Good morning everyone. How are we doing this morning?
I'm kind of like, how tall am I? We haven't met.
My name is Mandy. I'm on staff here at the Garden
Church and I have the honor of sharing God's word this morning.
So I'm like kind of stoked. I feel like I don't know if
y'all ever do like public speaking or teaching.
I was like, sometimes I feel nervous, sometimes I feel
differently. I really love this passage and
I'm really excited to share it with all of you.
As Cal mentioned, we're currently in a sermon series on
Ephesians, which is a letter written by the Apostle Paul to
the church in the ancient city of Ephesus.
Does it ever, I don't know how familiar you are with the New
Testament, but does it ever strike you as interesting that
so much of the New Testament is letters?
Like, I mean, when was the last time that you wrote a letter,
like, sat down with pen and paper and like, painstakingly
spelled out your thoughts or like, bought a stamp?
Maybe a teacher made you do it at some point.
But these days, most of us don't write letters, especially not
letters that are long enough to divide into 6 chapters.
But I really love that the New Testament is filled with letters
as opposed to like, you know, you know, practical manuals or
maybe like philosophical treatises because letters are
personal. They imply a relationship
between people and kind of an intention to impact or connect
with the reader. And I love that this is part of
how God teaches us about himself and what it means to live a life
of faith. Like, he speaks through the
problems and the struggles and the challenges of real people,
the early church, like real people who are also trying to
follow Jesus. So today as we dive into the
letter to the Ephesians, I really want us to receive this
word, not as like Paul's doctoral dissertation about like
Christian spirituality, but as a conversation and, you know,
conversation with a seasoned Christian leader who fervently
wants us to know the love of God for us and to be completely
changed by it. So that's the invitation before
us today. So before we kind of get into
the nitty gritty, let me just take a moment to pray for us and
to ask God to meet us through his word.
Lord God, I thank you so much for again, just the way that you
reveal yourself to us. Lord, the way that you just
generously give us insight into who you are, insight into like
what it looks like to walk in faith inside into the challenges
that others have faced inside to questions that maybe are similar
to questions that we have. God, we just thank you for this
gift. And I want to pray this morning
especially that our hearts would be open to receive what you want
to say this morning, especially that our hearts would be open to
receive just the message of the depth of your love for us guide.
I pray that today that that word, that word that you love us
would not feel shallow or insufficient or too familiar or
small in some way. We pray that you would expand
our view of what it means to have a God who loves us.
We pray that we would discover through your word that that your
love speaks into the specific place that we find ourselves in
this morning, the challenges we face, the reason maybe we felt
stuck or empty or frustrated or overwhelmed or exhausted or
wherever we're coming in this morning.
We pray that your love would meet us there and that just as
as Paul prays so enthusiastically here, that that
we would be changed by your love.
Holy Spirit, speak to us, be present with us this morning.
We pray all those things in Jesus name, Amen.
Amen. So if you haven't been around
the last couple of weeks, we've been in Ephesians one and two,
and just kind of a quick overview of what we've learned
so far. In chapter 1, Paul kind of just
like talks at length about the amazing gifts that God has given
to his people. So he talks about how God has
blessed us with every spiritual blessing and because of his
love, he has adopted us into his family.
And through Jesus he has given us redemption, forgiveness, and
a beautiful inheritance, all of which we receive as a free gift
or as the Bible likes to call it, grace.
And then chapter 2, we learn that the Ephesians are Gentiles,
which means they're non Jews. And it appears that the Gentile
Christians are experiencing kind of some insecurity about whether
they were fully received by God if they had done enough to be
accepted into God's family. And Paul just unequivocally
reassures them that their faith is enough.
Even though they were once separated from God, walking and
sin and rebellion, they had now received God's mercy and
forgiveness. They've been brought near to
God, and not because of their own merit, but because of God's
extravagant kindness. So at the center of the letter,
there's kind of this sense of assurance, like Paul's
reassuring the Ephesian Christians that because of their
faith they've become God's people and received God's
promise. And that this is not a
hypothetical or like a conditional agreement.
