew they had my gun until years later. A lot of years later. Because I didn't miss the gun. I didn't shoot it. It was a dirty hair special and presentation case. I have it now. But they came out there and they found the money. I told them I had the money. They found the money, but they didn't find the gun, because I didn't tell them the gun was missing. I was up here close to nine years ago or eight years ago, something like this, down working on the creek, and my cell phone rang and it was the sheriff's officer in Kern County. And he said, Are you Jim Phillips?" I said, yes, I am Jim Phillips. I said, we have your gun. I said, you have my gun? How did you get my gun? What is it? It's a Model 29 Smith & Wesson .44 Magnum. I said, well, somebody robbed my son's house or something? I said, is it nickel plated or stainless steel? He said, no, it's black gun. I said, I don't have a black 49, Model 29 Smith & Wesson. Well, it's registered in your name. And we found it in this drug bust. I said, really? I said, wait a minute. Wait just a minute. I did have one. I said, it's an eight and three-eighths inch barrel. Yes. It's a long barrel gun. I said, yes. I said, does it have a mahogany case? No. It's in a sock or kind of a, you know, wrapped up. It's got reloads in it. And the reloads is ones that I've reloaded. So anyway, I had to go down there and get my gun. I didn't know what's missing. But because the gun was registered, they traced it, they tracked the gun down to me. And I got my gun back. After all those years, 40 years, I got my gun back. And I didn't even know it was missing. Didn't even know it was missing. Tracking things. Sometimes you can, if you buy a gun or you buy a radio or you buy some kind of a phone, you register it. You buy a screwdriver, a power screwdriver, And you register it. You register it and then you can go down and get another one. All the things that they can track it down. Now let's go to Ephesians, the third chapter, verse number 8. Emoi to elatis to tero, panton hageon edothe, To me, to me, that's native singular first person pronoun, MOI. That's looking down, it's a reflexive first person pronoun. To me, the least. Though there is dative singular masculine, definite article. Least there, it's got kind of a double comparative. The most, most, most, most least. Most least, dative singular. Out of all, That's planton, that's the oblative plural masculine, out of all the holy ones, out of all the saints. Hagion. The word saints there is not of earth. It comes from alpha and gay, gamma, epsilon there, or gamma and eta. The holy ones, it has been given to me. Third person singular, first heiress, indicative, passive. That first heiress really punctill your knife-blade action. It was given to me, that word comes from Didami. It was given to me, third person singular, that's a it, was, passive voice, indicative mode, absolute fact, first heiress, punctill your action, the grace. Hey Carice, the grace, this, this grace. Paul is talking to us here that the gift and the call to the ministry of God, God did by His unmerited favor. Let's look at Paul for a moment. Paul was a very religious man always. He was raised in a very strict religious home. He was a Pharisee of Pharisees, a Hebrew of Hebrews. In other words, he was a elite Pharisee, the top Pharisee. He was a Hebrew of Hebrews. Most Hebrews did not speak Hebrew in their home. Paul's home did. Paul spoke Hebrew in his home. Most Hebrews, most of the Jewish people that day, did not speak Hebrew because they thought it was a very holy language. They spoke Greek or they spoke Aramaic. Everybody spoke Greek. Hellas. Everybody spoke Greek. Because that was the common language, Koine Greek. To me the least of all the holy ones, the saints, it was given to me the grace, this grace, and then tois et nusin, the grace to the nations, to the Gentiles, to the nations of the Gentiles. That means everybody but a Jew. But he preached to the Jews too. To preach, Euangeliis est, 1 Therese Infinity, Middle Voice. To preach for myself. Paul preached because he had to preach. You know when God calls you to preach, you gotta preach. I had a man one time that came to my class. He was a retired preacher. And he was pretty young. He was maybe 40-something years old. I think I was in my 40s at that time. Well, I was in my 50s at that time. And I'm preaching up at the time, I'm preaching Greek, just like I'm doing right now. And he came to my class, he wanted to learn a little bit of Greek, and he had retired and everything, and he came in there and he just, he would just sit there every time, amen, he'd get up there and he'd say, I never saw anything like this in my life. He said, you preach Greek just like it's English. And you make me understand it. He said, I had Greek in college, in seminary, but he said, I didn't learn that, I didn't learn this. All that was introductory Greek. He stayed in my class for about a year or two. And he came to me, he said, Brother Phillips, he said, I'm leaving. He said, Brother, you have taught me that I can't stop preaching. I've got to preach. He said, I ran out of soap before. I had to just preach everything. And I was just preaching the same messages over and over and over again. And he said, I come in here, and he said, I can take the whole Bible, and I can preach it now. And he said, boy, he said, it's a brand new book. And he went home preaching the riches of God's grace. He didn't see the riches. He didn't see the gold mines and the jewels and the pearls and the diamonds and things that were in God's Word. He said it was this dry. He said, now it's alive. He went on and did that. He went up there and preached. I hope that he did well. He may be dead and gone by now, I don't know. Because that was over 20 years ago, 25 years ago probably. It was given to me, the grace of God, to preach. Sometimes things happen in your life