Just for fun, let’s start with a trick question today. How many letters to the Ephesians are there in the New Testament? Well, I said it was a trick question. There are at least two. There is one that we’ll be looking at this morning and there is one in Revelation 2.
You see, Ephesus was an important port in Asia Minor. It had the right of “first landing.” It was the first stop on the imperial postal route, the place where new governors were announced and made their first official visit and the place where new laws were first imposed. If you look at the locations of the seven churches in Revelation, you’ll note that the “postal route” forms sort of an oval so that one starts in Ephesus and returns to Ephesus.
And, since I don’t think it’s fair to simply pull passages out of context and preach to you about them, I think we should consider a couple of easy ways to see what happens in Ephesians at a glance. Most scholars make a simple division. The first three chapters talk about theological concerns and the last three chapters deal with ethical concerns, while both sections end with doxologies. I like the late Watchman Nee’s approach to the book: Sit, Walk, Stand. We sit because we are enthroned with our Lord; we walk worthy of what God has shown us in Jesus; and we stand against the enemies of God.
As for the immediate context, I like the way everything in verses 3-14 seem to sandwich the idea of redemption. I like the way that the passage begins with the idea of believers having every spiritual blessing (v. 3) and closes with the idea that we yet have an inheritance (vv. 13-14). Isn’t it cool that we get to eat our cake by experiencing God’s spiritual gifts of love, joy, and peace (among others) and still have the hope of MORE in the future. There is an inner connection between the early reference to being “called” (vv. 4-5) and the later reference to being predestined to God’s purpose (vv. 11-12). This is more like attending a game show where we’d like to compete and being called to “come on down” or being nominated for an award and anxiously awaiting our name to be announced as the “winner.” I like the reference to God’s intention for us at the end of verse 5 and the idea of the mystery of His will in verse 9. Then, notice what the central point is. We are redeemed—purchased by God, set free by God (vv. 7-8), and all the rest of it fits together as to why we were redeemed.
It helps to know all of this because it helps us to know our purpose in order to prepare to learn how to pray for each other. In fact, when Paul says in verse 15 that he’s praying this for the same reason, he’s building upon all that’s happened from verses 3-14. He is living his calling, God’s purpose, the mystery of his life on the basis of his redemption, his dependence upon Jesus Christ as Savior. So, the first thing we learn in our text (v. 15) is that Paul’s prayer—our primary focus today—is rooted in relationship. And any prayer we mouth that doesn’t desire a growing and healthy relationship with God and with God’s people is doomed to failure. Because Paul has heard that the Ephesians are living in faithfulness to God and because he recognizes that they love each other, he finds himself constantly in a state of gratitude for them. Have you ever thought about the fact that it’s nearly impossible to hold a grudge against someone while you’re being thankful concerning him or her? Do you want to have marvelous fellowship in the church? Constantly thank God for each other. In fact, there have been some times when I had something against a fellow pastor or a deacon and decided to thank God for each of them, in spite of the fact that I didn’t feel like it, and that helped me get over it. In fact, this idea of “remembering” in verse 16 [not obvious in every modern translation] has a tremendous background in the Old Testament and, presumably, in Jewish worship during New Testament times. To “remember” was to formally recount the events of the past in order to claim the present and look forward expectantly to the future.
So let’s look at the specific words of Paul’s prayer. “In order that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of Glory, give you the Spirit of wisdom and the unveiling of the experiential knowledge of Him.” [my translation] Hmm! Just as we saw in the sermon of a few weeks ago, the essential answer to prayer is the Holy Spirit—the Spirit Who gives “wisdom,” practical knowledge or applied knowledge, useful knowledge for the service of God. The Holy Spirit also gives us “revelation.” Revelation helps us decode the essential, experiential knowledge of God Himself.
The word often translated “revelation” or as I translated it, “unveiling,” could also be understood as “decoding.” Ever heard of those Ovaltine Decoder Rings in the ‘40s? Ovaltine drink advertisements used to have a coded message on them (as did some of the Ovaltine radio ads you might hear when you listen to tapes or CDs of old radio programs). If you twisted the top of the ring to the symbol in the ad, you’d get a letter or number that was part of the message. Of course, those messages were designed to enhance the ad—much like the scene in the Christmas movie when Ralph finally gets his Little Orphan Annie decoder ring and deciphers the secret message only to discover that it said, “Drink more Ovaltine.”
