Ephesians | The Power of Love

Good morning everyone. How are we doing this morning?

I'm kind of like, how tall am I? We haven't met.

My name is Mandy. I'm on staff here at the Garden

Church and I have the honor of sharing God's word this morning.

So I'm like kind of stoked. I feel like I don't know if

y'all ever do like public speaking or teaching.

I was like, sometimes I feel nervous, sometimes I feel

differently. I really love this passage and

I'm really excited to share it with all of you.

As Cal mentioned, we're currently in a sermon series on

Ephesians, which is a letter written by the Apostle Paul to

the church in the ancient city of Ephesus.

Does it ever, I don't know how familiar you are with the New

Testament, but does it ever strike you as interesting that

so much of the New Testament is letters?

Like, I mean, when was the last time that you wrote a letter,

like, sat down with pen and paper and like, painstakingly

spelled out your thoughts or like, bought a stamp?

Maybe a teacher made you do it at some point.

But these days, most of us don't write letters, especially not

letters that are long enough to divide into 6 chapters.

But I really love that the New Testament is filled with letters

as opposed to like, you know, you know, practical manuals or

maybe like philosophical treatises because letters are

personal. They imply a relationship

between people and kind of an intention to impact or connect

with the reader. And I love that this is part of

how God teaches us about himself and what it means to live a life

of faith. Like, he speaks through the

problems and the struggles and the challenges of real people,

the early church, like real people who are also trying to

follow Jesus. So today as we dive into the

letter to the Ephesians, I really want us to receive this

word, not as like Paul's doctoral dissertation about like

Christian spirituality, but as a conversation and, you know,

conversation with a seasoned Christian leader who fervently

wants us to know the love of God for us and to be completely

changed by it. So that's the invitation before

us today. So before we kind of get into

the nitty gritty, let me just take a moment to pray for us and

to ask God to meet us through his word.

Lord God, I thank you so much for again, just the way that you

reveal yourself to us. Lord, the way that you just

generously give us insight into who you are, insight into like

what it looks like to walk in faith inside into the challenges

that others have faced inside to questions that maybe are similar

to questions that we have. God, we just thank you for this

gift. And I want to pray this morning

especially that our hearts would be open to receive what you want

to say this morning, especially that our hearts would be open to

receive just the message of the depth of your love for us guide.

I pray that today that that word, that word that you love us

would not feel shallow or insufficient or too familiar or

small in some way. We pray that you would expand

our view of what it means to have a God who loves us.

We pray that we would discover through your word that that your

love speaks into the specific place that we find ourselves in

this morning, the challenges we face, the reason maybe we felt

stuck or empty or frustrated or overwhelmed or exhausted or

wherever we're coming in this morning.

We pray that your love would meet us there and that just as

as Paul prays so enthusiastically here, that that

we would be changed by your love.

Holy Spirit, speak to us, be present with us this morning.

We pray all those things in Jesus name, Amen.

Amen. So if you haven't been around

the last couple of weeks, we've been in Ephesians one and two,

and just kind of a quick overview of what we've learned

so far. In chapter 1, Paul kind of just

like talks at length about the amazing gifts that God has given

to his people. So he talks about how God has

blessed us with every spiritual blessing and because of his

love, he has adopted us into his family.

And through Jesus he has given us redemption, forgiveness, and

a beautiful inheritance, all of which we receive as a free gift

or as the Bible likes to call it, grace.

And then chapter 2, we learn that the Ephesians are Gentiles,

which means they're non Jews. And it appears that the Gentile

Christians are experiencing kind of some insecurity about whether

they were fully received by God if they had done enough to be

accepted into God's family. And Paul just unequivocally

reassures them that their faith is enough.

Even though they were once separated from God, walking and

sin and rebellion, they had now received God's mercy and

forgiveness. They've been brought near to

God, and not because of their own merit, but because of God's

extravagant kindness. So at the center of the letter,

there's kind of this sense of assurance, like Paul's

reassuring the Ephesian Christians that because of their

faith they've become God's people and received God's

promise. And that this is not a

hypothetical or like a conditional agreement.

