Our scripture reading is found in Ephesians chapter three. Listen to Paul as he struggles for words to describe the amazing love of Jesus Christ, the great apostle, brilliant man, filled with the Spirit. Listen to how he does this. For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven on our earth is named. 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, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints. What is the breadth and the length and the height and depth, and to know the love of Christ, that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we 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, and all God's people said, Amen. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. You may be seated. The service has already proclaimed the beauty of the gospel with the way that the Lord has led Colin to craft the service and then to have my dear friends participating in the service through prayer and through singing and leading us and singing to have Jay Marty standing there. You know, Jay Marty's single. I have never seen so many single women join. The women's choir. That was amazing. How the Lord does that. It was beautiful. I was dove hunting a couple years ago and while I was down at one end of the fear, the field, I heard this glorious singing, just majestic, gorgeous, tender voice, singing hymns to the Lord about the Lord. And as I heard this voice, I just kind of put my shotgun down and I started to walk toward the voice. And as I got near the voice, I saw in the corner of a field was an outbuilding and outhouse, if you will. And as I approached the building, I heard this unbelievable praise to God coming out of this outhouse. And I just stood back away on the other side of a tree waiting to see who that was. And I waited and they came out. It was simply a farmer who was working his fields and he kind of stumbled over, got back up on his tractor and drove away. And I thought so much of the Lord Jesus Christ and how he lives in people who are so sinful and so foul that it should surprise others when they hear a singing of the glory of God. I should look over if they truly know us and say, can you believe those words? They're coming out of that person right there, that person we know. The majesty and power of Christ is magnificent. And Paul, as I said earlier, struggles to actually bring words that are adequate to describe the infinite love of Christ. I was going to say, could you imagine trying to do that? Yes, you can, can't you? You can imagine trying to tell somebody about the Lord Jesus Christ. Where do you start? Where do you finish? He's phenomenal. He's fantastic. Do you start with his wrath? Do you start with his love? My daughter and I were recently in an earthquake. We were in a second floor of a condominium and an earthquake hit. And the first trimmer came through and it was fairly shocking. It wasn't overly strong, but it was strong enough, you think, did somebody run a truck into the condo? Did a plane crash nearby and then the second trimmer hit and shook us again. And I just simply took her hand and I said, my God, I think this is an earthquake, honey. Let's get out of here. And so we walked down and we stood in a big open area in case the buildings collapsed. And as we were standing there, I looked out and there were a couple children playing in the ocean. They're playing just in the little shallow part of the ocean. And they were just taking little baby steps and the waves would go out and they would kind of walk out toward the ocean. And then the wave would turn around and come out and they would turn around and take off and run away from the waves. Just their little baby steps, just their little baby steps at this ocean. And I looked out over their heads wondering if a tsunami might be on its way. Wondering if these little children, as they played in these little waves, realized the world they lived in. If they realized that there could be the great potential for imminent danger. And as I reflected on God's creation, I reflected on the character of God. And I thought of his wrath. And I thought, do you know these children are playing in the ocean and the ocean is so dangerous. It's so powerful. They're just a few feet away from the crashing waves and yet they're so comfortable. They're so calm. They're having such a wonderful late morning at the beach. And I got to pondering how kind God is, that in the midst of His wrath, in the midst of His justifiable wrath toward sin and toward sinners, He kindly gives us these margins in which we live our lives. And we find ourselves this morning in the gentle waves of this church, in the gentle warm water lapping against the feet of our heart, if you will. And I would call you to turn your face toward the Lord. And if you do not know the Lord, please, I beg of you, do not mistake His kindness and His patience for impotence. For He has drawn the boundary lines of your life in a very pleasant place. And in His kindness, He's allowed you to be here this morning. That you might enjoy the lapping of the love of Christ. He's beautiful. He's so beautiful. Paul can barely describe it. Return your eyes to the text. He says, for this reason, and what is this reason, you may know the context of Ephesians, maybe you don't, but Paul is expressing this magnificent gift of Jesus Christ and how the Lord Jesus Christ has overcome the boundary