Ephesians 3:14-21 Sam Larson

A kid's Sunday.

Mike and Larry were back there just trying to figure stuff out, throwing ideas out there, and I snapped a picture and just looks like a great cover for like a 90s boy band.

But it's amazing to look back on that and think, we actually did this, you know, how far the church has actually come.

It's a beautiful, beautiful thing.

Would you guys turn in your Bibles to Ephesians chapter 3?

Ephesians 3 · chapter mention

We're going to be diving into verses 14 through 21 today.

Some of you may have heard kind of a famous story about a missionary, John Patton, and his work overseas.

So in 1858, he went over to a group of islands in the South Pacific called the New Hebrides.

They're now called Vanuatu.

And when he got there, he walked into a place that is known for picturesque beaches and lush forests and beautiful sandy beaches.

It was also known for violence, revenge, and cannibalism.

And people would kill their enemies there.

Families kept white-knuckled grudges with each other.

It's hard to imagine a more terrifying place to be.

But John Patton stayed.

He suffered many hardships and he preached Jesus.

He cared for people.

He translated the Bible into their language.

He got chased up a tree by some guys with spears who wanted to kill him.

And over time, he started seeing a dramatic transformation in the men and women of those islands.

Tribes who had been violent became a refuge for other tribes.

People who had lived for revenge began to forgive.

Men who had once taken life began caring for the lives of others.

And former cannibals became known for their compassion.

Now, there in those remote islands, God was changing people from the inside out.

If you look at history, I don't know very much about history, but I've listened a time or two about it.

Watched a couple of docs, you know.

When you look at history, there are some examples of like powerful, violent people moving into areas with more peaceful religions there, and eventually they did uh kind of make the more violent people more peaceful.

That's something that happened.

So the Mongolians moved a little bit south, they got some Buddhist influence, and after a while they became peaceful, stopped pillaging folks, all that.

But that took a long time.

That took generations and generations and generations.

These people in the New Hibrides, they gave up their witch doctors and they stopped mutilating people and they gave up cannibalism and began teaching the gospel and creating safe havens to escape tribal violence remarkably fast.

Like historically speaking, it just turned on a dime.

So the question we should ask is how does not just one person but an entire culture, an entire people, pivot from cannibalism to compassion that quickly?

I think the answer is through God's power and love, transforming them from the inside out.

That's what today's passage is all about.

Today's text is actually a prayer that the Lord would make his people his dwelling place and create a lasting transformation in us and through us.

Not just in isolated individual Christians, but in the whole people who are being changed together by the power and love of God.

So some quick background before we get started, because we're just kind of parachuting into the book of Ephesians today.

The book of Ephesians is six chapters long.

The first three are all about the powerful doctrines that our God has given to us.

So it teaches that Christians are chosen by God, that sin corrupted us, but when we were dead in our sins, Jesus came and he died on the cross for us so that we could become children of God.

And so put, take, take that into consideration, those last couple sentences.

Put yourselves in the shoes of the people in Ephesus.

Um a huge, miraculous, like huge, big place to live, kind of like the New York City of the time.

And they were mostly Gentiles, so they're mostly not Jewish folks, no Jewish background, um, who would have grown up believing in all sorts of different gods and creators who didn't really care about the people, but were above them, and the people were kind of at their disposal.

Imagine that, and then hearing the message of the gospel that you can come to Jesus at the bottom of the barrel with a mountain of guilt on your back and a million pounds of shame around your neck from a lifetime of sin, and you can come to Jesus, who has died on a cross for your sins, and through his sacrifice, the all-powerful God, creator of the universe, can call you sons and daughters, and you can call him Father.

And this Jesus didn't just come to save his own people, the Jews.

Ephesians 3 reminds us that Jesus died so that even the Gentiles could be fully welcomed into the family of our Lord.

Jews and Gentiles, people who had been divided from one another, are now being made into one family.

They're being made into one church, one dwelling place for God.

