:
You're listening to audio from Faith Church Indy.  This fall we're studying the book of Ephesians,  learning about the new life that we find in Christ.  Now here's the teaching. I'm Jeff Schultz, one of the pastors here at Faith. uh Glad to have you all here to worship with us this morning. One of the most important things, it's been said,  that we can think about  is what we think about when we think of God, what we think God is like. So let me ask you a question.  What do you think God  wants  from you? What do you think God wants  for you? We might think of things like obedience,  good morals,  serving others, loving our neighbors, giving generously, avoiding sin, sharing our faith, impacting society, caring for the needy.  All those are good. All those are biblical and true. But in Ephesians chapter three, Paul shows us something  deeper, something bigger. He shows us what God really desires for his people and it's not what we do for him, but actually what God is doing in us and for us and through  us.  Paul has this vision of what God intends for us to experience, what God intends for us our lives to look like and interestingly, it's not a command, it's actually a prayer. Paul falls to his knees before God and prays  that believers would experience,  that people would experience something breathtaking in knowing Jesus, that we would be filled with  all of the fullness of God. That's incredible. What does it mean to be filled with God's fullness? What would that look like? How could finite people...  experience the infinite God in that way. And yet that's what Paul prays for because that's what God wants for you. It's what God wants for His people. God wants you to know His love so that you are filled with His fullness. God wants you to know His love so that you are filled with His fullness. There's a lot to unpack there that we're going to see in this passage in Ephesians chapter three. Just a quick review. We're closing up this first half of the book of Ephesians today. Paul has laid out deep and amazing vistas of theology and God's work and who He is and what He's done, the riches of His grace and His glory. And he's talked about how we were chosen before the foundation of the world. That in love, God chose us to be adopted as daughters and sons into his family and how we've been forgiven and justified and in some mystical supernatural way even seated in the heavenly places with Christ  all because of God's  unearned  undeserved grace. And  now we're going to look at this passage this morning to see what it is that God wants for us and how that actually works, how we could experience it, that we would be so rooted and filled with God's love that we would experience His fullness. If you haven't already, go ahead and turn in your Bibles to Ephesians chapter 3. If you have those little Ephesians Scripture journals, we're on page 14 and we're looking at chapter 3 verses 14 to 21. And the first thing to notice here is Before we even talk about what's in this prayer is the posture of prayer that Paul adopts here. He says in verse 14, for this reason, that's everything we just sort of quickly summarize to all this amazing truths that he's expressed about who God is and what he's done. For all of this, I bow my knees before the Father. And I just want to take a minute to pause here because it's actually significant. For most Jews in Paul's day, they prayed standing up like we often do. Jews almost never prayed sitting down or kneeling. Kneeling particularly was a posture of humility. It was a posture of  intense emotion. And so even in this posture of prayer,  Paul is expressing that,  I'm burdened with something really significant that I just long for you to know and experience.  Notice how he talks about God, the Father  from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named. In other words,  everything, all that we have, all of life, everything that we experience, it  all derives life and identity from Him. He is the Lord and giver of life. Before Paul wants to ask anything of God, he wants us to remember who God is and who God is  for us.  We could maybe say  we don't really pray rightly until we see God rightly. He's a father to us, a loving and gracious and powerful father. So as we go through the sections of this prayer,  We're going to look at just a couple of movements here, a couple of focuses, and then how we can think about applying this to ourselves. Paul is praying essentially for three things, a prayer for strength, for Christ's presence, and for God's fullness.  And he wants you to know his love so that you are filled with that fullness. So let's dig into this together. First, Paul begins with a request for strength, for  spiritual strength, not physical strength, not positive circumstances, not emotional uh ability, but inner strength.  