Remain standing for the reading of God's Word and I'm going to
add one verse because it completes the prayer of the
things that he is petitioning God for.
That last verse will be given a whole sermon next week because
it's it's a tremendous sermon. Ephesians 115 to 18 For this
reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and
your love toward all the Saints, I do not cease to give thanks
for you. Remembering you in my prayers,
praying that God, the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of
glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and of revelation in
the knowledge of Him, having eyes, the eyes of your heart
enlightened, so that you may know what is the hope to which
He has called you, and what are the riches of the His glorious
inheritance in the Saints, and what is the surpassing greatness
of His power toward us who believe.
These are in accordance with the working of the strength of His
might. Thanks.
Though this is the word of the Lord, you may be seated.
The largest newspaper publisher possibly ever in the United
States, he owned over 28 newspapers from the West Coast
to the East Coast. The owner was named William
Randolph Hearst. William Hearst became famous for
several things. One of them was the fact that he
built this amazing Hearst Castle, possibly some of you
visited in Northern California, San Simeon, which even after all
of these years, thousands of people come to see it every
year. But he also probably, and more
so for us as the church did something that he didn't realize
at the time would do what it did.
And that is, there was a young evangelist preaching in Los
Angeles, and somehow another Hearst who had never met him
told all of his newspapers across the country.
I want you to puff Billy Graham. I want you to promote him.
And this launched Billy Graham's ministry onto a national scene
and which never stopped. But Hearst is also known because
he was an amazing collector of antiquities, and he had
thousands of them that he had purchased all over the world and
stored in multiple warehouses. One day he was reading a story,
actually a story that had a picture in it, an old ancient
picture of a magnificent vase that was known.
It was famous and Hearst decided I have to have that for my
collection. So he sent his agents out around
the world to search and they searched and searched.
They went to museums, they went to antiquities collectors.
They went all over the world looking and looking and looking.
And after months they came back and said we have good news.
We have found it. But it was an unexpected answer
because they said after going through all of our inventories,
we have discovered that it is in one of your warehouses,
uncrated. He was willing to spend any
money to get that vase, but he already had it.
And in this passage today, what we see is Paul telling us that
there is something that you have that you don't even truly
recognize what you have. And so I want you to understand
deeply what is yours. After explaining in the 1st 14
verses this amazing set of truth truths that are not found any
other place in the Scripture, they were truths that were truly
had been revealed to Paul and him alone, at least the fullness
of their explanation. And that's why we have taken our
time to go through this amazing revelation that God wanted us to
have and gave to Paul to give to us.
And so when he states at the beginning of our Scripture here,
for this reason, this is what is pumping his heart because of
these magnificent truths that are here.
And he's so desirous of us understanding what we have, what
we already possess. So as he's speaking to his
Ephesian friends and therefore to us, I want you to understand
how great your spiritual wealth is that you have gained from the
Lord Jesus Christ. He said.
I'm so pleased. I'm so thankful for your love
and for your faith. And yet there's something
better, something even more that he wants them to know.
He's eager for them to become fully, fully mature in Christ.
And so he prays. He prays not for something new,
not for something different or something else, but for
something deeper, A deeper understanding and even
usefulness of what they already have.
Praise for four things, which is why I read verse 19.
There are 4 petitions that he has here.
A deeper knowledge of God, a clearer view of the hope of
their calling, a grander view of the riches that they have in
Christ, and then the exceeding greatness of God's power for
them. We'll examine these first. 3
today he opens his prayer amazingly petitioning the
Trinity itself. He says the God of our Lord
Jesus Christ and the Father of glory to give them by the Holy
Spirit what they needed most. First, they needed to know God
so much more deeply and by giving them a spirit from the
Holy Spirit, a wisdom that reveals the wonderful personal
God who has made Himself known to us through what Christ has
done for us. This is the wisdom of God that
transforms our actions, our thoughts, our desires, so that
we effectively use this knowledge that is found in His
Word and use it for His glory because we know we are serving a
wonderfully personally intimate God that's with us at every
moment. Paul wrote to the Corinthians
and he said something similar. He said, now we have received
not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that
we might know, experientially know the things freely given to
us by God, taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts
with spiritual words, which is what you experience often when
you read the scripture one day, come back a couple days later
and read the same scripture and say, wow, I didn't see that.
Why? Because the Holy Spirit is
giving you thoughts in this infinite Word that is ours.
Paul wants them to grow and deepen what has been revealed.