lines between the Jew and the Gentile. He's overcome these walls of separation and He has made these two people, one people through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And this magnificent work of Christ is not only on a horizontal level in that he brings different people groups together, but it's on a vertical level, too, in a sense that we now have peace with God. The wrath of God which sinners justly deserve has been visited on the Lord Jesus Christ. And as Paul is extoling these truths here in the first few chapters of Ephesians before he goes on to challenge them to obedience, he says this prayer. And I want you to hear his prayer. He says, for this reason, I bow my knees before the Father. Do you know, I wanted to just stop there for a moment and ask you a question. Do you believe that it makes a difference your physical posture when you pray? He might say, no, I pray with my eyes open all the time, I pray when I'm walking around, I pray, yes, that's all true and that's fine, but do you believe that there are times when your heart is reflected in your posture? When's the last time you were on your knees before the Lord? Maybe in praise? Maybe in agony? Maybe in saying, Lord, hear me. Maybe or you're overcome with fear and you've fallen down because you have nowhere to turn, but to him. So Paul says, I bow my knees before the Father. And I want to call you to this thought that Paul's life reflects what he believes. He bows before his Father. He humbly adores God the Father. And he does so by bowing. His behavior is reflective of his belief. He believes God to be this great, magnificent God. And so his life naturally, his behavior flows out of his belief. Now, the struggle we have as the people of God is what do we do when our behavior does not match our belief? Well, how do we handle those fractures in our lives? How do we deal with those things? What do we do? How do you move forward? What do you do? Do you lie? Do you act like everything's okay? Do you get mad? Do you pout? Do you blame other people? I want you to know what Paul does when he's overwhelmed. He bows. He bows before the Lord. And I want you to hear what he says. He says, for this reason, I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory, he may grant you and now listen to what he wants God to grant, that you be strengthened with power through his spirit in your inner being. Why? So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you being rooted and grounded in love. So his prayer is, first of all, that the spirit would work in a person's heart in such a way that Christ would dwell in their hearts. I promise you, if Christ is dwelling in your heart, it's because of the work of the spirit. It's because of this power of the spirit that moves into our lives and moves us into places. We would never think of going, would never cross our minds. Not only would it not cross our minds, we would find it impossible to go. I don't know about you, but in the midst of this global warming we've experienced in the last few days, our power has been out since Thursday. Now, I'll tell you what, for about 24 hours, it was fun. It's like, oh, it's in this greater power, so let's be a pioneer. I've always wanted to be a pioneer. So I sent Laura out the chop wood and she started to blister. I found some gloves and she was able to keep the fire going. And it was fun for about a day. And then, you know, what are you going to do? The heaters off and you can use a candle. I mean, it's kind of almost the sense of romance here on Valentine's days. Let's light a candle and we'll read our Bible by candlelight. And you can't really see, especially as you get older, you don't need a candlelight. You need like a train light. And it's just frustrating. You know, you can do it. You can make life kind of work that way, but it's not the way we'd like. It's not what we're used to. And it's frustrating. And you know, some of you are frustrated. You're frustrated in your life with Christ. And you're saying, I want that strength. Well, let me ask you a question. How long does it take you to let God lead in your life? How long does it take you? Let's say that you were dancing with the Lord this week. Let's just think that you're dancing this week with the Lord. Who's leading? Who's leading? Are you leading the Lord? Now, Lord, I want you to do this. And then when you're done with that, I got this for you. And then, Lord, don't forget, oh, Lord, how about a spin right here? See, the Holy Spirit is so kind and so patient that he walks with us. And he never forsakes us. He doesn't leave us. And he watches our mistakes. He lives through them with us. What do you think it means when it says to grieve the Holy Spirit? If you want to grieve the Holy Spirit, just walk around with me every day and you'll get a great picture of it. Oh, that's what it means to grieve the Spirit. You see the Spirit brings a power that we don't possess. It brings a power that was broken at the fall. Now, I'll just summarize Christianity for you as simply as I can here. Your view of the cross and what Jesus did for you is driven by your view of the fall. If you don't think much happened at the fall, then you know what? You don't have much of a Jesus. You've just kind of got one of those good, good old boy Jesuses. Come on, Jesus. Let's go to church today. Let's get that out of the way. Let's check