This is an unshakable reality that is meant to shape how the
Ephesians see themselves. So this is kind of what all this
seemingly like dense theology in Ephesians is actually about.
It's an encouragement to these new Christians that they are a
part of God's family, and it's an invitation to let that truth
form the core of their identity. So now we read chapter 3, which
is kind of where Paul puts a cap on all of these sentiments by
just lifting up this beautiful prayer for the church.
And did you pick up on that, that these verses, that this
passage today is really just a prayer?
And it's an impassioned prayer like Bible commentators note
that Paul's even his opening is significant when he says, for
this reason, I bow my knees before the Father.
Because for Jews and for early Christians, the more common
practice was to pray standing up.
So kneeling was kind of a posture you would take before a
Lord or a king, or if you were kind of pleading for a request
to be granted. It implies kind of this depth of
feeling and urgent sense of need.
So what is this like emphatic, urgent prayer that Paul has?
He prays for three things on behalf of the church, power,
knowledge, and fullness. And these are like these kind of
three spokes. And at the center, the hub of
it, is God's love. So power, knowledge, and
fullness. And these are our kind of three
focal points today. And basically we're just asking
like, how do they relate to God's love?
And why is Paul insistent that the church desperately needs
them? So first, Paul prays for the
church to receive power. He asked that according to the
riches of God's glory, he may grant the church to be
strengthened with power through God's Holy Spirit and our inner
beings. I'm curious, how often have you
asked for power, prayed for power, like for yourself or for
your community? And power's kind of a tricky
word, isn't it? Like for some of us, it might
feel like a positive word. Maybe we felt kind of weak or
unsure of ourselves, and we would love to feel empowered by
God's Spirit. But power might also feel like a
dangerous word because of the many, many examples of abuse of
power that we see in our world. And history makes it clear that
humans struggle to hold power well.
Like those that seek power often seem like they like the feeling
of being big or even invincible, but to feel big, they need
someone else to feel small. But could that be the type of
power that Paul is talking about?
Or does he have something else in mind?
Well, when it comes to power, I think like an important question
is power for what? Like power used towards what
end? Because I, I think of power like
I think of fire. It's a fire could be used for
good. Like it could be used for warmth
and nourishment and creativity. There's some things that you
make where you need fire to create that.
Or it could be used for evil, for harm and destruction.
Like if I owned a flamethrower, I don't and I probably would
never buy one. But let's like say I was
bequeathed A flamethrower. Like I was given this greatly
prized ancestral flamethrower that I couldn't say no thank you
to. Like, I wouldn't just let any
random person off the street borrow it.
And if someone did want to borrow it, I would ask, well,
what do you want to use it for? Like, what's the vibe here?
And so we asked similarly, like, what to what end is Paul praying
for power like within the church?
Well, this is the purpose that he names, so that Christ may
dwell in your hearts through faith.
That's kind of like a surprise ending, right?
So Christ may dwell in our hearts through faith.
We apparently need supernatural empowerment from God so that our
faith would become stronger. And as our faith becomes
stronger, we'll experience more and more of the evidence of the
life of Christ within us. So what does real power, what
does godly power do in US? It enables Jesus to increasingly
become the foundation and the guiding force in our lives.
Because when the Bible refers to our hearts, that's not just
talking about emotions like I like, I feel the peace of Jesus,
where I feel loved towards Jesus.
It absolutely includes that. But it is also more than that.
The heart represents like the Control Center at the core of
our being, the seat of our thinking and our feeling and our
willing. And Paul is earnestly praying
that our faith in Jesus would basically reprogram, like our
internal GPS, that our desire to follow God and to know God would
determine the direction we're going in and even how we go
about getting there, like how fast we're going and whether we
take any pit stops along the way.
And then that GPS metaphor will break down.
But you get the picture. So do we understand why we might
need empowerment to live like this?
So that the presence of Christ in our hearts would shape what
we think and how we feel and what we pursue in life.
Like there's so many competing voices in the world that kind of
push back against this and try to persuade us to find our
identity in, in our accomplishments or how much
money we make or how we look or how popular we are in social
media or our ability to like influence the world around us.
