Ephesians Talk 3

‘That we may know the love of Christ, and so be filled with the fullness of God’
Intro:
Have you ever been unexpectedly wet (not the depends kind of wet), I mean really drenched, I mean caught in a monsoonal rain storm type wet, I mean standing under a waterfall wet, I mean you got caught in a place where it rained so hard you thought your head would bleed!

To which Edmund Blackadder would of course reply – ‘I guess some sought of hat would be in order then’. But you know what I mean.

On my last beach mission, which was about three years ago at Toowoon Bay on the central coast – I got wet – I mean seriously drenched. One evening as I looked out from under the big marquee which we had erected, I saw coming around the southern headland a storm approaching – the big black ominous clouds (block out the sun) kind of storm. The Kind of storm where you can actually see the rain hitting the water from quite a distance away.

Anyway, at this point the roof of the large tent which is reminiscent of a circus marquee, (which was about 30 feet by 60 feet), was up! but the sides of the tent, which are of course integral to the overall integrity of the structure, (particularly in storms), was not. So we all got to work trying to batten down the hatches, and to tie down the loose ends on the sides of the tent, but this storm was a little too quickly upon us, and it hit us, and I mean HIT us, before the very last section of the sides had been tied.

So I found myself outside in this storm, holding the last section of the sides together as someone else ties the parts together. And this section was right in the middle of the two peaks of the tent. So there was basically a funneling effect and around 25% of the water pouring off this roof was pouring on me. It was literally a down pipe or a water spout about this round, pummeling me on the head… It was quite unbelievable, except it happened to me.. I got seriously drenched… soaked to skin, in fact soaked to your bones kind of wet. When I walked back in my shoes squelched and my shorts pockets bulged because they were full of water.

I was overwhelmed by the intensity and the effect of this water flowing onto me… and it is this kind of overwhelming experience and flowing effect is exactly what Paul is describing in Ephesians. This is the overwhelming experience of what God’s love has done in us, through Christ, in His Spirit.

As we come to our last talk in Ephesians for this series, we can see Paul’s concern that Christian’s, (and in particular the Gentile Christians at Ephesus), would be assured as to the certain fact of God’s love toward them in Christ. Paul is reassuring them that they are absolutely soaked, drenched to their core, through and through, by the mercy, the grace and love of God found in Christ in our hearts by His Spirit.

The book of Ephesians is about assurance.



This assurance of what God is done is the grounds and reason why Paul can pray for other Christians, and in fact it is probably more correct to say Paul really can’t help but pray – like some form of Christian Turrets syndrome, the words of prayer and in particular praise just fall out of his mouth in our passage today.

P1 – Paul prays ‘for this reason..’
3:14 For this reason
I kneel
before the Father,
15 from whom his whole family
in heaven and
on earth
derives its name.

‘For this reason’ Paul says, which begs the question, ‘what reason?’ – but we’ll get back to that in a minute.



Now if you’ve been paying attention, at least within this chapter, but also within the book of Ephesians, you will know that Paul has used his phrase, ‘for this reason’ before. Which is one of the advantages of reading bigger slabs of the Bible on occasions – it can help you pick up the clues the writer gives, which you can miss when you read the Bible in too smaller chunks.

Paul has used this expression before in the letter, once in chapter 3:1 and a very similar phrase commences his prayer in Chapter 1:15.

It V1 of chapter 3 it seems to announce the commencement of a prayer for the Ephesians with the words, ‘for this reason’, which Paul then quickly gets sidetracked from. Paul sidetracks from his prayer to assure the Ephesians about his own situation, and the centrality of them, as Gentile Christians, to God’s plan, in chapter 3 V2-13.

In chapter 1:15, Paul uses an expression similar to ‘for this reason’ to commence his first prayer for the Ephesians.

So the ‘for this reason’ that we are concerned with in v14 caries on the prayer that Paul was starting in V1. And I can hear people thinking ‘Get on with it, what’s the reason!’. Well it seems to me the reason Paul prays is in response to all that God has done for the gentiles in Christ.

The overarching theological truth of God’s purposes that leads Paul to pray is that God in, through, and under Christ, is uniting all things, things in heaven and things on earth, we learn from Ch 1:10. This includes uniting those who were far away – the Gentiles, and those who were close – as the Jews, into one new creation in Christ. This new creation is the temple of God, the dwelling place of God, and we learn all this from Ch 2:12-14.

All this was achieved by Christ’s blood, his death poured out at our hands, and for our benefit, upon that Roman cross.

And because of all these blessings which God has achieved, and then has graciously poured out on us, Paul sees with clarity the right response, he grabs hold of these great riches as the child of God and it is for ‘this reason’ he boldly approaches God in prayer. Ch 3:12 ‘In him and through faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence.’

Because as Christians we have been seated with Christ in the heavenlies, we have freedom and confidence to approach God in prayer.

