The Eyes of Your Heart Enlightened

Good morning, welcome to NHCC. Please open your Bibles to Ephesians 1.

We turn our attention to the content of Jesus’ prayer for the Ephesian Christians.

Notice the importance of praying Scripture.

Read Ephesians 1:15-18- “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, 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, 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...”

Pray.

The greatest desire of Paul for the church at Ephesus- Begins with theology.

God the Father gives the Spirit. The Spirit gives revelation and enlightens one’s eyes and heart, and such enlightenment leads to hope in God.

Not just what needs to happen, but how it is to happen.

Lathey asking to mow the yard yesterday.

Nicene Creed- “And we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life. He proceeds from the Father and the Son, and with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified.”

Two major points to learn that will be pertinent to our study this morning:

The Spirit comes from the Father.

What the Spirit does is in line with the Father and the Son.

What the Father wants done in us is accomplished through the sending and the work of the Spirit.

The Spirit equips with life.

Both creates new life and sustains new life.

1. The Father of glory is the Father revealed.

Glorious Father.

What is the glory of God, and why is it important?

Difficult to define. Consider the word, beauty.

First, defining.

John Piper- “The glory of God is the infinite beauty and greatness of God’s manifold perfections.”

Beauty and greatness- these are things that are taken in and understood. Meant to be seen, fathomed, enjoyed.

Christopher Morgan- “The glory of God is the magnificence, worth, loveliness, and grandeur of his many perfections, which he displays in his creative and redemptive acts in order to make his glory known to those in his presence.”

The glory of God, if I can attempt a definition, is from our perspective all of His perfections that we are able to perceive.

God’s perfection made known to our perception.

We see God’s glory in His work and His Word.

Creation, the flood, the exodus, the sacrificial system.

Most clearly in Jesus, in His perfection, in the cross, in the resurrection, but also in the early church, Paul’s conversion, the descriptions of Revelation.

We are presented with a problem.

God is infinitely glorious, and we can never comprehend all of His perfection. We don’t work in such categories. For us, everything is flawed.

Exodus 33:21-23- “And the Lord said, “Behold, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock, and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen.”

What is God communicating to Moses? We cannot handle the entirety of God’s glory.

Now, why is understanding the glory of God important?

2. The gift of the Spirit opens eyes.

The Father gives the Spirit.

For what does the Father give the Spirit?

To give revelation and wisdom and knowledge of the Father.

To enlighten the eyes of your heart, that you might know your hope.

Consider a newborn baby’s vision.

Similar the the sight of a newborn believer.

Why is this necessary?

At the fall, something happened to us. From spiritual life to spiritual death. But every aspect of life has been affected by the fall.

Think about it, all is imperfect.

One aspect of life that is imperfect, our knowledge and understanding of God.

Our relationship with God is broken, in part, because we know nothing naturally of Him.

Child who knows nothing of a parent.

We choose not to consider our parents, or we create their existence.

We are blind to the glory of God that has been revealed.

Ephesians 4:17-19- “Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.”

Notice the description of life prior to knowing and loving God. Darkened minds, darkened understanding, alienated because of their ignorance. We are sinners, separated from God, in part because we do not know Him rightly.

So how does God rectify this situation? The Spirit gives right knowledge.

Consider your own story. What happened? Everything depended upon new knowledge.

Notice how Jesus speaks of eternal life in John 17.

John 17:3- “And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”

The Spirit increases our knowledge of God. Who God is. What God has done.

We are given sight. God reveals His glory and we begin to comprehend it, and it changes the way we see everything.

This answers the question- Why is the glory of God important? It’s our lifeblood.

This is the point of our worship, weekly as we gather, daily as we study and pray. We seek to know God. And such intimate knowledge does not remain stagnant.

We aren’t merely learning facts, we are getting to know our God. We are growing in relationship.

J.I. Packer- “There's a difference between knowing God and knowing about God. When you truly know God, you have energy to serve Him, boldness to share Him, and contentment in Him.”

Stated simply- Right knowledge of God and right relationship with God changes who we are entirely.

3. Enlightened hearts provide hope.

This growth in knowledge is not an end unto itself.

It is meant to lead to something, specifically to an increase in hope.

Knowledge of God is tied to our hope.

Stop for a moment and consider this.

Prayer meeting- world seems to be falling apart. Hope is necessary. But what is hope tied to? Knowing God. Seeing and understanding His glory in this world.

Bryan Chapell- “If our world is not to overwhelm us, we must know that what we see is not the full reality. With this in mind, the caring apostle prays that the Ephesians will see the spiritual reality that is not apparent to ordinary sight.”

Notice what is not said in our text- its not an experience, or relationship with one another, or church attendance, or any other benchmark of the Christian life that increases hope. Hope increases as our knowledge of God increases. That’s hugely important.

So we aim everything at the target of knowing who God is and what God has done.

Consider this- What Paul prays for the Ephesian Christians, first and foremost, is an increased knowledge. What is your first prayer for your church family?

Is it physical? Emotional? It wasn’t for Paul.

We better be a thinking people. First and foremost.

God reveals Himself to man, which assumes that we have the mental faculties to know and understand what He has given.

J.I. Packer- “Disregard the study of God, and you sentence yourself to stumble and blunder through life blindfolded, as it were, with no sense of direction and no understanding of what surrounds you. This way you can waste your life and lose your soul.”

Do we walk blindly through this world because our eyes refuse to be opened?

The Glorious Father has made Himself known. He has revealed His glory, the totality of His perfections. Paul’s prayer is that the Spirit would open wider the eyes of the Ephesians so that they would know this God and His glory. And as they grow in their knowledge of God, the Ephesians would grow in hope, trusting God entirely for their journey through this life.

The prayer is the same today, for our church family.

Frances Mary Owen- “Lighten the darkness of our life’s long night, Through which we blindly stumble to the day, Shadows mislead us; Father, send Thy light, To set our footsteps in the homeward way.”