But when these things take up residence in our hearts, meaning
they when they guide our actions and and how we view the world,
we become selfish like we have, you know, an image or a
reputation to maintain or a people to impress or accolades
to add to our resume. Our hearts and our worlds become
smaller and self focused. And there's no room for the kind
of expansive compassion and self sacrifice and goodness that
Christ wants to develop within us.
And throughout his letters, Paul describes kind of this like
spiritual tug of war that is taking place between our selfish
motives and what Christ wants to do in our hearts, their opposing
ends. And so I just want to say, if
you've ever found yourself exhausted just trying to follow
God and maybe do some good in this world, I just want to
affirm that from a spiritual perspective that makes complete
logical sense. Like there is a battle happening
and it takes strength to resist kind of the siren call of these
other sources of identity, like these false gods.
Really. So Paul prays that the church
would receive strength, that they would be empowered to
confidently and steadfastly rely on Jesus and to build our lives
on him. So that's the type of power that
Paul is praying for. And secondly, he prays for the
church to receive knowledge. Paul prays that you, being
rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with
all the Saints what is the breadth and length and height
and depth and to know the love of Christ that surpasses
knowledge, which is a beautiful passage.
But again, there's kind of like this element of surprise here,
right? Paul prays for knowledge.
Or, you know, we might say, like understanding comprehension, but
of a different kind than we might expect.
Now, if there's any place that knows about the desire for
knowledge, it's Boston. The city runs on the pursuit of
knowledge. But the end goal here is not to,
you know, earn another PhD or come up with the next
technological breakthrough or even win trivia night at your
local brewery. Like what Paul is yearning for
is that the church would have a greater knowledge of God's love.
Now, if we thought that power was a tricky word, love might
just outdo it. Like in modern America, we throw
the word love around like really freely, really frequently.
And I'm totally guilty of that. Like I've definitely on multiple
occasions said, I love Trader Joe's chili and lime flavored
rolled corn tortilla chips. They are my favorite snack.
So if I was to say to someone that I care about, you know, you
are so important in my life, you are like the human version of
Trader Joe's chili and lime flavored rolled corn tortilla
chips to me. I mean, if the person knows me,
they might take that as a compliment.
But this kind of reveals how unhelpful it is that we just
have one word for both of those things, right?
Because as much as I enjoy snacks, all I was really saying
is, you know, the snack is so delicious that the joy it gives
me surpasses all other snacks, which is high praise.
But that's not the same as telling a person like your
existence is meaningful to me. I'm invested in your happiness.
Your pain causes me pain, and your joy makes me rejoice too.
Like that's a very different definition of love.
And in Ephesians, Paul talks effusively about the love of
God, which is like our human love, and yet it's completely
unlike our love. And Paul uses the Greek word
agape when he talks about God's love here.
And an interesting thing that I learned about the word agape is
that it wasn't as commonly used before the New Testament was
written. Like it was a round, but it
wasn't like as distinctive a term as like Eros romantic love
or Ophelia brotherly love. So when Paul talks about agape,
he's actually not primarily relying on a definition of love
that like already existed in the Greco Roman world.
He is intentionally choosing a somewhat more neutral word and
he's defining it as the love of God as displayed throughout
Scripture and in the life and the sacrifice of Jesus.
So agape love is actually defined by God's very being in
his relationship with humanity. It's a outward focused love.
It encompasses selfless care and and steadfast investment and
willing generosity and a deep desire for others good.
It's a protective love and a self sacrificial love.
It's love is compelled to meet the true needs of the beloved.
So as you listen to this, you know, you might start thinking
about like the best examples of love you've seen in your own
life or maybe in stories like in books and movies or throughout
history. But even if we were to take like
the best possible example of human love, it would pale in
comparison. It would be minuscule and
colorless against the the vibrant, dazzling, deathless
love of God. Like it would be like trying to
compare like the size of the human heart to the size of the
human heart to like the size of the universe.
So let's just try to sketch this picture like really quickly.
So the human heart is about 4.7 inches long and 3.5 inches wide.