that discourage you very much. But if you're preaching, if really God called you to preach, you gotta preach. You gotta preach. The call to preach is a call that doesn't go away. It's there. You gotta preach. No matter how. I worked at a church in Bakersfield, California for 20-something years. I taught three classes a week, probably 3,000 classes in that 20-something years, plus others that I didn't even, some of them I didn't record. But I preached at that church without pay, without even any money to go back and forth. It was 30 miles one way to church, over 30 actually. And I go there and back and there and back and there and back and sometimes other times there and back. And you know what? It was a privilege because I didn't have to pay the electricity or anything. I didn't have to provide a seat or anything. I just preached and I had to preach. I'm thankful for it. Always was thankful for it. To preach. First Air Syndicative Middle Voice. He said, I had to preach. Middle Voice tells us it was an unction that he could not lay down. To preach to evangelize the toll on excess neostaton. The unsearchable, untrackable, uncomprehendable. It literally means, it comes from ana-ekon-ix-nos. comes from those three words. Ana ex ixnos. What it means is to erase the tracks. Have you ever watched a cowboy movie where they come there and somebody was tracking someone and they'd get a big bush and they'd hook it onto a rope and they would drag that bush behind them to rub out their tracks. to rub out their tracks. Indians, when they were in enemy territory or something, they put funk skin on their horse's feet to make it where it wouldn't track, and then they'd rub out those tracks so there wouldn't be any sharp impressions at all, rubbed out tracks. It has given to me the grace, this grace, to the nations, to the Gentiles, to the dogs, to those heathens, to those barbarians, to preach and evangelize the untrackable riches." Plutos. That means riches. That means over and abounding. Maryland, we used to go to church dinners and stuff, didn't we? We used to go to church dinners a long time ago. And we'd go in there to those dinners sometimes and some of those guys would have a plate and they'd have the food so piled so high on that plate it was falling off on the floor as they're going to sit down. I've seen that many times. I remember one time this guy, his name was Jim, and we'd have church dinners. I cooked very big church dinners. I cooked spaghetti, Mexican dinners, whatever, you know. And he went and got himself an old army tray. A stainless steel army tray. A food, you know, food tray. They had some of those in schools and everything. But they were stainless steel and they were real big. He'd pile that thing sky high. And that'd have something else with dessert on it. Brother Madden came there one time. Brother Madden walked by that guy there. He looked at that and he said, He was not a very big guy either, but he had a great big place. He had a couple of them there like that. Riches, overflowing riches. Riches that you can't contain. It's like a creek that is so full it's overflowing. It's like a glass that Somebody comes to your table and just like they came to pour tea or water in your glass and it just kept running all over the table. That's what that Plutus means. Of Christ, the untrackable riches of Christ. Paul tried to tell us that he was trying to show us the untrackable riches of God. In the church today, we live in the church age. In the church age, our business is to preach the untrackable riches of God. God owns everything. But you know what? Up in the third heaven up there, if you go up there and you walk into the boat of God, Now you can't do this without being glorified and resurrected, okay? Or taken up there, raptured up there, whatever. Because these bodies can't stand that. We would just dissolve or go away because of the sin in us. If you went up into heaven, you would see things much more greater than here. In America, when the Europeans came here, they saw riches and natural resources that they didn't have in Europe at all. I had a coin one time from Mount Polisey down Central South America and the mountain down there and Spain came here and claimed that area down in there. And they gathered up a whole bunch of the Indians and made slaves out of them and they sent them down this mine. They're still mining that thing for four and five hundred years ago. I had a coin that was in 1600 I think. I've got one coin in 1820 from that area. And is still going. There was a mine up in Carson City up there, I can't remember whether it was a silver or gold mine, that the veins were so big in the ground that they didn't know how to get it out. They went in there and they started chipping away at these veins, but the veins were so big they didn't know how in the world they were going to get it out of there. You know, when you usually go into a gold mine, you have a shaft, like that, and you build Timbers here, timbers there. Every few feet you have timbers and you have to support timbers in between. And you go into hard rock mining most of the time. But they went down in there and this thing just went gigantic horizontally. They couldn't build a shaft that big. So they started trying to figure out, what in the world am I going to do? How are we going to get this silver out of here? I mean, it's going to be like a great big hole down here, a giant cave, like Carlsbad Caverns, but even bigger, giant, when they take all the gold and silver out of there. Well, they said we've got to build something. We've got to build mine shafts like honeycombs. Honeycombs go like that. And they just kept on going, kept on going until they could fill up this gigantic cavern with this honeycomb type timbers. And there's still gold and silver there. Gigantic. Millions of dollars worth. But it was so massive that they didn't know how