To know God deeply and personally is what salvation is
for. It's not just to save us from
our sins. No, it's to deepen our walk and
love and joy of a personal God every single moment of our
lives. This is when you know it's
becoming yours, when God becomes real to you that you experience
it. Not just because you know what
we're supposed to believe, but you know this one we believe in.
I've learned in my ministry, rather than asking someone when
they became a Christian, instead to ask this question, when did
God become real to you? When did prayer become a joyful
continuous conversation with a real person that you know is
listening with a caring heart? So much so that you almost don't
want to stop praying because He's there.
And every morning when you walk up, wake up, you look out the
beautiful sky, sunlight, the beauty around us all gifts of
God. The very breath you're breathing
is a gift of God. Yesterday one of our dear
friends left this earth is not breathing here today, she's
breathing heavenly air. We do not know.
Every day is a gift and every day is an adventure because of
the person of Christ. When Jesus said he meant this, I
stand at the door of your heart and and knock.
If anyone opens the door, I will come in to their heart and I
will dine our fellowship with them.
He wants a deep personal relationship to lead us in that.
In fact, he told his disciples on his last night on earth in
John when he said this, he said if you love me, you will obey my
commands, and if you obey my commands, my Father will love
you and listen to this phrase, and we will come and make our
home in you. What a wonderful, deep
relationship he desires to have with us, he says, and to know
God increasingly his way as we grow in this wonderful,
wonderful knowledge of this personal God, really what we
call our sanctification. It's when we set ourselves and
our own desires to the side to consider His desires first.
Proverbs 3, many of you know it puts it this way so well.
Lean not on your own understanding, but in all of
your ways. Acknowledge Him and He will
guide your path. You see, this is what Paul
yearns for his friends. He desires for them to know this
good and wise God and the wisdom that he actually places within
us for a living. The second thing Paul prays for,
and again, he actually uses the word.
And so I pray also, I pray that this real person knowledge in
our heart will go even further. He wants us to make sure that we
move the knowledge of God into the passion of our living, you
might say from the mind to the soul, although actually that's
not separated, but it is unique because the way we think and
appreciate, but the way we love in response to what we know is
what He's seeking for with us. He calls this the eyes of heart,
our heart, which is powerful spiritual insight.
This is where deep down, we know something is true.
I had a privilege too many years ago to remember when I was at
the University of Texas, I'll have to say.
So glad they won yesterday. But any rate, I had the
privilege of speaking in a fraternity house, and we had an
invitation from one of the members.
And so they had a dinner and then anybody who wanted to come
and hear what we had to say, and they knew we were going to talk
about spiritual things to come into the living room.
And a small group came. Many didn't, as a matter of
fact, some went into the kitchen and started making all kinds of
noise while we were out there. But we gave the gospel and
afterwards just greeting a few of them.
One of them said, could I talk with you tomorrow?
And I said, certainly, let's have coffee down the street.
So we sit down and I met Henry. And Henry I said, what did you
think about last night? And he made the statement, I've
never forgotten. He said, Pete, I knew what you
were saying was true. How did he know that?
Because the Spirit of God opened his eyes.
He saw the truth and he responded to the truth.
I kept up with him for a while. I don't know where Henry is
today. He brought one of his other
friends who was the one making the most noise in the kitchen.
I think his name was Terry. And he too prayed to receive
Christ that day. It was wonderful.
Paul is saying that he that he wants us to see this
enlightening work of the Holy Spirit.
Psalm 19 says the commands of the Lord are radiant, giving
light to the eyes. There's things the Holy Spirit
can open to us that are yet ours to enjoy.
But enlightened to what he says. Three things.
A clearview of the hope of Our Calling, a grander view of our
riches in Christ, and in the exceeding greatness of God's
power for us and in us that will hold till next week.
Or what does the hope of His calling mean?
How can we know that hope? Paul is saying that our hearts
would be our asking, praying. Our hearts would be so flooded
with the light of the Spirit that we can see something of the
future that is truly our iron already belongs to us.
I want you to see it more clear, the glorious way of life that He
has for us. When Christ returns and we see
Him, we will be like him, holy and blameless.
But we're not only called to be something which is the most
important, but we're also called for something that is still as
we live here, here now, but even more so, how we will live when
we go to heaven. Have you ever wondered what will
we do in heaven when we'll be there for eternity?
What will we do? A wonderful man.
Some of you may have read Alice Willard, knowing that he was
dying of cancer, thought deeply about it and has made one of the
most wonderful statements I've ever read.
He put it this way. Your eternal destiny is not
cosmic retirement. It is to be a part of a
tremendously creative project under unimaginably splendid
leadership on an inconceivable scale, with ever increasing
cycles of fruitfulness and enjoyment.
