Ephesians 1:15-23 • Gospel Triumph
Listen to the audio version of this message with the player below.
Sermon Notes
Transcript
(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)
It's just wonderful for me to see Lindsay in that video, ministering in another part of the world, holding an infant. My family knew her family when she was an infant, and we're reminded that this mission of Christ is to all generations in all times until His kingdom is filled up with the glory of His purposes for all people. Let's look at that today. Ephesians, Ephesians chapter 1, as we will look at verses 15 through 23. Take out your Bibles there where you are, Ephesians chapter 1 verses 15 through 23. As we have been going through the entire Bible in a year, we have seen God's unswerving determination to provide a Redeemer for His people from that very first time that our first parents sinned and brought corruption into a world that broke it, that brought in disease and viruses and sin and pain and tears. Nonetheless, God said, "I will save my people." And He made a covenant plan through Abraham to redeem a family, and that family was expanded as God made a promise not only to guide them through the law of Moses, but ultimately through the lineage of David, expand the kingdom of God to include all nations for eternity. And that came to culmination in the work of Jesus Christ, whose life and death and resurrection, which had been prophesied all through the Bible, came to culmination. And when we celebrated on Easter His resurrection, we celebrated to say, "God has fulfilled His plan." And what that means is just as our sins were nailed with Jesus upon the cross, so also as we believe in Him, His righteousness and His life becomes our own. We actually have the identity of Jesus Christ when we stand before the Father in heaven. Now, you might say, "Is that the end of the plan? God saves a few and then He's done."
And what Jesus made clear before He ascended back to be His… with His Father in heaven is that He would create disciples, witnesses who would take His message from Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria to the ends of the earth. That's what our missionaries do, but it also means that God has a plan to win many, to expand the gospel until the righteousness of Christ covers the earth as waters cover the sea. And that's what the Apostle Paul is reminding people of in Ephesians 1. They are actually in houses across an ancient city, maybe feeling separated, isolated, sound familiar? And yet Paul is saying, "God yet has a plan, a purpose, and a glory for you." Here's what he says in Ephesians 1, verse 15. "For this reason, because I've heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and of revelation and the knowledge of Him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened,
that you may know what is the hope to which He has called you, what are the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of His power toward us who believe according to the working of His great might that He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in heavenly places. Far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named not only in this age, but in the age to come. And He put all things under His feet and gave Him as head over all things to the church,
which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.
You know, we are sheltered in place, but the butterflies are flying. Here in early spring, those of us who love seeing it happen see the butterflies on the early flowers in our gardens or in the milkweed that's in the hedgerows of the fields. And we rejoice to see those little winged crayola boxes flying among the fields and in our lawns. And take particular joy if you know the wonder of the journey that some of them will make. If you see those monarch butterflies, those bright orange flashes that go between the flowers, you see them for a few moments, but they have already been on an amazing journey. Every single one of those monarch butterflies will fly thousands of miles from North America all the way down to Mexico in the wintertime where it is warm and they can rest for a while. And then they will start north again.
But they won't come back to where they started. No one will make that journey on their own.
As they start north, some will deposit eggs in Florida and Texas, and then they'll die and another generation will begin and they'll work a little further north and lay eggs and create the next generation. Go a little further north. By the time butterflies return to Mexico, they will be separated by four generations
from the butterflies that without GPS on their phones made it all the way from North America back to the land that they themselves had never seen to start it all over again. It's a wonderful journey as God is showing glory by using those creatures coming together, not just singly, but en masse for a greater glory than any one of them could have arranged.
You actually become aware that if you ever go to Mexico and go to one of the sites where the monarchs gather, and they gather in those handfuls of sites by the millions like leaves on trees filling all in all.
Their wings, if you could hear just one, it would be virtual silence. But all of those butterflies gathered in one place, it's like a pounding surf.
It fills every sense, what you can see and what you can hear as though the glory is filling all in all.
The Apostle Paul is talking about an even greater glory.
He is speaking to people who are gathered in isolated little houses and house churches in an ancient city, and they must feel separated, maybe insignificant.