in the world they were going to get it out of there because the veins were so big. I lived down here on the Snogus Ranch when I was very young. From the time I was in my single digits, up until I became a double digit, 11, 12, 13 years old, 12 years old I think, when I was 13 when I first left there. But they had a gold mine up there and I tried to find it many years later and I haven't been able to find it. I went up there and you could drop a rock down in that shaft and it would just go over 1,001, 1,002, 1,003, 1,004, plink. Like that. Deep shaft. And I went down to this old dugout. They built, they were two minor brothers. They were minors and they were brothers. One of them got married. And so they had lived in, up there I showed you where there's two old dugouts right up there by Cottonwood Creek. There were two dugouts back in there and they had wood stoves and everything, side by side. One miner got married and they built him a house. They went up there and they built this concrete block house with a basement under it and a full attic in it. But they had a big dugout up there that was really nice. It was a big room about probably 15 feet wide by maybe 50 feet long or so. Just not like my front room. And in there was a wood stove and back in there they had cabinets and things all through there. Well, I went down there looking around one time and I found this rock like this. And I think what they had done is they had taken this one big gold vein out and they wanted a piece of it left just for a souvenir. And I went down there and here's rock was this big. And on the side was rock and a great big gold vein in the middle. Now that rock would be worth thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars today if I don't know where it went. But I moved from there. He got left behind somehow. Anyway, that was a remnant of the riches of that mine, of that gigantic gold vein in that mine, the riches of that gold mine. Well the riches of the grace of God are so great that it says that no man can track them. God's trail is untrackable. The only way you can track out the riches of God's glory and His grace is to track yourself all the way into the third heaven and see that beautiful city that Jesus has built up there. The city of four squares. That's paved with gold. Paved with gold. that the gates on that city are made out of gigantic pearls, one piece pearl, gigantic. God made those big pearly gates. The foundation stones are precious stones that God made those. God makes diamonds, he makes rubies, he makes sapphires, all of this, emeralds, all of this beautiful. They're all, that's what the city's built out of. And that's the glory of that city. We only began to see the riches of His grace here. I was, I grew up in the cotton fields. My family were Indians and we came out here to California, if I'm not mistaken, for White Oakies so we could own something. The first thing my family did is they put money down on a little acre of ground and all of my uncles and aunts and great grandmothers and everybody They all came in together and camped on that spot. We had a little Indian village out there east of Bakersfield. We'd go out in the cotton fields. And my grandmother had a voice that was very beautiful. She was as good as many of the country western stars. And she had an absolute photographic memory. If she ever heard a song, she could sing it perfectly in the right key and everything. She sat down, her sister was taking piano lessons. She would watch her from across the room. And she asked her mother if she could play the piano. She said, well, daughter, you don't know how to play the piano. She said, just let me try, Mama. Just let me try. She went over there and just rolled. Unbelievable. A savant. She started playing for the silent movies. Never had a lesson, but she knew exactly. She remembered everything, every song. We were out there in those cotton fields and people work in those cotton fields. Today, the people that are working, even the aliens that come up here, they used to come up here and be seasonal workers. They come up here for a season and go back to Mexico or wherever. When we went out there in the fields, there was no shade for us, there was no water for us, there was no bathroom for us. We worked from before daylight till after dark. As long as you could see cotton, You remember, it was right on your place. I was out there picking cotton. Crawling around, learning how to walk in a cotton field. But the most glorious thing of all was to hear my grandmother sing. And she'd start singing and all the people would sing. All the people would sing. I remember watching some Earl Hardy movies and them singing out in the cotton field. Now, those people that moved didn't know how to pick cotton, I can guarantee you that much. They didn't know how to pick cotton. They wouldn't have lasted 30 minutes in the cotton field. But they were out there singing. And I mean to tell you what, they were so miserable in the heat and the bugs and no privacy to even go to the bathroom. They're out there singing themselves in the glory land. They're singing the unsearchable riches of God. I want a cabin in the corner of glory land. Swing low sweet chariot. Amazing grace. When my grandmother got killed, I was very young, she wasn't my mother. She was the one who raised me. When she got killed, we had the old rugged cross and sang Love, Sweet Cherry at her funeral. As she sang that, singing herself into glory in that misery, I never saw in my grandmother's hands that they weren't bleeding in the cracks. from 2 o'clock in the morning till 8 or 9 o'clock, 10 o'clock at night. She had about four hours sleep a day and she worked. She worked hard. She took in the laundry and washed clothes on the rug board and built a fire out in the yard under some rocks with this tub there. She'd get the water out of the canal and put it in