Ephesians 3:14-15 • More, More, More
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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)
Our Scripture for today is Ephesians chapter 3, Ephesians chapter 3, verses 14 through 19. And as I looked at the Scripture preparing for this week, I couldn't help but confess some mixed motivation confession.
After all, as I go to places like Brazil, it's apparent to you, as you kind of see my picture in those places, that when I go, it's not particularly difficult. I mean, apart from the jet lag and being apart from my wife, there's not much discomfort. I'm typically honored and treated well in the various places that I'm invited.
But what if it were not that way?
What if the ministry calling involved suffering and persecution and disgrace?
Would I still be willing?
Would you still be willing?
As Pastor Carey just reported to you in the prayer prior to this sermon, there are Christians around the world suffering for their faith. Some have given their lives for their faith even this week. They have done it.
Perhaps one day we will have to do it.
What will be sufficient to motivate us to serve the Lord when it is not pleasant or comfortable?
What would motivate us to serve God if sacrifice were required?
Let's stand as we honor God's Word and hear Paul's answer.
What will motivate God's people for all the calling that He gives them?
Ephesians 3, verse 14, Paul says, "For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father, from whom the whole 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 on 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."
Let's pray together.
Heavenly, thank you that we may not only be filled with some turkey this week, but filled with the fullness of God, comprehending how wide and long and high and deep is the love of God in Christ Jesus. You would actually, by that understanding, fill us with your Spirit, and filling us with your Spirit, strengthen us for our calling. For some of us, that calling this week will just be finding a loving word in a moment to a friend or family member who's questioning our faith, wondering why we pray, why we gather here.
For others, the trial is greater.
As a family member suffers, as a job is in question, we wonder why there would be reason for thanksgiving.
And yet you are telling us here of a love that surpasses knowledge, of a care that is eternal.
As you relate these things, would you not only work in us, but work in other churches around our community and town and land. Father, we're just a piece of the body of Christ. You are doing a work far beyond us. And so we also pray for pastors and churches and church leaders all around us, who right now are ministering the gospel, that a nation's cause for thanksgiving would be more and more evident by what the body of Christ collectively does this day. Lead us by your Spirit, we pray, in Jesus' name, amen.
Please be seated.
Michael and Grace Huang are an American couple of Asian heritage who were called by Michael's company from Los Angeles two years ago to go to Qatar, a Middle Eastern country that is preparing for the 2022 World Cup.
Mike was called to be a part of those preparations and took with him not only his wife, but there are three adopted children.
On January 15 of 2013, their eight-year-old daughter, a daughter adopted from an impoverished African nation with multiple health problems, died of unknown causes.
Michael and Grace were arrested at that point by the nation of Qatar, and they have been tried and convicted.
The appeal of their sentence will occur this week in Qatar.
Why are they being held?
We got a clue from the very first witness who testified against them.
The first witness for the prosecution said these words, "The deceased girl was black from Africa with a plump figure, while the parents have Wheaton or white complexion.
Those who adopt normally choose beautiful children."
The chief investigator speaking for the prosecution.
The adoption process normally consists of searching for children who are good-looking and well-behaved and who have hereditary features that are similar to those of the parents. But the children connected to this incident are all from Africa, from families that are quite poor.
Thus, these people have likely participated with others in child trafficking, most likely either to sell their organs or to perform medical experiments.
The conclusion of the prosecutor at the end of the trial.
Allah has banned adoption outside of one's race as it leads to assembling foreigners with each other, which causes extremely bad outcomes such as this.
Absolutely incomprehensible that a father and mother would adopt a child unlike themselves. Why did they do it?
Maybe the children's names will give you a clue.
The girl who died, her name was Gloria.
Her brother also adopted Josiah.
And the other brother adopted Emmanuel, which being interpreted means God with us. These are Christians who believe that for the testimony of their faith that adopting a child who was in need unlike themselves, adopting the unlovely for the loveliness of Christ was their calling. They believe that God would use them in the life of another, and that would be something beautiful for the sake of the gospel. It is a calling a number of you in this church have already honored with your families. And it is a calling this church is increasingly sensing as we begin to believe more and more that God is calling us to reach out and to help and to nurture those very unlike ourselves that the gospel would be evident in this place.
But what would make it happen?