I pray  that according to the riches of his glory, He says in verse 16, you may be strengthened with power through His Spirit in your inner being. think Paul is praying this because  the greatest struggles  in our lives, the greatest need that we have are not about what's going on around us. It's most of the time what's going on inside of us. The biggest battles we face are not outside, they're inside. And  I don't know about you, but  we can come here, particularly on a Sunday morning or Wednesday night. We can look good on the outside. We can smile. We can show up. We can serve. We can give. We can greet people. And have you tired, though? I mean, maybe physically, but just weary.  It just feels like, especially the last four or five years since COVID, and everything was upended, and it feels like we've Some of them have never really gotten back to this sense of like, okay, things are manageable and I can sort of figure out what's going on and the world's pretty predictable and understandable. Just, there's a lot that feels overwhelming. Sometimes because of all we're trying to do, sometimes what's going on out in the world. And that's natural, right? That we can feel weak and weary and burdened and discouraged.  Paul is praying. I want you to actually know strength in your inner being that the Holy Spirit can give to you.  Notice the measure of this strength, according to the riches of His glory. And I think there's something significant there, not just out of His riches, but according to, in line with the immensity of the riches that He possesses. You know, decades ago when Bill Gates was still at the top of the list of the world's wealthiest people,  he was sitting on this big pile of tens of billions of dollars and people were critiquing him, like, are you doing with all this money?  Back when we used to, I guess, be able to shame people culturally into actually thinking about what they're doing with all this money they've accumulated. And  I think out of that and some reflection, he and his wife decided they were going to start a foundation. And they've started a foundation to help eliminate disease in Africa and provide education for  underserved populations. And in fact, his goal, he said, is to  decrease his wealth, to leave this world with less money than he has currently.  The guy has an immensity of wealth.  If Bill Gates gave you $100, yeah,  he'd be giving to you out of his wealth, but he wouldn't really be giving to you according to his wealth, right? Bill Gates has established his foundation to pour out according to the  billions and billions of dollars that he has available. Paul is saying, Paul's praying that God would strengthen you in accordance with,  in line with his own infinite glory and power. There's no limit to the supply. One commentator said, Spirit of God empowers the people of God to experience the fullness of God. What does God have to offer? That's what Paul is praying that we would experience. And look at one of the purposes of this. He's praying in verse 17 that Christ would dwell in your hearts by faith. That's the purpose of Jesus strengthening you. Not to make you equal to your task, not to help you, you know, sort of  overcome this particular challenge, although that's sort of implicit, but his prayers that God would strengthen you so that Jesus would live more and more in your heart by faith. Now, everyone who has come to faith in Christ, every Christian, every believer has Christ  dwelling within them. So Paul is... getting at something else here,  a deeper experience, a deeper intimacy, a greater reality of Jesus' presence with us. And I think there's maybe something in that word dwell.  It has the sense of to settle down, to make yourself at home. Right, you guys have probably had this experience where  you had people coming over and you didn't really have time to clean up, like do the full house cleaning. And so you gather a few things and you throw them in the extra guest bedroom  and you clean up the downstairs bathroom so it's presentable.  you just hope they, you know, two people don't need to use the bathroom at once so they go to the one you didn't get clean.  And you don't invite them to go in the basement  or to go up and look at what your bedroom looks like where all the unfolded laundry is, you know, strewn everywhere. Paul is saying, I want you to experience Christ in such a way that He is at home in your life, in your heart, not just as a visitor that goes to certain parts, certain areas, not just as a guest in one room, but as  Lord and present in every area of your life.  So that my intent is to say, not  Jesus, you get this hour and a half on Sunday or this hour on Wednesday, but. You know, I don't really want you talking to me about how I respond to those annoying people in traffic or that difficult person at work or that email that I sent.  You don't need to worry about that stuff. I'll just handle that part.  I you to experience Christ in a way that He's present in all of it and  shaping all of it. To let Him rearrange the furniture, to clean out the closets, to change what's on the wall, that Christ would not just... reside in you, but preside  over you.  