Sermon Tone Analysis

Ephesians 1:15–23 (NIV)

15 For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all God’s people, 16 I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers.

17 I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better.

18 I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, 19 and his incomparably great power for us who believe.

That power is the same as the mighty strength 20 he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, 21 far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.

22 And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, 23 which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.

Introduction

Thank you Carmen for reading our Text for today and Good Morning Church and welcome back to our series in Ephesians where we are focusing in on “God’s Plan.

Our Place in it.”

We took a break last week to celebrate “The Sanctity of Human Life in every stage and any struggle” as did so many other Churches in our nation.

I reached out to our friends at APPLE pregnancy care center and the director Melinda Gardner let me know that they were able to speak at 4 different churches this month and they have some possible new volunteers plus a new post-abortion client who has now come for the program.

If God stirred you last week toward this issue then let me encourage you to pray into getting involved in some way at APPLE.

They are always looking for volunteers for a whole host of different things from participating in their fundraising walk to repairs and updates on their building all the way to training in to do one-on-one counseling with young mothers and fathers that are looking to be better prepared to parent in the flow of God’s plan for family.

And speaking of God’s plan, we are all a part of it.

The book of Ephesians is a letter written by the Apostle Paul to the Churches in and around the major city of Ephesus and it speaks to God’s plan and instructs the readers on how to find their place in God’s plan.

If you were here with us last summer when we studied the book of Acts, you might remember Ephesus as the city where a great riot broke out because the idol makers were afraid that this new Christianity thing that the Apostle Paul preached about would cause people to stop buying their products so they incited a riot…a tactic not uncommon in our world today.

And just like the location of most of our major riots today, Ephesus was not some Podunk backwater town, we are talking about a booming metropolis with powerful civic and religious significance.

The greatest attraction of Ephesus was a Temple that was considered one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world.

This architectural masterpiece was erected to honor the pagan goddess Diana or Artemis - depending on whether you were trained in Roman or Greek mythology.

Just to give you a hint of its magnitude, the footprint was 4 times as large as the famed Parthenon in Athens Greece and it housed a statue of the pagan goddess that was three stories tall and surrounded by 120 ornate columns.

Those who pilgrimaged to Ephesus to worship at this famed temple did so because she was said to be goddess of the wild, often pictured with animals and/or a bow in her hand, and they said that she had the power to give you food, many children or protection if you came to her with the right offering or the right prayer.

Tension

And I don’t share those things with you as a ancient history lesson, but because it gives us a framework to better understand the context that these Churches existed in and why God would lead the Apostle Paul to write what he did to these Churches in Ephesus.

Because the basic premise of the dominant religion in this area was one where you sought to give the right offering to the right deity at the right time so that YOUR plans will work out in your right way…maybe.

And while the names and the practices may differ greatly, this really is how every world religion works…even today.

That is why many people, including myself, are hesitant to label Christianity as a “religion” because it doesn’t fit the pattern of anything else called “religion”.

Or at least it shouldn’t.

At its core, everything else called “religion” is man creating “god” in our image to accomplish our plans.

But Christianity operates in the opposite direction.

Christianity is the revelation that God created us in His image and for His plans.

So then our role is to discover those plans and walk in the wisdom of them.

In other words, We don’t pray to get God to fit into our plans, but we pray that God will open our eyes to where we fit in His plan.

That is not like any other religion in the world.

That’s Christianity...and that is what Paul is praying for in what Carmen read for us this morning in the first chapter of Ephesians.

So if you haven’t already, go ahead and open up your Bible Ephesians 1, it’s on page, 976 in the Bibles in the chairs.

We will stop and pray, and then we will dive deeper into this text together.

Truth

Paul begins this section by talking about why he is praying these things for the Churches, he says...

Ephesians 1:15–16 (ESV)

15 For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, 16 I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers,

As I said earlier, I don’t like using the word “religion” when describing “Christianity” but like many others I would prefer to define Christianity as a “relationship”.

And there are aspects of this “relationship” that Paul is pointing to here as evidence that he is writing to genuine Christians.

We could say that he is talking about a vertical and horizontal relationship.

Vertical = faith in the Lord Jesus

Horizontal = love toward all the saints (God’s holy people the Church)

And He prayed similarly in the other Prison letters (Phil 1:9-11, Col 1:9-12) and in none of these prayers did he pray for material things or for changes in the circumstances that these people were facing.

