Ephesians: To Know the Love of Christ | Associate Pastor: Matt Armstrong

Alright, this morning we continue in our series through the book of Ephesians, or Paul's letter to the church in Ephesus.

And today we come to the end of chapter three.

And this is an important place in the letter.

As we've said for all these weeks, Ephesians, like many of Paul's letters, basically has two parts.

Chapters 1, 2, and 3 tell us about who God is, what he has done, what we have received as a gift, our salvation by grace through faith.

The second part of the letter, chapters 4, 5, and 6, are all about how shall we now live in light of this reality and this great salvation that we have received in Jesus.

Today we come to the end of part one.

And it's fascinating to see how Paul ends this section.

He ends it with a prayer.

He prays to the Father for understanding, which is a fascinating thing.

For all the things Paul could pray for the Ephesians, after these three chapters of rich and deep theology, he prays for them to understand all that he has told them.

For three chapters, Paul has been telling or retelling the story of redemption to the Ephesians.

This story that for millennia was kind of separated from them.

It picked up with Abraham, God coming to Abraham and his descendants, Isaac and Jacob and the nation of Israel.

But Paul is reminding and telling the Ephesians that this story, that was very much a Jewish story, actually began before the foundations of the earth.

And now these Gentiles, these non-Jews, have been swept up into that very story.

Now we are great stand-ins for the Ephesians.

We too, most of us, were Gentile, non-Jewish Christians, those who have come to put our faith in Christ.

And what Paul wants the Ephesians and us to know more than anything here at the end of chapter 3 is the heart of the author of that story.

So let's look again at verses 14 and 15 in our passage.

Paul says, For this reason, all that is come before, I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named.

Point one, our God is both our loving Father and the King of the universe.

Paul says here, he begins by saying, I bow my knee before the Father, which when I initially read this, and probably when you initially read this, you think, well, this is language of prayer, right?

Bending the knee, kneeling in prayer.

But come to find out, no, that's not true.

The common Jewish posture in prayer, and even in the early church, was to stand.

If you were to stand, uh pray, you would stand.

So what is this kneeling about?

Kneeling is what you historically did before the sovereign, the Lord, or the king.

So by beginning his prayer this way, Paul is reminding the Ephesians that the one to whom he prays and they pray is the king of the universe.

This is one to whom we bend the knee, and especially when we come before the king to bring a petition, to ask something that only the king can provide.

This king is higher than Herod, higher than Caesar, higher than any earthly power.

But this is not some distant sovereign who is busy with the details of the kingdom and unaware or uncaring of the one who kneels before him.

Paul says, I bow the knee before the Father.

And as we've seen through these three chapters, that in Jesus Christ through faith we have been adopted.

And we are sons and daughters of the King.

And so as Paul kneels, yes, but before the sovereign king of the whole universe, he is also kneeling before his father.

And so he says, if if you are one who has a kid, you know that when your child asks for something, the initial desire of our hearts is to give our kids what they want.

Now, my kids annoy me to no end, and often they ask me for things and I don't want to give them because I'm tired and selfish and frugal or cheap.

But God is not limited in those ways.

God never gets tired to hear the requests of his children.

He loves when we go to him to ask for the things that we need.

And so Paul reminds us that he, that God, this God he bends the knee before, has both the power and the heart to answer his prayer.

There's one more descriptor Paul gives us.

He is the Father, he is the King, and He is the one from whom every family on heaven and earth is named.

Now, why does he add this descriptor?

This is very important to these Gentile Christians.

When we talk about the one from whom all the families of the earth are named, outside the family of Abraham, Paul is hearkening back to creation itself.

The Bible often talks about God naming things in association with his creation.

The Psalms say that God created all the stars of the heavens and he named each one.

And we're told that when God creates Adam, our first father, that he included Adam in the creation process by allowing him to name the animals of his creation.

And so by reminding the Ephesians that this is the God from whom every family, not just the Jewish families, is named, he reminds them that this is their God.

He is the God of all peoples.

And this is the great mystery that Paul was uniquely given the gift to proclaim.

The mystery that even before the foundation of the earth, God's plan was not just to set aside for himself a small people group, the Jews, and to save and to love them, but through those people to save and to love all the people of the earth.

And we see the fulfillment of that, that fulfillment for which we still wait in Revelation 7, when every tribe and tongue and nation are gathered together in the new heavens and the new earth, and they worship, we worship our God and king.

God is taking all the families of the earth who were dispersed and separated, and he is making now one new humanity in the Son.

And so he reminds them that he is no stranger to them, though they have been estranged from him for some time.

So what is Paul now kneeling before the Father to ask?

Point to Paul prays for a cascading series of gifts.

This is an incredible passage to simply sit and meditate on, and I encourage you to do that.

But but Paul, in this letter, he's so effusive with his language, and he he has clauses within clauses, it can get some a little bit grammatically confusing.

And so uh for me this is helpful.

So I want to show it to you that in this one prayer, he asks for three things specifically, and they're like a cascading waterfall, one flowing into the next.

