©2003 Larry Huntsperger Peninsula Bible Fellowship

03/09/03

The Hope Of His Calling

Ephesians 1:21-23

3/9/03 The Hope Of His Calling

We return to our study of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians this morning,

and we are going to pick up our study

at the beginning of chapter 2.

But to help prepare us for what happens in this second chapter

I want to remind us of the 4 progressive steps

that we saw Paul taking in chapter one.

We looked at all four of them together two weeks ago,

but we didn’t have time to pull them together into a single statement,

so we’ll start this morning by doing that.

1. He begins in the first 14 verses

by projecting the most amazing panoramic picture

of what Christ accomplished in our lives personally

as a result of our faith in Him.

This is us and our God

up close and personal,

and what we saw there made it clear

that He was involved in our individual lives

long before we ever met Him personally.

He created us,

He pursued us,

He aggressively sought to draw us into an awareness of His love,

and then, when we responded,

He sealed us forever in Him

by placing His Spirit within us.

2. Then, from there,

the next thing Paul does in verses 15-19

is to drop to his knees

and pray that that Spirit of God who now dwells within us

would reveal to each of us

the magnitude of what’s really going on

in the lives of those of us who have come to God through faith in Christ.

3. Then, following that prayer,

Paul moves directly into the revelation

of those truths that he has just prayed

God will give us eyes to see.

And he begins that revelation in verses 19-22

by talking with us

about what God has accomplished in the Person of Jesus Christ.

He tells us how God “ raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And He put all things in subjection under His feet...”

That, of course, is where we spent much of our time two weeks ago,

talking about this absolute authority over all of creation

that has been given to Christ.

4. But that isn’t where we stopped.

We moved one step farther

as we took that truth about Christ

and plugged it into this world as it now exists,

recognizing that at this point in the flow of human history

though Christ possesses absolute authority over all that is,

He does not yet exercise that authority absolutely.

Rather, for a brief time,

during these few years between the two greatest events in all of history,

between the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ

and the return of Jesus Christ in absolute power to this earth,

during these few years,

after God “...put all things in subjection under His feet,”

He then “...gave Him as head over all things to the church,

which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.”

And before we look more closely at what I want us to see there,

let me just say that this really is

a very brief time - just a few years in God’s overall design for creation.

We look at it and see nearly 2000 years,

and because each of us are allotted only 70 or 80 years each on this planet

we think 2000 years is a massive span of time.

It is only because our individual time is so extremely brief.

James describes our individual lives as “JAM 4:14 “... just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.”

And Peter says, “1PE 1:24 For, "All flesh is like grass, And all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, And the flower falls off...”

And you say to yourself,

“Thanks a lot, Larry! That’s just the encouraging words I needed this morning. Why don’t you just say it right out - life is hard and then we die!”

Well, believe it or not,

if we hear it correctly,

the understanding being given to us in those passages from James and Peter

really are tremendously encouraging truths.

We cringe at truths like that, of course,

in part because, even though our Lord has conquered the curse of death for us,

we have at this point

experienced only a portion of that total victory.

Our spirits have now been made alive through Christ,

and we live with the certain hope of an eternity immersed in the love of our God,

but our bodies have not yet been redeemed

and we still face the loss of this body

before we get the new one and our redemption is complete.

For obvious reasons,

we don’t look forward to that transition,

and being reminded of it can be painful.

But the truth is,

I don’t think that is the main reason why we sometimes react

to those reminders in Scripture

that our life is like a vapor or a blade of grass.

I think we react most

because we are so susceptible

to being pulled into an approach to life

in which these 80 years are all that is.

And once that lie takes root within us

our lives become a desperate, frantic pursuit

of whatever we think will make us feel good here and now,

at whatever cost to ourselves or others.

Why do we choose our careers over those we love?

Why do we choose things over people?

Why do we place our hobbies,

or our lusts,

or our addictions above the people God has placed around us?

We do it at least in part

because we have allowed ourselves to believe

that this life here and now is all that is.

But the truly remarkable thing

is that, when we hear correctly what our God is saying to us

about the brevity of life,

something fascinating happens within us.

Rather than clinging to this life,

we find ourselves freed to invest it in the things that really matter.

And the things that really matter

are the people God has placed into our care.

In our frantic efforts to find fulfillment and purpose and satisfaction in life

we have made our lives so much more complicated than God ever intended for them to be.

I never cease to be amazed

at the way in which, in just a few words,

Christ was able to suddenly, powerfully bring into focus

the true nature of this life we are called to live.