This is an unshakable reality that is meant to shape how the

Ephesians see themselves. So this is kind of what all this

seemingly like dense theology in Ephesians is actually about.

It's an encouragement to these new Christians that they are a

part of God's family, and it's an invitation to let that truth

form the core of their identity. So now we read chapter 3, which

is kind of where Paul puts a cap on all of these sentiments by

just lifting up this beautiful prayer for the church.

And did you pick up on that, that these verses, that this

passage today is really just a prayer?

And it's an impassioned prayer like Bible commentators note

that Paul's even his opening is significant when he says, for

this reason, I bow my knees before the Father.

Because for Jews and for early Christians, the more common

practice was to pray standing up.

So kneeling was kind of a posture you would take before a

Lord or a king, or if you were kind of pleading for a request

to be granted. It implies kind of this depth of

feeling and urgent sense of need.

So what is this like emphatic, urgent prayer that Paul has?

He prays for three things on behalf of the church, power,

knowledge, and fullness. And these are like these kind of

three spokes. And at the center, the hub of

it, is God's love. So power, knowledge, and

fullness. And these are our kind of three

focal points today. And basically we're just asking

like, how do they relate to God's love?

And why is Paul insistent that the church desperately needs

them? So first, Paul prays for the

church to receive power. He asked that according to the

riches of God's glory, he may grant the church to be

strengthened with power through God's Holy Spirit and our inner

beings. I'm curious, how often have you

asked for power, prayed for power, like for yourself or for

your community? And power's kind of a tricky

word, isn't it? Like for some of us, it might

feel like a positive word. Maybe we felt kind of weak or

unsure of ourselves, and we would love to feel empowered by

God's Spirit. But power might also feel like a

dangerous word because of the many, many examples of abuse of

power that we see in our world. And history makes it clear that

humans struggle to hold power well.

Like those that seek power often seem like they like the feeling

of being big or even invincible, but to feel big, they need

someone else to feel small. But could that be the type of

power that Paul is talking about?

Or does he have something else in mind?

Well, when it comes to power, I think like an important question

is power for what? Like power used towards what

end? Because I, I think of power like

I think of fire. It's a fire could be used for

good. Like it could be used for warmth

and nourishment and creativity. There's some things that you

make where you need fire to create that.

Or it could be used for evil, for harm and destruction.

Like if I owned a flamethrower, I don't and I probably would

never buy one. But let's like say I was

bequeathed A flamethrower. Like I was given this greatly

prized ancestral flamethrower that I couldn't say no thank you

to. Like, I wouldn't just let any

random person off the street borrow it.

And if someone did want to borrow it, I would ask, well,

what do you want to use it for? Like, what's the vibe here?

And so we asked similarly, like, what to what end is Paul praying

for power like within the church?

Well, this is the purpose that he names, so that Christ may

dwell in your hearts through faith.

That's kind of like a surprise ending, right?

So Christ may dwell in our hearts through faith.

We apparently need supernatural empowerment from God so that our

faith would become stronger. And as our faith becomes

stronger, we'll experience more and more of the evidence of the

life of Christ within us. So what does real power, what

does godly power do in US? It enables Jesus to increasingly

become the foundation and the guiding force in our lives.

Because when the Bible refers to our hearts, that's not just

talking about emotions like I like, I feel the peace of Jesus,

where I feel loved towards Jesus.

It absolutely includes that. But it is also more than that.

The heart represents like the Control Center at the core of

our being, the seat of our thinking and our feeling and our

willing. And Paul is earnestly praying

that our faith in Jesus would basically reprogram, like our

internal GPS, that our desire to follow God and to know God would

determine the direction we're going in and even how we go

about getting there, like how fast we're going and whether we

take any pit stops along the way.

And then that GPS metaphor will break down.

But you get the picture. So do we understand why we might

need empowerment to live like this?

So that the presence of Christ in our hearts would shape what

we think and how we feel and what we pursue in life.

Like there's so many competing voices in the world that kind of

push back against this and try to persuade us to find our

identity in, in our accomplishments or how much

money we make or how we look or how popular we are in social

media or our ability to like influence the world around us.

