The scripture reading this morning is from the book of Ephesians chapter 3 We'll be looking at the second part of that versus 14 through 21 so Ephesians 3 Verses 14 through 21 you can turn to that in your own Bible or If you don't have one this morning, it's also printed in the order of worship If there's one phrase that I have been hearing over and over and over again for the past two months It is this God is big Usually comes in the in the form of a song which I'm not going to sing for you this morning But I've heard God is big driving around in my car on the road I've heard God is big in my living room when I open the door after a long day at work I've heard God is big being sung from the mouth of my children while I'm trying to eat supper God is big God is big God is big and some of y'all are smiling because you've been hearing it too over and over again on that little CD That your children were listening to before vacation Bible school And I got to tell you that after about the 10,000th time that I heard that song what I wanted to do was just sort of I shrug the radio off and go okay, I got it God is big I think I can get the message of this, but then I started thinking about it. You know what? I don't get it I do not see God is big in my life all the time Especially not the way that Paul talks about it at the end of Ephesians chapter 3 God is big. We believe that we say that Well big enough to do what? So let's read Ephesians 3 14 to 21 and find out For this reason I bowed my knees before the Father from whom every family in heaven and on 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 breath and Leak and height and death 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. Amen Let's pray together Father this passage of Scripture before us is immense and powerful Do Holy Spirit instruct us from it? Father make the words of my mouth pleasing to you full of truth because They are full of Scripture A pray father that you would indeed work this knowledge of Christ so deep into our hearts that we would know That which is even unknowable in Jesus name. Amen When I was engaged to be married to Shannon a friend of mine Whisper they didn't whisper in my ear actually he told me While we were at work one day a little gym of information that he thought would really sort of Kind of provide the basis for my whole thinking about what it was going to be like to be married And it had to do with the phrase the big day, you know That's how we talk about weddings. It's the big day takes weeks if not months of planning. You've got to get dresses and Photographers and flowers and planner rehearsal and a rehearsal dinner and a reception and all that stuff And it is so all consuming that what ends up happening oftentimes is that the wedding becomes more important than the marriage or the day Becomes more important than what follows it. So with that in mind. This is what he told me after you're getting married And after all the songs and the prayers and the homily and the vows and after the Minister has pronounced you man and wife and after you have kissed your bride and you're getting ready to walk down Back down the aisle as a married couple what you're supposed to do is turn to your now wife and Whisper in her ear this I promise you this will not be the best day of your life Now I took this piece of information away But I've got to confess I totally freaked out when I got married and I didn't remember it I mean Shannon's like I've never heard that before in my life. What are you talking about? But oh, well if I written it on my palm it might have it might have been a better deal But you know as goofy as it sounds really the sentiment is the same Because unless the wedding ceremony is a total disaster. It's a pretty nice today and Even though you are united in marriage on that day when you make those vows that relationship that union Has to grow from there. It can't be the best day of your marriage or you would be stuck And that is exactly what Paul is praying for us at the clothes of Ephesians 3 all of this Unbelievable stuff these incredible blessings that God has poured out to us in Christ They have happened to some it looks up like Paul does we have been United with Christ if we trust in him and believe in the gospel and the results of that are that formation of the new community Call the church. It's incredible. It has happened. It has been done But Paul refuses to stop there because God is more powerful than just making it happen once In fact, he's all powerful as the song goes he is very very very very very very very very And so as we grow in our union with Christ We grow in knowledge and that is the focus of this prayer When Paul says in Verse 14 for this reason he's really picking up from verse 1 of chapter 3 He started that prayer before but something came into his mind and he poured out his heart and now he's coming back to this prayer So when he says for this reason the reason is basically Everything that Paul has written about in Ephesians up to this point all wrapped up in our being united to Christ and then to each other in the church But the big question for us is this how can we grow if that's what we're supposed to do How is it that we grow in this union with Christ and that's where he drops the bombshell in verse 16 He says all of this growth all of these blessings are what they are according to the riches of his glory Don't pass over that phrase some Versions of the Bible actually take that noun that is glory and they turn it into an adjective So it turns into something like his glorious riches But that's not what Paul is saying Paul's saying that God gives gifts to his people out of the riches of his own glory His glory his holiness his radiance his grace his mercy his love his justice his wrath the some total of all of God's attributes That's his glory and he gives gifts from it without ever being depleted of any of it That's where we get power as Christians to live from God's own glory He years ago was big news that Bill Gates and his wife had started a foundation and they were going to use this foundation to give away lots and lots and lots of money And many of us would probably think of a guy like Bill Gates is being infinitely wealthy But the truth is that when Bill Gates gives away money he loses money It may not take him very long to make it back again He will not fill the pinch of it, but he loses