And we hear those things as people who have maybe maybe you've sat in a church a time or two, and we kind of give that a thumbs up.

Like, yes, that is what the Bible says.

Um, but that was and is still to this day life-altering information.

That's the message of the gospel.

So the first three chapters are the doctrine laid out as because the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, did this, and then the final three chapters lay out this is how we must be transformed.

And it speaks to every aspect of our lives, to marriage and parenting and generosity and our disposition towards others, and how the church should work together and how we can push back darkness together.

But before Paul gets super, super practical, and after he's unloaded three chapters of wonderful beyond words doctrine, we have this prayer from chapter three, verses fourteen through twenty-one.

A prayer that the power of God and the knowledge of the love of God would transform the people of God.

Let's read that together.

Would you stand as I read?

If you're able.

And for you personally, maybe your health isn't what it used to be.

Maybe you're aging.

Maybe you don't really see yourself in a part of your life where you're ever going to be strengthened by anything.

The Bible itself talks about the body wasting away.

It's part of life.

It's not a fun part, but it's part of life.

But the strengthening we read about in verse 16 is in the inner being.

Side note, but an important side note.

Sometimes God uses the weakening of our outer selves to strengthen our inner selves because we're physically forced to look to him for our strength.

And the power that we read about here is a power at work in everyone who has a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

Earlier in Ephesians, we see that this power, if you go back to chapter one, is the same power that God used to raise Jesus from the dead.

In other words, we call this resurrection power.

The power of God that defeated the undefeatable and raised our Savior from the dead is now at work in us.

And notice that Paul isn't praying for this one super Christian alone.

He's praying over the entire church as well.

The you here could be as an individual, but it's also the whole people, the whole people of God.

We want this church to be strengthened together by the power of God.

And in verse 17, we see this: that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, to dwell in your hearts.

There's imagery here that's really all over the Bible, I think, especially the New Testament, that God is dwelling in his people.

Galatians 4.6, for example, says, Because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.

1 Corinthians 3.16 says, Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?

And here the Apostle Paul is praying that Christ would increasingly dwell in our hearts, that he would settle down, that he'd make a home for himself.

That the reality of Christ would move farther and farther into every part of who we are.

I remember moving, um, I remember moving out of my parents' house for the very first time.

Um I was about 18.

Um wouldn't be the last time I lived with my parents, mind you.

And uh and I took with me everything that I had.

I had a red Chevy S10, and I threw in the back of there my Lion King themed twin-size mattress, drove to my new living place.

I'd rented a room from my friends in my friend's house.

He was a little older than me.

Um, and I threw that mattress on the floor and I belly flopped over onto Simba and I called that place Home Sweet Home.

My friend, he decided to decorate his room.

He had a shotgun in the corner and he had a poster of Johnny Cash flipping the bird on the wall.

And that might sound like I'm just telling you guys a goofy story, which I am.

But what what what better picture of the soul that Jesus begins renovating when we first belong to him?

Childish, disordered, crass, nasty, totally devoid of any kind of beauty.

And when Jesus is at work in us through the Holy Spirit in resurrection power, he looks around and he goes, Hey, let's get started.

Let's do this.

He's not intimidated by the chaotic dumpster fire of the home.

Because we have a God who pursued us while we were still sinners.

And Paul's prayer is that Christ wouldn't just be an occupant who stays in one little corner of our lives, but that he would make himself at home in every room.

Our marriages and our parenting and our friendships and our speech and our money and our churches.

And Christ making his home among his people and in his people is where the transformation occurs.

We're doing some renovating at our home, slowly, uh, as our suffering community group will attest to.

And although we've been gifted far more, like our family's been gifted far more than we could ever like ask or deserve or anything like that, there's still really one thing that slows renovation progress.

I think everyone in this room can relate to this.

Uh, it's money, right?

You'd only use so much, you only have so much money.

There's a show I used to watch years ago called Love It or List It.

You guys seen this show?

All right, Love It Or List It's where they try to renovate a house and they decide if the if the uh owner is going to love it or if they're going to list it.

