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Sean Couch

Christiansburg Baptist Church

Ephesians: Bringing It All Together • Sermon • Submitted 6 years ago • Presented 6 years ago • 39:45

Ephesians 1:15–23

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Whether you are just beginning to think about Jesus or have been a Christian a long time, you need his help to see what this life is all about. Find out more in this week's message from Ephesians 1:15-23.

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We had a tremendous week at VBS where we saw that whatever we face, Jesus rescues.

That brings us to our message this week, so go ahead and open your Bibles to .

Last week, we began a series through the book of Ephesians.

This powerful letter starts off explaining some incredibly rich truths about who God is and who we are in Christ before it turns to teach us how to live in light of those truths.

The overall idea of the book is that God is bringing everything together in Christ. If you remember, we said that when sin entered into the picture, it caused a lot of areas of what God made to stop submitting wilfully to him.

There were angels who rebelled, all of humanity turned from him, and the whole universe groaned under the weight of our sin.

Yet, through Jesus, God is bringing it all back together.

Jesus died in our place and was raised from the dead to provide a way back to God and to show his power over everything.

That doesn’t mean that every person and every angel who fell will one day be saved from their sin, but it does mean that God is drawing people back to himself and will one day remove the stain of sin from all the earth.

When Jesus came back to life after he was crucified, he broke the power of sin and death, proving that he is the rightful ruler over everything.

Last week, then, we saw that those who have turned to Christ as their Lord and Savior and accepted God’s gift of salvation have some incredible blessings.

We are adopted into God’s family, we have been redeemed or bought back, we have this incredible inheritance waiting for us, and we have the Holy Spirit living in us.

In light of those blessings, Paul’s heart overflows in prayer for the church at Ephesus.

Pick up with me in verses 15-16...

He was grateful for the way God was working through them, both through the faith they put in Jesus and in the way they loved those who follow him.

Remember that the word “saint” doesn’t mean super-spiritual person. It means “holy one”, which is true of every person who has put their hope and trust in Christ.

As we said last week, he has taken your sin and given you his goodness and holiness, which makes you a saint!

Did you notice something that should sound somewhat familiar, though? Faith towards God is connected with a love for his people, which means we love God and others in our church.

Pick up in verse 17.

Paul is praying for God to help the Ephesians, and us as we read this, to understand some mind-boggling truths about who we are in Christ.

Here’s what we find in this passage, though, and this is the big idea of today’s message: You can’t understand the Christian life without God’s help.

If you take nothing else out of this message, I want you to see that you can’t understand the Christian life apart from God working to show you what is true and what it means.

For those of you here who are still not sure if you want to follow Christ yet, that means you aren’t ever going to have it all figured out. You should seek out answers for your questions, but know that you aren’t going to get all the answers.

There comes a point where you have to respond to God’s invitation to follow him in faith, trusting that he knows what he is doing and is good enough to place your hope and life and security in his hands.

What about those of us who know Jesus?

We can often be tempted to think that since we’ve been at this a while, we can figure it out on our own.

If you are going to draw closer to Christ, you have to remember that you are still completely dependent on him.

You need to be reading the Bible and studying, but you have to remember that you need him to teach you all the time what is true and where you are off track. You need him to constantly remind you of the beauty of his grace and the incredible riches of Christ.

In this prayer, Paul gives us at least three realities we need God’s help to fully grasp.

I will do my best to explain them, but only God can teach them to us, so let’s stop and ask his help, just like Paul did.

As a heads up, there are some phrases that are a little tricky to translate in this passage, so there are a few things that I am going to highlight that could go a couple of ways.

The first is in this verse.

If you look at what Paul prays, the CSB and several other translations render this as Paul asking God the Father to give you “the Spirit of wisdom and revelation.”

That would imply that Paul is praying for God to give the Holy Spirit to the church at Ephesus, because we need the Holy Spirit to give us wisdom and revelation from God.

It is true that we need the Holy Spirit to understand truth about God. He is the one who points us to Christ, and he is the one who makes Scripture come alive in our hearts.

He convicts and he guides, giving us wisdom.

However, in the original Greek text here, there is no “the”, so it could also be translated as “a spirit of wisdom and revelation”.

To me, this second translation makes a lot more sense.

Yes, we need the Holy Spirit to teach us and guide us, but here’s the thing: we already have him. Look back to verses 13-14.

Remember that when you come to Christ, you are sealed with the Holy Spirit as a down payment of the incredible inheritance you have still to come.

Why would Paul pray for God to give you something you already have?

That’s why I prefer to see this as Paul praying for us to have a spirit that has a rich knowledge and understanding of who God is.

That comes through the Holy Spirit’s work, but his prayer was for our spirits, our hearts, to be opened to understand.

We see that in the first part of verse 18...

Remember that, in biblical times, the heart was the core of who you are. It wasn’t the seat of your emotions like it is for us. It was where your thoughts and intentions and desires came from.

Again, in Paul’s original Greek, this isn’t a new sentence. In fact, it can be seen as expanding on the previous section.

We need a spirit of wisdom and revelation that comes as God enlightens our hearts to understand him better.

I wear contacts that are supposed to be changed out every month, and this morning was new contact day.

I had a tendency in years gone by to stretch my contacts for longer than I should have.

If I went a few months without swapping out a pair, they would get cloudier and cloudier.

On the day you put in a new pair of contacts, suddenly the world was crisp and clear and beautiful again!

It was like that first crisp fall day after the hazy humid days of summer.

In an even greater way, God enlightens our eyes when we come to Christ.