That is the prophetic vision, which the eye has not seen in
the ear hasn't heard. Heaven is full of activities, so
much so that all of his inhabitants embrace and live
with gusto and no fatigue. What a wonderful world, Paul is
saying. I want you to look to the fact
of the reality of that. In fact, he told the Colossians,
keep seeking the things above. Set your heart and your mind on
the things above because they are real and they're important
and they're wonderful. This hope of the calling that we
have before it is the assurance that Jesus is returning for us
and bringing the heaven life with Him, a life of which
there's never again hate or fear or tears, only love and joy.
The third request and the last that we'll look at today is to
know the riches of the glory of His Saints, of the inheritance
in His Saints. Now this phrase the inheritance
in the Saints in the original language is not real clear which
is the subject of it. But it can be taken in two ways.
And actually I see them as two sides of the same coin.
It can refer to the inheritance that God has in us, which Christ
created. Christ even said, I come to give
those you've given to me back to you.
OK? We are the ones who become God's
righteous children or, and I believe as well.
I believe both that we can refer it refers to the inheritance
that we have in Christ. So either we're Christ's, God's
treasured possession, or we're treasured because of the
glorious things that are now in US for forever, permanently.
In either case, Paul prays that we would have eyes enlightened
to see it, to enjoy it. And in fact, reading the whole
letter of Ephesians, especially the first part, Paul most
frequently speaks of riches that we have in our inheritance, as
in verse 3, chapter 1. We've been blessed with every
spiritual blessing. Verse 7.
We've received redemption according to the riches of His
grace. Chapter 2, verse 7, in the ages
to come, that God might show the surpassing riches of His grace
in kindness toward us. Eugene Peterson, one of my
favorite authors, writes and states it this way.
We have been called to grasp the immensity of this glorious way
of life that He has for His followers, the utter
extravagance of his work in us. So what are these riches of
grace that have been given to us, These blessings by his
grace, Paul adds in verse 8, have been lavished on us,
lavished with the riches of grace.
Bible scholars have counted at least 33 of these blessings of
God that come to us at the moment of salvation, or more
that come by the Holy Spirit and our sanctification.
But 33 things that become true of you at the moment your eyes
were open to Christ. Why?
33 Don't know. They're just simply given to us.
Seven of them are mentioned in chapter 1 alone, and then more
in the next 5 chapters. But I provided you with a little
card that lists these 33 blessings, Riches of grace.
I grouped them arbitrarily into 6 categories.
You might say. They could obviously be listed
in many ways, but I did this to help us grasp a little bit more
how to look at them. Look at the headers.
We have been included into God's family 5 riches there.
We have been restored to our true intended creation, the 10
riches just being restored. We've been given wonderful
intimate relationship with God seven places where He's adopted
us, where He's made us His children, etcetera.
We are deeply valued and seen in the graces of appointment of
what He's made us to be, Heavenly holy priest.
For Him. We're given a place and a way of
significant service in His Kingdom, and we've been made
whole and complete forever. Let me just highlight a few for
you while we have some time. The first five are what scholars
call the divine Cree of God, decree of God.
This is the stunning realization that you and I of all people
have been included in God's family, and it was done before
the foundation of the earth. Notice #11 We are free of all
condemnation, No Fear of future judgement.
Jesus has covered everything forever. 14 You're not only
forgiven for all your sins, but you've been given a clean
conscience. The psalmist right?
Many times God says I will remember your sins no more.
I don't know about you, but I'm so often tempted to remember my
past sins. That's never of God, that's
always of faith. He's always lifting us forward.
16 to 21 The blessings of a permanent, life changing
relationship. 26 You have immediate access to our holy God
because of Christ's righteousness that clothes US.
27 to 30 we've been given this place of service and in 31 we've
been marked with a sign and a seal of the Holy Spirit, which
means the whole spiritual realm sees that you have the mark of
royalty. You have the mark of being royal
sons and daughters. Spend time meditating on these
riches and what they can mean for you.
Make it your prayer that God opens the eyes of your heart to
grow more deeply in love with Christ.
And as you do, your intimate knowledge of God will grow so
deep and your eyes will be open to see more and more of the
depth of these riches. Let me pray for us, our great
and wonderful Father. Please help us to remember what
you have already given us, that we can dig, dive more deeply,
climb more highly, extend more length and breadth into your
love. We have been loved with an
everlasting love, We have been given with a growing
understanding of everlasting grace, and we've been made heirs
of an everlasting Kingdom which has been made sure of the blood
of an everlasting covenant. Amen.