But when these things take up residence in our hearts, meaning

they when they guide our actions and and how we view the world,

we become selfish like we have, you know, an image or a

reputation to maintain or a people to impress or accolades

to add to our resume. Our hearts and our worlds become

smaller and self focused. And there's no room for the kind

of expansive compassion and self sacrifice and goodness that

Christ wants to develop within us.

And throughout his letters, Paul describes kind of this like

spiritual tug of war that is taking place between our selfish

motives and what Christ wants to do in our hearts, their opposing

ends. And so I just want to say, if

you've ever found yourself exhausted just trying to follow

God and maybe do some good in this world, I just want to

affirm that from a spiritual perspective that makes complete

logical sense. Like there is a battle happening

and it takes strength to resist kind of the siren call of these

other sources of identity, like these false gods.

Really. So Paul prays that the church

would receive strength, that they would be empowered to

confidently and steadfastly rely on Jesus and to build our lives

on him. So that's the type of power that

Paul is praying for. And secondly, he prays for the

church to receive knowledge. Paul prays 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, which is a beautiful passage.

But again, there's kind of like this element of surprise here,

right? Paul prays for knowledge.

Or, you know, we might say, like understanding comprehension, but

of a different kind than we might expect.

Now, if there's any place that knows about the desire for

knowledge, it's Boston. The city runs on the pursuit of

knowledge. But the end goal here is not to,

you know, earn another PhD or come up with the next

technological breakthrough or even win trivia night at your

local brewery. Like what Paul is yearning for

is that the church would have a greater knowledge of God's love.

Now, if we thought that power was a tricky word, love might

just outdo it. Like in modern America, we throw

the word love around like really freely, really frequently.

And I'm totally guilty of that. Like I've definitely on multiple

occasions said, I love Trader Joe's chili and lime flavored

rolled corn tortilla chips. They are my favorite snack.

So if I was to say to someone that I care about, you know, you

are so important in my life, you are like the human version of

Trader Joe's chili and lime flavored rolled corn tortilla

chips to me. I mean, if the person knows me,

they might take that as a compliment.

But this kind of reveals how unhelpful it is that we just

have one word for both of those things, right?

Because as much as I enjoy snacks, all I was really saying

is, you know, the snack is so delicious that the joy it gives

me surpasses all other snacks, which is high praise.

But that's not the same as telling a person like your

existence is meaningful to me. I'm invested in your happiness.

Your pain causes me pain, and your joy makes me rejoice too.

Like that's a very different definition of love.

And in Ephesians, Paul talks effusively about the love of

God, which is like our human love, and yet it's completely

unlike our love. And Paul uses the Greek word

agape when he talks about God's love here.

And an interesting thing that I learned about the word agape is

that it wasn't as commonly used before the New Testament was

written. Like it was a round, but it

wasn't like as distinctive a term as like Eros romantic love

or Ophelia brotherly love. So when Paul talks about agape,

he's actually not primarily relying on a definition of love

that like already existed in the Greco Roman world.

He is intentionally choosing a somewhat more neutral word and

he's defining it as the love of God as displayed throughout

Scripture and in the life and the sacrifice of Jesus.

So agape love is actually defined by God's very being in

his relationship with humanity. It's a outward focused love.

It encompasses selfless care and and steadfast investment and

willing generosity and a deep desire for others good.

It's a protective love and a self sacrificial love.

It's love is compelled to meet the true needs of the beloved.

So as you listen to this, you know, you might start thinking

about like the best examples of love you've seen in your own

life or maybe in stories like in books and movies or throughout

history. But even if we were to take like

the best possible example of human love, it would pale in

comparison. It would be minuscule and

colorless against the the vibrant, dazzling, deathless

love of God. Like it would be like trying to

compare like the size of the human heart to the size of the

human heart to like the size of the universe.

So let's just try to sketch this picture like really quickly.

So the human heart is about 4.7 inches long and 3.5 inches wide.

I looked it up. By comparison, the Earth is

around 197,000,000 square miles. And that's just the Earth.

