EPHESIANS # 5
We are exploring the grand themes of Paul’s letter to the Church in Ephesus. As you know, I love this letter! The heart of our hope is captured in the first 3 chapters and the practical implications of that hope are explored in the last 3 chapters.
Paul opens by pouring out praise to God for the favor that He pours out on us in keeping with His plan to call us to know, love, and serve Him.
He continues by praying for us to grasp God’s amazing power that creates living faith in us. He steps back to remind us that our natural state was wretched, that we were ‘objects of wrath,’ but that God stepped in to save us, remake us, and prepare us to live in His will.
At the end of chapter 2, Paul teaches us that there are no more ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ in God’s family. We are ‘built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by His Spirit.’ Our amazing destiny is to make the invisible God visible in the world!
Would you pause to really think about such a GRAND purpose?
In the middle of all our little pursuits, our obsessions with Facebook, our love for celebrities,
our diversions with food .... God says, “if you really understand Me, if you really live in
faith, you exist to be part of my plan to change the universe!”
This is amplified in chapter 3, today’s text.
Do you like a mystery? When we watch ‘Elementary’ - the new Sherlock Holmes - I try to guess the identity of the bad guy as the program progresses. I usually do better when we watch an episode of ‘Bones.’
In our text passage from Ephesians, Paul talks about the mystery that God revealed to him - a mystery of which we Christians are a part.
TEXT - Ephesians 3
READ 3:1-13
Paul opens this part of his letter by reminding the readers that he is currently imprisoned because of his work to bring God’s message to ‘Gentiles,’ a broad word that includes all pagans or godless peoples. For centuries prior to Christ, the descendants of Abraham, who lived in faithful obedience to the Law, were the ‘people of God.’ But, all that changed with the coming of Jesus.
Now that the Church has gone into every part of the world the idea of a select race being God’s people may strike us as strange. But it was the way things worked in the B.C. world in the Bible.
Paul writes that God’s plan was to bring the Church into existence, something that had never before existed, that no one had even conceived. The Church, His Body on earth, His people - exists not in some specific kind of person, not in a nationality, or a race - it exists because of Christ Jesus. The Church cuts across all human boundaries!
This is a radical idea, a mystery, a secret God chose only to bring out into the open first in Christ Jesus, then through the apostles, and then through Paul.
We usually think of a mystery as a puzzle, a riddle to be solved by careful analysis of the clues. Paul uses the word ‘mystery’ in a different way. The word he uses means: “something which is secret, known only to a select few; something beyond natural knowledge.”
He uses the same word in the letter to the Colossians, as well as verse 3 of our text: “the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the saints.” - Colossians 1:26 (NIV)
What is this secret? We don’t have to guess because Paul lets us in on what God had revealed to him.
"This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus." (Ephesians 3:6, NIV)
"And this is God’s plan: Both Gentiles and Jews who believe the Good News share equally in the riches inherited by God’s children. Both are part of the same body, and both enjoy the promise of blessings because they belong to Christ Jesus." (Ephesians 3:6, NLT)
This may not mean much to us because we have such a low view of the Church. For many the Church is like a club. It’s a place to form friendships, to provide a social center for our kids and teens, to do some helpful things for those who are needy. All those things may be true, but they are not the reason that Christ called His Church into existence.
Paul was not giving his life in missionary work to create a new social club. He certainly was not willing to sit in prison so nice people could get together on Sunday mornings with other nice people.
The Church has a spiritual purpose that is grand, that extends beyond this time and even beyond the visible creation! In the last part of Chapter 2 and here in Chapter 3 we learn there are two great purposes for which God created the Church.
A. The Church is a place where love, inspired by God and modeled after Christ’s love for us, destroys the natural barriers that divide humanity along tribal, national, and racial boundaries.
Re- read 2: 19-21
B. The Church is the place where God will display His superior wisdom to the whole of the universe, including spirit beings that exist outside of our present view!
Re-read 3:10
Let me be perfectly honest ... the Church I know can barely keep it’s own act together, never mind unite people of all kinds of diversity with a mission to change the world. We spend a lot of our time just trying to survive, and don’t look very wise or powerful, do we?
So, what is the key to stepping into this destiny?
That occupies the 2nd half of the text - READ 3: 14-21
We must have a real experience of Jesus, not a religion, not a social connection. What we need cannot be found at the university, uncovered in the library, or even found through discipline or study. We need something only God can give. So, Paul says, “I kneel before the Father.”