Did you ever get a new toy off someone, and you just weren’t sure what to do with it? I once got talked into owing half a motorbike, it was my first bike, I’d never owned or ridden one before, so I thought why not. My mate went out and bought it the day before we went on a holiday to a country property. He bought a 500cc trail bike. Now incase that doesn’t mean much too you, let me assure you that, that is one fair lump of metal. In fact it is a motor probably only mildly smaller than the average European car – well maybe eastern European car anyway.

I can honestly say, the experience of learning to ride on a 500cc bike that wanted to catapult you into the next district at every opportunity, was intimidating. It was a very steep learning curve, but I did learn by having a go, but also learned by watching my mate who did know what he is doing. Sure I fell off lot’s, but I got better at it, the more I did it, and the more I studied people and talked to people who did in fact know what they were doing, things improved!

Bold, free and confident access to the God of all creation – the heavens, the earth, the universe, is an amazing thing, isn’t it? It’s definitely a powerful thing, it’s definitely an intimidating thing, and it is definitely quite often hard to know, how to use it best.

So when you pray, what do you think you should pray for, are you using the great riches of this access to the God of all creation - well? I suspect if we’re all being honest, the answer is ‘probably not’. So instead of just feeling guilty about, why don’t we don’t we look at, and learn from what Paul prays for, because he seems to know what is going on..
P2 – Paul prays with these three goals, that you may: be given strength, be given insight and be given fulfillment.
16 I pray that
out of his glorious riches
he may strengthen you
with power through his Spirit
in your inner being,
17 so that Christ may dwell
in your hearts
through faith.

The First aspect of Paul’s three tiered prayer is that God would give to us strengthening. As you look at the words of verses 16 and 17, he uses a number of words that could be grouped together under the general goal of strengthening, that you would have resolve and power within yourself, within your inner being.

This assurance of our strengthening within our inner being is that Christ himself dwells in our hearts, through faith. This dwelling of Christ picks up the language of Ch 2:21, ‘And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.’

This dwelling means that we have a deep and rich, personal and permanent, relationship with God. We who were foreigners have been given citizenship in Christ, He is a permanent resident in our hearts. That is our assurance and strength.

Paul prays that out of the riches we have received, we would be strengthened, that we would be spiritually mature in Christ. If Christ has taken up residence in our hearts, he is at the centre of our beings, which means he is at the centre of our lives . It means he is to exercise his rule over all we are, and all we do.

If he lives in our hearts, the ruler of the heavens and earth, we know longer need to fear the things of this world, we are no longer slaves to the things of the flesh that we were before, we are now in real ways set free to serve and follow Christ – not the powers of this world.


But in observing this truth, we again see in this verse an important theological truth about the priority of the action of God on our behalf, as we have seen throughout the book of Ephesians, it is only from God’s precious riches we will receive these things. He has the riches, they’re his and ‘no one’ and ‘nothing’, can take them from his grasp. And the only reason we receive these gifts is because of God’s own generosity. In fact in this life, the only thing we have going for us is God’s generosity, we who were ‘dead in our trespasses and sins’ have received God’s grace.

Our God has given to us great blessing, lavishly poured out on us as only he can, and he has done this in Christ. God’s strengthening of us is of course by the same way we have been saved. We are saved through Christ in the power of the Spirit by faith. It is by this means we know the power of Christ’s resurrection Ch1:19-20 to which we have now been in separately tied, a power that secures our salvation and ensures his ongoing work of new creation in us – that we be strengthened in our inner being.

Paul’s prayer is that we would be strengthened. But the second aspect of his three tiered prayer is that he prays we would given insight, a request that builds upon the first request of strengthening.
17 And I pray that you,
being rooted
and
established in love,
18 may have power,
together with all the saints,
to grasp
how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ,
19 and to know this love
that surpasses knowledge—

Paul prays that we may be given insight, insight that we would see reality as it truly is, and not just as it appears with the naked eye. The reality of our founded and established relationship with God in Christ. Paul wants us to be given insight in order to see the enormity of the gift of the love of God towards us in Christ, and the fullness of the rich hope we have. This unsurpassable knowledge of God found in the foolishness of a crucified Messiah. This enormous gift of love that is the right of all the saints – the benefit & the inheritance of every and all the saints.

This is God’s love that overwhelms us, it saturates our hearts in forgiveness and penetrates to the very core of our being with the reconciliation found only in Christ. This love that brings reconciliation with God, this love that brings reconciliation between Jew and Gentile – a love Paul prays we will be given the insight to grasp and to know!

To which I’m certain at least one smarty pants out there is thinking, how are we supposed to know something that surpasses knowledge, anyway?
Well I’m glad you ask! Because we can know God personally, it means we can know him truly, but not exhaustively. What does that mean?

Well personal knowledge of any kind is kind of like how I know my wife Kath. I can confidently say I know my wife. I know coffee and chocolate are good, and raisins are bad. I know spending time with people is good, and spatial co-ordination maybe isn’t so good. I know that ‘fun things’, including poor jokes - for no real reason are good, and some times when directing, ‘left’ really means Kath’s other ‘left’, which of course means ‘right’.