I looked it up. By comparison, the Earth is
around 197,000,000 square miles. And that's just the Earth.
So now we measure that against like say the Milky Way Galaxy,
which is about 100,000 light years in diameter, where each
light year is equal to 6 trillion miles.
So already we have so many zeros that I can't even keep track
anymore. And finally we have the
observable universe, the part we can measure, which according to
NASA is about 93 billion light years long.
So consider this framework and then remember, God created the
universe and everything in it. He sees and intimately knows
every inch, every minute aspect of what's going on in all of
creation. So if we take humanity's ability
to love and we try to expand it more and more in an effort to
compare it to God's love, we will run out of zeros like it's
not measurable. It it's beyond the observable
universe. It stretches past the farthest
extent of our imagination. So when we hear this truth that
God loves us, don't let that word love like ricochet off of
your heart without impact. This is not a small word.
This love is so high and deep and long and wide that we can
fully immerse ourselves in it and it will drown out everything
else like a protective force field around us.
This is a love that is big enough and powerful enough to
reshape the course of history. And if we find ourselves
struggling to kind of wrap our heads around the reality of
God's love, God did us an immense favor by giving us an
image of what His love looks like that is human sized so we
could kind of begin to take it in and conceptualize what His
love really means. And that image is found in
Jesus. So if we ever begin to doubt
God's love and make impact on your heart that it once did,
look to Jesus like do what the New Testament writers did.
Don't look to the world to define what agape love is.
Look to God himself. Let him show you what is the
breadth and length and height and depth of the love of God.
So I'm going to ask a question several times.
I'm going to invite you to just ponder this question as we
consider like what God's love has looked like for real people
in real life. The question is, how great is
God's love? How great is God's love?
God's love? It's so wide that encompasses
all of humanity. No matter our race or our
culture, no matter our flaws or our failures.
His love stretches outward to envelope us all.
I think of Jesus like healing lepers who were outcasts.
They were diseased and separated from the community.
But when they came to Jesus, he was moved with compassion.
That's what it says in Mark chapter 1.
When they came to Jesus, he was moved with love to heal them.
Or I think of Jesus encounter with a Samaritan woman at the
well, another outcast because of her many failed marriages or
illicit relationships. How in the face of her emptiness
and her spiritual dryness, Jesus meets her and offers her the
water of eternal life. So if our understanding of the
love of God is not broad enough to meet us in our shame, in our
rejection, in our loneliness, and to offer us healing and hope
that our understanding of God's love is still too small, how
great is God's love? God's love is so long that no
matter how much we've strayed from him, chasing after false
gods, he pursues us. He offers us forgiveness and
restoration. And Jesus compares God's love to
the father of the prodigal son, the son who rejected his family
and and indulged in every sin and basically wrecked his life.
But when he sees the foolishness of his ways and he decides to go
home, what does his father do? Jesus says that the Father I saw
his Son in the distance and is moved with compassion.
He runs to his Son and he embraces him and kisses him and
he rejoices. And that is God's heart, God.
It's a God who rejoices the moment we turn back towards him.
So if our understanding of the love of God is not long enough
that it goes running to meet the Sinner who realizes that he just
wants to come home, if we don't see that the heart of the Father
longs to be reunited with us, that our understanding of God's
love is still too small, how great is God's love?
God's love is so high that he is incapable of compromising or
diminishing his love for us. And this is where we discover
that God is fully loving and also fully holy at the same
time. And these are characteristics
that do not contradict one another.
They they complement one another.
Because he is holy, God's love is marked by integrity, purity,
righteousness. And because he is loving, God
does not lower his standard of holiness, but he lifts us up to
become like Him. He fiercely combats the sin in
our hearts and in our world. And I think of that scene where
Jesus goes to the temple and he sees that these greedy money
changers are extorting the worshippers who have journeyed
there and he chases them out of the temple.
When we read this I think we often are kind of struck by
Jesus anger. But do we also notice His love,
like His passion that is so protective of those who had
travelled from afar just to worship God, of those who come
to Him in need and in prayer? Just like the temple, our hearts
are meant to be holy spaces for God to inhabit, and He is
relentless in cleansing us and renewing us so we can experience
His nearness. So if our understanding of the
love of God is not high enough that it makes space for His
purifying holiness, then our understanding of God's love is
still too small. How great is God's love?