And so he begins to reveal them to them, God's plan for a greater glory than any one of them could have had as they are part of the body of Christ being called to a purpose beyond any single generation, any single place to fulfill His purpose. How do we rejoice in that purpose when we're feeling maybe insignificant and isolated?
And the answer is by listening carefully to the prayer that the Apostle Paul is making.
He prays first a prayer of personal thanksgiving. In verse 16 he says, "I do not cease to give thanks for you." He says, "I give thanks remembering you in my prayers." Now by the time the Apostle is writing this, he's far away from Ephesus, far away from the people gathered in their separate homes trying to worship.
And yet he says, "I give thanks for you. And as far away as I am, I continue to pray for you." I love the warmth of that pastoral touch.
You know, last Sunday at Easter I looked into the blank eye of a TV camera and just feeling in the moment the loss of not being gathered here for the beauty and the glory of an Easter service. I felt a real longing for my church family. And without planning it, I just said, "I love you."
And when I said it, I had to keep going fast because I wasn't prepared for the depth of emotion that I was going to feel right in that moment.
It was just overwhelming to me to recognize how wonderful has been this congregation to Kathy and me to show us even in this time of separation by cards and phone calls and even just chance greetings to say, "We so appreciate you." And I think of Kathy and I coming here to this church and thinking that we were probably working toward the end of our ministry and how you just filled us with such love and welcomed us so warmly so that what God began to do in our hearts is refill us up with an awareness of how great was His compassion toward us just in the way that we were being received and treated and welcomed and loved. And we look back and we say we might not fully have grasped the length and width and height and depth of the Lord for us. And God's people not shown us such love themselves. And we just had to say we give thanks for you, remembering you in our prayers. And in these times of separation, we feel it so much more deeply. Maybe you do too. And yet we have thanksgiving that God has called us to be a church, that God has brought us together regularly as a people. And even when we can't be here, we can still pray for one another as the apostle, prayed for his people when he was apart from them.
You know, not only do we give thanks for one another, the apostle said, "Here's why I'm giving thanks." He gave content to his prayer. Verse 15, "For this reason, because I've heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints." What was he giving thanks for?
People's faith in Jesus.
I mean, here's the apostle Paul when he first came to Ephesus, this large commercial pagan Greek city, people following other gods, people often separated from another by ancient antipathies, by ethnicities. And yet Paul comes with the gospel that God has loved the world so much that he would send his only Son to dine across for our sin and rise the victor over it. And people believe that.
They turn from idols to serve the living God. They turn from selfishness to love the Savior. And Paul must know in his heart, "This gospel that I teach is real.
This risen Savior by his Holy Spirit is still working." And he says, "I give thanks for your faith in Jesus Christ. You demonstrate in the way that you love him, that this gospel is real.
And because you love him, you love those that he loves."
And the apostle said, "I don't just thank God that you love Jesus, that you love one another."
Think of that. There are people whose nations have been at war with one another. There are people whose industries have been in competition with one another. There are people whose gods of the past have been in competition for people's loyalties and monies and morality.
And Paul says, "You came together in your own homes, in those house churches across Ephesus, and you loved one another.
Despite failings, despite the fact that you would have to forgive one another, you loved each other. And that too shows the power and the warmth and the blessing of the gospel.
And it's what Kathy and I have felt. It's what the leaders of this church have felt in this time of extraordinary stress upon this church and the world. We send out calls for our people to love one another. We said, "Can people volunteer to take food or medicines to people who are isolated, to older, in homes or nursing communities, or not able to help themselves?" And we've had more volunteers than we actually have people to serve.
And we ask for people to donate funds because there are people in our congregation who are losing their jobs or have already lost their jobs. Could you provide some funds to help carry people over? And thousands were donated for that purpose. And when we said, "Because we're so isolated, we just want to extend a shepherding touch to different people," dozens of our leaders volunteered just to make phone calls, just to take the love of Christ across a phone line to a person in a home and say, "Jesus still loves you, and we're still praying for you."
And it just extends such love that you have to say, "This is the power of God in this place for which we give thanks as we see it happening."