God has given us the gift of the Holy Spirit to help us decode what God wants from us. But it isn’t a disappointment. The Holy Spirit not only helps us to know God’s will, but to know how to accomplish God’s will and empowers us to do it. But where other religions promised to let a few chosen people in on the special mysteries of their knowledge, promising the ancient equivalent of today’s Scientology with its promise of amazing powers for those few special ones who are dedicated enough and donate enough to reach the upper echelons of their religion, God has revealed Himself to us in order to share the mystery of His love, His presence, and His purpose with EVERYONE.
Just to underscore that last point, let me share something about the word translated “knowledge” in verse 17. You’ll notice that I translated it as experiential knowledge. It isn’t merely “head knowledge.” It isn’t knowledge of facts or even knowledge of secrets. The Greeks would have used the word “gnosis” to describe that. The word used here is “epignosis” which adds a preposition to express a deeper, more emphatic knowledge. In short, I believe Paul prayed for the believers at Ephesus to be so aware of and open to God’s presence that they would apply knowledge of God to their lives (wisdom) and become aware (revelation) in a personal way (experiential knowledge) of Who God is and what God wants.
I’m going to put a short rebus up here, just to wake some of you up. Can you decipher that? Without a decoder ring? It’s the next part of Paul’s prayer. Here, I have it reading “May the eyes of u+oar heart bee inn+light+inn+d” I would actually translate verse 18 and the first part of 19 as, “Illuminating the eyes of your heart such that you are aware what the hope of your calling is, what the fullness of the glory of His inheritance among the saints, (19) and what is the over and abounding greatness of His power in regard to those of us who believe, …” But we’ll get back to that later.
And since we’ve already talked about decoder rings in this sermon, why not mention X-ray glasses? Did you ever see those comic book ads for X-ray glasses? Did you ever know anyone who thought they would work? We all know that they were a “con,” but we also know that most of us recognize that sight gives us power. The old cliché goes, “Seeing is believing.” We also say, “You’ve got to see it to believe it.” Well, the Bible tells us that “We walk by faith, not by sight.” It isn’t enough to see what everyone else sees. We have to see things through God’s eyes.
So, the illumination of the eyes leads to our lifestyle. Thus, we especially need the eyes of our heart. But as I’ve reminded you before, the Bible doesn’t necessarily mean by heart what you think it does. The heart isn’t the seat of the emotions; it is the seat of the will, the ambition, and the determination. It’s where we hook in our will to God’s glory. The root of glory in the Old Testament has the idea of weight, significance, wealth, and power. The New Testament has the idea of glory as light and power. Paul wants believers to know that they have been invited to participate in the royal court of heaven where their thoughts and deeds can have eternal significance.
In the ancient world, whether you were an Old Testament Jew, a member of the separatists at Qumran, a student of Plato in his academy, a novice in a Gnostic mystery cult, or a New Testament believer, you understood that have your eyes enlightened meant to see your way of living more clearly. For example, check out Psalm 19:8 (NIV): “The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes.” Plato described the light by which one lived rather negatively in Book VII (Paragraph 519) of “The Republic.”
Did you never observe the narrow intelligence flashing from the keen eye of a
clever rogue—how eager he is, how clearly his paltry soul sees the way to his end;
he is the reverse of blind, but his keen eye-sight is forced into the service of evil,
and he is mischievous in proportion to his cleverness.
Of course, we understand very vividly that light affects the way we see the rest of the world. I took a poor digital photo about a month ago when we visited Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. It’s so dark that you can’t really see any of the beautiful tile patterns and detail in the ceiling of the room. It was a cloudy day and the shadows simply masked the bulk of the pattern. Then, I took my computer and placed a sunburst coming through the window. Then, I could see more immediately around the window, but still couldn’t see the entire picture.
Next, I inserted a digital light source up on the ceiling. You could see even more of the ceiling, but certain portions of the ceiling were still clearer than others. I used another trick to mimic traditional incandescent lights. Then, I had better definition of the detail, but everything looked red.
To get a realistic view, I had to force the computer to illuminate the entire area with consistent, natural light. Then, you could see everything clear and have a better grasp of the detail. And because God is the only one who can see the whole picture of history as well as our individual lives, we need God to illuminate the entire picture of our circumstances.
Why do we need this illumination, the eyes of our will, if you please? It is because the world, our limited life spans, our limited resources, our limited brain power, and more are rather like Paul’s illustration of looking into a poor mirror. We’re looking into a glass darkly. We become confused by the shadows and optical illusions of circumstances. We think things are hopeless. We think we’ve reached the end of the road. We think that what we do, think, or say doesn’t matter. We think we can’t make a difference.
We simply cannot trust the senses to tell us the whole story. We need God who is above and beyond to show us what we should, can and will do in order to gain victories over addictions, doubts, failures, fears, habits, and ideas that could otherwise defeat us. Victory comes when we actually see things as God sees them. We have to become aware that God hasn’t DRAFTED us involuntarily into His service. God has granted us an appointment, an ambassadorship even greater than if President Obama appointed us to the Court of St. James. The hope of our calling is that we are ambassadors for Christ.