That's right.

And there's this point in the show, because it's scripted, like all reality TV, except for alone, and and there's always a point in the show where it turns to Hillary, who's like the renovation person, and she goes, the budget is gone.

The budget is gone, we have to ask for more money.

They try to cause a little drama in the show with that.

You guys.

This prayer is that we would be strengthened according to the riches of the glory of God.

The budget is not gone.

What are the riches of the glory of God?

Totally extraordinary in every way, never-ending, poured out on the people of God.

God is not working on a renovation with limited resources.

And as we grow in Christ, as he dwells in us richly through the Holy Spirit, God is taking our fixer upper souls and renovating them into a picture of himself.

And he isn't just doing this to us as individuals, he's making the whole church into a dwelling place for himself, a people who increasingly look like Jesus together as one body.

So, how does anyone change?

A stubborn relative, a hurting neighbor, a cannibal in Vanuatu, you, me, us, through the power that raised Jesus from the grave.

The power of God working in us through him.

Nothing transforms like the gospel transforms.

And in the very same prayer we see Paul praying about God's love.

Let's look back at the text here.

My second point today is rooted in his love.

Rooted in his love.

Pause for a minute.

Keep in mind that this isn't a prayer that we would simply love God more.

Why don't you love him more?

Come on, guys.

No, it's a prayer that we would understand his love.

There's another helpful analogy that we see here as we read.

It's being rooted and grounded in his love.

Paul actually piles two pictures, one on top of another.

Rooted like a plant is rooted in soil, and grounded like a building sitting on a foundation.

Like God's love is the fertile soil where a child of God grows strong, and the foundation underneath the whole life of a believer and a church.

But what is love?

What is love?

Because culture seems to know a lot about it, right?

Almost every song is about love.

Almost every book, every movie is about love.

And yet, knowing true love is key to understanding our God.

And yet I think the love of God is maybe the most confused and misunderstood aspect of who He really is.

You might look at the love of God and think that it's it's a pretty simple thing to observe, right?

We teach our children, Jesus loves me.

This I know, for the Bible tells me so.

I didn't know how that was gonna go.

Thanks, guys, for playing along.

But we're surrounded, like we're surrounded culturally, and I think personally within ourselves, we're surrounded by counterfeit loves, right?

I jotted down three types of counterfeit loves that I think negatively affect our ourselves and our culture and our families, but there's more.

There's more than this.

The first one is in affirming Jesus.

Affirming Jesus just says, hey, whatever you do, whatever you do is right.

I'm on your team.

There's nothing in you that needs to change.

Whatever you believe, whatever you deserve, that's what's best for you.

And on a side note here, many of you were not loved growing up.

You've been in hurtful relationships where all you wanted was to be affirmed by someone or something, right?

That's not what I'm talking about here.

What I'm talking about is the fact that a true father or a true friend who is powerful and knowing and truly loves you deeply, if that person affirms you only and never corrects, never redirects, never speaks truth into the lies that you're telling yourself, that person doesn't really love you.

We also have advice, Jesus.

Advice Jesus is our cosmic butler and our occasional therapist.

We bring him in when we're feeling bummed out or we think we have a question that we kind of want his opinion on.

What does Jesus say about doing yoga?

What does Jesus say about drinking beers?

Advice, Jesus, is a good idea because he knows some important stuff, is what we think.

A Jesus who is good for advice, but he is not an abiding Christ.

And then we have far off Jesus.

Far off Jesus.

We believe Jesus is real and he's good, but he's not close.

He's close to other people, and other people even seem to know him and be close with him, like they've cracked some kind of a code and you're happy for them.

But you feel like his love is something distant and vague.

But Paul prays that believers would have the strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth of God's love with all the saints.

I want to look into that phrase, except I'm gonna use slightly simpler words.

Because I think you can look at those four words and trace them all back to other times in the book of Ephesians, where Paul is writing about the doctrines of God.