I love the account of Pastor Ben Patterson when separation from his church was caused by something that I was suffering with a few months ago, and you've prayed about it, many of you in our church, and that was a bad back. And because he'd injured his back, he wasn't able to sit or lie down and get comfort at all. The only way he could get comfort was by lying on the floor.
And he had medication that was also clouding his vision, so even when he was lying on the floor, he couldn't really watch TV or do reading. And so at some point he said to his wife, "Would you bring me the church directory?"
And I know that's a little sore point here. Actually believe it or not, during this virus time, the directories have finally come in. But as the directories were given to him lying there on the floor, he used kind of his ability to just recognize families to pray for them.
And as that joy of praying for people like the Apostle Paul here began to work in his heart, he rejoiced at what God was doing. When he finally healed and was getting back to his duties, he said he prayed one day to the Lord, "Lord, these times of prayer have become very sweet.
It's too bad that I don't have time to do this now that I'm going back to work."
And he said, "The Lord replied to his heart, "Silly man, you have the same time to pray as when you're well. But when you are well, you think the church runs on your power.
When you're sick, you know the church runs on my power."
It's what we all need to remember and maybe what this virus time will remind us of. We can't do all the things we want, but we pray to a God who is still working in the hearts of his people, working across generations, working across leaders and people to extend his care. And when you see that happening, not required of God's people, no pressure could make them do it, and yet they do it out of love for Christ.
You say, "I thank God for you and his working among you." And pray that not just I would see it or the leaders, but that everybody could be seeing it. And that's what the apostle prays for here too, not just a prayer of personal thanksgiving,
but a prayer for spiritual revelation that what he sees other people could see as well. Verse 16 right at the end, he says, "I'm remembering you in my prayers." What's he praying? "And I'm remembering in the 17th that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory may give you the spirit of wisdom and of revelation, the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened." Oh, I love the image. You know, we sing the song, "Open the eyes of my heart, Lord. Open the eyes of my heart." And Paul is saying, "God, these people that I love, would you just open the eyes of their heart that they see who you are and what you are doing and understand the greatness and the wonder of that." And he explains what that greatness and wonder is. Verses 18 and 19, "The eyes of hearts are to be opened so that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us to believe."
God, open the eyes of their hearts that they could see hope and their inheritance and your power.
What is the hope that we pray people's heart eyes will see? Hope is not holy wishing, not hope against hope. No, biblical hope is faith just as trust is faith in the present tense. I trust that God is even now working all things together for good. That's faith in the present tense.
Hope, biblical hope, is faith in the future tense.
I have confidence that what God is doing will work toward a good end, that he is working all things together for good, that he is at work now and that he will be at work in the future, and I am confident of that. I do not believe that a virus has the final word. My hope, my confidence is that my God rules with immeasurably great power for those who believe, and because of that, even when the world is forced to shelter in place, we can believe that our God is at work, and if we will open the eyes of our hearts to see it, we can begin to see it even now.
In the last three weeks in this nation, a record number of people in that amount of time, 16 million people have applied for unemployment benefits.
Do you recognize that in that same time period, the three major organizations who operate evangelism over the Internet, that would be the global media outreach, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and crew, have all reported roughly the same number of inquiries for information about Jesus Christ?
I mean, if we're really going to open the eyes of our hearts, then what God is doing is He's stripping away the idols of our hearts as scales would be dropping away from our eyes so that we could see that what we were depending on, our affluence, our entertainments, our pleasures that would be giving our hearts meaning and promise and treasure for life to come, we begin to see the emptiness of that and look for something else. And it's the very thing that God is doing. I read the conversation of a counselor on global media outreach. She said, "A woman asked me online, please help me not to worry about everything."
And even in that moment, the counselor prayed, "Open the eyes of our heart, Lord, to the hope that is in You."
Not a hope in things, not a hope in our bodies, not a hope in this present time, but a hope for eternity that God is providing for those who put their faith in Jesus Christ to both take away their sin and secure their future with His righteousness becoming their own, with He Himself becoming their treasure. But it's actually more than that.