We go from being spiritually blind to suddenly understanding truths about God, and as he shows us more and more of himself, we see better and better.

Again, though, we need his help to understand anything.

What was it, then, that Paul was praying for us to see?

The rest of this chapter lays out for us some amazing realities that only God can help us fully see and grasp.

For the rest of our time, we are going to see what we can look at them together, prayerfully asking God to help us understand.

Read verses 18-19.

The first reality we need his help to see is...

1) You have hope because of what God has done.

We need to understand the hope we have in his calling.

For those who are in Christ, we have an incredible hope.

In the Bible, the term hope doesn’t mean “wishful thinking”.

Many of us have a hope that next year, our health will be better, we will have more money, our marriage will be stronger, our job will be more satisfying, our classes will be easier, or in some general way, our lives will be better next year than they are this year.

As lovingly as I possibly can, may I remind you that the Bible nowhere promises any of those things?

We have bought into the lie the world sells that if I do good, good things will happen to me.

You don’t find that in the Bible.

Think about it: of the twelve men who were Jesus’ first disciples, 11 were killed for their faith and the twelfth spend many of his later years in exile for his faith.

None of the men who followed Jesus died wealthy.

Many of the prophets God used throughout history were beaten, imprisoned, ridiculed, or killed because they did what God told them to do.

So do we just give up?

No; we need God to show us what hope really is all about.

You see, our hope is not a hope that tomorrow is going to be better than today.

Our hope is the certain assurance that goes deep into the core of our soul that even if every tomorrow gets worse than the one before, that I am safe and secure in Christ.

If I lose my job, I have the hope that I am adopted into the family of God. If I lose my health or if my marriage goes through a difficult time or if my whole world seems to fall apart, I have the hope that I have been called by God into a relationship with him and that one day, I will stand before him for all eternity with every trace of pain erased and live forever with him in sweet joy and surrender and rest.

This hope isn’t based on me, it’s based on what God has done!

My hope isn’t that I hope I am good enough to get into heaven, my hope is that I know I am right with him because of he saved me by his grace and his mercy.

This hope is in his calling, not in my goodness.

In a world obsessed with trying to find hope in everything else, we need God to open our eyes to see what it looks like to truly understand the hope of his calling.

When the bottom drops out, we need his grace to show us that his calling hasn’t changed and he still cares and he still loves and he still works and he is bringing everything together in Christ, so we have hope.

That frees us to live securely and obey boldly because we are totally safe in him.

There’s a second reality we need his help to understand, and it is tied in a way to this first.

2) You are God’s inheritance.

Look back at the end of verse 18...

This one still boggles my mind.

I can’t fully wrap my head around it, so I am praying for God to help me understand this truth better.

Now, back in verse 11, we saw that we have an inheritance from Christ that connects with the hope we just talked about. We will one day be totally free from sin and forever in God’s presence.

However, look back at this verse again: you are God’s inheritance, and he says that his inheritance is a glorious wealth.

You see, when God set apart the nation of Israel in the Old Testament as his unique people, he called them his inheritance.

Now, he is saying that is true of all who place their trust in Christ.

Do you ever feel worthless? Do you feel like you are so badly broken that no one could ever really love you or care about you?

You are a part of this gloriously wealthy inheritance that belong to Christ.

Isn’t that incredible?

Do you see the value you have? Go back up to verse 4…you are chosen by God to be in his family!

You are God’s inheritance, and God isn’t disappointed in that.

It’s not like when the will is read, God gets mad because he got the beat up old car while someone else got the house.

God says you are a part of the glorious inheritance.

Here’s how Warren Weirsbe comments on this passage:

Wiersbe’s Expository Outlines on the New Testament Chapter 1

We not only have an inheritance in Christ, but we are an inheritance to Christ (see v. 11). The word “riches” appears often in Ephesians, suggesting that there is nothing lacking, nothing more that we need. Christians mature in the Lord when they learn how much they mean to Christ and then start living to bring joy to His heart.

You need God to help you understand and live this way.

That brings us to the third reality.

God called you, so you are secure. He wants you, and you bring him joy, but you can’t do it on your own.

You aren’t strong enough to obey Christ by yourself, so you need to understand that...

3)You have the power of God working in you.

Look at verse 19.

Paul is tripping over words to describe how incredible God’s power is, and that power is working in you.

It was his power that saved you, and it is his power that equips you to live a life that is honoring him.

Look at me: if you are in Christ, you have the power of God working in you right now.

There isn’t a sin God can’t overcome in you, and there isn’t a step of obedience that is too difficult for you. His power is working in you.

Do you wonder how powerful he is?

Look at verses 20-23.

The power that is at work in you is the very same power that raised Jesus from the dead. (20)

The power that is at work in you exalted Christ to rule over everything in creation, even angels and demons (20-21).

It is this power that is bringing everything together in Christ (22).

It is this same power that Jesus exercises as the leader of the church (22-23).

That is the power of God, which is working in you and fully available to you.

Does that mean that God is going to put you in charge of the church and that angels and demons will bow at your feet?

Not in the same way that Christ is exalted, no. As God the Son, Jesus holds a unique position that no one else can fill.

However, we will keep these verses in mind next week as we dive into chapter 2.

For today, pray for God to open your eyes to see these truths again in a greater way.

He called you, so you are completely secure and can hope in him no matter what.

He delights in you, because you are his inheritance.

His power is working in you, so there is nothing he can call you to do that is impossible, and I can guarantee he can do things in and through you that you never imagined possible.