He says, I bow my knees before the Father so that he may grant you strength through his spirit, so that you may comprehend the love Christ has for you, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

So let's walk through these each in turn.

Point three, Paul prays for God to grant the Ephesians strength of understanding.

Let me read verses 16 and 17.

He says, He prays that according to the riches of his glory, he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you being rooted and grounded in love.

Dot, dot, dot.

Okay.

This first petition.

First, he prays that this strength, like their salvation, comes as a gift.

He doesn't say, hey, buckle down, Ephesians, get to studying, put your thinking caps on.

He says, I pray that God would grant you power through his spirit to understand.

We've talked uh through multiple sermons through this series that our salvation is completely the act of sovereign grace.

That's all a gift that we simply receive.

And so even Paul says, even here, our understanding, our comprehension, our ability to grasp this truth is a gift from God.

Second, this strength comes through the Spirit, through God's Holy Spirit.

And this is easy to miss, but I want us to just stop for a moment and and and witness here Paul's deep Trinitarian theology.

He prays to the Father that the Ephesians would be given strength through the Spirit, so that the Son of God may dwell in their hearts by faith.

Beloved, we worship one God who has revealed himself in three persons, and those three persons are not at odds.

It is not as if the father is angry and wrathful, and the son is loving and merciful, and he comes and placates the Father.

No, the plan of our salvation came from the heart of the Father before the foundations of the earth.

It is carried out by the Son, and it is gifted to us through the Spirit.

Paul wants us to know, to see, and to revel in this unity in our triune God.

Third, he prays that this strength that he wants for us and for the Ephesians, that it would be supplied through the riches of God's glory.

So think about it.

How rich is God in glory?

If God had a bank account of glory, what's the balance?

Well, it's infinite.

There are not enough zeros to account for the glory of God.

God is infinite in glory.

God is his glory, his glory is his person.

And so Paul says, this is the power that we are tapping into.

It is an infinite power.

It is a power that flows from a heart of love from a father.

But what is this strength needed for, you might ask?

Well, point four, Paul prays for strength that we might comprehend love.

Specifically, Christ's love for us.

Let's look at verses 18 and 19.

He prays that they may have strength to comprehend together with all the saints what is the breadth and length, the height and the depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

There's a beautiful story in the book, The Hiding Place.

It's kind of a memoir from Corey Tenboom that takes place during World War II.

And she has this beautiful story about when she's a little girl, she's going somewhere with her father, and I believe they're heading to the train station.

And she asks a question of her father, like lots of our young children do.

It's a question that is beyond her ability to understand the answer because of her young age.

She is not mature enough to understand.

But it her father, in his wisdom, rather than answering her directly in response to her question, he puts down his two suitcases and he's and he asks her, Corey, would you pick up these suitcases for me and carry them on?

And she goes and she she's confused, but she tries to pick them up and she says, Papa, these are these are too heavy.

I can't carry them.

He says, Yes, that that's right.

And the the question you're answer asking, the answer is too heavy for you right now to understand.

But one day you will be old enough and and you will understand.

And in a similar way, Paul is saying to the Ephesians that to comprehend the love that God has for us takes divine strength.

That fact alone is worth pondering meditating.

Do you know how much God loves you if you are in Christ?

I can almost guarantee that you don't.

You don't understand the breadth and the length and the height and the depth of it.

Why?

Because it comes from a heart of infinite love.

But Paul wants, he wants for the Ephesians and for us what he has been gifted, and that is a deeper understanding.

A deep understanding into the mysteries of God, the plans of God, what God has been doing since before the foundations of the earth.

And he knows that if we if we can if our understanding can be strengthened and stretched, then our hearts will be strengthened and stretched and filled with the love of God.

And that that love will change us, will shape us.

I remember uh wrestling with this some time ago because it it's it's kind of a strange thing to think why do we need strength to comprehend the love of God?

Well, I I was I was going through a particularly difficult time, it's very anxious, um, just struggling, and and I was talking to someone seeking counsel, and they said, Hey, Matt, you're okay.

God loves you.

You're a beloved son.

And I remember my honest response was, I'm glad God loves me.

I have no idea what that has to do with what's going on in my life.

It wasn't until I walked through this season of difficulty, of suffering.

Some of the things we've we've sung this morning.

Sam's done an incredible job of picking uh incredible songs for us to sing this morning.

It wasn't until I went through that hard time that that through that God purposefully led me down where all the other loves of my life seemed to be stripped away.

And there was only one love left.

When all other loves and all other ambitions were stripped away, and I was kind of taken down to the bone, what I realized and what I experienced in a depth I had never known before is that the love of God endures.

That when I fall completely short, when I have nothing left in myself, when I ultimately realize that I have nothing to give and no way to earn, God loves me.

His love endures when I betray and turn away from him.

When I am faithless, he is faithful.

When I don't have the strength, he is strong.

His love will never end.

