Sunday, September 15th
Ephesians 3:14-21
Matt Rawlings
"For this
reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and
on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you
to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that
Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith- that you, being rooted and
grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is
the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ
that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now
to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think,
according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in
Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen." Ephesians 3:14-21
Prayer: Dear Heavenly Father - make this our prayer as
a church. I pray that you would grant us
to be strengthened with power through your Holy Spirit and that through the
Spirit, your Son Jesus would reside in the very core of our being through
faith. I pray that we all in this church would be rooted and grounded in love
and see the full beauty of your love for us. Please let us know Christ’s love
for us in a way that is greater than we ever have before and fill us with all
of your fullness as we are strengthened in your love. God, we ask these things
in your name – knowing that you are able to do far more than we have ever
imagined and we thank you that your all-powerful Holy Spirit is already at work
in us. We pray these things in your Son’s name and we ask that you would be
glorified in our church and that the name of Christ Jesus would be lifted up
for all generations. Amen.
There used to
be an old comic strip that later became a cartoon called Popeye. And in the
Popeye comics, he would be weak and unable to conquer his nemesis, Bluto or woo
Olive Oyl or foil the plans of criminals, unless he consumed spinach. But when
he ingested spinach, he was strengthened from the inside out and he developed a
strength that enabled him to carry out whatever his mission was.
I think why
people identified with Popeye is because everyone feels weak at times and
everyone wants to be strong and able to overcome the challenges we face. Now,
there is no miraculous food that a person can eat that can make them suddenly
have super-human strength. And God doesn’t always intend that we are delivered
from our trouble or even that we will be delivered from suffering always. Because,
as we saw last week, God is often at work in mysterious ways bringing about His
plans, in ways we don’t expect. But, we can have a strength that lasts, that is
meant to be resident inside of us, that will sustain us, that will enable us to
face whatever challenges we have and remain faithful in Christ and glorify His
name.
Paul has just
written that he is suffering as a prisoner and he has told the Ephesians to not
be discouraged. But he knows that they will need strength if they are to remain
faithful in the Christian walk. They need strength if they are to keep on
loving God. They need strength to love each other and they need strength to
know the fullness of God. There are four points that we are going to look at
today from this passage, four things that we need to see and understand if we
are to be encouraged and be filled with the fullness of God and glorify the
name of Jesus.
1. God
has all power
2. We
need to be strengthened with God’s power, to know Christ’s love
3. We
need to know Christ’s limitless love to be filled with Him
4. We can trust that God can do more than we can imagine
1. God
has all power
Paul says, "For
this reason I bow my knees before the Father,". The “for this
reason” is pointing back to the awesome truths in chapter 2 that Paul has been
meditating on and sharing with the Ephesians. Jew and Gentile alike have
miraculously been brought together into a new humanity in Christ Jesus as He
has reconciled man to God through the Cross. Paul has been marveling that Jews
and Gentiles alike have been joined together as the new temple – the church -
the dwelling where God lives by His Spirit. And God’s glorious purpose in all
of history has been revealed in Christ Jesus now through the church.
Paul is clearly humbled. And Paul is bowing his knees in a sign of
reverence and awe to the all-wise Creator and the Ruler of all history, who has
made known His mysteries through the church. Just a few verses earlier, Paul
instructed us that in Christ, we have boldness and access with confidence. And now
Paul bows before the Father. God is not only the Almighty Creator and sovereign
Ruler, but He is also Father. Where before no Jew could approach God on his own
initiative and whenever he would have wanted, now we can come directly to God’s
presence, not just as our Lord, which He is, but we can be confident that He is
our Father.
"from whom
every family in heaven and on earth is named,"
God is our Father and we are a part of His family, His group. And every
family in heaven – every group of angels both good and fallen angels began
their existence through God who created them. In the ancient world when someone
named someone, it was a sign that they had authority over the person named. That
is why it was significant that in Genesis 1, the first thing God told Adam was
to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over every living thing that moves on
the earth. Then, the very first thing Adam is recorded doing, in Genesis 2:19,
is that “whatever the man called every
living creature, that was its name.” It says “The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens
and to every beast of the field.” Adam’s naming of the creatures was a sign
of his subduing them and their names indicated that Adam had dominion –
authority and power over all the animals.
So, Paul here tells us very deliberately that every family – every group
that exists in heaven – the angels and demons and Satan himself, as well as
every family on earth is named by God. God has dominion over every demon and
angel and every people group on the planet. This would have been reassuring to
the Ephesians, who may have been fearful of the spiritual opposition as
disciples of Jesus, spreading the good news and they may have been fearful of
the Romans and other people groups that were hostile to them.
