Battle Ready: "Wisdom and Revelation": Ephesians 1:15-17 : Pastor Daniel Reese

This morning we will be in Ephesians chapter one. We'll continue that.

So, I have this beautiful daughter

who is everything I ever hoped for in a child.

She's funny, she's smart, a lot smarter than I ever was or am probably, and she's passionate.

About all kinds of different things. As I was getting ready for this week, I was reminded of one of her old passion projects.

Her cousin and her became very passionate about something that I am not passionate about.

We have given her up to this time no indication whatsoever that her mother or I would ever be passionate about this.

But she didn't care about our support. She just ran with it.

And I'll let this video speak for itself.

Hey guys, I'm Adelie Reese and I'm Emily Shock.

And this video is really important. We need you guys to help us save the cats.

There are 144,000 cats die a day. Exact count and 6,000 per hour. And it's not right.

So, we're hanging up posters. We're leaving cat food by the doors for stray cats to save cats.

Three ways you can help save cats, Emory, please.

One, you can donate to the shelters so that they have more room for more cats.

Because sometimes they run out of room in the shelters and they have to kill the animals.

We don't want that. We want to save them.

The second way, number two, is you can take in a cat, but if you do, you need to go get rabies shots and get a cat.

Well, not for you. For the cat.

And three, if you find a cat, you can grab it and take it to a shelter.

So, those are ways that you can help us save the cats.

Our grandmother, well, our grandparents, not just her grandmother, has 15, over 15, I'd say 20 cats living in her barn.

There are so many. And, you know, once I was in my backyard.

Sorry for all the noise, we have guests.

So, I was in my backyard once and I saw a baby cat on the street.

It was almost a newborn. So, I saved it.

Yeah, I saved it.

And so, I named it Elmer because it's eyes were glued together because of its pink eye.

Sadly, he died because he was outside sleeping and it became a really cold night. He froze stiff.

But still, I'm thankful that he was even born.

I'm glad that you're here.

Obviously, this is not normal behavior.

But you've got to admit one thing. These girls were passionate at the time about those cats.

Thankfully, we have prayed that out of her.

But weren't they the cutest things? Yes.

But we can see that same kind of passion obviously directed in a healthier manner in Paul's letter to the Ephesian church.

For the past month now, we have focused our attention on the longest sentence in the New Testament in verses 3 through 14.

Paul has written about our spiritual blessings in Christ.

And it's almost like Paul is so excited and so passionate about these blessings that he took one big breath and then he just started writing and writing.

He wrote about how God the Father chose us in him before the creation of the world.

And he has predestined us to be adopted as sons because it gives him pleasure to bless us that way.

He wrote about how God the Son redeemed us from a life of bondage to sin and he has freed us from a life that's in abundance.

He wrote about how God the Holy Spirit comes into the life of every single believer as a seal, as a down payment, as a guarantee for all these spiritual blessings and ensure our future inheritance.

And then it seems that Paul paused for a moment to catch his breath and then he began writing again.

And his passion spills out into another long sentence.

Not quite as long as the previous one, but long nonetheless.

We're only going to look at part of that sentence this morning and over the next couple of weeks we'll finish it.

So let's start in verse 15.

For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you.

Remembering you in my prayers that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and of revelation and the knowledge of him.

Alright, so with verse 14, Paul has ended his lengthy praise filled salutation to the Ephesians.

The more I study the epistles of Paul, the more I understand and appreciate those who have been so drawn to him, who have been so drawn to the man of Paul even now, 2,000 years since he's walked the earth.

Paul is so filled with Christ, so overflowing with the Holy Spirit, in power and in love that he can't even just say hello.

Without bursting into some sort of virtual song of wonder and praise, right?

Grace to you in peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Blessed is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places and then he just goes.

That's his hello, right?

I recently ran across a statistic compiled by a German scholar whose name I can't pronounce.

He determined that in Paul's 13 letters, some very short, for lemons only like a page in your Bible, he uses the term in Christ or some form of God.

Or some form of it like in him or in the Lord, no less than 164 times.

How he loved to talk about Jesus.

Here in the first chapter of Ephesians, he spells out all these spiritual blessings that God has lavished on us by the intention of his will.

He tells us the end or the purpose of all these blessings is that we should be the praise of his Father's glory.