And now  out of that experience of the Spirit  strengthening you in your inner being and Christ dwelling in you, look at what he goes on to say in verse 17. So that again, that you being  rooted and grounded in love. Notice the imagery that he uses here. It's kind of this mixed metaphor, I think, on purpose. Rooted is this agricultural picture, uh like a tree drawing nourishment from healthy, fertile soil. And  grounded is, of course, a picture of a building standing on a firm foundation. Both of them give this image of stability and  security and confidence. Because a tree can't live without healthy roots and good soil, and a building can't stand without a solid foundation. And interestingly, Paul was saying that foundation is not theology, it's not doctrine, it's not the things we know about Jesus,  that you being rooted and grounded  in  love. That's amazing. Paul's saying that our life as we walk with Christ, it doesn't grow in the soil of our performance or our activity or our generosity. It grows in the soil of Christ's  love. And listen, this is important, right? That it's not we grow because of our love for Jesus. We grow because of His love for  us.  It's the awareness and the experience of His love that actually strengthens and  grows us. That's why Paul prays  that you would have strength to comprehend, to  know fully and deeply, profoundly with all of the saints.  Man, this is just amazing, isn't it? Paul is praying that we would have strength not to know theology better, not to have a better prayer life, not to  do better, not to have more education, more insight, more intelligence, more giftedness, but to have strength to understand. the extent of God's love for us. I'm going to be honest, mean, for me this is  a struggle, like maybe it is for some of you. I can believe that God forgives me, I can believe that God uses me. But man, I just at times really struggle to believe that God likes me. God delights  in me. That God deeply, profoundly  loves  me. Knowing everything there is to know about. That's why Paul prays for  strength for us. Strength for us to not just know,  but to comprehend, to grasp the dimensions of God's love for us.  The breadth of it.  I  mean, Paul just sort of runs out of dimensions here.  The breadth of it could be, you know, he's thinking about... Again, how God has reached out amazingly, unexpectedly to not just the children of Abraham, but to Gentiles, you know, almost everyone in this room, people who have no claim on God, that God's love would be broad enough for  everyone, for every single person that He's ever made. The length of God's love. Oh, remember back how in  chapter one, Paul gave this amazing picture of how In love, He chose us from the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight. God's love for me stretches back before He ever even created any of So there's nothing that I can do that's gonna undo that, right? Paul wants us to know that the length of that love, the height of that love, remember he said  he's declared us righteous and in fact seated us in heavenly places with Christ. Do we have a sense of the height of Jesus' love that we have been lifted  with Christ and seated before the presence of the Father in glory? and that the depth of that love, that it reaches down to the lowest pits. to the very worst, ugliest, most hateful, shameful, embarrassing, wicked things that we have said or thought or done or wished that we could do. And Jesus knows it all. He knows it. And His love reaches  deeper than that. You cannot  measure this love policy and you can only  marvel at it and pray that God will  enlarge your ability to understand it for you. Paul adds then that you may  know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.  How do you know something that surpasses  knowing? I think we could say it's something we actually have to just experience.  We have to lay hold of it for ourselves and believe it and have an experience of it because there's a difference between knowing about God's love  and actually believing and experiencing it for ourselves.  Our daughter-in-law's dad  has several beehives. And just recently, we were gifted with three or four  jars of beautiful, rich amber honey. Now, I don't know whether you like honey or not, but we probably all know what it is. So just picture honey in your mind, like a  jar of beautiful honey. We could talk about it, think about it all day long, the color, the texture, the composition, how it's produced, its uses, stickiness, sweetness.  We can understand honey, right, from the perspective of biology or ecology or chemistry or history. But until you actually open the jar, until you actually taste it, you don't really know what honey is about. You don't know what it  is. And I think that's what Paul is getting at. And he wants us to know, to comprehend, to taste, to experience  the love of Christ. that is even beyond full definition. to know the immensity of Jesus' love for you and the  sweetness of that you may be filled with all the fullness of God in verse 19. This is,  if we could say maybe the summit or the goal of Paul's prayer, that everything has been building to this, be strengthened in our inner being, that Christ would dwell in our hearts, that being rooted and established in love, we would have  strength to know