It's actually opening people's eyes not only to their hope, but to their value.
It's really kind of strange words there that the apostle offers. He prays that our hearts would be open to see the riches of God's inheritance in the saints.
You know, we often think about heaven as being our inheritance, that when we get to heaven there will be treasures for us stored up by God, and there certainly is biblical truth in that.
But in this particular place, what Paul the apostle is saying is, "God, open people's hearts to see this, that the inheritance that God the Father is preparing for Jesus is us.
We are His treasured possession.
We were purchased with the blood of Jesus Christ.
All circumstances, all events since the dawn of creation had been moving forward in such a way that God's people would be claimed for the glory of the kingdom of God. And as a consequence, we are precious to God.
We are the inheritance that will be bequeathed to Jesus."
Our children were put to bed when they were small every night by their mom, me when I was home, more consistently by their mom. And what she would say to them every night is, "You are precious to me."
And what God is saying to His people is, "You are so precious to me that you are what I will bequeath to Jesus when He comes into His kingdom."
And that's a beautiful thought. You know, as the stock market erosion happens, we sometimes in FaceTime with our kids and grandkids say, "Well, your inheritance is getting smaller."
It's amazing to think that as God is filling up His kingdom with those who believe that His kingdom and His inheritance is getting larger all the time.
And that's happening because a great power is at work, that God is working in such a way that people would see how precious they are in their inheritance that is made eternal.
Because I will tell you something, sing our hope and sing our inheritance if our hearts really do see that, is the strength that we need to make it through the day, sometimes through very hard days here.
During the Reformation, one of the Reformation forefathers was named John Calvin, and he was ministering in a time in his region of Europe where there was a plague and wars and mass migration and religious persecution and infighting with civil governments. And he prayed at one time, "Lord, we have seen battles for such a long time.
There is no end to them. One sees poor people dead among the bushes, others who are left to endure hunger and thirst and heat and cold.
How can we survive, except our rescue consists in seeing God our Father, the love of God that is eternal is what tranquilizes the heart against the pain of this moment.
True godliness, he said, consists in a sincere understanding of God as Father when the world holds only horror."
Maybe we know a little of that now, that when stress pushes in and worry seems to cloud everything in our lives that we say, "But God, open my eyes, the eyes of my heart, to be a Father who loves me enough to send His Son for me and to provide an eternal inheritance for me." God, keep opening my eyes to that so that when tears or wanting of things again or wanting of pleasures again that I can't have right now begins to fill my heart with a sense of that's worth of fulfillment lives, strip away the idols. Don't waste this crisis for my heart or the hearts of my family, the hearts of people around us.
Open the eyes of our hearts that we could see the beauty that you are for eternity and how you would even use these times. Just as a pastor, I felt the constraints of the moment to more and more be praying that God would use this time for the revival of our nation, of our world, that people would see Christ as an answer that even family members would.
Our staff call as a church staff this last week, people began to pray, "God, don't let us lose heart and don't let God's people lose heart, but use this time to revive in us a sense, not just to the tenderness of your heart, but the power of your name."
It wasn't my prayer, and as we were ending that Zoom call, I just had to applaud for the prayers of those who were praying for revival.
So many of us now, just Zoom calls become part of the regularity of our lives.
I was on a call later that same day with another church leader, and he was praying that a daughter from which he is estranged would hear the gospel in these moments and turn away from some of her own idols. He prayed even on that call, "Father, whether I'm praying for the renewal of her faith or the conversion of her soul, I'm not sure, but I am sure that we need you to work in the broken spaces of our lives.
Open the eyes of her heart through this."
It's what the apostle was praying, "Open the eyes of hearts, even through the difficult moments with the power that you have." How great is that power? He actually says, remember in verse 19, "The immeasurable greatness of God's power toward us who believe." That's what we want eyes opened to. And so ultimately, the apostle is just praying.
"God, let people see the hope that is theirs, the inheritance that they are to you, your precious possession.
But let them see power.
It's life-giving. It's that same power, verse 20, that God worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places. We celebrated Easter, but some of you took that Easter message out into your workplaces to say, "This immeasurably great power that gives hope beyond this life is what I believe and what I want to share."