We need to become aware that our inheritance, as saints, is the glory of God as it plays out in the fruits of the Spirit in our lives and offers promise for the future. I recently read where a believer referred to dying as “cashing out” because he knew he was going to be with the Lord. I believe we are going to be with the Lord, but I don’t think of it as cashing out. I’m enjoying my inheritance already. And it isn’t like these bumper stickers that say “We’re spending our children’s inheritance.” The more of the fruits of the Spirit I enjoy, the more I believe I’ll enjoy heaven. But the point is that we can’t enjoy our inheritance without the participation and power of the Holy Spirit.
We need something that goes beyond our limitations, limitations of vision, strength, purpose, and determination. We need God’s surpassing, energizing power. We need to learn to operate out of His strength. After all, check out the “kicker” of verse 19. “…according to the energizing of the strength of His might.”
I want to give you a silly illustration of one way this can work. When I was a teenager and just starting to enjoy coffee, I liked to take a cup of coffee with me wherever I went. Of course, those of you who’ve seen me play softball are well aware that I have trouble walking and talking at the same time. So, it’s no wonder that I was bad at spilling coffee. My Dad had a trick for drinking coffee from an open cup while he was driving or riding in a car without spilling it. When I asked him how he did it, this is what he explained to me. He told me to hold the cup out where I couldn’t see it. He told me to quit looking at it and to let my arm relax. He said that the brain has a built-in gyroscope that would correct for the movement of the car or, when I’m walking (if I’m not rushing) and would constantly adjust the position of the cup to keep from spilling.
For me, his secret works better than those plastic tops to “to go” cups that scald the tip of my tongue and make the coffee taste bad and it works better than all the times I’ve spilled with supposed “spill-proof” cups. It doesn’t work quite as well with all the potholes in Chicago, but that’s a different issue. Anyway, in order for this to work, I have to trust the inner workings of my brain and body connection.
In many ways, this is what happens when we let God’s Power flow through us. We trust the Holy Spirit to illuminate the direction we’re going and the objectives we need to reach. We trust the Holy Spirit to both prepare us and empower us for living life according to God’s purposes. We need to learn to depend upon God instead of ourselves.
Now, let’s get back to the text with verses 20 to the end. “Which He energized in Christ when He raised Him from the dead, and seated Him on His right hand in the heavenly dimension [lit. “heavens”], (21) above every rule and authority and power and dominion [or “lordship”] and every name that is named, not only in this era, but also in the succeeding [or “better one”], (22) and everything under His feet and He gave Him as the head of all the church, (23) which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills everything with everything.”
We could almost paraphrase this as, when we follow God’s guidance, God works with power as appropriate as when Jesus was energized by the Father after His death and now is intimately involved in all of the big decisions above every boss and politician and military might and possibly loyalty, in fact, every important person in this era and in eternity, but God gave Him all authority and He uses it to direct His church to do His will as though it was His own body.
The word usually translated as dominion has the same root as the Greek word for “lord.” It means anything that demands our loyalty or is in charge of our lives. We can’t have anything that demands our loyalty more than Jesus. But we shouldn’t worry about this because Jesus is in charge of everything, everything is subject to Him. Who would you rather serve, someone who has influence and fame now but is a “lame duck” with their power coming to the end or someone who will wield influence for your benefit forever?
So, how can we lose? This is a powerful prayer to use on each other’s behalf. So, now, I’d like you to open your Bibles to Ephesians 1 and starting with verse 15, pray with me. “Dear Father, I want to vouch for my brothers and sisters at Living Grace Community Church, that they love You and that they love each other. I’m thankful for their giving spirit, their faithfulness, and their love for me, but I also want to petition you for their future. Lord of all and Father of all prestige, power, and authority, please give them an awareness of Your Holy Spirit in their lives so that they can apply the knowledge of You to their everyday lives and You would reveal Yourself so that they can experience You even more completely. Lord, please illuminate the vision that directs their ambitions and goals so that they know why You called them and what You have in store for them both now and forever. And Lord, please help them to know how superior Your power is over any earthly competition and how You use it for our benefit. Lord, please teach them to live in so much agreement with Your will that the same kind of power You used in the resurrection can flow through Your church. And I pray this according to that name beyond any name that is named, now and forever, my Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.” There is a prayer we can pray for each other. It is a powerful prayer. It is inspired by the Holy Spirit. Even in paraphrase, it reminds us that God has a great plan for us.