And it was in that moment that the love of God shone brightly, brighter than I'd ever seen before into my heart, and I understood the words that Teresa of Avila is so famous for saying that because I have received the love of Christ, it is a true thing that all things will be well.

All manner of things will be well.

It is a peace and it is a grounding and it is a rooting that I had never understood before.

And this is what Paul longs for each of us to know and to experience.

It is a knowledge of love that surpasses knowledge.

This is where human language meets paradox and the limits of human comprehension.

And so we pray.

Paul prays that the power of the Spirit might be poured out into our hearts.

So that finally he says, the last, so that, the what Paul ultimately wants for us is that we would be filled with all the fullness of God.

This is an astounding statement, an astounding prayer.

You're like, and I am like, a small cup.

And God's love is like the ocean.

How can you fill a cup with the ocean?

It's absolutely impossible.

And yet, this is Paul's prayer that we might be filled with all the fullness of God.

And I love, you know, my words fail.

I love the way one commentator described this.

He says, this is precisely God's love that's in view.

Thus, the end of the Christian life is to be filled up with God's love.

That which is the very essence of God, that which characterizes the relations of the trying persons, that which will make us one with God.

You see, Paul doesn't just want us to know how much we are loved, to experience how overwhelming God's love is for us, but he wants us to be filled with God's love so that as his love pours out into us, it overflows out of us into the world around us.

That's what the rest of the book is about.

And that's why we must grasp chapters 1, 2, and 3.

We must know that we are rooted and grounded in a love that we cannot comprehend.

That is our lifeblood, that is our foundation, that is who we are, it tells us who we are, and it actually tells us who God is.

This is the one thing Paul wants you to know out of everything else in this book, most important, God loves you in an everlasting love that we don't deserve, but it's ours by grace through faith.

And so if you, like me, not that long ago, were wrestling with what does it really mean to be loved by God, I charge you to go and find out what that means.

That is the most important thing you can know.

And what's amazing is that this is an infinite love poured out into us.

All right, let's look at Paul's final words as we wrap up.

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all we can ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever.

Amen.

So Paul has come to the end of this teaching section that we encapsulate in chapters one, two, and three.

For three chapters, he's been telling us about God, about who God is, about what God has done, about what he has given to us.

And now, as he closes in prayer and he's about to transition into how we shall live, he does the most appropriate thing there is to do.

He stops and he worships.

He worships.

I remember uh one of my seminary professors, his name was Vern Poythrus, and this guy was super duper smart.

He had graduated from MIT, and I think he got a doctorate from Harvard or whatever.

And uh off the charts, smart, a little odd.

Uh yeah, this feeling when you're around him, like he was operating two or three levels kind of above where you are, which is impressive but also unrelatable.

So he was um he was just kind of an awkward guy.

Um, but there was also this other thing about him.

It was very clear that he loved Jesus, and his classes were a joy.

Well, I learned that most profoundly one day, one random day, we're we're in this class, he's teaching some deep theological truth, and I'm just trying to keep up taking notes.

And he just stops.

Smack stops in the middle of class and he says, We need to pray.

And I'm, you know, I'm just trying to keep up, I'm taking notes.

So it takes me a second to realize what's happening, but he stops in light of what we've been learning about Jesus in the book of Revelation.

He stops and he he just enters into a prayer of praise and thanksgiving.

And now, 20 years later, I remember that class, and I remember that that's the most appropriate, that was the most appropriate thing to do in any seminary class, and it only happened once.

Beloved, we are so loved.

It is a it is a profound truth that our minds can't wrap around.

And Paul shows us, even as he prays, that we would have the power through the spirit to have that comprehension, to be filled with that love, the most appropriate response.

Before we even look at chapter 4, 5, and 6, before we think, well, what should we do?

The natural inclination of the Spirit is to stop and to worship.

Oh God, who is beyond our understanding, who is able to do far more than all we could ask or imagine.

All more than all more than we could even think to ask for.

To you be glory.

Glory in the church, glory in Christ Jesus.

And so, beloved, this this is our application today.

It is it is to receive, it is to ask for the strength, to be filled with the love of God, and to simply respond in praise.

And so we'll go to the table and we'll sing some more songs of praise, and we'll ask Paul's request of us that we be filled with a knowledge of God's love that goes beyond our understanding, knowing that we pray to the King of the universe who has all the power, but is also our Father, and so he loves to give us good gifts, and it all comes together here in this time of worship.

Beloved, God loves you more than you will ever know.

Can ever know.

And yet we will be with him for eternity, and we will have eternity to delve into the depths of that love that we will never find the bottom of.

Let us pray and then let us worship.

And if you have any questions, I'll be down front here after the sermon.

Father, we simply stand in awe.

Lord, your mind and your wisdom goes beyond our understanding.

You have planned out all of history before creation.

You brought everything together to hinge on the life, death, and resurrection of your son.

You have you have saved us by grace through faith.

Now we walk securely in your love.

Lord, fill us, expand our hearts and our minds to comprehend.

And may we praise you now with the fullness of your own love.

We ask it in Jesus' name.

Amen.