Not that there is anything wrong with praying for those things, but that was not Paul’s prayer for them.

Paul was not praying for them as if they needed something they didn’t already have.

He was praying that they would become more aware of what they already had in their relationship with God - because they had more than they realized “In Christ Jesus”.

The first thing that we see Paul pray is a...

Prayer to know the presence of God (Eph 1:17)

Ephesians 1:17 (ESV)

[16 I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers,…]

17 that 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,

So Paul prays that they would know God in a very special way.

You see the description “Spirit of wisdom” was something they probably knew because it was a common reference to the Holy Spirit in Old Testament but Paul adds a new phrase here: “The Spirit of wisdom and revelation”.

Paul wanted them to know God not just through what He had done in the past, but in what He was revealing to them right now.

This was different.

This was new.

The finished work of Jesus, in His death, burial and resurrection changed everything for God’s people, even how they experienced the presence of God.

In the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit came on certain people for a certain period of time to accomplish a certain task.

Think of the stories of Moses, Samson or one of the prophets.

They were led by, strengthened or used by God in certain times and places but not everyone of God’s children were given access to God’s presence in the same way.

But it was promised that one day the Holy Spirit would be present in a whole different way.

When we look back at when the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost, we hear Peter preaching the first Christian sermon and in it He reminded the people how these things that were promised way back then, had now come to be.

Acts 2:14, 16-18

14 But Peter, standing with the eleven, lifted up his voice and addressed them: “Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and give ear to my words...

16... this is what was uttered through the prophet Joel: 17 “ ‘And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams; 18 even on my male servants and female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy.

This was the beginning of the Church, the New Covenant, the New Testament.

Now the Holy Spirit is available to all who believe from the youngest to the oldest all the way down to the most lowly of servants.

And so Paul’s prayer is that these Christians would know God’s presence like this.

In a personal and relational way.

This is the kind of relationship that God wants to have with all his children.

There is no longer a need to bring out offering to the Temple like there was before Jesus...We can access to the “spirit of wisdom and revelation” as we grow in our relationship with God.

And so we can see why Paul is praying this way...because when you have the wisdom of God revealed to you then you have everything you need to handle any need or circumstance that you may be facing.

Some of us continue to miss out on the guidance, strength or calling that God has for us because we do not engage in this relationship with God like we could.

We have what we need, but we just are not engaging with it.

It is like the story that is told of the newspaper baron William Randolf Hearst who had invested a fortune in collecting different art pieces from around the world.

One day he heard a description of these incredible art pieces that he just had to own.

So he sent his art agent around the world to look for these pieces and after months of investigating who sold them to who and so forth he finally returned to Mr. Hearst with the news that he had indeed found for him the very things that he so desperately wanted…they were in his own warehouse.

Hearst desired something that he already owned, but apparently was too busy or distracted by other things that never stopped to take stock of what was already his.

The Apostle Paul doesn’t want this to happen to the Christians in Ephesus, because they could miss out on something much more valuable than any piece of art.

So he prays that they would have the kind of relationship where the wisdom of God was revealed to them through the Holy Spirit.

Secondly, Paul prays a...

Prayer to know the hope of God (Eph 1:18)

He prays that...

Ephesians 1:18 (ESV)

18 having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints,

A few weeks ago we talked about our inheritance, but Paul is not talking about the saints inheritance “in Christ” again, he is talking about God’s inheritance in us.

How the riches of God are found in what he has inherited in us.

I don’t know about you, but when I look at this mess, it sounds to me like God is getting ripped off!

But to understand the source of our hope we have to think beyond ourselves and remember that we are creatures, created in His image for His glory and so the fact that Jesus’ powerful sacrifice has worked to buy us back from death to the life that God created us for…this is of immense value to God the Father!

It is not us intrinsically, but what Jesus has done and is doing in and through us to redeem God’s creation that is so valuable and beautiful.

The finished work of that is his glorious inheritance.

So to have the “eyes of our hearts enlightened” is to understand that no matter what we have done...God is still God!

And our hope is rooted not in our ability to become a worthy inheritance, but in God’s ability to finish what He started as he works all things out for His greatest glory and our greatest good.

It is His Plan.

One of the distinctives of the letter of Ephesians is that Paul emphasizes our relationship with God as Father more in this letter than in any of his other books.

And remembering Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son, we must remember that our God loves us even more than that.

The young man in that story said to himself...