But God has named them all – just like today, as I believe we are facing
very real spiritual opposition in our church as we are catching hold of the
vision to make disciples of all Greenville. That is a threatening thing to the
demons – because when Christians really begin to live out the gospel as
disciples in all they do, it is very real spiritual warfare – we are assaulting
the gates of hell. But, just as the Ephesians could be assured that the Almighty
God is their Father and He has named everything – we can be reassured that God
has dominion over every angel both good or bad and every people group that may
seem intimidating – God has subdued them, God has authority over them all.
As a side note, when we approach God in prayer, it is good for us to
remember that we approach the One who has named everything and has authority
over all. Our Father is the Almighty! And Paul prays that God, our Father, who
as we saw in Ephesians 2:19 has immeasurable riches, he prays that according to
all of the riches of His glory, God would grant us to be strengthened with
power.
"that
according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with
power through his Spirit in your inner being,"
Paul already prayed in chapter 1 that these Christians would know the
immeasurable greatness of God’s power toward us who believe. Now, let me stop
there for a moment. I know I’ve already preached about that passage a few weeks
back, but I think that we can so easily fail to actually believe that it is
true. We can fail to believe that God has immeasurably great power that is
available to us who believe. We can become accustomed to God’s work in us to
redeem us and save us and transform us and sanctify us and we are no longer
impressed with His power. But His power is immeasurably great and He is the One
who grants all power.
2. We
need to be strengthened with God’s power
So, Paul prays that his readers may have God’s power and that He might give
it to them through His Spirit – the same Spirit that raised Christ from the
dead. Not only that though, Paul prays that the reader might experience God’s
power through His Spirit “in your inner being”. They needed God’s power to not
be discouraged when they faced opposition and saw that Paul was suffering in
prison too. They may have been tempted to think that God lacked the power to
deliver Paul from suffering. But Paul wants them to know that God doesn’t lack
any power – he may be imprisoned but it is according to God’s working of His good
plans, although His plans may be unknown to us – it is still part of God’s
plans – nothing is outside His control.
They needed to be strengthened through God’s Spirit in their inner being. And
don’t we need to be strengthened through God’s Spirit in our inner being? Don’t
we need to see and know the power of God at the core of who we are? Don’t we
need to remember how great and mighty God is – that He is over all things and
don’t we need to cry out to Him for power through His Spirit at the very core
of our being?
Don’t we need to remember that God is fully able to supply all of our needs
according to His riches in glory?
Paul knows what his readers really need when they faced difficulty and
discouragement. They don’t need a new and better plan – they don’t need hype –
they don’t need to be wowed by him – they needed God’s power. When we face difficulty and discouragement,
what do we need? We need to be strengthened with God’s power through His Holy
Spirit.
Years ago, the Navy began putting Nuclear reactors inside of their
submarines, because they needed inexhaustible power as they were submerged in
the depths for long periods of time. God has placed His Spirit inside of us and
His Spirit is an inexhaustible power that sustains us whether we rise to the
heights or whether we experience the depths of darkness for long periods of
time. We need the Holy Spirit to give us His power and impart wisdom and
revelation to us so that we might know God better and be renewed in our inner
man. Verse 17 serves as further explanation of the empowering Spirit that Paul
is praying for.
"so
that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith- that you, being rooted and
grounded in love,"
We need God’s power through His Spirit and as this occurs, we have the very
indwelling of Christ in our hearts through faith. Jesus already lived within
them but they needed to know the continual presence of Jesus in their hearts. As
believers in Jesus Christ – if you have been born again, we have the Spirit of
Christ within us, but we still need to know the empowering presence of His Holy
Spirit and we need to know the very presence of Jesus Christ in our hearts.
We need a settled assurance and awareness of Christ permanently living
inside of us – in our inner being, in our personality, our thoughts, our will,
our emotions – in the core of our being - through His mighty, empowering Holy
Spirit. And if we have Jesus Christ living inside of our hearts – He is at the
center of our life and it is as we trust Him – it is through faith that He
makes our hearts His dwelling place. Or through faith, we are given over, at
our very core to Jesus. And as we are strengthened through the Spirit and as
Christ dwells in our inner being, we are to be rooted and grounded in love, so
that we may as verse 18 says...
"may have
strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and
height and depth,"
A tree cannot know the sunlight and the sky and the depths of all around
it, if it remains a seed. But place the seed in soil and it will grow and be established
and then it will know what it is to touch the sky and soak in the sun and dig
deep into the earth. In a similar way, the love of Christ is the soil in which
we are to be planted and grow in so that we might experience Him even more.
“Those who are strengthened by the Spirit and in whom Christ dwells will
have their lives rooted and grounded in love.” - O'Brien, Peter T. The Letter
to the Ephesians (p. 260).