It's what the apostle is praying for here as he has already urged those at Ephesus to look beyond the boundaries of their culture and the boundaries of their race, even the boundaries of former religion, and recognize that God is building them together into a temple that rises to heaven and in doing so brings manifold witness to the wisdom of God even in the heavenly places as even the angels and the demons look down and say, "My, what a God!"
If he can bring together all kinds of people like come together in the church of Jesus Christ.
What would so motivate, strengthen, enable us to be such a people?
By his very example, the apostle Paul tells us as he is explaining what would create such a people who would honor their calling is first their willingness to pray from a position
of power.
You want to see the position of power? It's right there in verse 14. Paul says, "For this reason I bow my knees before the Father." What is the position of power?
It is humility.
On our knees before the Lord. Some of you know already that it was not typical for a Jewish person to pray on their knees. The more typical posture for a Jew praying is described even in Jesus' parables, right? One would stand, beat their breast, and look to heaven, except in moments of extreme homage and emotion.
As when King Solomon dedicated the temple that he had built to the Lord, and in the dedication ceremony following his prayer, the Shekinah glory of God, the visible presence of the glory of God, filled the temple so that even the priest could not stay inside. And as that glory filled the temple, even Solomon the King fell to his knees and said, "Lord, I am not worthy that you would honor me in such a way. Lord, I bow to my knees in prayer to you." It was the position of humility as God's king, God's apostle, and God's people pray.
But curious, right? White with that attitude of humility is amazing boldness. Did you catch it? It's right at the end of that first verse. For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father.
The apostle is saying, "I recognize that I have boldness and access to the Father." And he explains who that Father is in verse 15. The one from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named. You'll actually see it in some of the footnotes to your Bibles. That word family is actually a Greek word that means fathered ones. "I bend my knee before the Father, from whom all in heaven and on earth are fathered." As though the creator himself is the one that Paul is now approaching. It's the reflection of verse 12 of the same chapter that Paul has already rejoiced that we have boldness and access, that word that means access to a throne room, that we have boldness and access to the creator of the universe who is our Father.
Why can I come?
Because he has given me the ability to come to him who is above all and by whom all things have their name. I have boldness as well as humility because I recognize I come to the one who is the creator of all things. I know that is unsophisticated and passé in our age to say that we come to a God as creator and sustainer of all things.
But any other point of view ultimately is as unsophisticated and may require even more faith.
Two weeks ago, Robert Adler, writing the Discovery's column of the science portion of the BBC page, wrote these words, "People have wrestled with the mystery of why the universe exists for thousands of years.
Pretty much every ancient culture has come up with its own creation story, most of them handing the matter over to the gods."
You kind of know where this is going, don't you?
"However," writes Adler, "in recent years a few physicists and cosmologists point out that we now have an understanding of the history of the universe.
Their answer is that the entire universe popped into existence from nothing at all.
It had to happen, they say, because nothing is inherently unstable."
I thought it was a joke when I read it at first.
"This idea may sound bizarre," writes Adler, "or maybe just another fanciful creation story.
But the physicists argue that it follows naturally, from scientists' two most powerful and successful theories, quantum mechanics and general relativity.
This approach was used by Stephen Hawking of the University of Cambridge to describe black holes.
The explanation?
In quantum physics, if something is not forbidden, it necessarily happens."
Did you catch that? If it is not forbidden, it necessarily happens. "Little bubbles of space and time form spontaneously."
What's more, if it's possible for those bubbles to form, you can guarantee that they will.
At this point, making a universe looks almost easy.
The resulting tiny bubbles of space-time could have burgeoned into a massive, busy universe.
As Lawrence Krause of Arizona State University puts it, "The laws of physics as we now understand them make it eminently plausible that our universe arose from nothing."
No space, no time, no particles, nothing that we now know of, concludes Adler in the article, "These ideas give whole new meaning to the phrase, thanks for nothing."
Thank whom for nothing?
I've said to you before, if science is honest about what it knows, and we are honest about what the Scripture says, there is no conflict.
But if we begin to say that we know what we cannot know, if we begin to assume a science that says it is eminently plausible that everything you now see came from absolutely nothing because nothing is unstable, we begin to recognize the relevance of the words of the Apostle Paul centuries ago, speaking of those who did not honor God, nor give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened.
Claiming to be wise, they became fools.
Is it really easier to believe that everything about you came from nothing, or to believe
that an eminently wise, powerful, sovereign God brought it into being and now says to you and me, "Come to me when you have need," and we believing it do.