it off the list. But if your view of the fall is that when Adam sinned, the consequences for his posterity were they were total. They were in a way magnificent. They were overwhelming. If you have the view of the fall that Paul shares in Ephesians chapter 2 verse 5 when he says, well you were dead in your trespasses. God made you alive. Then if you have that view of the fall, you have a magnificent Jesus. The power of the Spirit has worked in such a way that you have this Jesus indwelling you. You see Jesus doesn't just come in and kind of elbow his way in and try to compete. Jesus comes in and he supplants your past affections. He comes in your heart in such a way, strengthen in this Spirit, that he supplants your previous affections. And when you're growing in Christ, what's happening is your affections are becoming renewed for Christ. You come to church and your affections are renewed for him. And you say oh that's true, oh Lord I love you Lord. I know when I became a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ it was more along the lines of not wanting to go to hell. It wasn't that I wanted to bring glory and enjoy the Lord and kind of walk through life with the Lord. I think Mark shared when he was sharing his testimony one time during a sermon as a young child he was given a choice. Do you want to die and go to hell or do you want to have Jesus in your heart and go to heaven? Well you know I'm pretty much with Mark. I'm going to choose B on that one. I'm going to take Jesus and go on to heaven. Thank you very much. But what happened to me when I was in college when I came to faith in Christ, what I found is that Christ wasn't rooted deeply in my life yet. This this prayer that this specific prayer that Paul has speaks of being rooted and grounded. And what happened to me is I grew up as a performer. I performed on the athletic field and I performed in the classroom. That was the way I made sense of life. That was my survival skill performance. When I came to faith in Christ I took the performance model that I had as a non-Christian and I brought it into my Christian life. And I became a performing Christian. I read the Bible, I prayed, I told people about Jesus very dutifully. And if I failed to do that I would remove myself from fellowship with the Lord. And I would say a prayer like this. Lord I know I haven't spoken to you much lately. You kind of know what happened. I did that sin that I'm so ashamed of again. And so Lord I'm just going to not talk to you for a while. And I would I would do the silent treatment for God. And then I would get back on my performance trail. I would read my Bible every day. I'd go for a month straight like no Bible, no breakfast, right? I'm really committed and worked my way through. I'd pray every day. I try to lead anything with legs to Christ. And about the time I worked up enough self-righteousness I'd come back to the Lord. Well, here I am Lord. I'm sure you've missed me. I've been out serving you. And now I'm back. Do you like me? Have I been good enough? Lord, do you love me now? Can we be friends again? I took the performance of a non-believer and put it on a Christian track. And I began to try to perform for the Lord. And you know the Lord had to take me through some really deep mess to uproot the performance tree that was growing in my heart. A lot of you walked through that with me and I'll forever be in your debt. You were kind. You were generous. You were tender. You were honest. But the Lord did His work. And in a magnificent way, He subplants the roots of the system that we are trying to employ to make sense of life. And He replaces it with what? He replaces it with the indwelling of Jesus Christ. Paul prays that. Paul prays that. I'm an answer to Paul's prayer. You may be an answer to Paul's prayer. Let's look at the second thing Paul prays. He goes on and He says in His beautiful, specific prayer. Look at verse 17 again. So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you being rooted and grounded in love may what? May have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth. He's struggling for words. Can you feel it? He's saying it's so big. I don't know how to describe it. I'm usually pretty good at quantifying and qualifying little brilliant Pharisee Apostle Paul. His whole life has been about qualifying and quantifying. And Jesus blew up his little model, didn't he? He blew him up to the point that the Apostle Paul resorts to children's words to try to help people understand the love of Christ. He's really wide and he's really tall and he's so deep and it's like he's stuttering. Why? This is why. Look at 19 to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. How would you like to teach somebody about something that surpasses knowledge? You're like, I have a teenager. I know that. No. Something that surpasses knowledge. What does that mean? It's a bit of a spiritual conundrum. If you think about it, it sounds almost irrational, unreasonable to learn something that is not unknowable. It does require the revelatory work of the Spirit. Look at verse 5, chapter 3, if you have a little time. But not only does it require the revelatory work of the Spirit, he's describing a subject that's too big for us to understand. Now listen to this because I don't often say what God can't do, but God is so infinite. He can't fully represent and reveal himself to a finite being. I remember one day I was talking to this young man who was dying of cancer, a brilliant mathematician, even as a young man. He scored in like the 99th percentile in the world for mathematics. And I was talking to this young man, extoling the virtues of Christ to him. And he said, look, look Tim, I don't get it. I don't believe it. And I just somehow the Holy Spirit clicked in my heart what was going on. I was trying to get this finite boy to understand the infinite nature of our eternal God. And I couldn't do it. And he couldn't classify it or qualify it or quantify it. And so do you know what I said? I just said that to him. I said, do you know what, Rhett? You're not able to fully comprehend an infinite God as a fallen finite teenage boy.
