Sealed Through Love

Sealed – Week 3

Sealed Through Love

Ephesians 3:14-21

Series Slide

Good morning and welcome to worship. What an amazing couple of weeks we have had. I kinda wish I had waited until last week to do all my yard work. But isn’t it nice to have days in July with a high below 90* and to be able to turn the sprinklers off for a few days! I know it won’t last, but we can enjoy it while we can.

Before we get into our sermon today, I wanted to share some information that will be coming out over the next few weeks. This past week, Matt and I spent some time talking about our youth ministry, some of the ups and downs over the past couple of years, and the great things that have happened over the past months. We had a great mission trip and a great camp where kids made decisions for Christ… In fact, at that camp, out of the 788 total attendees, there were 90 first-time professions of faith, 42 called to ministry, and 175 rededications. So, it was a great camp!

In that conversation, Matt resigned from his position as our Youth Minister and decided to go in a different direction in ministry. This is something Matt has been contemplating for a while, and he and I together decided that now is the time for this move. Today, Matt is filling in at another church in town that is in need of a pastor. Friends, I believe Matt is following God’s direction in his life here and I hope you will celebrate with him and pray for him and his family in this time of transition.

I know it seems sudden, but we also felt we needed to make this move before the school year gets started so we can all hit the ground running. So, over the next weeks, we covet your prayers.

You know, when we are marked for God… when we are Sealed with the mark of the Spirit…. When we are identified in, with, and through Christ it makes a difference in our lives. That’s what we have been talking about over the past few weeks.

Sealed with the Spirit

The first week, we talked about what it means to be marked… we talked about the fact that a seal was like a signature identifying the author of a letter, and the fact that we are marked, we are sealed, we are identified with Christ. There are so many things that our culture places our identity in… but as followers of Jesus Christ, we don’t need to have our identity in politics or whether we are an Eagle or a Tiger or a Bulldog. We don’t need to identify based on our race or ethnicity or gender or anything else… No, we need to have our identity in Jesus Christ, the author and perfector of our faith.

Sealed as the Temple

Then last week we talked about the fact that a part of our identity is that we, the gathered Body of Christ are the place where the Spirit of God dwells. We are now God’s Temple. Anywhere we gather we are God’s Temple, we are now the Holy of Holies.

Sealed through Love

Today we are continuing through the book of Ephesians as we dive into the second half of the 3rd Chapter as we talk about being Sealed Through Love. Thank you ______ for reading our scripture this week. I want to highlight one portion of that passage:

Ephesians 3:17b-19 (NIV)

And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

<Prayer>

Sermon Slide

In 1967, The BBC had a grand dream. They put together a program called “Our World” which was to be the first ever live international satellite broadcast with performers from 5 continents and 14 countries. Representing Great Britain, the BBC asked the Beatles to write a song with a simple positive message. The song was performed and recorded live on the first episode on June 25, 1967. The chorus included backing vocals by such greats as Mick Jagger, Kieth Richards, Eric Clapton, Graham Nash, and many others. The song?

“All You Need is Love” Video

John Lennon wrote this song and said that he wanted to create a song with the message that love is stronger than hate. They all understood the importance of this moment and the vast audience they would reach in this unprecedented medium. George Harrison said, “Because of the mood of the times, it seemed to be a great idea to perform that song while everybody else was showing knitting in Canada or Irish Clog dancing in Venezuela. We thought we would sing “All You Need is Love” because it is a simple PR bit for God.”

With the backdrop of war and hate, protests and riots, they wanted to share a message that love is the answer to our problems.

And, I have to admit, I agree with them. Maybe I don’t believe in or agree with everything they stood for back then, but I do agree, love is all we need. All through John’s Gospel and his letters in the New Testament, we find the sentiment that the world will know that we are followers of Jesus by our love for each other and our love for the world.

But that love isn’t something that comes easy. That love isn’t something that just happens out of ourselves… it has to come from God.