money from his storehouse when he gives it away But God is so big he is big enough to give great gifts to his people out of his own storehouse of glory He's never depleted of any of it And so what are those gracious gifts that he gives from his power from his glory? What is Paul praying for here? Well first we learned from verses 16-17 that Paul is praying for strength for the church Power is another one of the words that he uses. It's one of the repeating words of this text God is giving from the riches of his own glory So he is drinking us with his own power We have the power the very power of God flowing through us to accomplish a certain task that Paul is praying for It's an incredible prayer So what is it? Verse 17 that Christ made well in your hearts through faith Now that's an interesting thing to say the question naturally arises from that Okay, Paul's praying that Christ can dwell in our hearts through faith So does that mean he's praying here for non-Christians or is he praying here for Christians? I thought that you know what we did to make ourself a Christian was to ask Christ to come into our hearts Well, let's look at that In Ephesians in chapter one he is called the people who's writing to saints In chapter one he's also said that they are united to Christ and share all the benefits of that in chapter two in the first part of three He says that they are now bound together in Christ to one another in the church It's obvious that what Paul is doing is asking that Christ will dwell more richly in the lives in the hearts of people who are already Christians How can that be? Well the first thing to ask is what does he mean when he prays for Christ to dwell in our hearts? What it means is this he's not praying that Christ comes into our hearts and spins the night He's not praying that that Christ comes and rinses out a room for a week or two and then leave No, what he's saying and what this word literally means is that Jesus Christ takes up permanent Residents in our hearts. It's where he dwells So Paul's not talking here about making a commitment or asking Jesus into your heart or Walking down the aisle to make an decision. No, what he's talking about here is Christ making a home a permanent dwelling in all of our hearts Dwelling there continuously How does that happen? How can that happen? Verse 17 he answers it Christ does it by faith. Just like we found out in chapter two that we're originally Made right with God by faith now Paul's telling us that we stay connected to Christ by faith. It's not our actions It is by faith if you want to put it in theological terms You can say that we are justified by faith But we're also sanctified by faith Faith the gospel is the totality of the Christian life So what does this mean for you and me today? What it means is what my campus minister in college used to tell me over and over and over again I and we are called to make the gospel our permanent Residents not our actions not our striving but the gospel no matter where we go in life We're always coming home to the gospel That's where we hang our hat what it means is that we can't hang our hat on our accomplishments on our positions On our possessions on our friends on how smart our kids are or how popular we are in high school We can't hang our hats on that We're called to come home to the gospel But you know what it also means it also means that we can't hang our hats on our fear on our loneliness on our depression On all of those things that tend to weigh on our shoulders and get us down We don't hang our hats there. We hang our hats on the gospel and we find rest there Are you a perfectionist? Are you one of those people who feel like that you live in constant fear that one of these days somebody is going to find you out? That you don't have it all together and that you will therefore lose all of your sense of significance that you've spent years and years Carefully building up by doing things well all the time My encouragement is to come home to the gospel and find your rest there and not in your performance Are you right now at a stage where you're just killing yourself at work and not because you have to but just because you You think you need to to find your significance that you can be one of those people that grind it out with the best of them Even when you don't need to because all of yourself work is wrapped up in your performance at the job The encouragement is to come home to the gospel to find your rest there Are you burdened? Are you burdened with fear? Are you burdened with loneliness? Are you burdened with looking into the future and just not knowing what will be there for you? Come home to the gospel find your rest there Know what it means for Christ Continually to dwell in your heart by faith And that leads us to the second aspect of Paul's prayer here that we would be united in love the specific words He uses our rooted and grounded in love. It's an agricultural metaphor combined with a building metaphor So that love is both the soil in which the Christian grows and also the foundation upon which the Christian is built But the question is okay love you're not yourselves in love But who's love we're supposed to unite ourselves in the love of God that did all these great things for us Or we're supposed to unite ourselves in love for each other not really sure. I get it. I think the answer to that question is yes both and I was talking to link Ashby this week and he told me that one of his professors used to say that it is impossible to be God-centered if you are not at one in the same time Man-centered or people-centered in other words all of the preeminent command of scriptures to love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength Jesus says the second one is like it Right on its heels love your neighbor as yourself What this means is that love of God that unites us to Christ frees us up To really love each other so that we are as we are bound to Christ That's where all of our significance lies. We're free to take radical risk in love Without fearing what will happen When I was a little bit younger I used to do some rock climbing and I was horrible at it So before anybody is at all impressed with that. I was just not good at it But you know when you're rock climbing you're out there trying to not get yourself killed You're bound to take a few risks because you got to try to figure out