there. Working in the fields and working after she got home and there was flat iron, she'd be ironing these clothes. But she sang herself into glory. Those unsearchable riches of God. 3 in verse 9 now. Kai photisse, tis hei okonomia tu mysterio, tu apo kec kru menu, apo ton aeonion ento theoto ta ponta quesante. and Chi, that conjunction there, and to put in the light, to put in the light, to turn on the light, 1st Harris Infinity, to put in the light what the stewardship, the administration, the dispensation of the secret mystery of having been hidden of the secret mystery, the othomia there, that is the executor of the state, the stewardship, the administrator. In this period of time we live in, the church is the executor of the state of the kingdom of God. And that doesn't bind the Catholic Church, the Presbyterian Church, the Church of England. It means those local, little, individual, visible New Testament churches, they are the administrators of God's kingdom, with no head above them except Jesus Christ. To put in the light, to turn on the light bulb, what the stewardship, the administration, the dispensation of the secret mystery. Mysterio. Our word mystery comes right out, that's genitive singular. Genitive singular definite article in front of it. Genitive singular means that The case, that means a case of possession. The ministry of the having been hidden. That is genitive, singular, neuter, perfect participle, passive voice. Having been hidden. The word in there is opo and crypto. Opo means from, and then the word crypto, we've got a word crypto, cryptic, secret, hidden, not visible, cryptic. Crypto money, crypto this, crypto that. Hidden. Having been hidden from the ages. From eternity past. In eternity past. The ages of the ages. Eona. Eona. Way back there. Way, way back there. In eternity past. Way back there when he decided how that he would save the man that he was going to create, because he knew he was going to sin. The plans of that, the riches of that grace, of the ages, in the God, in To-Theo. It's hidden in God. Preposition, page 137, the end, just like our Greek, our English preposition. Beth is the Hebrew one there, Beth, page 88. Ba-Rashith. That's the first word in the Hebrew Old Testament. Ba-Rashith. First word in the book of Genesis. Ba-En-Rosh. Beginnings. In beginnings. In one of the beginnings. Having been hidden from the ages in the God, the One, the things all having created. Having created, katisis. Katizo is what it comes from. Having been created. Now, in the translations it says, by Christ Jesus, but actually that's not in there. It's not in it, but we understand. In Colossians 1.16, all things were created in Him. Colossians 1.14, in whom we have redemption, even the forgiveness of sins, who is the image of the invisible God, firstborn out of creation, actually the head of all creation, for in him were all things created that are in heaven and upon the earth, visible and invisible. They are thrones, and dominions, and principalities, and powers, and all things that were created were created by Him, and for Him, and through Him. He is before all things, and by Him all things exist. In the God, the One all things having created, all things having created. Jesus Christ created all things. And what we have, the grace of God, for in grace you're having been saved through faith without knowledge of self, is the gift of God. All of that we see today, but it's only just a peek into the riches of God's grace. We don't even get to peek into heaven in all reality. Heaven is so much greater than the earth, and the earth is beautiful. If you've ever been up here in these mountains, you'll see beauty, unbelievable things. I remember when Marilyn, I was trying to talk Marilyn into moving up here. And she said, this is too far from anywhere. She said, that's too far from Todd. I took her eye shoulder some things. Then one day, we got in a pickup and we drove up the mountain. We drove up into Trail Canyon, and I hadn't been there for 30 years. And all these roads up here now, they've got all kinds of new roads. I get lost on the wrong road, because there was only one road that went there at one time. There was a little road shooting off of there, but nothing. but one road going up to that trail canyon. I went up there and we went up this little hill. I knew, I knew what was up there. We got up there and I stopped that car and here's this beautiful pond up there and all these beautiful aspen trees and pinyon trees and animals all over the place. And we rode to a canyon of roses, Rose Canyon. Nothing but wild roses and you could just smell the roses. And we drove up there and Marilyn just said, oh, oh, oh, this is, I can't believe I lived this long and didn't see something like this. This is the most beautiful thing I ever saw. Tears were just coming down her eyes. The beauty of this place is something else. Go up here and see some of the oldest trees, oldest living things in the world. the oldest living things in the world, not some, the oldest living thing in the world. The trees, the beauty, the animals, the antelope, the deer, the wild horses, the big horned sheep. You see all these things. You see the beautiful streams and ponds coming down. That's nothing compared to heaven. That's nothing compared to heaven. That's just a glimpse of what God owns. He owns all things, but that's just a glimpse of some of His treasures. That's on the outside of the box, but the box is in heaven. That's where you walk to the pearly gates. Our Father, we thank You for Your message from Your Word. Please forgive me where I've gone. Please use this message to touch on Your glory, to make people want to see it, and look forward to it, and to understand salvation today is by free grace through the blood of your Son, through His death, burial, and resurrection. Please forgive me for I fail you. In Jesus' name, amen.