Sermon Tone Analysis

We lift You higher | Your name be louder than any other song | You are forever seated on Your throne | You are forever, God and God a lone

THAT is the cry of any true church… that God would be seen and adored as HIGHER… MORE GLORIOUS… MORE AWESOME THAN ANYTHING ELSE...

…because he has made us HIS people...

We are IN HIM… and he is dwelling IN US… we are his temple… his dwelling place… together.

We are ONE CHURCH, sharing ONE FAITH… lifting high the anthem of our glorious King.

Really, that type of response to God is what the Apostle Paul is trying to stimulate in the churches when he wrote the letter of Ephesians...

He wrote this letter to stir us up to pursue God’s unimaginable vision for his church so that he would receive MUCH glory.

Not just through what we say or what we do… but in who we ARE.

God gets much glory for who he has created us to be as the body of Christ.

Today we are coming to the end of the first section of the book…

The end of chapter 3…

Next week, David Parker will preach the transitional verses of chapter 4:1-6 that launch us into very applicational matters for the rest of the letter...

But at the end of chapter 3, Paul wraps up this heavily doctrinal section of the letter with a prayer...

This is his second prayer in the book… in fact you could say that it’s a continuation of his prayer in chapter 1...

He’s continually praying throughout the letter that these churches would “get it.”

That they would take hold of the GLORIOUS PLAN that God is working out in his church… and that God has entrusted Paul to reveal...

He’s praying that they would fully embrace and embody it, and in doing so, that they would EXPERIENCE the glory of God in their midst.

Just like the prayer of chapter 1… Paul’s prayer for the churches surrounding Ephesus must become OUR prayer for OUR church...

So let’s read it… we are going to explore it in depth using two main questions… and then we are going to pray it over our church.

Read Eph.

3:14-21

Now this is another one of those LONG run-on sentences from the Apostle Paul… he gets so caught up in what he is saying that he forgets to breath...

And so it can be hard to find the main request that he is praying for here…

We can see EASILY his REASON for praying… he says, “For this reason...”

And you might remember from last week that chapter 4:1 started out with the same words, “For this reason...”

He’s picking up where he left off before going down a Spirit-inspired rabbit trail about his job description as an Apostle to reveal the mystery of Christ and how it relates to the Gentiles.

And so “for this reason” refers to what came at the end of chapter 2…

The revelation that the GENTILES are fully in Christ… in the Messiah… just like the Jews...

That God has created one NEW MAN in place of the two divided people groups… one NEW body who is united under Christ, the head.

And in doing so, he has made the Gentiles CITIZENS of a NEW KINGDOM…

With the full rights and privileges of a natural born member of God’s people unlike what they could be under the Old Covenant.

He made the Gentiles MEMBERS of a NEW FAMILY.

He made them BUILDING BLOCKS in a NEW TEMPLE...

TOGETHER they are a DWELLING PLACE FOR GOD.

And because of this glorious truth, Paul is bowing his knees before the Father as he sits in prison because he made this mystery known…

But what is the main thing he is praying for?

What is Paul is asking God to accomplish?

I believe the answer to that question comes in verses 18-19...

We are going to look at those verses first… because they are the pinnacle of his request… and it’s in these verses that we see Paul fully going after God’s vision for the church as he prays.

He’s praying that these churches would EXPERIENCE what it means to be a dwelling place for God through the Spirit.

Look at 3:18-19 again - Paul prays “[That you] 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.”

We are going to ask two main questions based on Paul’s prayer today:

What is God’s vision for his church?

(this is really the point of all that we’ve been studying so far in Ephesians)

And then, based on that, what must happen for our church to experience this vision God has for us.

[repeat]

Let’s look at this first question from verses 18-19… we’ll start here and then answer the second question by going back through the whole prayer.

(v.

18-19) What is God's vision for his church?

That we would be filled with all the fullness of God together.

THAT is the bottom line of what Paul LONGS for every church… and I would suggest that is the best summary of God’s vision for his church that Paul is revealing in Ephesians...

v, 14 told us Paul is praying BECAUSE he knows God is making the Church his dwelling place… and so he prays that the churches would be filled with all the fullness of God together.

Now we can say that quicly… but it is a MASSIVE… GLORIOUS vision if you stop to think about it...

We aren’t just humans gathering together to perform for God… to put on a song and dance for him so that he would be appeased or so that others can be entertained.

We are vessels being filled up with God himself!

THAT is what is going on in the church.

How can WE… finite human beings… be FILLED with ALL the FULLNESS of an INFINITE God?

Solomon prayed at the dedication of the Temple in the Old Testament, saying,

“But will God indeed dwell on the earth?

Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you; how much less this house that I have built!

(1 Kings 8:27 ESV)

And that serves to demonstrate the wonder of what is being said here...

The heaven… and the highest heaven cannot contain him…

But God has CHOSEN to build FOR HIMSELF a PEOPLE who will be his dwelling place…

whom he will FILL… TOGETHER… with all his fullness… with his glory.

And he will do that in two ways:

He will grant them to comprehend the full dimensions of his glory together…

And he will grant them to experientially know the love of Christ.

I’m suggesting here that the idea of being “filled with all the glory of God” is the summary of the previous two phrases.

The previous two phrases are how we are filled with all the fullness of God.

Being filled with God’s fullness will mean that we begin to...

1) Comprehend with all the saints the fill dimensions of his glory...

Paul starts this main heart of his request by saying, “that you may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth,” (Ephesians 3:18, ESV)

And we read that, and we are like, “The breadth and length and height and depth… OF WHAT?!?! FINISH THE SENTENCE!”

It’s almost like when you get so excited about something and are so speechless that you forget to finish what you are saying…

Now if you have an NIV Bible, it makes an interpretation and ties this directly to “the love of Christ...”

And it’s not wrong to say that Christ’s love has vast dimensions, but that’s not what the original actually says...

It just leaves it open ended...

And there are a lot of interpretations to what this is referring to… because of the vastness of God, I’m not sure we can say any of them are necessarily WRONG or inaccurate to say of God...

But I think it is probably referring to the vastness of his total glory…

Paul’s prayer echoes a passage in Job where it says,

“Can you find out the deep things of God? Can you find out the limit of the Almighty?

It is higher than heaven—what can you do?

Deeper than Sheol—what can you know?

Its measure is longer than the earth and broader than the sea.” (Job 11:7–9, ESV)

The deep things of God… the limit of the Almighty… has vast, unsearchable dimensions...

The word we could use to describe that is GLORY.

And Paul prays that we would comprehend the vast dimensions of that glory “together with all the saints.”

Knowing God… being filled with his fullness… going deeper into our understanding of him… is not an individual pursuit.

The best way to get to know the deep things of God is not to wander off by yourself into the woods to meditate for a while...

It’s not to isolate yourself like a Monk...

The way we comprehend the magnitude of God most clearly is by getting to know him “together with all the saints.”

We need one another in order to grow deeper in our knowing God.

We need one another in order to have true insight into God’s word.

We need one another to help us discern God’s leading...

We need one another in order to see the vastness of what God is doing in his people… both here… and all around the world…

To be filled with all the fullness of God means to comprehend the vast dimensions of God’s glory TOGETHER...

AND it means to...

2) Experientially know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge

Paul prays that they would know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.

The word for know is not just to “know about”… rather it’s to KNOW PERSONALLY… INTIMATELY… to be FULLY ACQUAINTED with his love.