That you and I as believers should be the praise of his Father's glory, meaning our call, our hope, our forgiveness, our redemption, our inheritance is the gift of the Holy Spirit in sealing us, right?

In preserving us and protecting us as God's own possession.

And it's important to remind you of those things.

Today as we continue because Paul begins his next thought with the words for this reason, right?

So due to the fact that God has blessed us with all these spiritual blessings, it has sealed us into himself in the Holy Spirit in order to redeem us to himself as his own possession.

Because he has done all these things for his glory, he says for this reason, I do not cease to give thanks to you.

Remembering you my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and of revelation and the knowledge of him.

In other words, Paul is praying over the Ephesians the most important prayer any believer can pray for another believer.

That God would take them deeper and deeper into an intimate knowledge of himself.

The Westminster Catechism says, man's chief end is to know God and enjoy him forever.

But Paul knew and taught that basic truth long before that was ever written.

So looking closely at our text in verse 17, I have to assert that the wording of it and what Paul is praying for, for the Ephesian church,

is that something that only the Holy Spirit of God can give.

He's not praying for them to have an attitude.

He's not praying for a strength of determination or anything that can be conjured up or mustered up within a man.

He is praying and asking God for this particular thing because he is praying for spiritual wisdom and revelation.

And that can only come from God.

Now does this mean that he's praying for God to give them the Holy Spirit?

No.

They've had the Holy Spirit since their salvation.

What he is praying for is simply, is that the Holy Spirit's help in bringing them to these faithful believers and even greater wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of God.

He's asking the Spirit to give them greater wisdom, greater knowledge.

Now as Christians, we spend a great deal of time closely examining Paul's doctrine.

We debate the finer points of it.

And we take those points and we take that doctrine and we talk about how we should live according to the truth of them.

And I will constantly agree that what Paul is doing is he's trying to magnify Christ and he's trying to point us towards him.

And it is Christ that we should study and it's Christ that we should know personally.

And it's Christ who is our ultimate example in all these things.

But we can also learn some things by looking at the example of the Apostle Paul.

When was the last time that you prayed for the spiritual growth and well-being of another Christian?

Oh, we pray for our children.

You may pray for your children often.

You may even have a child who very frequently causes you to run to your room and fall into your face before the Lord.

And I hope you pray for your spouse.

I believe there is a great deal of spiritual power in the prayer of a husband over his wife and vice versa.

But I wonder how many Christians, even among pastors of congregations of people, intercede for other believers, for believers everywhere

and pray not just for things like for health, not for help in specific known circumstances,

but just that the Holy Spirit would give them wisdom, that the Holy Spirit would give them revelation

and the knowledge of the Father of glory.

Since I've been studying Ephesians in depth throughout the summer,

I have been moved to pray these things for you.

In the morning, before anybody gets here, I like to run your faces through my mind's eye and pray for you by name.

And if I know of any particular needs, then I might mention that.

But some things that I can pray for each and every one of you and never have to wonder whether I am praying for a legitimate need or not,

I can pray that the Lord will enlighten the eyes of your heart so that you may know the hope of his calling.

What are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints?

And what is the surpassing greatness of his power towards us who believe?

And I can pray those things and I can be confident that I'm praying the right things because I'm just praying the scriptures over you.

There's nothing wrong with that, is there?

I can pray that the Lord will give you a greater hunger for his word and that he will use you as you study his word to draw you closer to himself.

And that as you grow in the grace and as you grow in the knowledge of him, that he will use you to illuminate the world around you.

I can pray those things for you and I do.

These are many other things I can pray for you from the scriptures and I hope that you will pray the same for me.

I don't care as much that you will pray that the Lord would give me physical comfort.

I don't care as much that you would pray for me that the Lord would meet my financial needs or that the Lord will keep me from harm or illness.

But I will be blessed beyond measure if you will pray that the Lord will give me the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him.

You see believers, this is a great and wonderful privilege we have to pray this way for one another because no one outside of Christ can pray this.

Nobody can pray this.

When we pray this way, we're asking God to give us and give our fellow believers something that is only available to us through the Holy Spirit.

Proverbs 9.10 declares, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.

You need to understand this.

Man in his natural mind cannot comprehend God.

Your natural bent cannot comprehend God.

In fact, one of the basic truths that the scriptures teach us from beginning to end is that apart from the spirit and spiritual birth,

God is infinitely and eternally out of our grasp.

