God Is Able

--- Welcome to our women's Bible study on the book of Ephesians called Finding Purpose and today we're going to cover all of chapter 3. Just as a review, in chapter 1, we were informed about all of the blessings that are associated with our new life in Christ. When we went through chapter 2, it was a before and after, like what we once were and what we are now. We also learned that all people are dead in transgressions and sins and need to be made alive by the work of Jesus Christ. Our spirits need to be enlivened. We also learned that God has prepared good works for each and every one of us to do once we are made alive in Christ. And these have been prepared for us beforehand. And so we have purpose. God has given us a purpose. And then we also spent quite a lot of time investigating the former distinctions between Jews and Gentiles, which were eliminated once Jesus rose from the dead and new life is available in Him. Those distinctions are no more. All people on the planet, all human beings are in the same position, have equal access to God and equal opportunity to be joined into this new family called the church, as Paul called it, the one new man, no longer two, Jew and Gentile, the body of Christ. So that's where we've been. Now in chapter 3, Paul begins to pray that they would be able to apply what they learned, but he only gets one phrase out, and then he starts a huge parenthesis. But what he started to say was this, verse 1, For this reason I, Paul, a prisoner of Jesus Christ, on behalf of you Gentiles, and then what he was about to say, I bow before my knees before the Father. But he paused and he inserted verses 2 through 13, which we call this big parenthesis. So before we investigate that parenthesis, I want to find out what do we learn from verse 1. In verse 1 itself, what do we learn? What did they learn? What did they read as they read his letter? Well, number one, they read that he was in prison. This may have been news to some of those people that, oh, this apostle, some of them didn't know him, you know, they got saved after, since the last time Paul had been here, and so they find out that he's writing this from prison. The second thing they learn is he said it in a very interesting way. I, Paul, a prisoner of Jesus Christ. That's very interesting and unusual, because we would say, I'm a prisoner of Malheur County, because I did something wrong, or we would have expected him to say, I am a prisoner of Rome, or I am a prisoner of Nero, but he didn't say that. He said, I'm a prisoner of Jesus Christ. And so the implication there, as we think about that, as they thought about it, we realize that what Paul is saying is being a prisoner is no fun. That is not a picnic at all. But he's a prisoner of Jesus Christ. That means there was a reason for it. That means that Rome didn't have control over him. Nero didn't have control over him. God had full control over him, and even this difficult place that he was in had been filtered through the hands of the Lord. And so there was a reason. The reason for his imprisonment, he said, is on behalf of you Gentiles. And he wasn't really saying, so you guys are the reason I'm in prison. But in a way, they were, because he was spending his time preaching the gospel to the Gentiles. He was spending his time explaining that now the Gentiles could be saved, just like the Jews, and could be brought in. So his imprisonment really was on behalf of them. And so the reason, what he wanted to do was to teach the Gentiles about this mystery of the church. Now we're going to move on to this parenthesis, verses 2 to 13. And there's two themes that keep going back and forth as we do this. Paul's personal experience and this mystery of the church. And we'll point them out as we go back and forth. Assuming that you've heard of the stewardship of God's grace that was given to me for you. That's a personal thing there. How the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I have written briefly. When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men and other generations, as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles, the prophets by the Spirit. This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Jesus Christ through the gospel. Alright, let's pick up one of those themes, the mystery of the church. He mentions it three times in this passage. We have one more time to come in this chapter. It is the relationship of Christ to the church. And the idea now that Jews and Gentiles can all be saved, can be in one family, are co-heirs with Christ. And this is a mystery because it was not revealed in the Old Testament. As I was planning for this lesson, I thought to myself, I know that my husband drew a chart one time. I can remember