So now we measure that against like say the Milky Way Galaxy,

which is about 100,000 light years in diameter, where each

light year is equal to 6 trillion miles.

So already we have so many zeros that I can't even keep track

anymore. And finally we have the

observable universe, the part we can measure, which according to

NASA is about 93 billion light years long.

So consider this framework and then remember, God created the

universe and everything in it. He sees and intimately knows

every inch, every minute aspect of what's going on in all of

creation. So if we take humanity's ability

to love and we try to expand it more and more in an effort to

compare it to God's love, we will run out of zeros like it's

not measurable. It it's beyond the observable

universe. It stretches past the farthest

extent of our imagination. So when we hear this truth that

God loves us, don't let that word love like ricochet off of

your heart without impact. This is not a small word.

This love is so high and deep and long and wide that we can

fully immerse ourselves in it and it will drown out everything

else like a protective force field around us.

This is a love that is big enough and powerful enough to

reshape the course of history. And if we find ourselves

struggling to kind of wrap our heads around the reality of

God's love, God did us an immense favor by giving us an

image of what His love looks like that is human sized so we

could kind of begin to take it in and conceptualize what His

love really means. And that image is found in

Jesus. So if we ever begin to doubt

God's love and make impact on your heart that it once did,

look to Jesus like do what the New Testament writers did.

Don't look to the world to define what agape love is.

Look to God himself. Let him show you what is the

breadth and length and height and depth of the love of God.

So I'm going to ask a question several times.

I'm going to invite you to just ponder this question as we

consider like what God's love has looked like for real people

in real life. The question is, how great is

God's love? How great is God's love?

God's love? It's so wide that encompasses

all of humanity. No matter our race or our

culture, no matter our flaws or our failures.

His love stretches outward to envelope us all.

I think of Jesus like healing lepers who were outcasts.

They were diseased and separated from the community.

But when they came to Jesus, he was moved with compassion.

That's what it says in Mark chapter 1.

Mark 1 · chapter mention

When they came to Jesus, he was moved with love to heal them.

Or I think of Jesus encounter with a Samaritan woman at the

well, another outcast because of her many failed marriages or

illicit relationships. How in the face of her emptiness

and her spiritual dryness, Jesus meets her and offers her the

water of eternal life. So if our understanding of the

love of God is not broad enough to meet us in our shame, in our

rejection, in our loneliness, and to offer us healing and hope

that our understanding of God's love is still too small, how

great is God's love? God's love is so long that no

matter how much we've strayed from him, chasing after false

gods, he pursues us. He offers us forgiveness and

restoration. And Jesus compares God's love to

the father of the prodigal son, the son who rejected his family

and and indulged in every sin and basically wrecked his life.

But when he sees the foolishness of his ways and he decides to go

home, what does his father do? Jesus says that the Father I saw

his Son in the distance and is moved with compassion.

He runs to his Son and he embraces him and kisses him and

he rejoices. And that is God's heart, God.

It's a God who rejoices the moment we turn back towards him.

So if our understanding of the love of God is not long enough

that it goes running to meet the Sinner who realizes that he just

wants to come home, if we don't see that the heart of the Father

longs to be reunited with us, that our understanding of God's

love is still too small, how great is God's love?

God's love is so high that he is incapable of compromising or

diminishing his love for us. And this is where we discover

that God is fully loving and also fully holy at the same

time. And these are characteristics

that do not contradict one another.

They they complement one another.

Because he is holy, God's love is marked by integrity, purity,

righteousness. And because he is loving, God

does not lower his standard of holiness, but he lifts us up to

become like Him. He fiercely combats the sin in

our hearts and in our world. And I think of that scene where

Jesus goes to the temple and he sees that these greedy money

changers are extorting the worshippers who have journeyed

there and he chases them out of the temple.

When we read this I think we often are kind of struck by

Jesus anger. But do we also notice His love,

like His passion that is so protective of those who had

travelled from afar just to worship God, of those who come

to Him in need and in prayer? Just like the temple, our hearts

are meant to be holy spaces for God to inhabit, and He is

relentless in cleansing us and renewing us so we can experience

His nearness. So if our understanding of the

love of God is not high enough that it makes space for His

purifying holiness, then our understanding of God's love is

still too small. How great is God's love?