God's love is so deep that he knows every part of us.
It's like some he says in Psalm 139.
God discerns our thoughts from afar, and even before a word is
on our tongues, he knows it all together.
And this could be intimidating because if we're realistic, our
thoughts and our and our actions can be selfish, vengeful,
lustful, prejudice, unrighteous. But Jesus sees all of this and
he still moves towards us. And right before the Last
Supper, Jesus knew that one of his disciples would betray him
and that the others would scatter out of fear.
And what did he do with that information?
The text says he loved them to the end.
He tied a towel around his waist and he knelt down to wash his
disciples feet, and they still didn't understand the extent of
his love. And yet Jesus went to the cross
for them, for us. And even as people mocked him as
he was dying, Jesus prayed for them.
Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.
So if our understanding of the love of God is not deep enough
that he can see the darkest parts of us and respond with
extravagant mercy that our understanding of God's love is
still too small. Like are you starting to grasp
it? How immeasurably vast God's love
is? Can you comprehend the immensity
of God's love for you? Now there is a correct answer to
that question. I mean, the answer is no, we
can't, because of the love of Christ surpasses knowledge.
And that should be profoundly comforting to us, that the love
of God is so immense that we can keep searching and searching and
learning and learning and growing in our understanding and
and expanding our experiences of God's love.
And yet we will never reach the end of it.
No matter how many years we live and walk in faith, the love of
God will keep surpassing our expectations and surprising us
and overwhelming us and shifting our paradigms and taking us
deeper and farther and farther into God's goodness and His
passion for His people. His love is beautifully
unfathomable and beyond human limitations.
And that is a glorious thing. Now, the third thing that Paul
prays for is that the church would be filled with all the
fullness of God, filled with all the fullness of God.
So Paul is, is asking that more and more of this multifaceted
love of God would flow into us until our hearts are just like
bursting at the seams. And this is another aspect of
faith that I, I always wonder if we like fail to grasp it or or
maybe we forget sometimes that we need to continually be filled
by God. Like in Scripture, God often
compares himself to things that nourish us or or fuel us like
he's the bread of life. He's a fount of living water.
He's the vine that feeds into the branches.
How often do we act like the ideal version of ourselves or
like, you know, who we're supposed to try to become is
someone who's totally self-sufficient?
Like that's a value that we hold in high esteem in like modern
Western culture. But do we realize that it's
based on a lie? Like we were not designed to be
self-sufficient. We were designed to be God
reliant, like if you are a human that is built into your
operational system. Like you need the life of God to
flow into you continually and powerfully for the rest of your
existence. God is like a deep well that we
can draw from anytime. We're even a little thirsty
because his living water will never run dry.
He's like the manna from heaven that we can feast on freely
without worrying that he won't show up again tomorrow.
We are meant to be filled by Him again and again and again.
God's fullness is meant to fill us, But I also think that it's
meant to stretch us so that we kind of develop the capacity for
even more of God. I remember this conversation I
had with a really dear friend, like years ago.
We were both just kind of trying to make sense of these really
challenging seasons that we were going through.
And I remember my friend said that in her season, she felt
like she was just being stretched, like all the time,
and it was uncomfortable and sometimes painful, and she
didn't know how much more of it she could take.
And so, you know, I'm like listening to her as I did,
suddenly it struck me that what she was describing also actually
sounded like growth. Growth, especially significant
growth, often feels painful at first because it's stretching us
beyond our current capacity. But once we adjust to our new
capacity, we discover that through the stretching, we've
come to know God in new ways than we did before.
And if I look back at the times when I felt like I was being,
you know, stretched beyond my limits, now I can see that I was
actually growing like, you know, God was stretching me by
deepening my ability to love, by taking my kind of confronting me
with somebody that I found it difficult to love.
Or he was challenging my trust in Him by taking something away
from me and revealing kind of the insufficient things that
I've been relying on and turning to for security.
