Hello My Name is Rooted

Offering:

Sunrise locations?

Fred Meyer

The blessing of shared joy

Shared with Christ as praise

Shared with another for mutual enjoyment and encouragement

(table, movie, music)

Proverbs 11:24–25 ESV

One gives freely, yet grows all the richer; another withholds what he should give, and only suffers want. Whoever brings blessing will be enriched, and one who waters will himself be watered.

Our lives are to be examples of God’s endless generosity to us.

This morning as we take our offering, thank you for your faithful giving to HCC. but also, pray and allow God to show you in moments large and small opportunities to give.

Jab 1

White Blood Cells

Holman New Testament Commentary: Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians & Colossians IV. Life Application: Strengthened from Within

They look exactly like amoebae: amorphous blobs of turgid liquid with darkened nuclei, they roam through the body by extending a finger-like projection and humping along to follow it. Sometimes they creep along the walls of the veins; sometimes they let go and free-float in the bloodstream. To navigate the smaller capillaries, bulky white cells must elongate their shapes, while impatient red blood cells jostle in line behind them.

Watching the white cells, one can’t help thinking them sluggish and ineffective at patrolling territory, much less repelling an attack. Until the attack occurs, that is. When damage occurs to anything in the blood stream, an alarm seems to sound. As if they have a sense of smell (we still don’t know how they “sense” danger), nearby white cells abruptly halt their aimless wandering. Like beagles on the scent of a rabbit, they home in from all directions to the point of attack. Using their unique shape-changing qualities, they ooze between overlapping cells of capillary walls and hurry through tissue via the most direct route. When they arrive, the battle begins.

The shapeless white cell, resembling science fiction’s creature “The Blob,” lumbers toward a cluster of luminous green bacterial spheres. Like a blanket pulled over a corpse, the white blood cell assumes the shape of the bacteria; for awhile the bacteria still glow eerily inside the white cell. But the white cell contains granules of chemical explosives, and as soon as the bacteria are absorbed the granules detonate, destroying the invaders. In thirty seconds to a minute only the white cell remains.

Jab 2

Trees

Giant Sequoia: Shallow…no tap root…depends on other sequoias to stay upright.

Oak: deep tap root, able to grow strong in isolation (though can grow together and even merge root systems!

Largest living organism? An Aspen. Which you can tell is an Aspen because of the way that it is… growing in a unique way. Aspen do a remarkable thing. They don’t just grow roots down…they grow out…and then up again! A new trunk…and new roots going out again.

In Utah’s Fishlake National Forest, there is an Aspen “colony” named Pando which is recognized as the largest living organism on the planet. It spans 106 acres.

Jab 3

How much control?

Immunity?

Tree roots?

The life of the minister of the gospel (the disciple).

Doing it in our own strength vs. relying on God’s. So what can we do?

Transition

Theological truth: Loved, adopted, sealed, a citizen of a new kind of community, brought from death to life. A whole new identity formed not based on what we have done, but on who created and called us.

Chapter 3 is a transition passage, taking us from theological ideas about our identity into the reality of the ministers of the gospel which this new identity compels us to become.

Last week...

Next week Dave will take us into the realities of what it means to actually live out the life of Christ beginning with a call to unity in equipped service. (1/2 of M\my ministry philosophy!)

But before Paul jumps into the practical, for the 2nd time in this letter, Paul is going to stop and pray. He’s going to finish what he intended to begin before his rabbit trail we covered last week. Specifically, Paul will pray for what we were just discussing: That we would be rooted. Paul is about to pray for the things which act as our support, our defence, and our power in the life of the disciple/minister.

As we break down this prayer, we will see a few things:’

How we can pray for ourselves and others

The nutrition our “roots” need to provide support

Increased trust in the power of God to do far more than we think

Read:

Ephesians 3:14–21 ESV

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—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, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. 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 glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

Pray

Rooted in the Family Name

In my married life, I have moved at least 19 times. Contrast that to both Monica and I growing up, she lived in one place from a very young age, so did I beginning from Kindergarten. Since then, all of our parents have moved and our grandparents are gone.

Our physical “roots” have been pulled up.

DNA tests would prove however that our family roots remain intact.

I will never stop being the son of my father. Rebecca and Joshua are stuck being Shaun’s daughter and son for the rest of their lives.

Paul calls us back to an even deeper root:

Ephesians 3:14–15 ESV

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named,

Every family gets its beginning in God.

Eph 3:14-

Genesis 1:27 ESV

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

Genesis

Paul prays to God, because God is the source, the original from which all the images were patterned.

What does that mean for us? How does that root and strengthen us as we prepare for the challenges and trials of the life of the disciple?

It means your value is incalculable.

It means you were made on purpose.

It means you have a call and an ability to see that same value and purpose in others.