I can genuinely say, I know my wife, I have a personal knowledge of my wife, I know her truly, and I know her more fully the longer we are married, but I don’t know her exhaustively. What I mean is regularly, I have occasion for good and otherwise to say, that is not the reaction I expected, but the longer I know her, and the more I know her, the fuller my true knowledge of Kath becomes.

And Paul prays that we would grow in understanding of the love of God in Christ, that we would plumb its depths, its width, height and length. That we would be overwhelmed by the extent of his love, as we know it personally and more and more fully. That we would grow into being mature in our understanding of God’s love.


The third thing that Paul prays for is that we may be filled, so he prays firstly that we may be strengthened, secondly that we may have insight and thirdly that we may be fulfilled.
19b that you may be filled
to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Now when we say fulfilled, what Paul means is filled to the fullness of love God and in your relationship with God.

What Paul definitely does not mean is fulfilled in the Oprah kind of way, y’know that self actualised, self glorifying way, where you have the adoring husband who worships the ground you walk on and treats you like a princess. You have a house that is more like a perfect castle from the pages of homes beautiful – and it’s even better if it does get in to home beautiful, because then the neighbours will, see it. Fulfilled because your large brood of children are cute, intelligent and highly praised by everyone. Fulfilled because you just dropped two dress sizes, while managing to detox and cancer proof your improbably youthful looking body.

A body which will of course turn to dust one day, much like the house and the rest of Oprah’s apparent treasures for life – how is that fulfilment? – sounds a little more like certain disappointment to me!

Paul prays that we will increasingly comprehend the amazing depths of the love of God towards us, that we will be filled to the full measure. We have a tendency to sip at God’s grace to us and Paul want’s us to drinking from the riches of God like it was water from out of a fire hydrant. This is the enormity of God’s grace to us – that we may be called children of God.

We are to be children that continually grow into his likeness, to become what we already are – if you like.

And this is why we should also pray boldly, like Paul has prayed. To be strengthened, To have insight and to be fulfilled.

And finally in this passage of Ephesians that completes the first half of the book, we see that:
P3 – Paul the prisoner can’t help but acknowledge the power and glory of God.
20 Now to him who is able
to do immeasurably more than all
we ask
or imagine,
according to his power
that is at work
within us,
21 to him be glory
in the church and
in Christ Jesus
throughout all generations, for ever and ever!
Amen.

As Paul considers the wonders of what God has done in his world, and undoubtedly in his own life, Paul bursts out with these spontaneous words of praise as he considers God’s power, that does immeasurably more, or infinitely more if you like, than we are able to conceive of. Now it is not surprising that God can do much more than we can conceive of, he created the universe, on a good day I get the RCA leads in the right holes in the back of the video recorder – we clearly are no on the same intellectual plain, Which is why what Paul says next is SO staggering…
God will perform these great works ‘within us’ v20, which I’m sure means within our beings, but also through us into God’s world, like in chapter 2:10 were we are called to carry out the good works God has prepared in advance for us to do. That is staggering isn’t it!

These works of God in his people, that will express unity in the church, will bring honour and glory through Christ – for generations and all time.

Now when we think great works for God, I suspect we have little bit of a tendency to go all Anthony Robbins at this point – y’know the info-mercial guy, who tells to dream big, and achieve big, and to not let the doubters get you down blah blah blah… But the kingdom of God, is well small an unimpressive – like a mustard seed that grows into the largest of trees.

God is quite capable of doing the big things, we need to be faithful in doing the right things, the things that honour him even if they look unwise to the world. Things that plan for the future and lay foundations for the days to come.
Here’s a couple of questions for you;
Do think when Paul, sitting in a gaol cell, wrote letters to his Christian brother’s and sister’s, he would have ever imagined that they would become arguably the most read literature in all human history?
Do you think that Paul would have imagined a day when Christianity would have spread to the lands beyond his far Eastern horizon?
Do you think Paul wrote knowing that his letter to the Romans would convert so many people, including Martin Luther?
Do you think that Paul would have imagined the part he played in You coming to know, love and serve Jesus?

I’m pretty certain he didn’t know, but like Abraham, by faith, he did what he knew God had called him to do and sought to proclaim Christ to everyone with whom he could win a hearing.


This is a right response to a love that overwhelms, a love that’s depths cannot be sounded. The love of God towards us in Christ, a love that took him to the cross and a love that now pours the knowledge of God into our hearts. A Love that demands a response from us who have received it, a response that lead Paul to be in prison and die for the sake of Christ – and by extension – he died in service of us as well!

This love of Christ demands a response from us, and not a $20 and two hours a week kind of response either. Are you willing to follow Christ if it is going to guarantee your shame?

This great love of God for us in Christ is one that is so overwhelming it demands nothing less than the response of my life, my soul and my all.