I do not believe in magical thinking for a moment! I think it is a tragic mistake to expect that every issue we have, every mistaken idea, every hurt that skews our understanding.... will be swept away in a moment of spiritual ecstasy. But, at the very same time, I know that we can and we must be born again, touched by the Spirit, changed by a baptism of His life!
Many of us are too impatient for this process to come to a complete ending.
We spend 5 minutes in distracted prayer, 2 or 3 minutes in meditation on the Scripture ... and rush off thinking that all is well with God. In truth, His processes are revealed in the world He created.
Growth to maturity is never quick!
Paul prays three things, that are connected one to the other, for us. These are spiritual experiences, processes of growth, that will lead us to maturity and effectiveness.
A. He prays that God will pour His divine power into us making us alive in the inner person.
The Christian life is an inside out experience! If you have been told you can find Christ by following rules, adopting a certain kind of lifestyle, or doing what some religious leader does - you have been misled. The inner person - the spiritual part of us - must be made alive to God.
Ever worked hard in the heat of the day and found yourself parched, wilting, weak? Then, you pause in the shade and pick up a glass of cool water, as you sip it slowly, you can feel it coursing through your body, and in a matter of moments you feel revived. Paul prays that God, the Holy Spirit, will come to us like that. As we drink of His Presence, we sense a new power, a kind of vitality flowing into us.
The mystery of the Church is sustained by our sharing in the Spirit. "Some of us are Jews, and others are Gentiles. Some of us are slaves, and others are free. But God’s Spirit baptized each of us and made us part of the body of Christ. Now we each drink from that same Spirit. " (1 Corinthians 12:13, CEV)
B. He prays that Christ will dwell in our hearts through faith.
Does Christ live in you? The question is not do you know the Jesus of history, it about the ‘right now’ experience of His Presence.
Jesus spoke of the kind relationship we have with Him in John 15. “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. “I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing." (John 15:1-5, NIV)
It is a tragic thing that someone will say, “Yes, I accepted Christ 20 years ago at a PromiseKeepers rally,” Or, “I prayed to receive Christ with my mother when I was a child,” and somehow believe that it was a once and done experience. Of course, there is a moment of conversion, but the true power to live the Christian life as Paul has described is found when we know Christ in us today, when we are open to His presence in the here and now. It is a DAILY experience.
C. He prays that we will be rooted and grounded in love.
Trees grow deep roots to draw water from the soil.
Deep foundations support strong, stable buildings.
Love is what roots us, it is the foundation that supports our Christian life.
"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love." (1 Corinthians 13, NIV)
No love - no Christ.
Know love - know Christ.
ill.- On Friday morning during my prayers, my cell phone signaled a text message. I saw my son, Sean, was writing to me. He was making French Toast for his little girl’s birthday. Selah is 3. And, he was feeling so much love for his baby that he was crying! I wrote back, “Ah, now you’re a father. I love you much the same way, so deeply it hurts sometime.” What security comes from that interchange of human love.
Jesus says that our human parental love cannot hold a candle to the love of our Heavenly Father! Love is powerful. That is why the Devil invests extraordinary amounts of effort to make us feel isolated and alone, to keep us focused on our sins and failures. But, when we catch a glimpse of the love of God, we grow steady, we become as immoveable as a tree with deep roots!
D. He prays that we will know the kind of love that defies mere human understanding.
AND ... then
When we are empowered by the Spirit, drinking deeply of His refreshment -
When we open our hearts and ask Jesus to move in and live with us everyday -
When love becomes more than a word, but a way of life,
When it is revealed in Christ in all it’s fullness ....
We will be ‘filled to overflowing with God’s nature!’
The passage closes in much the same way it opened - by returning our focus to the One who is the active agent in all this. READ v. 20
"For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do." (Ephesians 2:10, NIV)
"And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit." (Ephesians 2:22, NIV)
To what purpose? READ v. 21
Yes, then we become that Church that God purposed in His wisdom...
A. The Church is a place where love, inspired by God and modeled after Christ’s love for us, destroys the natural barriers that divide humanity along tribal, national, and racial boundaries.
Re- read 2: 19-21
B. The Church is the place where God will display His superior wisdom to the whole of the universe, including spirit beings that exist outside of our present view!
Re-read 3:10
amen
