Sermon Tone Analysis

*Preparing to Live*

*Living Requires Experiencing Christ’s Love (1)*

(Ephesians 3:18-19)

 

We’ve been studying the prayer that Paul prays for his Ephesian friends as recorded in Ephesians 3:14-21 under the title “Preparing to Live.”

And we’ve been following as Paul builds a ladder of requests from a prayer for inner strength to a prayer that they would allow Christ to settle down and be at home in their hearts to a prayer that they be rooted and grounded in love.

We now reach rung number 4 on the ladder and with it we have reached truly holy ground as Paul prays that they may comprehend the unknowable;  he wants them to know the fullness of Christ’s love.

All the previous petitions prepare for and lead up to this petition.

They were essential as preparation, but they are not ends in themselves; they are designed to lead on to this grand objective.

We find ourselves, as it were, upon the pinnacle of Christian truth.

There is nothing higher than this.

God grant us His Spirit that we may consider it aright!

We are in a rarefied atmosphere; in a place to which, unfortunately, we are not accustomed.

It is impossible to come to this subject without a feeling of inadequacy.

How can one possibly explain what it is to know and experience the love of Christ?

Let us pray that His Spirit will teach us.

A few years ago a woman wrote in a national magazine about how being the younger sister of a brilliant student in the high school of a small town was difficult.

She said that while her grades were average, her sister made history at their /alma/ /mater/ when she crammed four years of high school into three and graduated at the top of her class.

Twenty years later, the author attended a school reunion where she encountered two former teachers who had also had taught her sister.

Their faces brightened with recognition.

“You remember me,” the author beamed.

They nodded and said, “You’re one of the Barber girls.”

“Do you know which one?” the author queried.

The teachers put their heads together and whispered for a moment before they gave their answer:  “You’re the other one.”

The other one!

The other one.

No one wants to be the other one, do they?

No one.

And you see, in a nutshell, at the heart of everything about Christ’s love – the thing you most need to know is that although He knows and loves billions of people, and although you may be lost in your own work, school or even home – you will never, ever be “the other one” to Jesus.

Never!

The thing you need to know about the love of Christ is this – */He knows your name.

/* And in knowing your name He knows everything about you and about your life.

He knows your good and He knows your bad.

He knows your reputation and He knows the real you!

He knows it all, and yet He loves you.

He knows your name.

Max Lucado, the San Antonio-based pastor and author that many of you have probably read somewhere along the line, wrote a book called /A Gentle Thunder.

/In it he says this, “/If God had a refrigerator, your picture would be on it.

If he had a wallet, your photo would be in it.

He sends you flowers every spring and a sunrise every morning.

Whenever you want to talk, he’ll listen.

He can live anywhere in the universe, and he chose your heart…Face it, friend.

He’s crazy about you.”/

Isn’t that good?

The problem is we are like children paddling at the edge of an ocean; there are untold depths in this love of God of which we know nothing.

Paul is praying that these Ephesians, and we with them, may go out into the depths and the deeps, and */discover things which we have never even imagined./

*Whatever we may think we know of God’s love, let us assume that we are mere novices, babes who have only scratched the surface and whose lives can be enriched by the study and application of this subject and we ask the question, what is required to know and experience the love of Christ leading to life lived with a capital “L”?

 

*I.

**People*

 

The first thing it takes to see, understand, comprehend, know the love of Christ is people.

People.

Strange as it may seem, */you can’t know the love of Christ in isolation./*

Paul prays in verse 18 that the Ephesians “may have strength to comprehend */with all the saints/*.”

Who are these saints and why did Paul add this little phrase?

Who are the saints?

You may recall that in the very first verse of this book we were confronted immediately with these saints: “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To the saints who are in Ephesus, and are faithful in Christ Jesus.”

If you were with us then, you may recall that we noted that the word “faithful” in Christ Jesus could just as well be translated “believing ones.”

When Paul says saints, he is not thinking about some super-duper spiritual group of people who are over and above the rest of us.

In fact, */it is the rest of us/* he means when he says saints –any true believer in Christ.

You may recall Vernon McGee’s comment: “There are only two kinds of people today: the saints and the ain’ts.

If you are a saint, then you are not an ain’t.

If you ain’t an ain’t, then you are a saint.”

So, the point here would be that Paul is praying that /all/ believers, not just some elite minority, but */all believers/* would experience the wonderful, overwhelming love of Christ.

That is Paul’s prayer.

There are no upper crust Christians in God’s eyes – whatever some may think of themselves.

The Bible frequently emphasizes this aspect of truth.

In the Book of Revelation, for instance, in the letter to the Church at Pergamos, the Lord Jesus Christ says: “To the one who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it.”

The one who conquers here is the true believer, the one who has overcome sin and Satan, not in his own power, but because he has trusted Christ as Savior.

The ‘hidden’ manna!

Every provision.

The white stone with a name written on it that nobody can understand except the recipient!

Others can see the lettering but it means nothing to them.

None understand it save those who truly receive it.

This is a secret love that no one else knows.

The picture is that of a great affection between two persons which they have kept between them as a great secret.

They are enjoying it, their hearts are ravished by it; but no one else knows anything about it.

They are enjoying the very secrecy of it, in a sense.

Such is the character of this love to which the Apostle refers.

The world knows nothing about it; it is only for the saints, but it is for */all/ *saints.

*/Not only does he know your name, the day is coming when He will give you a new name./*

As the old hymn put it, “The love of Jesus what it is, none but His loved ones know”.

Only believers -- but /all believer – can know the love of Christ./

But I also think that Paul prays that we  “may have strength to comprehend with all the saints,”  to make the point that */we will never understand the precious love of Christ in isolation, away from others/*.

We need each other for many things and not least to understand the love of Christ.

The great British commentator F. F. Bruce says, “It is vain for Christian individuals or groups to imagine they can better attain the fullness of spiritual maturity if they isolate themselves from fellow believers.”

We need each other.

I need you, and like it or not, you need me.

We experience Christ’s love /with all God’s consecrated people.

/We find it, or should, in the fellowship of the Church.

John Wesley’s saying was true, “God knows nothing of solitary religion.”

“No man,” he said, “ever went to heaven alone.”

The church may have its faults; the church members may be very far from being the people they ought to be; but in the fellowship of the Church we find the love of God.

We need to be rooted and grounded in love because it */is love alone that can recognize love/*.

Love alone recognizes love, love alone understands love; indeed it is love alone that can receive love.

Like attracts like.

You must have love in your heart if you are going to know love and experience it.

It is love alone that can appreciate love.

You will not be able to appreciate the most glorious music if you are not musical.

There are people who are almost driven mad by the sound of some great symphony because they are devoid of a musical faculty.

Likewise people can walk through the finest Art galleries and be bored.

They are lacking in an artistic sense.