Let's look at how wide.

How wide?

How wide is God's love, you might ask?

God opens his arms to even the Gentiles.

Do you think you've sinned beyond forgiveness?

Have you run from God?

Have you disregarded him for most of your life?

Are you just not a Jesus person?

Could you be beyond the reach of his love?

No.

His love is far too wide.

He knows the beginning and the end, your first and your last breath, and yet he opens wide his arms.

And look around the church.

People who would have had no reason to belong together are being brought together because of Christ.

The love of Christ is wide enough to create a family out of people who otherwise may never have become a family.

And how long?

How long is his love?

Will God's love ever wear thin?

Is he going to wake up one day and regret ever getting involved with you?

Have you read the Bible?

Have you read this book here?

If you know this book and if you like, just think about it and zoom out, there's one thing that's really clear.

It's well, God is a God of perfect justice, and his love for his people never stops.

Not through the fall of man, not through the rebellion of the patriarchs, not through the complaining and faithlessness of Israelites, not through the sin of the appointed kings.

So does God regret getting involved with you, Christian?

No.

No.

His love is far too long.

How high?

How high?

Well, Ephesians 2 says we are seated with Christ.

In the heavenly places.

Think about that.

People who are dead in sins, enemies of God brought near and raised with Christ, seated with him.

How high has his love brought us all the way from death in sin to life in Christ?

How deep.

How deep is his love?

Can we dive right in, or does God's love have one of those swimming pool red X diver things on it?

No, his love is deep.

No man or woman has seen the bottom.

As it says previously, his grace is lavished or poured out.

It is not rationed to last.

It is beyond measure.

What's the depth of the Father's love for us?

Well, he sent his one and only Son to us to walk with us, to suffer and die.

And Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to live in our hearts.

As if wide and long and high and deep still fall short of really capturing the love of Christ.

We also read the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.

We will never fully wrap our arms or our heads around it.

And as I studied this, the metaphor that seems to be most accurate was the ocean itself.

Last year, um, the North American Mission Board uh blessed our family, and we got to go down to uh to Florida and play in the ocean for the first time, and the kids just really, really loved it.

Uh, the waves crashing against their bodies and splashing around in the ocean is so much fun and looking for crabs and shells, and it was just it was the most fun time.

And then somehow uh in the ocean, there are thousands of unexplored miles, and there's depths that no human being can touch.

In the same time, it is gentle enough for a child to wait in, but it is deep enough and vast enough to behold with wonder.

I've spoken with enough hurting people to know that I think the first fear we usually have when it comes to thinking about love and trying to comprehend what it is and what its effect is on us, the first thing we always think is, will anyone ever love me?

Will anyone ever love me?

And the question that comes after that is if they really know me, would they still choose to love me?

And the answer to both of those questions is found in our God, because only in him are we completely known and completely loved.

Let's look back at the text.

Because all of this is building somewhere, it says we're strengthened by the Spirit, Christ is making his home in us, we're rooted and grounded in love, comprehending with all the saints the enormous love of Christ, knowing a love that surpasses knowledge, and then Paul gives us the destination, so to speak, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

The prayer is that God would fill his people more and more with everything that he intends for us to be, with his character, with his holiness, with his love, with his life, that it would increase in us and shape us.

That Christ would make himself so at home among his people that the church increasingly looks like Jesus.

Think back to renovation for a minute.

God doesn't just come in to fix a broken cabinet.

He's after the whole house.

And not just my house, it's people's house.

Your house.

A whole church is being filled more and more with the life of Christ.

That's power.

That's powerful.

And if you hear this prayer and you think, that sounds like a lot to ask, it's significant.

That's exactly right.

That's exactly right.

Point number three is this filled with his fullness.

Filled with his fullness.

This prayer is already enormous, it's huge.

Look now.

Read this.

To him who's able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think.

It's not a blank check, by the way.

Saying, think of your wildest dream, and God will give you something even better than that.