We can't wrap our minds around it.

Actually, the best commentary for Ephesians 1 verse 17 is to be found in 1 Corinthians chapter 2.

Ephesians 1:17 1 Corinthians 2 · chapter mention

Listen to verses 6 through 8.

He says, yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or the rulers of this age who are doomed to pass away.

But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory.

None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

He goes on later in verse 14.

He says, the natural person does not accept the things of the spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.

He is in effect repeating what Jesus told the Pharisee Nicodemus, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

I have a copy of a letter to the editor that was printed several years ago.

I want to read it to you today because it so clearly illustrates the truth of these things that Paul is laying out for us.

Here's what the letter says, quote.

Hello Christian.

You seem very well, you seem like a very well meaning fellow and all, but the thing that makes all this quite illogical is this.

You say God, and I use that term loosely, wants all people to repent of their sins and misdeeds.

To reach salvation, one must have faith and repent and all of that.

Wait a second here.

Excuse me.

If there really is a God, one who is all powerful, all knowing, all this, all that, who had no beginning and will have no end, what would he care if people repented or not?

That is, even if he created them in the first place, if he had to concern himself with all that trouble, wouldn't he have just skipped the part of creation?

Wouldn't he say, to heck with mankind, they're not worth all this trouble in the first place?

And what would God care what I or anybody else believes?

He'll continue being God without regard for me or anything else.

Are you saying I'll ruin his existence if I don't repent or believe?

I hardly think so.

I'd be just another Adam in the universe to him.

You see, it makes no difference either way.

He either does not exist, which is highly probable, or does exist but doesn't care about anyone because he is God.

One more thing that is disturbing.

Just who created God anyway?

Don't give me that.

It's just a mystery stuff either.

It is totally illogical and senseless in addition to impossible that he never had a beginning or will have no end.

Best regards, Lou.

I wish that I could respond to Lou because frankly, if I knew Lou's email address, I would write to him and I would tell him that I agree with him.

I would tell him that the God he describes does not exist.

I would tell him that the God who is revealed in the Scriptures, which is the place to learn about God,

is quite the opposite of the uncaring, unfeeling God in his email.

Nevertheless, my point here is that Lou is simply confirming to us that natural man cannot fathom the things of the Spirit.

The best natural man can ever hope to come up with is some sort of God of utility,

a mental image that is by nature as shallow and two-dimensional as a character in a novel.

It's a figure carved out of wood or stone to stand in the corner or on a shelf to be dusted once a week.

But it has no life in it and it has no breath in it because the natural man,

since he can think no higher than his human spirit will let him, can therefore only make God's like himself and no higher.

But since no one can know God or his thoughts except the Spirit of God, then God cannot be known except in his Spirit.

Again, in 2 Corinthians chapter 10 it says,

2 Corinthians 10 · chapter mention

To us God revealed them through the Spirit, for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God.

So now let's touch on this word, Revelation in verse 17 of chapter 1 of Ephesians.

That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him.

We've been seeing that man cannot know, cannot have the knowledge of God apart from his Spirit,

the wisdom or the learning, the understanding of things of the Spirit.

But I can go further and say that apart from God's revelation of himself to the Spirit, there can be no understanding of God at all.

Here's probably the clearest and best example that I can give you.

The disciples walked and talked with Jesus for over three years.

They were with him constantly, listening to him teach, seeing his miracles, asking him questions,

seeing him in all aspects and all circumstances of life, every single day for three years.

But they did not understand.

They did not perceive the purpose of his coming until after the resurrection.

And even when they continued to ask questions and expose their ignorance, even after the resurrection,

they would say things like, we were hoping that it was he who was going to redeem Israel.

In Acts they said, Lord, is it at this time you are restoring the kingdom of Israel?

It wasn't until they were gathered in that upper room and then came from heaven a noise like a violent rushing wind.

And it filled the whole house where they were sitting.

And there appeared to them tongues of fire distributing themselves and they rested on each of them.

And they were filled with the Holy Spirit and they began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.

And they stepped out onto the streets of Jerusalem.

Now I want you to take notice here about that story.

They weren't given a crash course in theology by Jesus for the next 13 weeks.

Jesus didn't pull out his whiteboard or his felt board and expound, you know, pull out all his scrolls and teach them doctrine

and teach them hermeneutics and how to properly exegete a passage of Scripture.

