15I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, and for this reason 16I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers. 17I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, 18so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, 19and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power. 20God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, 21far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. 22And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, 23which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. Ephesians 1: 15-23 (NRSVA)
One Thanksgiving season a family was seated around their table, looking at the annual holiday bird. From the oldest to the youngest, they were to express their praise. When they came to the 5-year-old in the family, he began by looking at the turkey and expressing his thanks to the turkey, saying although he had not tasted it he knew it would be good. After that rather novel expression of thanksgiving, he began with a more predictable line of credits, thanking his mother for cooking the turkey and his father for buying the turkey.
But then he went beyond that. He joined together a whole hidden multitude of benefactors, linking them with cause and effect. He said, "I thank you for the checker at the grocery store who checked out the turkey. I thank you for the grocery store people who put it on the shelf. I thank you for the farmer who made it fat. I thank you for the man who made the feed. I thank you for those who brought the turkey to the store." Using his Columbo-like little mind, he traced the turkey all the way from its origin to his plate. And then at the end he solemnly said "Did I leave anybody out?" His 2-year-older brother, embarrassed by all those proceedings, said, "God." Solemnly and without being flustered at all, the 5-year-old said, "I was about to get to him." Well, isn’t that the question about which we ought to think at Thanksgiving time? Are we really going to get to him this Thanksgiving? [1]
Paul does! In fact Paul puts genuine thanksgiving right in the midst of “getting to him”. This is Reign of Christ Sunday, and also the Sunday before Thanksgiving. Our text in Ephesians could not be more appropriate for marrying the two celebrations! Paul gives great thanks for the people who worship the One to Whom thanksgiving is always due…the King!
A Side Issue
I want to deal with verse 17 in our text before we get to the main thrust of Scripture: 17I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation….
Paul’s desire for them to have a “spirit of wisdom and revelation” is not for the ability to seem weird among normal people…rather it is so the “eyes of [your] enlightened heart” can help you know the hope, riches and greatness of his power. Some people treat “spiritual gifts” as some sort of illusory and mystical game; they are the David Copperfields of Christianity. For them, the “spirit of wisdom and revelation” is spooky – trances and predictions, secret instructions from above that only come if you’re an incredibly spiritual and superior saint!
Friends, that makes a mockery out of the God who died a painful and humiliating death just to open the door of relationship to everyone…not just “Joe Superchristian”. It reduces the realm of genuine spiritual giftedness, which is the reality of God having control over your life, to parlor games – shell games. The openness to revelation from God is not so you are able to guess which shell the pea may be under, but rather an intimate knowledge of Jesus Christ – a personal relationship with the Lord – and an accurate understanding of Who Christ is, and what He calls us to be. In a sense it is the maturity factor of a believer who rightly is able to understand (see) Christ as the king, and himself as an obedient subject of the king….and then translate that into actions; actions being more than observations (or spooky parlor seances).
So, the spirit of wisdom and revelation is much more about growing up in Christ, learning to be near Him, so you can be like Him – than it is having some supernatural revelation every time you meditate.
A man once told me he had “a word from the Lord” for me about the kind of ministry I should do; he had received it as a “revelation”. Now, I am very cautious to behave myself and be nice to people. However, the kind of “revelation” this man was trying to push was an arrogant assumption that as something akin to being an apostle, he speaks for the Lord, and those to whom the message is directed had better listen.
God gave all the revelation we need in His holy word, and speaks to each of us individually through that revelation, and as we spend time with HIM, not those who would capture us as cult mentors; I would much rather entrust my life and work to my relationship with Christ, than to someone who gets an idea in his head and then wants me to validate it so he can feel spiritual! Be careful when someone wants to exercise spiritual authority over you – you can grant it, but you can also regret it!
Now to the main thrust of the text….
A spirit of wisdom and revelation gives you eyes of the heart that are wide-open to see the King, King Jesus, and how His rule brings magnificent gifts into our lives for which we can and should be thankful…three of them in this short passage:
THE HOPE TO WHICH WE ARE CALLED
The Christian hope is that calling that Jesus extends to each person who draws breath, to come to Him for salvation. Scripture declares it many times…there is salvation from our sins in no other name but Jesus. Nobody but the King has the power to forgive sins.
There’s a worn-out story about the preacher who was getting fired-up in his sermon. He thundered, Every member of this church is a sinner! When he hollered this a second time for emphasis, there was a man on the back row who had a broad smile come across his face. The preacher thought he hadn’t gotten through so he cranked up the volume and bellowed, EACH and EVERY member of this church is a sinner deserving Hell! Still nothing; the man smiled even bigger. So finally the preacher tried the direct approach: Mister? You there on the back row; I said every member of this church deserves to go to Hell – didn’t you hear me, man…? The man laughed out loud and said, I’m not a member of this church!
The man may have missed the point, but it doesn’t change anything; we are all sinners, and do deserve Hell. But God, as the ultimate good parent calls to us…and His calling is hope, His calling is away from Hell and towards Heaven and an eternity of joy with our God; pretty good deal!