Along with all the saints, we need God’s empowering Spirit to have strength
to be able to comprehend or grasp what is the breadth and length and height and
depth of Christ’s love. Paul prays in verse 18 and 19 that because the love of
Christ is incomprehensibly, immeasurably great and we need God to enable us, as
verse 19 says...
"and to know
the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all
the fullness of God."
3. We
need to know Christ’s limitless love to be filled with Him
If you are a Christian, you already know the love of Christ to some degree
and these were Christians that Paul is writing to. Paul has already said that
his readers are “In Christ Jesus” – they abide in Him and He abides in them. But
the fact that he is praying this way shows us that he doesn’t think that they
know Christ’s love well enough.
So, the question for us as we read and hear this passage today, is do we
think that we adequately know Christ’s love for us already? Do we functionally
believe that we appreciate the love of Jesus for us enough? Do you find
yourself thinking, “alright already, I get it – Jesus loves me” at times? And
are you tempted to zone out or move on from there, as if you have enough
understanding of His love?
Well, before you do that, or when you do that – remind yourself that what
you need is not to move on to another topic – you need to be strengthened with
God’s power in moments like that. When you and I feel like this, we need His
Spirit, we need the Spirit of Christ to dwell inside of us, so that we might be
rooted and grounded in His love in our inner being and have strength to know
the love of Christ.
Why is this – because the love of Christ surpasses knowledge. His love is
greater than and goes further than our knowledge. Although, indeed, we must
have an intellectual knowledge of God’s love, Paul is saying that the kind of
knowing we need can’t be reduced to intellectual understanding alone. At the
core of who we are, we need God’s strength to comprehend all of the dimensions
of His love for us in our own experience. So, in order to grow, in order to be
spiritually mature, we must be empowered by God, “to grasp the limitless
dimensions of the love of Christ” as D.A. Carson put it.
You see, the love of Christ is so high, so deep, so broad, so long that we
can never fully know it and we can never reach the end of knowing the love of
Christ. There will always be more to know of Christ’s love for us in all of the
limitless dimensions of His love and there will always be more for us to
experience and apply and trust in the more we get to know.
So why does Paul pray that his readers would be strengthened with God’s
power, through His Spirit in our inner being – that Christ may dwell in our
hearts through faith? He prays this so that we may have strength to comprehend,
and know personally the limitless dimensions of the love of Christ Jesus, and
so be filled with all the fullness of God.
Sometimes, we can stuff ourselves to the point that we can no longer enjoy
food. When I was a kid I remember gorging on Anthony’s Pizza until I couldn’t
eat any more and I felt sick and regretted eating it in the first place. But
when thanksgiving came around, I still filled my plate up so full that I
couldn’t enjoy what I really wanted - the delicious treats that had been
prepared – the pumpkin and pecan pies and chocolate chip cookies. The good
things didn’t even appeal to me, because I got stuffed on potatoes.
In our lives, if we want to grow in God, if we want to have joy and peace. And
if we want to have a renewed passion for God, we need to taste and eat of His
goodness in His love for us. We need to feast on His love for us, because it is
the only really satisfying thing. But instead, we often neglect the very thing
that will lead to our enjoyment the most and instead we fill ourselves up with
endless Facebook surfing and email and texting and entertainment of all kinds,
looking for excitement, looking for stimulation, looking for something to
satisfy us but in the end, it leaves us feeling sick.
We have this vague sense that something is wrong, something is unhealthy
and that we are lacking something. And what we are lacking is Jesus. We lack
passion because we don’t know His love anywhere near where we could. We lack excitement
about the things of God because we don’t see that His boundless love is waiting
to be explored. We are weary because we are not being strengthened by His love
and we wonder what is wrong. We don’t seem to be able to put our finger on it
and so we go searching for new and different things to entertain us or
stimulate us or fulfill us – but we will never be truly rooted and grounded
unless we know His love. And we need God to fill us with His Holy Spirit to
strengthen us and empower us – to fill us with Himself, so that we might be
able to grasp how great His love for us is.
This past week, in our care groups we had times of prayer in each group. Why
did we do that? Well, it began as we were encouraged to pray by one of our
members. And as we thought about it, it really excited us – because I think we
are facing a time of testing as a church. Like the Ephesians, we are facing
Spiritual opposition as we begin to grasp what it really means to live as
disciples and actually make disciples. For too long, we haven’t been very good
at this.
A few years ago, we had stagnated as a church and become complacent. We
lacked vision and purpose and we weren’t clear on our mission. A little over a
year and a half ago, we rolled out our mission – which begins with who we are –
we are disciples of Jesus Christ and then it is carried out as we seek to grow
as disciples in every area of our lives and then we seek to actively make
disciples. And there has been an excitement about our mission and you have
responded.