In our Lord’s final conversation with His followers

in the hours just prior to His crucifixion

He took the entire message He came to bring to the human race

and distilled it down into just two statements.

And then, just so that it would be easy for us to recognize them

and hang onto them

He even gave them titles.

He called the first the New Covenant

and the second the New Commandment.

LUK 22:20 ... He took the cup after they had eaten, saying, "This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in My blood.”

He came to offer us a new covenant,

a new agreement between God and the human race,

an agreement that rests on His blood poured out for our sins

so that we can now live forever in a personal love union with Him.

And he came to offer us a new commandment.

JOH 13:34 "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.”

It is those two,

the New Covenant

and the New Commandment given to us by our Lord

that place life in focus

and then keep it in focus every day we live.

And I mention them now

simply because it is the second of those two, the New Commandment,

that provides us with the answer to how we can approach the few years we are allotted on this planet

in a way that guarantees that we will never look back with disappointment or regret.

I don’t care how old

or how young you are.

I don’t care if you’re in Jr. High School,

or collecting Social Security,

or somewhere in between.

I’ll make you a promise -

if you choose to focus your life

on learning how to act in love toward the those people that God has placed closest to you

I guarantee that you will never look back with regret.

And the most remarkable pattern seems to take place

when we begin to approach life from this perspective.

The more we learn about how to love others,

and the more we apply what we are learning to those around us,

the more people God brings into our lives for us to love.

And riches just keep compounding.

But let me get us back to our passage in Ephesians.

Without realizing it,

we are at one of the crucial pivotal statements in this remarkable letter.

Our study has brought us to the point where we have seen that

after God “...put all things in subjection under (Christ’s) feet,”

He then “...gave Him as head over all things to the church,

which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.”

And before we move into chapter three

I want to be sure we see

what our God is saying to us in these verses.

I think probably we’ve done fine

as we were moving through that description

of what God has accomplished in and through Christ.

We have no problem recognizing Christ’s supreme authority over all of creation.

I mean, really! What else would we logically expect from our God?

But what we can so easily miss

because it comes upon us so fast

and is so totally unexpected

is this punch line of the entire passage.

That may sound like a rather strange way of putting it,

but I think it describes well what’s really happening.

It’s maybe a little bit like this.

Picture yourself as a ten year old child living in an orphanage.

You have lived in this orphanage as long as you can remember.

It is all you know,

all you have ever known.

Life there is OK.

Nobody beats you

or yells at you,

but nobody loves you, either.

The greatest longing of your entire life

has been the longing for a home of your own,

for a daddy and a mommy

and a permanent place deep in their hearts and lives.

Then one day a man walks into the orphanage and asks to talk with you.

The two of you sit down together

and the man chats with you about your life in the orphanage for a few minutes,

and then he says he wants to tell you a story.

He tells you about a husband and a wife who love each other very much.

They have no children,

but, apart from that, they have the most wonderful life together.

They live on several acres just outside of town.

They have a puppy dog,

and a cat,

and even a cow and a few chickens, just for fun.

They live in a very comfortable home,

a home that is comfortable most of all

because it is a home filled with love.

The man goes on for several more minutes talking about this couple,

about their life together,

and about the fun things they do on the weekends,

and times they share together in the evenings.

Then the man pauses for a minute before saying,

“Oh yes, and there is one more thing you should know about this man and woman.

They have just completed all the legal formalities,

and, as their representative I am here to tell you

that you have been adopted by them

and I am to take you to your new home this afternoon.”

Now, obviously, there was a punch line to the story that man was telling the child.

There was a reason why

he went into his extended description of this husband and wife.

He wanted to paint for the child

a vivid picture of the family into which this child had just been adopted.

It was that portrait that gave such power

to the announcement of the child’s adoption that followed.

There is something similar going on at this point in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians.

But the difference, of course,

is that what Paul is telling us is not imaginary.

It is no fairy tale.

It is absolute truth about the way things really are.

And there is most certainly a punch line to the truth he is revealing.

Paul went through that careful description of Christ

and of all that God the Father has done in and through Him

because that information was necessary

in order to prepare us for what he then reveals to us in the final words of that first chapter.

And what he reveals to us

is the most remarkable,

the most unexpected,

the most truly amazing mutual exchange between God and those who come to Him through faith in Christ that we could ever imagine.

And let me state it in a single sentence.

Paul tells us that Christ has been given to us as our head,

and we have been given to Christ as His body.

And then Paul concludes with that powerful little phrase

used by him to describe the people of God.

He says that we have become “...the fullness of Him who fills all in all.”

Now, the second half of that phrase

is probably a better place for us to start.