Many people miss the point that we are accountable to God our Creator. There is coming a judgment. But just like ignoring the train that’s coming your way, the fact that you miss the point of an approaching train won’t make a whole lot of difference if you’re sitting on the track. This life is a one-time event that culminates in the judgment. Scripture tells us that Jesus gave Himself as a sacrifice for our sins, but those who refuse to be saved by the cross will be condemned by our own words of refusal. But our calling, and the certain hope of it – is that kneeling at the cross, acknowledging Jesus as King and Lord removes judgment from our lives, and makes us children-in-waiting towards the day of our King’s returning. The writer to the Hebrews expressed it this way:
…he has appeared once for all at the end of the age to remove sin by the sacrifice of himself. 27And just as it is appointed for mortals to die once, and after that the judgment, 28so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin, but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him. Hebrews 9:26b - 28 NRSVA
God calls us to have spiritual eyes wide-open to see our hope that is certain. Secondly, we see with wide-open spiritual eyes:
OUR INHERITANCE OF RICHES
Thanksgiving has its own set of symbols -- turkeys, pilgrims, pumpkins and Indian corn. But the symbol that best expresses the abundance that Thanksgiving celebrates is the cornucopia. The cornucopia is an ancient symbol used in both Greek and Roman mythology….the Roman goddess of plenty, named "Copia," always wore or carried a horn filled with fruits and drinks. The magical horn of plenty was always full; its abundance could never be exhausted.
That should always remind us of God’s bountiful blessings. Here is how we are to see with the eyes of the heart – a wisdom that reveals our inheritance of riches. As children of the King we stand to inherit – and even now enjoy – a trove of riches. But we also stand with an assortment of responsibility in the midst of our inheritance. [2]
We can be responsible or we can be the absurd picture of a King’s child, a prince standing near the throne playing with a wooden sword, dressed in a cardboard suit of armor and paper helmet. We imagine ourselves slaying dragons and parading around in great power – all this potentially true, but woefully unrealized. We are a parody of what could be; a caricature of that for which God created, called and desires to be in us. We can become the foolish emperor wearing invisible clothes.
When we foolishly think about what we can get out of living this Christian life we have failed to look at King Jesus, to fall before Him, worship Him; instead we have looked upon ourselves, set ourselves on the throne. We do what Romans (1:25) declares – exchanging worship of the Creator, our true mission in life, for worshipping the creation (ourselves).
But, if we would just do that for which we have been created – obediently give our praise, adoration and glory to God – we would see the emptiness of living for self, and begin to experience the glory for which we are created. But we cannot see without light, without the eyes of our hearts enlightened; men love darkness rather than light. But that should not be so for those who follow Jesus the king.
Consider what He told us to do:
John 12:36 (NRSVA) 36While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become children of light.”
Ephesians 5:8 (NRSVA) 8For once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light—
This Thanksgiving we have plenty; we are rich beyond comparison. Benevolent kings share generously with the residents of their kingdom, but the family of the King inherits everything. We must live as heirs to the throne, learning to do the works of light…sharing what the King owns with those who are still walking around in darkness!
How is this done? Allow the eyes of your heart to be opened with spiritual wisdom and revelation; invite God to have complete control of your life through His Holy Spirit, so you can see…
THE GREATNESS OF HIS POWER
In Paul’s letter to the Philippian church we find the source of all the power needed to live as children of light – to live as those who have inherited the calling of our hope:
9Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, 10so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Philippians 2:9 - 11 (NRSVA)
It is this power, to which everything in the universe will one day bow, which God used to raise Jesus from the dead. It is this same power which God invested in Jesus when He ascended to the throne.
Our main text this morning in Ephesians tells us that this power, which is possessed by our elder brother Jesus, is so superior, it is sufficient for the church to do anything God has called us to do. According to a modern paraphrase, Jesus is…
21in charge of running the universe, everything from galaxies to governments, no name and no power exempt from his rule. And not just for the time being, but forever. 22He is in charge of it all, has the final word on everything.
At the center of all this, Christ rules the church. 23The church, you see, is not peripheral to the world; the world is peripheral to the church. The church is Christ’s body, in which he speaks and acts, by which he fills everything with his presence. [3]
The church is not on the outside, looking-in on what the world dictates; the church is the center of God’s heart and plans. It is through the church God acts and moves. The world is actually on the outside. Jesus said one day the tables will be turned…everything will be upside down. Right now the world thinks it is in charge; but the world is blind!
This is how Christ’s kingdom and king-ship operates.
It is not in Christians banding together to form a political voting bloc…
It is not in forming new denominations centered-around a new pet theory of theology…
It is not in rethinking and reformatting programs and styles of worship…
Rather it is Christ in the heart of a man moving him to act with compassion and thanksgiving….living in the light.
It is when a person responds with childlike faith to the hope of our calling…salvation in no other name than Jesus.
It is when the eyes of our heart are flooded with the light of spiritual wisdom and understanding to see the riches we enjoy in Christ Jesus!
It is when God shines the light of Jesus’ great power in our hearts that we become accessible to Him, and that power becomes accessible to the church…
…and hospitals are built
…and humans are treated as God’s creation
…and hungry mouths are filled
…and babies are allowed to be born
…and the elderly are seen as valuable resources of wisdom
…and the kingdom comes on earth, even as it is in Heaven.
This is the reign of Christ in the hearts of men; this is the elevating of the throne of King Jesus.
Can I take part in such a lofty thing? Can I be part of that kind of living. Certainly…it is a prayer that seals the deal…but only a prayer directly from your heart to God’s ears; will you pray it this morning?
‘ I am no longer my own, but yours.
Put me to what you will, place me where you will.
Put me to doing, put me to suffering….
Let me be full, let me be empty.
I freely and willingly yield all things to your
pleasure and disposal.’ [4]
This will open the eyes of your heart with wisdom and revelation!
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ENDNOTES
1- Joel Gregory, Getting Around to God, "The Unlikely Thanker," Preaching Today, Tape No. 110.
2- Living Beneath Our Means, HomileticsOnline.com, 11/21/93
3- Ephesians 1: 21-23 The Message New Testament
4- The Methodist Covenant Service