But church – I think we are tempted to forget why we are disciples. We are
disciples because Jesus made us alive and has given us His great love – His
love is limitless, His love is boundless, it knows no end – it is glorious and
magnificent. But when we forget His love and don’t know His love personally, we
can become weary and lose heart – just like the Ephesians, who were part of a
great mission with perhaps the best spiritual leader you could want – but they
needed to be encouraged. They needed to be strengthened.
And we need to be encouraged – we need to be strengthened. Why does Paul
pray for them to be strengthened? Because they needed it. Why does Paul pray
for the Holy Spirit to fill them? Because they needed the Holy Spirit, so that
Christ may dwell in the core of who they are and so that they can know His love.
We need the Holy Spirit to give us His power and we need Christ to dwell in our
inner being. We need to be strengthened so that we might know the great love of
Christ and not lose heart, not get distracted, not be filled with chasing after
things that don’t satisfy.
Church, I believe that we need to know His surpassing and compelling love
afresh. Are you weary? Oh we need to know the limitless, strength-giving love
of Christ. That is why we have a mission in the first place – His love enables
us to grow as disciples and His love is what motivates us to want to make
disciples – so that others may know His love.
We need to be filled with all the fullness of God. And here is the cool
thing – God desires to grant us to be strengthened with His power through His
Spirit at the core of who we are. He wants to give us the nuclear power of
Christ, so that we may know His love and be filled with Him.
Maybe at this moment, you are identifying with those feelings of emptiness
and weariness, of complacency. But maybe you are even still lacking faith and
you don’t really believe that anything can or will change for you. Maybe you
are thinking, “Sure – He may do this for other people but not me.” “I’ll always
be this way, I will always feel empty, I will always be discouraged.”
Well, first – let me say that you need to stop listening to the roaring of
the devil – He is like a roaring lion seeking to devour you by stealing your
faith and robbing you of joy in Jesus. But that isn’t all – I think that all of
us who are lacking faith and lacking love for God need to cry out to Him – to
repent of being filled with other things – to repent of our attempts at
self-sufficiency and to come to Him in faith – asking Him to do what He longs
to do.
In Revelation chapters 2 and 3, Jesus speaks to several churches. In
Revelation 2:3, Jesus speaks to this same Ephesian church and says to them:
"I know you
are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name's sake, and you have not
grown weary. But I have this against
you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember
therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at
first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place,
unless you repent.” Revelation
2:3-4
And Jesus said to the church in Smyrna: "The
words of the first and the last, who died and came to life. 9 "'I know your tribulation
and your poverty ( but you are rich) and the slander of those who say that they
are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan. 10 Do not fear what you are about
to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that
you may be tested, and for ten days you will have tribulation. Be faithful unto
death, and I will give you the crown of life.
11 He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to
the churches. The one who conquers will not be hurt by the second death."
Revelation 2:8-11
And to the church in Sardis: "Wake
up, and strengthen what remains and is about to die," Revelation 3:2
To the church in Philadelphia: "I
know that you have but little power, and yet you have kept my word and have not
denied my name…I am coming soon. Hold fast what you have, so that no one may
seize your crown." Revelation 3:8,
11
And in Revelation 3:15, Jesus says to the church in Laodicea, "'I know your works: you are neither
cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are
lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. For you
say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you
are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. I counsel you to buy from me
gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you
may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve
to anoint your eyes, so that you may see. Those whom I love, I reprove and
discipline, so be zealous and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If
anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with
him, and he with me. The one who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on
my throne, as I also conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne. He
who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.'" Revelation 3:15-22
No matter where you are at – no matter what you passion level may or may
not be – we need more of Jesus. We need to know more of His love. We need to “buy from Jesus gold refined by fire, so
that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and
the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so
that you may see.”
Jesus desires for us to be white hot in our passion for Him and He stands
at the door and knocks. We need today to hear His voice speaking to us and open
the door to Him and He will come in to us and eat with us and be with Him. And
He will fill us with all the fullness of God. Paul is confident in his prayer
for the church because he knows God is able to answer our prayers. And so Paul
ends encouraging the Ephesians, and through the Holy Spirit, encouraging us
that we are praying now, it says in verse 20...
"to him who
is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to
the power at work within us,"
4. We can Trust that God can do more than we can imagine
God is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or even think, according
to the power at work within us. According to the power of His Holy Spirit – the
same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead. The Holy Spirit is the one who
makes dry bones alive and we have the Holy Spirit – the almighty power of God
at work within us – and He is able to do far more than we even know to ask. We
may not ask for much but God is able to do so much more than we ask. We may not
think that God can do much, but He can do abundantly more than we can even
imagine
What is the main idea of these verses? It is simply this: We need God’s power to enable us to know
the love of Jesus and be filled with Him.
"to Him be
glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and
ever. Amen."