sitting in here and seeing a chart. We share all of our files. Our files are all shared with one another. So I thought, I'm just going to go and sneak in and find that chart. And so I found it. Here is the chart. I'm going to use it. He doesn't know I'm using it. But I thought, hey, I don't have to reinvent the wheel. This is fantastic. And this is so great because it shows, he called it the mountain peaks of prophecy, but it shows us this idea of why the church was unknown in the Old Testament. Why it was unknown even to the prophets. The prophets could see the first coming of Christ. They expected the Messiah. And to some degree, they could see the second coming of Christ. But look what's in the valley. The church. So it was concealed from them. It was a mystery to them. But Paul is saying, not to us. Now it's revealed to us. And so that's what he was getting so excited about. So it was really important for the early church to understand this mystery. And you know what? It is really important for us to understand what we see in that chart. Otherwise, we won't understand our Old Testament very well. If we don't understand that the church itself was concealed in the Old Testament. You know, you read through your Old Testament. You start in Genesis and all the way through. It's all about God's dealing with Israel. Israel. Israel. Even when Jesus comes and starts his earthly ministry. He's still dealing. I came to the lost sheep of Israel. Okay? And so it's not until we get to after the resurrection. We get to Pentecost to the rapture is the church age. That is the church age. That is this mystery. So we'll talk more about the mystery. But I want to look at that personal example that Paul started off with in verse 2. Where he said, the stewardship of God's grace that was given to me for you. The NIV calls it the administration of God's grace. And I've always liked that word. I do have a little bit of administration in me as well. And when you administrate something, you see it through. You continue to work on it from beginning to end. Maybe you administrate an event. Or maybe you do this for your work or a business or something. So I kind of like the administration of God's grace. Because it reminds me that God is there to see it through. Whatever he's given me to do, God is there to see it through. And that's what this verse says. Look at Philippians 1.6. I'm sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion. Will administrate it to the day of Christ Jesus. So that's one of Paul's personal examples that he's giving. And he goes back to it here again in verse 7. Let's read from verse 7 on.

So again, it's a personal example. So we ask ourselves the question, what are the good works that God intended for Paul? Well, he says here to preach to the Gentiles and to uncover this mystery. That was the good works God prepared in advance for Paul to walk in. Were there some delights and some satisfactions for him in doing what God had called him to do? Absolutely. Were there some challenges and some problems in doing what God had called him to do? Absolutely. Being in prison is one of them. Not to mention the riots and the beatings and all of that that he endured as well. So as we sort of take this into our own life and we think about what God has given us to do, maybe not for an entire lifetime, maybe for the season that you are in right now, are there some satisfactions and some delights in doing what God has called you to do? Yes. And do you have challenges and problems in carrying out what God has given you to do? Yes, you probably do. You probably have some challenges. You probably need to make adjustments. This is one of the things God has given me to do in this season of life and one of my challenges is to do this. I have to say no to a lot of things. My time really isn't my own. I have to focus on things. And whether you're raising toddlers or whether you're, you know, trying to equip young adults in your family or, you know, whatever it is, whatever ministry God has given you to do, there are some challenges that have to be faced. But don't overlook the satisfactions and the delights that go with the work that God has given you as well. I really love verse seven and I want to, I try really hard not to give you too many personal stories because I don't want to make a Bible study session about me, but I'm going to break my rule here because I want to tell you why I love Ephesians 3, 7 so much and I have a visual aid that goes with it. This is a little stone, kind of a pebble, a little rock with pink and it's hand-painted Ephesians 3, 7. And in October of 1999, I went to an event, a women's event, and a woman gave me this rock and she said, this is a verse for you. She was giving a rock to everybody. I