God's love is so deep that he knows every part of us.

It's like some he says in Psalm 139.

God discerns our thoughts from afar, and even before a word is

on our tongues, he knows it all together.

And this could be intimidating because if we're realistic, our

thoughts and our and our actions can be selfish, vengeful,

lustful, prejudice, unrighteous. But Jesus sees all of this and

he still moves towards us. And right before the Last

Supper, Jesus knew that one of his disciples would betray him

and that the others would scatter out of fear.

And what did he do with that information?

The text says he loved them to the end.

He tied a towel around his waist and he knelt down to wash his

disciples feet, and they still didn't understand the extent of

his love. And yet Jesus went to the cross

for them, for us. And even as people mocked him as

he was dying, Jesus prayed for them.

Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.

So if our understanding of the love of God is not deep enough

that he can see the darkest parts of us and respond with

extravagant mercy that our understanding of God's love is

still too small. Like are you starting to grasp

it? How immeasurably vast God's love

is? Can you comprehend the immensity

of God's love for you? Now there is a correct answer to

that question. I mean, the answer is no, we

can't, because of the love of Christ surpasses knowledge.

And that should be profoundly comforting to us, that the love

of God is so immense that we can keep searching and searching and

learning and learning and growing in our understanding and

and expanding our experiences of God's love.

And yet we will never reach the end of it.

No matter how many years we live and walk in faith, the love of

God will keep surpassing our expectations and surprising us

and overwhelming us and shifting our paradigms and taking us

deeper and farther and farther into God's goodness and His

passion for His people. His love is beautifully

unfathomable and beyond human limitations.

And that is a glorious thing. Now, the third thing that Paul

prays for is that the church would be filled with all the

fullness of God, filled with all the fullness of God.

So Paul is, is asking that more and more of this multifaceted

love of God would flow into us until our hearts are just like

bursting at the seams. And this is another aspect of

faith that I, I always wonder if we like fail to grasp it or or

maybe we forget sometimes that we need to continually be filled

by God. Like in Scripture, God often

compares himself to things that nourish us or or fuel us like

he's the bread of life. He's a fount of living water.

He's the vine that feeds into the branches.

How often do we act like the ideal version of ourselves or

like, you know, who we're supposed to try to become is

someone who's totally self-sufficient?

Like that's a value that we hold in high esteem in like modern

Western culture. But do we realize that it's

based on a lie? Like we were not designed to be

self-sufficient. We were designed to be God

reliant, like if you are a human that is built into your

operational system. Like you need the life of God to

flow into you continually and powerfully for the rest of your

existence. God is like a deep well that we

can draw from anytime. We're even a little thirsty

because his living water will never run dry.

He's like the manna from heaven that we can feast on freely

without worrying that he won't show up again tomorrow.

We are meant to be filled by Him again and again and again.

God's fullness is meant to fill us, But I also think that it's

meant to stretch us so that we kind of develop the capacity for

even more of God. I remember this conversation I

had with a really dear friend, like years ago.

We were both just kind of trying to make sense of these really

challenging seasons that we were going through.

And I remember my friend said that in her season, she felt

like she was just being stretched, like all the time,

and it was uncomfortable and sometimes painful, and she

didn't know how much more of it she could take.

And so, you know, I'm like listening to her as I did,

suddenly it struck me that what she was describing also actually

sounded like growth. Growth, especially significant

growth, often feels painful at first because it's stretching us

beyond our current capacity. But once we adjust to our new

capacity, we discover that through the stretching, we've

come to know God in new ways than we did before.

And if I look back at the times when I felt like I was being,

you know, stretched beyond my limits, now I can see that I was

actually growing like, you know, God was stretching me by

deepening my ability to love, by taking my kind of confronting me

with somebody that I found it difficult to love.

Or he was challenging my trust in Him by taking something away

from me and revealing kind of the insufficient things that

I've been relying on and turning to for security.