It's not suggesting we dream of riding a unicorn to Disney World, although that would be great.

Paul has something even bigger than that in view.

He's talking about the power of God to do this miraculous work in his people, to take spiritually dead people and make them alive, to take enemies and make them family, to take sinners and make Christ at home in them, to take divided people and make them one church, one body, to take people who barely comprehend the love of Christ and root them so deeply in it that it begins changing everything about them, to fill his people more and more with his own fullness.

That is what God is able to do beyond what we ask or imagine, according to the power at work within us.

To him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever.

Amen.

That's the end goal.

A people so transformed by his power and the love of God that God gets glory through his church, here, next door, the next neighborhood, the next city, to the ends of the earth.

In Ephesus, in the New Hebrides, in this church, in Adams, Nebraska, and beyond.

And in all of us.

Listen to this.

When it comes to prayer, we spend so much time wondering if God will measure up to our prayers, and very little time wondering at all if our prayers measure up to the power of our God.

So I'm going to leave you with a few things here.

First is pray in his power.

Look at what Paul is willing to ask God to do in his church.

Strengthen us.

Make Christ at home in us.

Root us in his love.

Help us know the unknowable.

Fill us with his fullness, transform us into a people who brings him glory.

And if we are his children, and our priority is living for him and bringing glory to him, we're praying for the very kinds of things that Paul tells us God loves to throw his power into.

So what would it look like for God to answer this prayer here at Redemption Hill Bible Church?

It would look like people who have carried bitterness for years beginning to forgive.

It would look like lonely people finding family here among us.

It would look like marriages being transformed by the love of Jesus.

It would look like our children growing up surrounded by people who keep pointing them to Christ.

It would look like people that we've almost stopped praying for, coming to faith in Jesus.

It would look like us becoming more patient with one another, more generous with one another, quicker to forgive, harder to divide.

Not because we finally found the perfect program or we hacked the system, but because the power that raised Jesus from the dead is at work among us and we can see it.

Lord, make Christ at home here in Redemption Hill.

Root us in that love.

Fill us more and more with your fullness.

Make us into a people who brings you glory.

And remember his love.

Remember his love.

Individually and corporately, remember it.

Do you struggle with loneliness?

Christ sees you and knows you, and he loves you.

Do you struggle with self-pity?

The riches of Christ are being poured out onto you through his power and his love.

Remember that you aren't trying to understand that love alone.

We comprehend it with all the saints.

Your brothers and sisters right here.

And sometimes we need another believer sitting beside us saying, Brother, I know you can't see it right now.

You can't see it right now, but Christ has not stopped loving you.

Sister, I know this hurts.

I know this is painful, but you have not fallen outside of the reach of the love of God.

And remember his love for others.

Because we have no right to hate those who Jesus loves.

And we have no right not to extend love to those that he loves.

If the love of Christ is wide enough to bring enemies into his family, then his love should begin changing the way that his family treats one another and the world.

So as we go, I want to put some emphasis on this.

The church should be a place where we keep pointing one another back to these two realities.

First, look at his power.

Look at his power.

Second, look at his love.

Because you can spend the rest of eternity exploring it and never really reach the bottom.

This is what God is doing in his people.

Through his spirit, he strengthens us with resurrection power.

He fills his people more and more with his fullness.

And he's able to do far more than we could ask or imagine through his power at work within us.

So that when people look back at the church, when they look at a group of ordinary people, this island of misfit toys who are being changed from the inside out, the glory is all to our Lord and Savior.

And if you do not know this Lord and Savior, may I invite you today.

Receive Christ.

Make Him Lord and Savior of your life because he is worth it.

Let's pray.

Father, we are so thankful for you this morning.

We're thankful to know, Lord, that the triune God of the universe is at work in our lives personally and in the church corporately, Lord.

And that you, through your power and love, can do more than we could ever ask or imagine.

Lord, help this not to be a sermon we hear, help this to be a truth that we know far beyond today.

In the life of the church, the life of your church, Lord.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.