That's not what he did. They had a certain knowledge, a learning that he had stored up for them while he was with them.

But they had no revelation of the Spirit until he came from the sun and filled them in that upper room.

And when he did this, these disciples who only days before were still asking questions in ignorance.

These same ones whose hearts were filled with fear and doubt when they met him after the resurrection on the Mount of Olives.

Those who stood gazing into the sky as he ascended and even as he was out of sight,

they thought that he was going to return immediately and be escorted by angels to go about the task that he had been given to them.

Those same disciples who had all these questions day before now stepped out immediately out of the upper room

and preached a Holy Spirit inspired sermon that had even those who had crucified the Lord a month or so before

began asking the question, what must we do to be saved?

So you see, it's not just enough to have head knowledge of Jesus, to examine him and scrutinize him in his word and his actions

and think that we understand him that way. Our relationship with Jesus must be based on the revelation of himself through his Spirit to ours.

Through his Spirit to ours, it will only be in the Spirit and by the Spirit of wisdom and revelation that we will begin to understand his mission in this world.

His purpose in us, only by the Spirit of wisdom and revelation is when we begin to know the Father.

So I'd like to enter into a pact with you that we pray these things for each other faithfully.

Not a pact that calls for some legalistic accountability. I'm not going to call you on the phone one day and say,

the Lord revealed to me that you haven't prayed for me for a week. What's up with that? But let's simply agree earnestly and sincerely

that in the course of our days as the Lord brings us to each other's minds or even if it's something other than the Lord that brings us into mind

even if it's the enemy trying to make us think poorly of one another to disrupt our unity. Let's agree to turn that around

and say, Lord give this one and give that one the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of you.

And then in the days and weeks and months to come, let's watch and see the marvelous things the Father of glory does in us and through us as a family of believers.

So I'm going to make a pact with you. As you come to mind throughout the week, I'm going to pray that the Lord would reveal to you a Spirit of wisdom

and knowledge and revelation of Him. And I'm asking that as I come to mind, you'll do the same for me.

As you, can we make that pact with each other? It's not just you and me, but can we make that pact as a family?

That as someone comes to your mind that's part of the family of believers, whether they're in this church or across the world or wherever,

that as believers come to mind, we'll pray that the Spirit of God would give them wisdom and knowledge and revelation of Him.

So my question for you this morning is this, do you know God better than you did yesterday?

A month ago, a year ago, if not, it's not God's fault. He wants you to know Him better, but the process of knowing Him better doesn't just happen automatically.

You're not going to wake up one day and be able to expand the intricacies of the doctrines of the Scriptures.

It begins by developing a heart that truly seeks after the things of God.

It means developing a passion to seek God with all our hearts, like my nine-year-old daughter had about cats.

That we would want to know Him better. That we would pray for each other that God would give us wisdom and insight.

Have you ever been reading a passage of Scripture and you've read it a thousand times, but that one time it just like illuminates to you?

You know what I'm talking about? Like, oh, I never thought of it that way. That's the Spirit of God giving you wisdom and insight.

Somebody's been praying that for you. That's the best prayer that we can pray as believers for each other, that God would give you spirit and wisdom and insight.

So I'm going to pray for us. And James and the worship team will come lead us in another song.

Okay, go ahead and come up. I wasn't ready, but go ahead.

James needs some wisdom and insight, I guess.

But as we sing and as we respond, my prayer is that the Lord would flash people's faces in front of your mind's eye.

And those people that are flashed in front of your mind's eye, will you commit to pray for them this week?

Will you commit to pray that God would give them wisdom and insight?

If you've never prayed that prayer for somebody, start today. Start today.

And let's see what God does. Let me pray for us. Father, I pray right now for every believer in this room, that you would give us the wisdom and insight and revelation of you.

That your spirit would fall in this room. That your spirit would speak to our hearts.

That your spirit would communicate things to our spirit so we can know you better.

God, I pray that this church will be a spirit-filled church because you are working in our midst.

So God, as we study your word, as we pray over each other, I pray God that you do great things.

Great things that only you can do. Illuminate our hearts to see your purpose for us.

Illuminate our hearts to see your purpose in this world. And God, I pray that as we leave, we will take that light to a dark place.

To our neighborhoods, to our schools, to our workplaces. God, I pray that you'll just speak through all of us.

We ask all these things in your name. Amen.