Rooted in the Power of the Spirit

The oak has a taproot. Here’s yours.

Ephesians 3:16 ESV

that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being,

Ephesians 3:16

A few weeks ago we discussed that part of our identity is that we have been sealed by the Holy Spirit.

You are also empowered in and by the Spirit.

I grew up in the cassette tape era. Unique to the cassette tape is the experience of a low battery. CD player, MP3? When the batteries go, the music dies. Not so on a cassette! With a cassette, as the battery gets weak, the music gets more soulful.

We are more like a cassette than an MP3 in our spiritual lives. We’ll keep moving. Maybe we keep serving. But if we have let our connection to the Spirit grow thin, we will find our joy, energy, and desire waning.

We were never meant to do this on our own. In Acts, as Jesus was preparing to ascend, he says this to his disciples:

Acts 1:8 ESV

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”

Very similar to the great commission expressed in , but the focus is not on our role as disciple makers, but on the Spirit’s role in empowering those disciples to become his witnesses.

Lack of desire to serve the kingdom? Fear of sharing your faith? Missing joy? Easier to fixate on the reasons why not, than on the calling to?

Prayer, meditation upon scripture, practice.

Rooted in the Experience of Love

The next two are so interconnected, I want to bring them together and then sort them out. Let’s read this as one part and then break it out:

Ephesians 3:17–19 ESV

so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—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, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Love. But Paul makes a couple distinctions in what his aim is:

First he focuses on being rooted and grounded in love. In essence, that we would experience the love of Christ. He then says, that being grounded in love you would have strength to comprehend…love?

One at a time.

Ephesians 3:17 ESV

so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love,

Paul is praying for the Ephesians to experience the love of God in the indwelling of Christ in our hearts.

Eph 3:17

I am not an experience over knowledge kind of guy, but this is significant. You see when our knowledge of the concept of love outstrips our experience of it…bad things happen.

1 Corinthians 8:1 ESV

Now concerning food offered to idols: we know that “all of us possess knowledge.” This “knowledge” puffs up, but love builds up.

One of the scary things about preaching…often if not always, if I am teaching the full truth of scripture, I am communicating knowledge which outstrips my experience.

What I hope you always hear is a call to something deeper than knowledge, but not separated from it.

“Jesus loves me this I know...”

Nice…but incomplete.

After one of the worst days of my life, worshipping in an evening service. Broken hearted at betrayal, lifted up in prayer by my family in Christ. When everything in me was ready to give up, the right email at the right time, or the right song on the radio, or a passing comment from a stranger which all communicated the same thing to my soul…not “for the Bible tells me so”, but because I can testify to his love in my story.

There is a common error however, in which we leave knowledge and truth behind in a constant pursuit of the experience of love. Just like any other relationship, the strength is based not only on how you feel, but what you know when you don’t feel.

Rooted in the Knowledge of Love

Ephesians 3:18–19 ESV

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, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Riff on this...

Eph 3:18

Strength. It can be hard to trust what you know over what you feel.

Pre marital counseling.

To know the love…that surpasses knowledge.

That you may be filled.

Rooted in Praise

Ephesians 3:20–21 ESV

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 glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

Truth about worship. A reality of praise.

Ephesians 3:

I can testify, (anxiety, depression, poverty, sickness, loss, broken relationships) and so can a whole lot of you I have talked with that in the worst…Praise pulled you through.

Beyond us, David, Moses, Jacob, Elijah, Hezekiah, Jeremiah, Nehemiah…anyone else whose name ends in iah can attest to the same.

It doesn’t mean it got better. Praise didn’t magically fix it. But it shifted my attention from myself to my God.

In the fall…3 different views. One constant companion: Praise

Proverbs 3:9 ESV

Honor the Lord with your wealth and with the firstfruits of all your produce;

Proverbs

Proverbs 21:3 ESV

To do righteousness and justice is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice.

Proverbs

Proverbs 3:5–9 ESV

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord, and turn away from evil. It will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones. Honor the Lord with your wealth and with the firstfruits of all your produce;

Ecclesiastes is filled with references to God’s eternal purposes

and Job may have one of the most precious worship moments of all time:

Job 1:

Job 1:20–21 ESV

Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped. And he said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”

In fact when God does communicate with Job he gets no answer for why his life is so hard. Instead he gets a bigger image of God.

Worship team and prayer teams up.

A bigger image of God.

How do you see God today?

How are your roots?

Tim Keller said it this way in a prayer:

Lord, life is going by so fast! it frightens me unless I remember your eternity. We are as rootless as tumbleweeds and will be blown about all our lives unless you are our dwelling place. In you we are home. What I have in you I can never lose and will have forever. I praise you for this unfathomable comfort. Amen.