It is what makes us willing, not only to do what He says, but to come as He urges. "Come to me. I am the Creator God. I am not the one who did all things out of some nothingness. I am the one who made all things out of the love of my heart for the people that before the foundations of the world I was calling my own." That God is the one who is not just the Father of all things, He is the Father of me, and He is the Father of you.
That's why the Apostle is so marked to put before us, "From whom every family in heaven and earth is named, that God is the one that I go to." When I married Kathy, her maiden name was Gabriel, which means, of course, I married an angel.
But more biblical than that, I did not just marry an angel, I married into the family of angels.
My heavenly Father is the one who fathers all things on heaven, in heaven, and on earth.
I'm part of a heavenly family, and the great evidence of that is I am an adopted child
of the Father whose first son was Jesus Christ. He is my brother. He is your brother. And the reality of that gives us the willingness and the ability to come before God in our hurt and in our losses and say, "Father, I need you now."
Even past our own sin and weakness, we come, and it's what we have the ability to do. This is the God who is by His Son broken down the wall of hostility that was between us and Him by the work of Jesus Christ so that we can come boldly and have access to the Creator of the universe.
What does that mean?
My son, a few years ago on a senior trip in college, because of his dad's reputation, was asked to preach a sermon in a church in Romania.
It was a very traditional church, and it had a dividing wall of partition between men and women. It had to sit on different sides.
And at some point, my son, who was preaching, and you all have to remember this, I can actually see you when I'm preaching, you know. So he said he could actually see what was happening in the congregation while he was preaching, and he watched this little girl on the girl's side get away from her mother out of her mom's lap and crawl under the dividing wall of partition and crawl into the lap of her father, who took her and embraced her and hugged her close.
It's a wonderful picture of what our father has done, that even though there was a wall of hostility between us and him, that wall was our sin, that God removed the wall of hostility, crushing it by the work of Jesus Christ, saying, "There's nothing between us now. Your sin has been taken away as far as the east is from the west. His blood, his penalty paid all for your guilt, and now there's nothing between us. As we come to him in faith, we come to a father, the father of all who's also the father of me and the father of you.
We come from a position of power when we ask him to help."
But the apostle, of course, having said that we pray from a position of power, wants us to actually understand the content of what should be prayed for if we're going to be motivated and strengthened by the priorities of Scripture. And so he not only urges that we pray from a position of power, he actually prays to heaven for an expression of the power from God himself. That is verse 16.
What is Paul actually praying? He is praying that according to the riches of God's glory, he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being.
Paul is praying that God would express the power that his people need first according to his riches.
Now that phrase has already got a rich history in the book of Ephesians. If you've still got your Bibles open, I'm just going to ask you to look at one verse now. Look at verse 7 of chapter 1.
In chapter 1 and verse 7, Paul is talking about in him, that is, in the beloved Christ Jesus, in him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace.
Creation is a ransom paid to release a slave.
We were slaves to our sin. We had the guilt of it that shackled us. And now God has given his Son for us according to the riches of his grace. He has provided whatever we need to be made right with himself. And now the Apostle says, "I pray that according to the riches of God's great heart for you,
he would strengthen you through his Spirit."
Now what does that mean, to be strengthened by the Spirit of God? We don't really have to guess. The Apostle is going to explain it later in this same book. In chapter 6 and verse 17, you already know the word, some of you, putting on the full armor of God, we are told to put on the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.
We are to be strengthened by that Word of God, which is not only the sword of the Spirit, but we are to be at the same moment, verse 18 of chapter 6, praying at all times in the Spirit with all prayer and supplication. How are we being strengthened by the Spirit?
The Spirit inspired the Word of God.
We have been given the Word to learn the purposes and the priorities of God. And as we know those priorities, listening to God's voice and his Word, we not only have to listen, we have the privilege of praying back to the Father with petition and supplication. "Lord, this is what I think we need. Lord, this is where I'm hurting. Lord, this is where I pray you would bring your power to bear."
All of those we have the right and the ability to pray for because we have been strengthened by the Spirit to say, "I know what the Word says. Now I'm going to pray according to its priorities."
As we are doing those things, there is an amazing response of God.
We may just go past it because it's in that Bible language, but look at verse 17. As we are strengthened by the Spirit and our inner being, this is verse 17.
"So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith."
I know these are just kind of churchy words, but I want you to hear what is being said.
As you, by reading the Scriptures, hear the voice of God.