a way for your hand or your foot to go Where you don't really want either your hand or your foot to go but also unless you're Just dumb you're gonna be clipped into a rope When you're doing this thing so when I was out on the rock clipped into the rope And I was sitting there kind of frozen going okay, what am I doing? Where am I gonna go? I don't really want to do this. You can always hear the encouragement from people saying go ahead and just try to make the move Try to reach to that X handhold. You know why you're clipped in if you fall you're not going anywhere you're clipped in And if you're a Christian this morning and you're afraid to go out on a limb for another person because you're afraid that if you're Rejected that you will lose all your significance My encouragement for you is this just go for it because you're clipped in to Christ You are not going anywhere It could be as simple as just Following the three-minute rule after the worship service where you commit to for the first three minutes after worship is over to Talking to people that you don't know instead of immediately cleaning to you're secure group of friends You can do that. I know many of you're thinking but what if I say something silly or what if they don't want to talk to me or look at the clothes that she's wearing. I don't have anything in common with her I can't talk to that person The encouragement is you're clipped into Christ and you can be freed up to love It could really mean to take even more radical risks. I know men that many of you who are married and me too I'm preaching this to myself Our chicken about really loving our wives when their heart broken when they are really down What we prefer to do is to get back at a safe distance and take out our little fix it grenades You know pull the pen and lob them over the wall I've got some platitudes for you, but let me get out of the room first that sort of thing You're really you're really chickening out you're not loving your wife if you're doing that Someone may have told you that well, you know jumping into someone's pain or someone's hurt That's kind of a that's not a masculine virtue. That's sort of a feminine virtue But I'm going to tell you if somebody told you that they were wrong They lied to you Because when Jesus came to earth he jumped into our pain and our mess hard He jumped in and so we're called to jump in and we're free to jump in in that way too So Paul prays for strength He prays for rootedness and love and the third aspect of this prayer is knowledge Uh, the knowledge that Paul is talking about is specific and it's also ambiguous verse 19 Points it out that we would know the love of Christ that what Sir passes knowledge He wants us to know something that we can't know to know the unknowable I'm not exactly sure how we can do that But at the very least it points out that it's important and also while we'll never really grasp the enormity of it So what is it that Paul wants us to know and it's at this point that we read one of the most Wonderful and beautiful statements in all of scripture from verse 18 Hit Paul wants us to know the breadth and the length and the height and the depth of the love of Christ He wants us who think and exist in If three dimensions to think away from that and to think in the four dimensions to use our Imaginations to figure out how much love there is in Christ how big the gospel really is How can we get a handle on this at all? Well, I'm going to tell you from my same conversation with Link Ashby who was my personal theological reference this week Fortunately here to a couple of things suggestions on a way to to get our our minds wrapped around that The question is how long is Christ's love Well from Ephesians one four we learned that Christ's love is eternal That Christ's love you before the creation of the world way way before you or the world even existed That's how far Christ's love goes for you That's how far he reaches back in love for you How deep is Christ's love We read in Ephesians 120 that part of our union with Christ is that he was he descended into the depths before us He was killed on our behalf and descended into the grave Christ's love is so deep that he descended to the depth of death for us How high is Christ's love? Well, not only did he descend into the depth He was also raised back into life and even now sits at the right hand of the Father in heaven And his resurrection guarantees our eventual resurrection and our life of eternity with him We are raised up with Christ as Paul says in chapter two verse six And how wide is Christ's love? Well, it's wide enough to spend the gap It is wide enough to create an entirely new humanity To span the gap between the enmity and the barriers that even beings in sin set up between themselves So that God in Christ creates the church from every tribe and every nation and every language under heaven And that's Paul's point from two eleven on until three thirteen in this book So this four-dimensional love of Christ how high and wide and deep and long is really a summary of the book of Ephesians The love of Christ is so immense that it fills all of space and time It reconciles us to God and to each other It accomplishes everything that God wants to accomplish the love of Christ does And the second question regarding this is Well whom does Christ want to know these things? This may be a sort of a trick question for you I know some of you are out there thinking you know what if only I could get better handle on this If only I could grasp this maybe things would be different in my life But you know what Paul says He says in verse eighteen that we comprehend we comprehend the four-dimensional love of Christ with all the saints With all the saints that's who he wants to come together to know these things The theme and Ephesians of the connectedness the bondness of Christians has got to break down Our long-held conviction that we are merely individuals wandering around and that the only thing that matters is my Relationship to Christ Paul talks about that, but it's not what is most important to him What is most important to him is our relationship to Christ our Bondingness to Christ as the church And I know that many of you would would whistle at suggestions that you are called to serve the saints or or are Really are afraid that someone may ask you a personal question regarding your faith or