wasn't even 40 years old yet and I hadn't gone to tons and tons of women's events. And so she handed me this rock and in the moment, I don't always do this, but in the moment I thought, God has a message for me. Like this, whatever this is, this is for me because she said so. She gave it to me, you know. And so I went to my Bible, which I actually brought that Bible I was using at the time. It was a nice 1984 Thompson chain NIV and I went to that Bible and actually I'll put it up on the screen so you can see what this verse says in the NIV. I think I did it, yeah. I became a servant of this gospel by the gift of God's grace given me through the working of his power. I am really grateful that in that moment I was using an NIV because of the word servant. That can resonate with just an ordinary person, right? In the ESV, it says I became a minister and we might get a kind of a professional layer put over that and not be able to you know take it personally, but in this moment I looked up that verse. I became a servant of this gospel and the Lord really spoke to me and ministered to me and truly I'd already been saved for 15 years at this time, maybe longer, but the Lord really ministered to me. See, this is your life and it really is the life of anyone who is born again, who's been made alive in Christ. This is your life to be a minister, a servant of the good news. However that looks, whoever is around us, we serve the good news that Jesus makes people alive and so I really love that verse. I hope it gives you a little texture to that. Okay, now back to the other theme of the church, verse 10. So that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him. If I were to condense verses 10 to 12, I would say wisdom of God made known to the rulers and authorities. That's what that's all about. Now in your study guide I quoted Warren Weersbee so that we would know who the rulers and authorities are and he explained to us that these are basically angels, the heavenly angels and the demons. And so the wisdom of God is to be made known to them. We were reminded also that they are not omniscient. Remember, God is the only one who knows everything. Satan doesn't know everything. The demons don't know everything. The angels don't know everything. Only God knows everything. And so Paul was explaining here in this letter that the church was God's plan to educate the angels and the demons to do it through them. Okay, now this is deep. Can we dive deep for maybe two minutes here? We're going to dive deep because we didn't think about these things all week unless you were doing your Bible study. You don't naturally think along the lines of, hmm, I wonder what the angels know. I wonder what the angels are thinking. That's just not what we think. So we're going to do it for just a moment. And in order to go deep, I'm going to quote John Stott. And he says here, we may infer that God has not revealed to them directly his master plan for the church, but intended rather to make it known to them through the church itself as it came into being and grew. So what he's saying is that, well, what we understand here is that it was God's plan for the angels to observe the church and figure out God's plan through their observations. So I think about the angels at Cornelius's house in Acts chapter 10 when the Gentiles got saved and the angels are going, who knew? Who knew that that was going to happen? But look what's happening. Look at the wisdom of God. And so that's just a real interesting aspect there. He goes on to say, God revealed his glory to humans through the old creation, the universe, and God reveals his wisdom to angels through the new creation, the church. All right. So the final verse in this parentheses ends with a personal example. Again, Paul says, so I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory. And we need to move rather quickly into the second half of our lesson, the second half of this chapter, because there's so much good stuff. And it begins again in verse 14. Paul says, for the second time, for this reason, I bow my knees before the Father. And then he's going to continue, but we should ask, for what reason? Okay, he's said this twice now, for this reason. What is the reason? Because of God's unfolding purpose that's no longer concealed. For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father. Because God's purpose and his plan have always been advancing, but now it's made known. Because the reconciling work of Jesus has been done, and all of the blessings that we have in Christ. This is the reason that he's bowing, is because now he can pray that we would comprehend, and that they would comprehend, and that we would have power to walk in what we learn. So let's read in verse 14, okay?