And he looked at me and says, I get it. I want to worship that God. And he came to faith in Christ before he died. You see, the Apostle Paul is struggling with the very things we struggle with. How big is Jesus to you? He's so huge and he lives even right here with us. Now I need to close and I want you to think of the last point here. I want you to think about the praise that he offers in the last two verses of this chapter. Just look at this as a praise. Look at this as he's finishing his prayer and he says now to him who's able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think. Do you see that theme? If you just read through that chapter, you're going to see this theme in Paul. He's like, he's too big to describe. He continues it even as he closes. Now to him who's able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power that works where, within us, to him be glory where in the church. To him be glory in the church. If there's any place where Christ should receive glory, it's in the church. The world is not glorifying Christ. The world is discrediting Christ. The world is laughing at Christ. The world is blaspheming against Christ. If there's any place where the Lord Jesus Christ should be glorified, it's in this place right here and it's in your heart and my heart as we live in the world. We don't live out on the peripheral of the world. The church is not on the edge of the world. The church by God's decree is in the center of the culture. We're the center of our culture. Do you glory in Christ? We went to the cotton bowl and I was yelling after Ole Miss scored a touchdown which, believe me, was miraculous.
And a few weeks later, somebody came up to me and said, I saw you in the cotton bowl man, you were screaming, I can't believe you're like a pastor and you're like cheering. Like yeah, it was pretty exciting. I got to thinking about that and I thought, you know, I'm sure if that person has heard me preach, he's seen me cheer before because the Lord Jesus Christ is the greatest. The Lord Jesus Christ should take us off our feet occasionally to where we bring glory to him. We are so overwhelmed with who he is and what he has done that it overwhelms us to the point that on our knees we cry to the Lord and we glorify him. And so as we move on to Chattanooga and walk with the people and shepherd them as they shepherd us. You know, I'll never forget the first time I realized while I was preaching that you were watching me as much as I was watching you. I came here in hopes that you would grow in your faith in Christ, that you would be on fire for the Lord that your office would radiate the glory of Christ, that your homes and your children would magnify Christ. And the whole time I had these designs on you, you had them on me. You're like, when is that young arrogant fool going to teach God's word? When's that breakthrough going to happen? Come on Holy Spirit, do your stuff. I was praying that for you and you were praying that for me. And now we part ways. And then I would encourage you to continue your baby steps and I'll continue my baby steps and we'll meet again down the road. But as we're baby stepping along, we're the church and no one's going to bring glory to Christ like the church. So I want to encourage you, glory in Christ. Enjoy him. Be overwhelmed by him. Be reduced to baby talk as you take your baby steps toward heaven and ultimately glorification with him. Let's pray together. Father, you are so patient as we've been in a pitter padding here on the edge of your character. We've been splashing a little bit as children in your grace. And we want to bow before you and we want to adore you and esteem you as the one true God. And oh Lord, our souls begin to well and the water of your spirit begins to fill us in such a way that we cannot hold back the exuberant joy of our hearts for you and who you are and what you've done and what you're going to do. Lord, we can't imagine it literally. We cannot think or even imagine how magnificent you are. So we take what you've revealed to us and we revel in you. We enjoy you, Lord. And Lord, as we even sing this last closing hymn, may our hearts engage with these words, but Lord, may we sing to you about you. We're not screaming for a touchdown at the cotton bowl. We're not glorying in Tony Romo in his exploits. Lord, we're glorying in our magnificent Savior, Jesus Christ, whose bigger and stronger than words thank you for your kindness in revealing him to us. Now Lord, Jesus, receive our praise. We love you and we extol you, help us, Holy Spirit, we pray in Jesus' name. And all God's people said, Amen.