I listened with tears of joy to an interview on local TV news with one of our church members who's a nurse in a respiratory unit in this time of corona crisis. And the interviewer asked her, "Why does she put herself at risk working in a respiratory unit in this time?"
And this is what this beautiful saint of God said.
She said, "I want to be there when patients wake up to give them hope."
We know hope is power. It's life-giving. And when we can say to people through their trust in Jesus Christ, it's not just hope for the moment. It's hope beyond this life. It is hope eternal that they have strength for now because of what is promised to come. And it's strength that is all superseding. It's above everything that could challenge us now. Verse 21, "This immeasurably great power of Christ is far above all rule and authority and power and dominion above every name that is named, not only in the present age, but in the one to come.
We may now face a coronavirus.
Jesus still wears the crown.
When I know that, I recognize His immeasurably great power for us who believe is securing not just the moments of this life, but the eternity of those who believe in Him. And there's nothing that's going to challenge that. Not trials, not disease, not family separation, not even the frailties of my own heart. Ultimately, Christ will rule. And He does that by indwelling His church so that our witness keeps going. That was the message from the beginning. This great power is that, verses 22 and 23, that put all things under Christ's feet and gave Him head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all. The church is the place where Christ isn't just indwelling persons, but like those monarch butterflies where He's gathering together this great multitude of believers across time and space and eternity to bring glory to Himself until the righteousness of Christ covers the world like waters cover the sea. And as a consequence, yes, there can be hard times.
Yes, let me tell you, they may say the church cannot meet for a few weeks or a few months or a lifetime.
But the church is not going to go away.
Like a steel locomotive going all through the history of the world has been the plan and the purpose of God. And for that reason, we know that His God's people, even in their separate places, continue to pray that He would open the eyes of their heart and the eyes of the hearts of others would be open, that the purposes of God continue to move forward until on the amazing journey that God has put us in the church upon, He is ultimately going to fulfill His purposes of filling up heaven with the glory of the saints gathered to praise the name of Jesus. Saints forgiven, bodies freed of disease, families reunited, fear gone, tears gone. We will be part of that glorious kingdom that is our hope, our confidence.
Some will see it sooner than others, but it is for us all who put faith in Him. I think it in terms of a friend who went to be with the Lord a few years ago.
As she was dying, family gathered around her to sing the hymns they knew.
How sweet the name of Jesus sounds.
By Jesus, I love you.
And then in her final breaths, with a clear voice that surprised them all, she said, "Everybody's here." At first they thought she meant them, but then she said, "Jesus is here."
Samantha, a child that she had lost in infancy. Samantha is here. The Apostle Paul is here. Mark, Joshua. And then her favorite Christian poet, John Dunn, she said, "John Dunn is here."
And then she said, "Hallelujah.
Hallelujah. Everybody's here."
And she went to be with her Lord. Now, whether she was actually singing to heaven or the Lord had put the image in her heart to comfort her in that moment, I don't know. We'll know when we're with the Lord. But this is what I recognize. The glory of the handiwork of God is not just in butterflies gathered on trees in Mexico. It is God gathering to Himself the church of Jesus Christ, where people's eyes have been opened to the reality of the goodness that is in Him. And because of that, we are part of a great multitude. And we are part of a great mission, preparing that multitude, precious to God, possessing a great hope and the power of God yet working among us. We pray with thanksgiving, knowing this, He has made a way for us. And as we put our hope in Him, we have a great blessing.
The glory of God shall be revealed in us with a great multitude, 10,000 times 10,000. We will be a part of it because the virus will be gone and Christ will be the victor. Praise God, Jesus shall reign. Father, remind us even now by opening our hearts to the truths of Your Word that we would remember our hope, the inheritance that we are, and the power that You are providing to claim more and more for yourself. Brothers, by bringing people back from a distant, spiritual distance from You, or converting them for the first time, strip the idols from their hearts that they may trust in Jesus and be part of the glory that He has planned, we ask in Jesus' name, Amen.