He was expanding my understanding of the ways that

He can meet with people when I experienced boredom or staleness

in my devotional life, and it forced me to go searching for

different ways to connect with God.

Or he was confronting my defense mechanisms that I used to

protect myself when I would see sin and injustice in the world

and would be overwhelmed by grief and anger.

But He stirred me up by making me uncomfortable in the comfort

zone that I created. So in all of these seasons

where, you know, I felt stretched, God was actually

expanding my heart to make room for more of him.

And I think that's part of what it means to be filled with the

fullness of God. So I just want to encourage you.

If you were feeling dry or empty or stirred up or uncomfortable

or like challenged and stretched to the point where it maybe you

feel like you might break, maybe there's something arise that

needs fixing, I wouldn't be the one to tell you that.

But maybe God is also using this moment to grow your capacity to

know him, to know his grace and his goodness and his fierce,

relentless, expansive love that is beyond comprehension.

So these three things that Paul prays for, power, knowledge, and

fullness, are all rooted in the love of God.

And Bible commentators point out that in these verses, Paul is

speaking in the passive voice, which means that these are not

primarily things that we do or we accomplish.

Like we are recipients and this is God's work.

And this is like a such a mysterious part of our faith,

like we're called to be active in many ways, to to work and to

labor and prayer and to love others through our words and our

actions. And yet the miracle of salvation

and transformation that happens within us is the work of the God

who loves us. So finally, Paul ends this

prayer with a doxology. It's a short hymn that lifts up

praises to God. And he says 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 the glory

and the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all

generations, forever and ever. Amen.

I'm so thankful for this truth that God is able to do far more

abundantly than all that we ask or think.

And this points us back to the immensity of God's love and

power working on our behalf. I mean, there's so many times in

my life where God has answered a prayer in a way that is so like

wise and specific and surprising that it would have never

occurred to me that this was exactly what I needed.

And like, all glory be to God for that.

But to close this today, what I want to do is just rely on the

truth of these verses by praying Paul's words over us, over his

church. So I actually listened to a

sermon about this passage. I don't always do that, but this

one, like, just popped up and I wanted to listen to it.

That was by Francis Chan. And he said that if all we do

when we read Ephesians 3 is like analyze the theology behind it

or like dissect the nuances of the Greek, then we've missed the

point. Because a prayer is meant to be

prayed over the lives and for the good and the growth of God's

church. So this kind of prayer that Paul

has, I've kind of rewritten it in my own words as a prayer

meant for our church. And I made it longer.

Just a warning. But I'd like to pray this over

all of us now and just invite you as we transition into a time

of worship through song and through reflection, to make this

prayer your own and to lift your voices up to the God who hears

us. So let me pray for us, Father

God, you are the King of all creation, infinite in your power

and mercy, and I come to you. We come to you today, asking and

believing that you can work mightily on behalf of your

church and that you want to do miraculous things in the lives

of your people and God. I asked first for the greatest

miracle, that we would be made new by your love.

I pray that your Holy Spirit would empower each person in

this room to receive you. I pray that any identities we're

clinging to, anything we've built on the shifting sands of

this world would be swept away. And I ask that Christ our rock

would become the foundation of all that we are and all that we

do. I ask that you alone would take

up full residence in our hearts, strengthen our faith, Lord, root

us, and ground us in your love. And God, would you please open

our eyes to see more of You. Bring to our minds the moments

in our lives when you have revealed Your love to us.

Deepen our understanding of Your love.

Help us to stand in awe of it the way we stand in awe of a

vibrant sunset or a vast Canyon or a night sky blazing with

stars. Would we feel the smallness of

our love so that we can begin to grasp how wide and long and high

and deep Your love for us really is?

Where to fill us to the brim with Your love in the places we

feel empty, in the places we feel insufficient, and all of

our longings and fear and frustration and overwhelm help

us reject the lie of self-sufficiency and instead

learn to abide in You. We ask all of this trusting and

believing that you hear this prayer and that you were able to

do far more than we could possibly ask or imagine.

By your power and for your glory, we ask all of this in the

name of Jesus, Amen. Amen.