He was expanding my understanding of the ways that
He can meet with people when I experienced boredom or staleness
in my devotional life, and it forced me to go searching for
different ways to connect with God.
Or he was confronting my defense mechanisms that I used to
protect myself when I would see sin and injustice in the world
and would be overwhelmed by grief and anger.
But He stirred me up by making me uncomfortable in the comfort
zone that I created. So in all of these seasons
where, you know, I felt stretched, God was actually
expanding my heart to make room for more of him.
And I think that's part of what it means to be filled with the
fullness of God. So I just want to encourage you.
If you were feeling dry or empty or stirred up or uncomfortable
or like challenged and stretched to the point where it maybe you
feel like you might break, maybe there's something arise that
needs fixing, I wouldn't be the one to tell you that.
But maybe God is also using this moment to grow your capacity to
know him, to know his grace and his goodness and his fierce,
relentless, expansive love that is beyond comprehension.
So these three things that Paul prays for, power, knowledge, and
fullness, are all rooted in the love of God.
And Bible commentators point out that in these verses, Paul is
speaking in the passive voice, which means that these are not
primarily things that we do or we accomplish.
Like we are recipients and this is God's work.
And this is like a such a mysterious part of our faith,
like we're called to be active in many ways, to to work and to
labor and prayer and to love others through our words and our
actions. And yet the miracle of salvation
and transformation that happens within us is the work of the God
who loves us. So finally, Paul ends this
prayer with a doxology. It's a short hymn that lifts up
praises to God. And he says 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 the glory
and the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all
generations, forever and ever. Amen.
I'm so thankful for this truth that God is able to do far more
abundantly than all that we ask or think.
And this points us back to the immensity of God's love and
power working on our behalf. I mean, there's so many times in
my life where God has answered a prayer in a way that is so like
wise and specific and surprising that it would have never
occurred to me that this was exactly what I needed.
And like, all glory be to God for that.
But to close this today, what I want to do is just rely on the
truth of these verses by praying Paul's words over us, over his
church. So I actually listened to a
sermon about this passage. I don't always do that, but this
one, like, just popped up and I wanted to listen to it.
That was by Francis Chan. And he said that if all we do
when we read Ephesians 3 is like analyze the theology behind it
or like dissect the nuances of the Greek, then we've missed the
point. Because a prayer is meant to be
prayed over the lives and for the good and the growth of God's
church. So this kind of prayer that Paul
has, I've kind of rewritten it in my own words as a prayer
meant for our church. And I made it longer.
Just a warning. But I'd like to pray this over
all of us now and just invite you as we transition into a time
of worship through song and through reflection, to make this
prayer your own and to lift your voices up to the God who hears
us. So let me pray for us, Father
God, you are the King of all creation, infinite in your power
and mercy, and I come to you. We come to you today, asking and
believing that you can work mightily on behalf of your
church and that you want to do miraculous things in the lives
of your people and God. I asked first for the greatest
miracle, that we would be made new by your love.
I pray that your Holy Spirit would empower each person in
this room to receive you. I pray that any identities we're
clinging to, anything we've built on the shifting sands of
this world would be swept away. And I ask that Christ our rock
would become the foundation of all that we are and all that we
do. I ask that you alone would take
up full residence in our hearts, strengthen our faith, Lord, root
us, and ground us in your love. And God, would you please open
our eyes to see more of You. Bring to our minds the moments
in our lives when you have revealed Your love to us.
Deepen our understanding of Your love.
Help us to stand in awe of it the way we stand in awe of a
vibrant sunset or a vast Canyon or a night sky blazing with
stars. Would we feel the smallness of
our love so that we can begin to grasp how wide and long and high
and deep Your love for us really is?
Where to fill us to the brim with Your love in the places we
feel empty, in the places we feel insufficient, and all of
our longings and fear and frustration and overwhelm help
us reject the lie of self-sufficiency and instead
learn to abide in You. We ask all of this trusting and
believing that you hear this prayer and that you were able to
do far more than we could possibly ask or imagine.
By your power and for your glory, we ask all of this in the
name of Jesus, Amen. Amen.