if that's the case You're refusing to take Paul seriously here in Ephesians Because what he's saying is that we do not primarily grow in our knowledge of Christ on our own We primarily grow in our knowledge of Christ with all the saints As we are connected to each other and what that means is this what is good for the church is good for you What is good for the church is good for you? Are you involved consciously in places where you are able to grow together with other saints? Are you involved in a Sunday morning class so that you can shrink the size of the church down a little bit and get to know people and And grow with all the saints or are you just thinking that well, you know, I don't really need that sort of thing Are you thinking about joining a home fellowship group in the fall to make that group even smaller to come together to really come to know each other We do not offer programs like these simply to have programs for programs sake But we're trying to do is create avenues for you to grow in your knowledge of Christ not just by yourself But with the saints and that is what Paul prays for here And with that in you can experience the last aspect of Paul's prayer in Ephesians 3 That you will be filled What he says actually is that you will be filled with the fullness of God in verse 19 It's really simply another way of restating all that he has said before But the question is why does he use this term? What is he named to be filled with the fullness of God? That is Incredible to just to think about well one thing that can help us here is to look in the book of Colossians You don't have to turn there, but in Colossians 2.9 here's what Paul Paul himself writes He says for in Christ all the fullness of deity lives in bodily form The fullness of God is Christ so to be filled with the fullness of God is to be filled with Christ we're going back to what Paul has originally been praying for us all centered on Christ That Christ will be everything to us. This is an incredible prayer It's so incredible that it's it's difficult to get a handle on it And I think Paul knew that they were going to the readers of this prayer would have this struggle So much so that when he's finished praying this prayer that is full of so much deep theology that I'm sure that even He's sweating when he's done with it He offers the words of verses 20 and 21 Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask to think According to the power at work within us To him to glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever Amen So here we turn to the original question how big is God? How big is God? Well, he's so big that he can do more than we ask or think or some commentators say this means more than we even think to ask He's so big that he does great things for us that we don't even think to ask him to do and don't miss the significance of this I know that there are some of you out there who are burdened in prayer You think oh if I forget to pray for my friend's doctor's appointment automatically the results are going to come back bad Or if I don't if I forget to pray for my children one day They're obviously going to rebel the next day and you're so tied up that prayer that comes bondage for you and not freedom But what Paul is saying here is you can be free because God delights to do even those things that you don't ask him to do Now I'm going to be the first person to tell you that prayer is important But I'm also going to be the first person to tell you to expect the unexpected don't neglect prayer But also expect God to do amazing things even when you don't ask him to do it. That's grace That's his work and not ours And that's something that we can rest in So the title is all up. What is the result of all this? What should we do with this amazing prayer? What should it lead us to? Well, the answer is simply worship The answer is worship If you do not know this union with Christ if you have not been united with him for the first time He is calling you to do that to know that all of the blessings The four dimensional blessings are found only in Christ not in yourself Not in your work Not in anything else only in Christ and if you don't know him Today is the day to know him But also he's saying to those who are believers that God is big He's big enough to strengthen you so that you may do well that Christ will dwell in your hearts through faith He's big enough to root you and ground you in love He's big enough so that you can know this four dimensional love of Christ And he's big enough to fill you with the fullness of God That's how big God is And so for us just like Paul there really is nothing left for us to say but to worship To him the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever And all the people of God said and then to take communion is both to remember what Christ has done in the past just like Ephesians And also to be strengthened in what Christ is doing in the present It's Ephesians three Made physical We remember what Christ has done But we are really and truly strengthened in our union with him that a mysterious way Through for taking the sacrament So if you have been united to Christ by placing your trust in him and you have manifested that by Being a baptized member of a church that proclaims the gospel This meal is for you to increase in your union with Christ If you're not at that point I would invite you to take this time Even where you are to come to Christ for the first time to place your trust in him to be united with him And to know eternal life there are prayers in the insert of the bulletin for those of you who would like to use them to lead your Heart in your mind in those in in focusing on him The Lord be with you Lift up your hearts Let us give thanks to the Lord our God
Our God and our Father we do give you thanks and praise that you have united us to Christ and you are increasing that union That Christ is more and more to us and that the gospel is made more and more manifest We pray that you would use this meal To work that truth deep into our hearts and into our lives Father, we do not approach this table um Cavalierly But humbly knowing that you have called us and knowing that you have called us also to confess our sins Before we do this and so we pray that in this time of silent confession You would forgive us and that you would remind us of your grace through the receiving of communion