©2003 Larry Huntsperger Peninsula Bible Fellowship

10/12/03

From Prayer To Prayer Pt. 2

Ephesians 3:10

10/12/03 From Prayer To Prayer Pt. 2

 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, and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe.

EPH 3:14, 16-19 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.

Our study of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians

has almost but not quite taken us from prayer to prayer.

Early in his letter we heard Paul pray

that God would enlighten the eyes of our hearts

so that we would know the hope of His calling,

the riches of the glory of the inheritance He has received through us,

and that we would know the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe.

Toward us who believe what?

Toward us who believe God.

Toward us who believe His words to us

and who believe the love for us that has motivated Him

to say and to do what He has said and done.

That’s where the human race made it’s first massive wrong turn, of course.

Adam and Eve chose not to believe what their God had said to them

because they chose not to believe His love

that motivated Him to say what He had said.

It wasn’t that they refused to obey Him,

it’s that they refused to believe Him.

The disobedience that followed

was simply and unavoidable natural consequence

of their refusal to believe what He said.

But as Paul writes to us here in Ephesians,

he addresses us as those “who believe”.

He’s not suggesting that we understand and believe perfectly

everything God has said to us about all of life, of course.

Learning to believe our God

is very much of a daily growing process,

a process that never ceases as long as we remain on this planet.

What Paul is talking about

is that entrance point of belief

that God has established for the entire human race,

that one point of belief in God

upon which everything else is built.

Think of it as a doorway into a whole new world we never even knew existed.

And that doorway is simply this - do we choose to believe what He has told us

about what He has done for us through the death of Christ?

He made that clear just a few verses earlier in Ephesians 1:13 when he said,

In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation -- having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise...

I believe I have sined before God.

God has told me His Son died on that cross to pay my debt for my sins.

I choose to believe He is telling me the truth.

That’s it.

That’s all He asks from us.

And I do very much hope

that you see clearly

the absolute justice and fairness and righteousness and love of our Creator in what I’ve just said.

It’s all so incredibly simple.

The human race was separated from God

when we refused to believe what He said at one point - “If you eat from that tree you will die.”

And now each member of the human race who chooses to

can be reunited with God forever

simply by doing what Adam refused to do,

by believing what our God has said to us at one point - “Trust My Son’s death for your sins and you will live.”

When Adam made his choice

he’d never seen death.

He had no idea what it looked like.

He had no idea what separation from God would be.

But that didn’t make it any less real when it happened.

And when we make our choice of trust

we have no idea what eternal life with God will look like.

But that doesn’t make it any less real for us when we enter into it.

And as Paul writes to the Ephesians

he makes it clear that he is writing to those of us

who have chosen to believe what our God has said to us at that one point.

And he prays that the eyes of our hearts will be enlightened

so that we will know

what’s really going on between us and our God

as a result of that belief.

Then, immediately following that prayer,

Paul lays it out for us.

He begins with a clear, powerful statement

of the position given to Christ in creation by God the Father.

He told us that 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...

He’s the only big guy on the block.

He is now and will forevermore be the supreme authority over all that is.

But sharing that truth with us

is just the first step in what Paul wants the eyes of our hearts to see.

From there

he then takes us to the second step

when he describes the relationship that God then established

between Christ and His people.

EPH 1:22-23 ...and (He) gave Him as head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.

He gave Christ to the church,

and gave the church to Christ.

And we are not talking here

about buildings and weekly meetings.

We are talking about a relationship established by God

between Jesus Christ and all those who have believed.

Just to keep it clear,

it would probably be better to say

He gave Christ to His people,

and He gave His people to Christ.

And that isn’t all.

He also reveals to us the roles assigned to each of us.

Christ is given to us as our head,

and we are given to Christ as His body.

OK, now that right there

is the heart, the center of the truth that forms the foundation for this entire letter.

Christ is given to us as our head,

and we are given to Christ as His body.

Everything that happens in chapter two

is simply Paul’s expansion of that truth.

It is his careful chronology

of how this remarkable relationship between us and our God came into being.

But before we move into that chronology

I must state one more time

the critical importance of our hearing what Paul is saying

not as some sort of theological doctrine or theory,

but rather as literal, living, daily reality.

This is why we did what we did last week in our time together.

This is why we spent nearly the entire morning

talking about the practical reality of the life of Christ being lived through us

and the effect that has both on us

and on the world around us as our Lord touches lives through us.

If you were here,

you will remember that we talked about three distinctly different motivations within us

that provide the driving force behind everything we do.

There is the flesh

with all of the values,

and goals,

and priorities that come with it.

Then there are those religious responses within us,

those responses that attempt to improve our standing with God through something we do or do not do.

And then, finally, we looked at the life of Christ within us

as He lives out His life through us each day.

I had a phone call this past week

from a man who knows me through my books.

A number of years ago he tracked down my phone number

and has called occasionally to ask advice on issues he’s struggling with.

This time he called to tell me that “all growth had stopped in my Christian life”

and he wanted to know how to start it again.

I asked him what “growth” looked like.

The question seemed to throw him a bit.

I suppose he assumed someone who has spent his whole life as a Bible teacher

really should know the answer to that question himself,

but he said, “You know... discovering new principles and feeling the presence of God and the power of His Spirit...”

To which I responded, “No, I don’t think so... I think Christian growth looks like loving your wife, loving your children, investing time in them, and then taking good care of the other people God has entrusted to you.”

What I’m about to say right now

will very likely be misunderstood by some of you,

but I wouldn’t be honest with you without trying to put it into words.

I have come to realize that the true life of faith

looks almost nothing like what I once thought it looked like.

I spent a good deal of my early Christian life

seeking, wanting, and expecting visible evidences of the reality of God in my life.