As you, by praying to Him, commune with God.
This is so that Christ Jesus may dwell in your hearts by faith.
As you are hearing Him and speaking to Him, the reality of the presence of Christ Jesus indwells your heart. It's not caused by your Word. Remember, if this is by faith, but rather as I am entering into this communion of Word and prayer with God, the reality of the presence of Christ now enters my life so that whether I face hardship or trial or difficulty, I am doing it with Christ. I recognize His voice.
I speak to Him in my prayers. And the reality now is there is a presence of Christ Jesus that becomes more and more real in my life. Listen, I know some of you, even here now, because of family difficulties, because of marriage hurts, because of career questions, because of disease in your life, you feel that God is very distant and remote.
And you wonder, how do I actually experience the presence of Christ in my life? It's not a secret.
As we are reading in His Word, reading His Word is not about bribing God to be nice to us. It's not earning brownie points. It's none of that.
If I am hearing His Word and speaking to Him, then the reality of the presence of Christ more and more invades and provokes in me a knowledge of His presence that makes me able to face anything without the sense that He is distant and gone.
I think of the testimony of John Bunyan, the author of Pilgrim's Progress, who because of his willingness to stand for the gospel, saying that the king of England should not determine who the clergy were, that the church should establish the purity and the truth of the gospel by the church establishing who the pastors would be, simply for that stance he was thrown into prison for years, away from his family.
And when he was taken from his family, he said he felt as though his flesh was being ripped from his bones. It hurts so much.
And it hurt even more to recognize that because of his commitment, his calling, which he was willing to suffer for, that his daughter had to suffer too.
Her name was Mary.
She was blind, and she needed the care and the income of her father.
And he wrote to friends, "I fear that by my commitment to Christ, I am bringing down my house upon my own daughter's head."
He questioned, he wondered, "Should he stand for Christ?" And ultimately he wrote these words, "I must do it. I must stand for Christ, Lord, the dearest idol I have known. Whatever that idol may be, help me tear it from thy throne and worship only thee.
I want you, Lord, to be so present and real in my life that the things of this earth grow dim, that even the suffering that you may call me to, even the suffering that you may call my family to, that we would stand for you because what you are doing is you are showing us the presence of your son in our lives. And if we have Jesus, we have more than this world can offer. We have more than this world can call dear.
I ask, Father, that the reality of the presence of Jesus would be so much dear and present in my heart and life that I could face anything knowing Christ is with me. And that presence is known by his word, by prayer, as his Spirit uses those elements to make us know Christ is here in our hearts, strengthened by the Spirit, so that rooted and grounded in Christ, we have strength to face anything.
If that's what the apostles are actually praying, not just from a position of power, but he's praying, "God, show us an expression of power and let that power not just be kind of the external miracles, but the reality of Christ in our hearts that allows us to stand up to anything. God, pour it out. Let us have your Spirit. Let Christ be near by your word and by our prayers. Bring the Spirit so that we would know Christ among us."
What has to be the final element of the prayer? It's not merely that there would be this great expression of Christ, but that there would be comprehension on our parts to receive it.
And that's precisely what the apostle prays for. Verse 18, "He is praying that the Ephesians 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."
What do I want you to have, he's saying? I want you to be able to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of God that's in Christ Jesus. It's really a reference to everything he's said so far. I want you to know how big the love of God is. It's so wide that it embraces people from every tribe and language and people and nation,
Jews and Gentiles, different races, different backgrounds, different ethnicities, different Democrats. God's love is big enough because it's that wide.
And it's so long that before the foundations of the world were laid, God was loving his people and saying, "I'm not waiting for you to get good enough for me. I loved you before you were born."
That's how long my love is.
And how high that when God's people feeling that foundational love come together from all the ranks and differences and obstructions and they come together, that God is building a temple who tries in its walls, living stones, we're the living stones, that the praise to God rises even to heaven so that angels and demons are awed by the work of God to bring so many different kinds of people together. And ultimately it's so deep this love of God that Paul says it could rescue the least of the saints of God.
Even when I was on my way to murder them, wide and long and high and deep is the love of God. If that's what you begin to grasp, then you can be motivated by what the things of God are even in the difficulties of this world.
American pastor William Alfred Quayle recorded one of the conversations he had with one of the early American frontier preachers. If you think of kind of Thanksgiving in pilgrim terms, this would be one speaking.
"Why do you minister in such hard circumstances?"