His love so that we would be filled  with His fullness. That is what Jesus wants for you. Not your obedience, not your morality, not your generosity, not your faithfulness, but fullness. And out of that fullness, all of those things can flow and grow and expand and extend to others. But that you, what Jesus wants for you  is that you  would  overflow with the very life and the glory and the joy and the  the of Jesus Himself. It doesn't mean we become God, obviously. It means we become so full of experiencing Him and knowing Him that  His joy, His love, His beauty,  that there's no part of us that isn't impacted by that reality and that doesn't reflect what Jesus is like. Paul says in writing to believers in Colossi, in Christ, the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form and you have been  filled  in  Him. It's just amazing.  Imagine a huge  waterfall, just a never-ending water supply cascading down towards you and  you have a copper bucket there.  The cup can never contain the waterfall, right? But the cup can be full of that water. Full even to overflowing. That's what Paul is getting at here. That we don't just know Jesus  as  someone who died for me and who loves me and yes, I'm going to heaven someday, but I'm actually experiencing his life here and now. That his grace and his presence are an ongoing reality in my daily experience in  a way that is constantly filling me up. What does that look like?  How do we experience that? What does it mean to  be filled with the fullness of God? Well, first, it comes from a place of deep dependence.  It comes from a position of surrender.  You can't fill a cup with something that's already full of something else, right? Like if that cup under the waterfall is full of concrete, it's never going to get full of water, unless I have some way of getting the concrete out. And if I'm filled with resentment or fear or worry, ambition, pride, thoughts about what other people are thinking or worries about what's going on in the world or anxieties over the way things ought to be going and they're not. We're not leaving room for God to come in and fill us up with His presence out of the awareness of His love for us. But when we humble ourselves before Him and say, Lord, would you fill me?  Would you even help me see the things that I'm filling myself with that  aren't  shaped by Your love and Your grace and Your glory? He will answer that prayer. The Spirit of God empowers the people of God to experience the fullness of God. Maybe that even just becomes a  prayer for us daily, throughout the day. Father, strengthen me today by Your Spirit in my inner being to know Your love and the fullness of Your love.  And that flows out of fellowship, out of intimacy with Jesus.  It doesn't happen, you know, just automatically by osmosis, right? Like it's been said,  grace is opposed to earning, but it's not opposed to effort. It takes intentionality to  nurture a relationship with God in this way, right? It grows through time and His Word and through prayer and…  Meditation, if it's okay to use that word as long as we define it correctly, right? Like you understand in  Eastern meditation the goal is to kind of empty your mind, to sort of empty yourself. Christian meditation is almost the exact opposite. It's intended to focus our mind and to fill us  by reflecting and turning over in our minds  who Jesus is and what He's done for me and what the Word says about me and what His Word says about Him.  and His purposes for me.  That's  so important and valuable and necessary for us to nourish a relationship with Jesus that's shaped by  inviting Him to shape our thoughts and our emotions and our wills according to His Word. And when he talks about being rooted and grounded in love,  it means that love isn't an emotion that we chase, it's a foundation that we stand on, that we live out of. In other words, when our lives are grounded on the awareness of God's love for  us, it overflows out of that fullness into love for others. It means I will forgive more easily. I will serve more willingly. I'll give more  generously. I'll judge less harshly. And that happens when I'm full of the awareness of God's amazing, undeserved love for me.  That's what pours his love out from us. You'll know that you're experiencing God's love when you start to love other people, especially, I'm going to say, two kind of categories of people.  The weak, the poor, the marginalized, because they can't offer you anything.  And the people that you would not choose as your friend because they don't attract you naturally. We look like Jesus when we love people who can't give us anything in return and have nothing in them that attracts us. because that's us, right? That's how Jesus loves us. That's who we are. We have nothing to offer Jesus. He doesn't need us in that sense. And honestly, there's nothing attractive in us that would make God go like, well, I'm really impressed with him, with her. When we know that that's the way Jesus loves us, that flows out of us to help us love people in the same way. If your faith makes you more cruel, more angry, more impatient, more judgmental, more exclusionary, more self-righteous, it's not God you're reflecting. And I think one of the ways that we can sort this out or help ourselves is by looking at what things we're actually looking to in our lives to find life and love and  meaning, right? We  hear people say, for example, we're addicted to smartphones, we're addicted to social media, a generation ago we were addicted to television.  