I was forever looking for some external verification that He was there.

Just like Thomas,

I wanted to touch the wounds in His hands and his feet.

I’m not saying I was wrong in that.

In truth, that’s where we all start out in our walk with the King.

We’re infants,

and just as an infant needs to be held by its mother almost constantly during the first months of its life,

so we frequently need to be held by our God

in the early days of our life with Him.

But that is not the life of faith.

In fact,

it is exactly the opposite.

Did you happen to notice the Lord’s words to Thomas

when we read that passage together a few weeks ago?

JOH 20:27 Then He said to Thomas, "Reach here with your finger, and see My hands; and reach here your hand and put it into My side; and do not be unbelieving, but believing."

JOH 20:28 Thomas answered and said to Him, "My Lord and my God!"

JOH 20:29 Jesus said to him, "Because you have seen Me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed."

I am certainly not suggesting

that the true life of faith

does not bring with it a deep inner awareness of the presence and reality of our God,

because it most certainly does.

But what I’ve come to realize

is that the goals of the life of faith

are so very different from what I once thought they were.

The work God is seeking to accomplish within us

is so different from what I once understood it to be.

I have spent too much of my Christian life

like a man at a rifle range

with a scope that’s pointing the wrong direction,

wondering why I never seem to hit what I’m aiming at.

I once thought great men and women of faith

would generate some sort of spiritual aura,

and emanate the power and presence of God.

I’d met a few men like that

and wondered how long it would take

to become like one of them.

But now, after more than 35 years in my own walk with the King,

I see it all so differently.

I know now that many of those I was so impressed with when I was younger

were not men of faith at all.

They were simply men who had discovered how to use the world of religion

to create a following for their own flesh-based goals.

You see,

the true walk of faith

does not create an image.

It does not create and aura.

True faith,

the real thing,

the real working of God Himself within the life of an individual

will produce three things.

1. A growing personal love for God.

2. A growing practical trust in what He has said.

3. And a growing ability to love the people God has placed around us,

beginning with our marriage partner,

and then our children,

and then the others He’s placed close to us.

1TI 1:5 But the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.

JOH 13:35 "By this all men will know that you are My disciples...

if your conversation is filled with Bible references

and you quote verses continually...

if your life abounds in spiritual gifts

and people stand in awe at the power of God working through you...

if you preach to thousands,

and your book sales soar,

and the Christian community holds you in great reverence...

No, that’s not what our Lord said.

JOH 13:35 "By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another."

You see, learning to posture before the Christian community

in ways that impress others is easy.

No one needs God for that.

But God alone can reshape our lives

in ways that pry us out of our selfishness,

and our fears,

and our pain long enough

so that we can begin to reach out in love to those around us.

Just this past week

I once again came across that remarkable description

of what the Spirit of God looks like within a person

when the Spirit is allowed to control.

Listen to this!

GAL 5:22-23 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.

That is the Spirit-filled life.

That is the walk of faith.

And nearly everything mentioned in that list

is talking about the way in which we relate to the people around us.

Love, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control...

Remember that fellow who called me earlier this week?

Well, I had a second call from him a few days later,

a call that I found to be tremendously encouraging.

He said he’d come to the conclusion

that he’s never really known

what it means to love God,

or what it means to love his wife,

but he wants to learn.

So, what have we seen so far?

God has created a relationship between Himself and His people

in which Christ is given to us as our head,

and we are given to Christ as His body on this earth.

When the true life of Christ is being lived out through us

we will recognize it

because it will produce within us a growing love for our Lord,

a growing ability to trust what He says,

and a growing ability to love those God has placed around us.

In this relationship He establishes between us and him,

as we learn to hear His voice

and respond to what He’s saying,

we find Him giving us eyes to see ourselves and others as we’ve never seen them before.

I can give it to you in a single phrase -

PEOPLE begin to really matter to us.

We shouldn’t be surprised at that, of course.

All it means is that we begin to take on

the same life values as our Lord.

People matter to Him - they matter most of all.

And people begin to matter to us as well.

OK, from there, as we continue to move from prayer to prayer in Ephesians,

the next thing we see Paul doing throughout chapter two

is to lead us through a presentation

of the pilgrimage Christ brought us through

in this recreative work He has accomplished in our lives.

We see Paul walk through that pilgrimage with us twice.

The first time he does it in our relationship with God Himself.

It is a pilgrimage that started with Paul reminding us of where we all started out.

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

and ends by his telling us that now, in response to our faith in God,

(He) raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus...

And then he pulls that whole first pilgrimage together by saying,

EPH 2:10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.

Then, in the second half of the chapter

he walks us through our pilgrimage again,

but this time he does it

not from the perspective of our relationship with God personally,

but rather from the perspective of our relationship with the family of God,

the body of Christ.

He began by saying,

EPH 2:12 remember that you were at that time separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.

And he ends by telling us that we are now,

a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.

Then from there, he moves us into that remarkable statement in Ephesians 3:10,

that statement in which He explains to us

why God has done what He has done in us,

and why He is so pleased with the result.

He tells us that God has done what He has done

... so that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places.

Which brings us, then,

to this second prayer.

It brings us to the place where Paul once again drops to His knees,

making his final request to God on our behalf.

It is, at its core,

the request that we would each be able to comprehend

the true nature of the love of our God for each one of us.

And he makes it clear

that everything he has said to us prior to this,

our ability to effectively enter into this remarkable relationship between us and our God,

this relationship in which He is our head

and we are His body on this earth,

this relationship in which the manifold wisdom of God

is now made known through our lives,

all of this depends upon the degree to which

we comprehend... what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge,...

because only then can we be filled up to all the fullness of God.

And we’re going to take one final week with this before we move on

and take that prayer phrase by phrase

to see what Paul is praying.