Replied the journeyman preacher.
"I feel the woes of the lost, but that would not suffice to keep me among them. After all, one gets used to their woes and their ways and even callous to their tragedies.
It is not the love of humanity that keeps me from my wife and children," said the preacher.
"It is only the love of Christ that is able to capture my heart. Only the love of Christ would make me do this."
And so, as there are those of you contemplating hard things in life, I know some of you even this very moment will have all kinds of earthly reasons to abandon the things of God, to take an easy path, and to not worry about the consequences.
What would keep you enduring a bad marriage, reaching out to lost children, reaching across hard lines of unforgiving, harsh people? What would keep you doing it? "Ultimately, I will tell you, it is not love for them." Ultimately, it is not.
Ultimately, it is only love for Christ.
And you, in order to love Him, must know how wide and long and high and deep is His love for you, because it is that knowledge that grips your heart ultimately and say, "Only for Christ." Not even for the other person, not for the child, not for the family, not for the community. "Finally, I fulfill this calling out of love for Christ." That and that alone will help. Why is that? It's because ultimately the Apostle is saying, "I want you to know," verse 19, "the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge."
I don't want you to know just how big is the love of Christ.
I want you to know it's so big, it surpasses your knowledge. Now why is that important? He says, "I want you to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge." Do you hear the irony? "I want you to know what you can't know.
I want you to know that which surpasses knowledge."
Well what is in your knowledge?
You are in your knowledge.
Your weakness, your sin, your trials, your frailty. Remember even the psalmist said it?
"Father, I know my transgressions. My sin is ever before me."
That's what you do know.
What does Paul also want you to know? The love of God surpasses that. I want you to know the love of God that surpasses your knowledge. I want you to know everything you know, the love of God is bigger than that. Everything you know about yourself, every failing, every shame, every difficulty, every past thing, all of that. You know it.
God's love is bigger.
It surpasses that. If that's what you understand, no matter how great is my lack of understanding of the capacity of God, his love is bigger even than that than something dramatic happens. It's the very last phrase. "I want you to know the love of God that surpasses knowledge that you may be filled with all the fullness of God." That when you begin to say, "However great is the sin I have knowledge of, however great is the frailty or the weakness, the love of God is bigger. Something happens.
I begin to get filled with love of Christ."
After all, the only reason that sin has power in our lives is because we love it.
Paul says we're no longer slaves to sin. Sin no longer has dominion over us greater is he that's in me than he that's in the world. Why do I sin?
Because I love it.
What will displace a love for sin?
A greater love. A surpassing love. If I say, "Here's how great my sin is," the love of Christ is greater than ultimately we love Him because He first loved us. And the love of Christ begins to fill us and fill us. And when His priorities, love for Him fills us, we are told the fullness of God.
That's what we were actually told in the very first chapter. The power of God that's at work in the church through all the ages is God's people loving Him above all things. That when they love Him above all things, they face the hard things without flinching, without blinking because the love of Christ is the most powerful human motivation this world would ever have.
When we know that, it begins to change us.
Rich and Andrea Yates, though they are married now, were once separately involved in same sex relationships.
And as believers now write about what helped them, they wrote these words, "All our counselors loved us and tried to help.
They gave us good readings and said what the Bible says about our choices.
But no one was direct with us and still hopeful.
We could not change until we were given the freedom to see our sin and go to the cross and be safe at the same time."
I want you to know the love of God that surpasses knowledge, to see your sin. That's what you know. You know that.
The love of Christ surpasses that. And when you begin to see that and the love of the world begins to get displaced by the reality of a God who knows all about me, loves me even more than the sin in my life, that that love becomes the priority of your life and the fullness of God begins to fill you.
Knowing you're living for Him and He's walking with you, you want to live with Him regardless of the cost.
What will your thanksgiving be about this year?
I praise about, you know how wide and long and high and deep is the love of God. God in Christ Jesus.
May it be your thanks and by your thanksgiving, your power. Father, work the gospel into our hearts, we pray. You are so good in a world that is so hard and we have strength to face it because we know the God of eternity has broken down every barrier between us and Him.
And now because you have done that, we call you Father, Abba, Daddy, the creator of the universe is our Father. We are the adopted children along with all that you are calling to yourself.
Help us know it. That we overflowing with thanksgiving might be the instruments of your power in this earth for the praise and the glory of Jesus in whose name we pray. Amen.