Again, from 1 John,

1 John 4:7-12 (NIV)

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

I am so tempted to fall into my Forrest Gump sermon and tell you that “I know what love is…”

But I won’t…

This passage from Ephesians that was so eloquently read for us this morning is all about God’s power revealed in love… It starts out with these words

14 For this reason I kneel before the Father,

For what reason? As you read the passages before you see the reason… that in Christ we have access to God through faith. Paul is wanting us to know all that God is doing in us and through us and that God’s greatest gifts are love and power. This all comes to us from God who is the father of us all.

Verse 15 says,

15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name.

We miss the eloquence of this passage because we loose the play on words here. I love the way my professor Eugene Boring put it,

“’Family’ is the Greek work patria similar to patera, ‘father’ … the word play cannot be reproduced in English. The point has to do with the greatness of God, not human or heavenly families: God is the Creator and sustainer of all the structures in which earthly and heavenly beings are organized.”

So, we kneel before the Patera in whom every patria on earth derives its name.

We are all united under one God the creator of all that was, is, and ever will be…

Then in verses 16-18 he talks about the power of God in us. This word for power is the Greek word Dunimas. This isn’t normal power this is miraculous power. Paul is praying that the readers and all believers everywhere… that we will receive the power, this miraculous power, or to borrow a phrase from a great hymn of our faith, Paul is praying for us to have the “power, power, wonder working power, in the Blood of the Lamb.”

Our secret strength is the presence of Christ within our lives.

That is Paul’s prayer for us, but that the power we have is rooted… it is established… it is planted… permanently fixed in the love of Jesus Christ. This is a love that is greater than you or I could ever imagine. William Barclay, in his Daily Study Bible Series puts it this way,

It is as if Paul invited us to look at the universe – to the limitless sky above, the limitless horizons on every side, to the depth of the earth and of the seas beneath us, and said, “The love of Christ is as vast as that.”

Ladies and gentlemen, that is the love through which we find our identity. We are sealed, we are marked by this love that is beyond our comprehension. When we place our identity in Christ, when that love of Christ resides in us, when it dwells in us, when it is completely at home with in us… we become a new creation. 2 Corinthians 5:17 tells us that when we are in Christ, there is a new creation, not just that we as an individual are made new, but that all of creation is made new… and when we are made new, and all of creation in made new, then the old is gone and the new has come.

When you let the love of Christ dwell with in you… when you are Sealed through the Love of Jesus Christ…. When we are identified by the love of Christ then we can’t help but change the world around us.

Some of you have heard of the Butterfly Principle… the theory that when a butterfly flaps its wings it causes a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. Well, it isn’t far from the truth. As we see the Caribbean being covered in Sahara Dust and prepare for it to hit us… and as we still help others recover from Hurricane Beryl… we know that what happens in Africa affects our climates here. That the smallest change in weather patterns in Western Africa can be multiplied as it crosses the warm waters of the Atlantic.

Our life as followers of Jesus Christ should have that same impact. A small change in you or me, will impact those around us, and in turn that impacts those around them… rippling out like waves on a pond until the entire lake is covered by the effect of a tiny pebble.

Friends, we live in a world that needs this wonder working power of the love of Jesus Christ.

I want to wrap up with one more quote from William Barclay. He wraps up his commentary on this section of scripture with these words:

Let us think of Paul’s glorious picture of the Church. This world is not what it was meant to be; it is torn in sunder by opposing forces and by hatred and strife. Nation is against nation, man is against man, class is against class. Within a man’s own self the fight rages between the good and the evil. It is God’s design that all men and all nations should become one in Christ. To achieve this end Christ needs the Church to go out and tell men of his love and of his mercy. And the Church cannot do that, until its members, joined together in fellowship, experience the limitless love of Christ.

And so, I quote these words to you once again:

“All we need is love, love, love is all we need.”

Invitation/prayer