I think there's some truth in that, right? But there's something more significant than that going on. The problem beneath that problem is that it's a reflection of distraction and avoidance. Because life is hard. It's discouraging, it's difficult, it's painful, it's frustrating,  it's tiring.  And that surfaces all these  negative emotions in us, right? Anger, fear, anxiety. The problem is I don't want to be dependent. I don't want to have to go to God to deal with that. I don't want to have to ask him. He may, you know, lift up the hood and start tinkering around with things I don't really want him telling me about. So I'll find something else to help me deal with the anger, the fear, the anxiety. We fill ourselves with spiritual junk food. And maybe it's social media, maybe it's the news, maybe it's games, whatever. And it's not that any of those things are inherently bad, but... Check what you're filling yourself with. Make more room for God in your soul because He wants to fill Himself with you so that you overflow with love and faith and hope and peace. fullness isn't about more activity, it's about pursuing intimacy with God. It's not about doing more for God, it's about being more with God. And  we have to go through this  so quickly, I've run out of time. um This closing prayer, Paul has prayed for the impossible, right, that we would be filled with the fullness of an infinite God and yet look what he says now,  to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think. Right, like do I believe that it's actually possible that God can actually fill me with His fullness, that He is able and that when I pray that sincerely that He will answer that prayer. He's able. No prayer is too big, no sin is too deep, no situation is too far gone. God is able and He's able to do. far more abundantly than all we ask or think. It's like Paul's just piling up adjectives. He's run out of ways to describe God's power super abundantly beyond. according to His power at work within us, the same power that raised Jesus from the dead, is alive in God's people to do this. We don't live a Christian life for God. We live a Christian life from God. We live out  of the infinite supply of His riches. So, don't settle for half-full experience  of Christ.  I you to know Jesus in an increasingly abundantly beyond what you could ask or imagine kind of way. And maybe you feel right now like well I have a cup full that a cup that I want Jesus to fill. The amazing thing is I think Paul was saying  that as we live this kind of life as we pursue Jesus in this way he actually expands our ability to experience his love and his grace and his joy and his life. Oh, what an amazing promise and a hope for us. So don't live in  spiritual scarcity and starvation when God wants to fill you. Fill you with His love and His life. You know, our kids, for many years, we're blessed to be able to go with them down to a beach in Florida on the Gulf Coast. And you could just sort of picture young kids at the beach, and maybe one of them runs up to you with a bucket and says, look, Dad, I've got the ocean in my bucket. And there's a sense in which that's true, right? Like, there's ocean water in the bucket, but you don't have the ocean in your bucket. It's impossibly immense.  And that's,  think, Paul is sort of picturing for us here. We cannot contain the vast ocean of God's love and glory and grace and beauty, but we can actually be filled. We can actually be filled with His love, His joy, His hope, His life,  that we would overflow towards others out of the abundance of what He has filled us with. And when that becomes the intentional focus and  prayer of our lives, God will do abundantly, exceedingly beyond what we ask or imagine. Let's pray. Oh Father, we bow our hearts humbly before you  and ask that out of your  limitless riches, according to your limitless riches, you would strengthen us with power by your Spirit. Oh Jesus, you  have come to live in  us,  we who trust in you, but dwell in our hearts, Jesus. Increasingly, more and more in all the other areas, root us and ground us in your love in ways that would drive out the weeds of fear and pride and  doubt and anger. Oh Father, increase our capacity to comprehend, to know, to experience experience Jesus' love. Fill us with your fullness, Father, until our words, our thoughts, our actions, our relationships all reflect you. To you be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations. Keper and never. Amen. Thank you for engaging with our community by checking out this podcast.  If you would like more information about our Church and ministry, you can find us at faithchurchindeed.com.