It describes Christ as the One who “fills all in all.”

He is the source of all things for all His people.

Paul comes at this same idea from the other direction in I Corinthians 4:7 when he says,

“...What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?”

What he’s doing with those questions, of course,

is simply nudging us toward honesty.

Do you know what we’re like in our attitudes toward life?

We’re like Rook players.

Have you ever played that card game?

During the first year Sandee and I were married

we had a regular card night each week

in which we had several friends come over to play Rook.

I remember one of those games distinctly.

We were playing “call partner”

in which the person who got the bid

would name any card of their choice

and whoever had that card became their partner for the hand.

The cards were dealt,

our friend, Merlene, got the bid,

she called the card of her choice,

and play began.

She opened, taking the first trick,

and then the second,

and the third,

and the forth,

and the fifth...

And she continued to take every trick for the rest of the game.

It wasn’t until right near the end of the hand

that we finally discovered she had called herself as her own partner.

She had been dealt the dream hand of a lifetime.

She had all the high cards,

and a massive number of high trumps.

With intelligent playing

anyone could have won with that hand.

I think we often mentally approach life

very much like a game of Rook.

The cards are dealt

and we each look at our hand to see what we’ve got.

But remarkably,

the instant we enter this world

we forget that we didn’t deal the cards.

They were dealt to us by our Creator.

If we happen to have been dealt a really great hand,

we can so easily feel as though we had some right to it,

and even that we deserve some special recognition because of it.

But Paul says simply,

“What do you have that you did not receive?”

In the context of this passage in Ephesians,

Paul takes this same truth

and carries it one step farther, applying it to the people of God.

He describes Christ as the one “who fills all in all.”

He is the One who gave us all that we possess when we enter this world, of course.

But, as Christians, there is far more as well.

He is also the One who has placed His Spirit within each of us,

creating within us that hunger and longing for a life that honors Him.

He is also the One who has chosen for each of us

those gifts He knows fit us best,

and then committed Himself to living His life out through each of us

in ways perfectly suited both to us and to the work He wants to do through us.

He truly does “fill all in all”.

But there is a second side to what Paul is saying here.

For just as Christ was given to us as our source of life,

so we have been given to Christ as His body,

as the means by which He can now express Himself to this world in which we live.

We receive Him as our head,

being granted both the mind and the heart of Christ Himself.

He receives us as His body,

receiving through us the means by which our Creator now reveals Himself to this world.

Now, let me set this next to that prayer of Paul’s

that we were looking at a few weeks ago.

EPH 1:18 I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints...

It is this truth he was talking about in that prayer.

The hope of His calling

is the hope of His life being lived out through each of us

in ways that reveal the living reality of God Himself to this world in which we live.

Way back in my college days

a good friend of mine gave me a quotation

that has stayed with me ever since.

I have long since forgotten who said it,

but I will never forget what it said.

“Being a witness means living in such a way that your life cannot be explained outside of the existence of Jesus Christ.”

I see that happening in remarkable ways in the lives of many of you.

I see some of you confronted with powerful addictions in your lives,

and rather than allowing those addictions to control you,

you trust your God to lead you one day at a time

through the daily process of victory over them.

I see you being deeply offended or misused by a fellow Christian,

and rather than responding in kind,

you reach out for healing and reconciliation.

I see young people surrounded by a culture that tries to cram immorality down their throats

with nearly every movie,

and every song,

and every TV show on the air.

And yet they live with a moral strength and commitment to purity

that can only come from the reality of their God within them.

The hope of His calling that Paul prays we will understand

is the hope of the reality of God Himself

being expressed through the lives of His people.

And “the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints”

is talking about the way in which our God

considers Himself greatly enriched because of the way we express Him to the world.

It is our God saying to us, “YOU are My greatest treasure!”

And let me say it once again...

in God’s economy there are no little people

and no little places.

We’re out of time

and I have still not made the connection I wanted to make

between chapters one and two.

We can’t look at it in depth until next week,

but let me just conclude

by reading the first verse of chapter 2

so that we can see the contrast Paul wanted us to see.

After presenting this remarkable union between God and His church

in which He gives Christ to us as our head,

and we give Christ His body through which He now expresses Himself on this earth,

the next thing Paul says is this:

EPH 2:1 And you were dead in your trespasses and sins,

EPH 2:2 in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.

What He’s saying is that

if we are ever going to correctly appreciate

the overwhelming work God has done in and for us,

we must see clearly both who we are now in Christ,

and where we came from before we met Him.

But we’ll pick up our study here next week.