What I want to do in the second half is highlight just three important themes that we see in here, and they're very applicable themes to us. I'll put the three themes on the screen, and we're going to do these three, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, being rooted and grounded in love, and finally, that you may have strength to comprehend the love of Christ. So let's look at the first theme, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, and if you're really thinking this through, Paul is praying for them that Christ would dwell in their hearts, and so we're a little confused right off, because we know that when we ask Jesus into our heart to forgive our sins, he dwells in our hearts. We know that he does this by faith, so why is Paul praying that Christ would dwell in their hearts? Because they're believers, they're Christians, it should already be happening. So the answer to that question, and the simplest way to explain it, is the nuances of vocabulary words. So let's bring it into our language. We use words like tenant and landlord. They both dwell in the same place, but they're very different, aren't they? They're quite different. One is almost like a stranger in that place, just there for a while, and one is like an owner. Or we might use words like stay and live. Have you ever noticed that you say, I'm staying at the Ramada Inn? It's temporary, you're a stranger there. You never say, I'm living at the Ramada Inn. And in the same way, you say to somebody, I live at the house on the corner of Oak Street. You don't say, I stay at the house. Okay, so one implies both are dwelling. You are dwelling. You're going to either the hotel or your home. You are living there in that moment. You're dwelling there. But those words imply different things, don't they? And the same thing is true in the Greek language. And Paul chose the word that would line up with our word live or landlord. He chose the permanent, not the stranger, not the I'm coming in for a short time, but the I'm gonna settle down and make myself at home. And so what he's basically saying is that Jesus would be able to say, not say, I'm staying with Sue, but rather say, I'm living with Sue. I'm settling down and making myself at home in her heart. Look at what Jesus said in John 14, 23.

Do you see the warmth of that? We will settle down. We will be at home. And so when we read this, we can kind of process and think of our own lives and ask, is Jesus merely a guest in my home? Or have I created a situation in my heart where he settles down and is at home because I have made adjustments in my life. I have accommodated the presence of the spirit of God. And now we are in agreement. We are unified in my heart. And so Paul is praying for the believers that Christ may dwell in your hearts. And we can understand now that makes sense because I bet every one of us has some little corner of the heart of our home that we think to ourselves, yeah, the Lord's been talking to me about that. I need to make an adjustment there so that he feels more at home, more settled down in my life there. What else happens when Christ settles down in our hearts? Our spiritual roots grow deeper. And that's the second theme here, being rooted and grounded in love. Rooted and grounded in love. I've talked before about the comparison. It's fun for me to make comparisons with spiritual things and with nature. And even at our women's retreat, we compared trees, the roots of trees to our spiritual life. And I didn't make this up. The psalmist made it up in Psalm 92. It says, the righteous will flourish like a palm tree. They will grow like the cedar of Lebanon. And a cedar of Lebanon is a tree that grows to great heights. And the reason it is able to grow to great heights is because the root system goes down in direct proportion and even more downward than what the tree grows upward. And so in nature, the roots of trees are able to drill down through soil, through hardpan, even through rock, because God has designed for their roots to have a special substance on the tips of their roots that enables them to push, push, push down even further. And I like to consider that, switch that over to our spiritual lives and to say, Lord, have you done that for us as well? Have you given us something on the tips of our spiritual roots that enables us to go down through difficulties, down through the hardest of things to establish our roots even more? Yes, I believe that God has done that. And it's in this verse, rooted in love, rooted and grounded in love. When we truly understand the love of God and walk in the love of God is when our root system is able to continue to go deeper. What do deep roots do for trees? They make them stable, practically immovable. What does deep root systems do for a Christian? It makes us stable, steadfast, immovable. And that is what we want. That is our goal. So it's very closely tied to the next phrase. The third phrase here is that you may have strength to comprehend the love of Christ, to comprehend the love of Christ. God didn't save me because he was obligated to do so. We already learned in Ephesians, in love, he predestined us into his kingdom. We already learned that he has adopted us and that he continued to adopt us even when he knew what we had turned into, what we had become, he still adopted us. He brought us into his family when we were dead in our transgressions and sins, when we were enemies of God. So what Paul is saying is I want them to comprehend that kind of love, that kind of love, what he has done. Now, it might not come naturally for us to comprehend this. I've shared with you before that I did not come to Christ because I was motivated by the love of Christ. I was a young girl. I came to Christ because I did not wanna get turned away from heaven. That was my motivation. I had to grow in comprehending the love of Christ throughout my whole young life and adult life. I had to become, I had to understand that that was the love of Christ. And maybe that's the same for some of you, but for a lot of us, it doesn't come naturally. So Paul prayed for the believers. That's what he prayed, that they would comprehend the breadth and the length and the depth and the height of the love of Christ, all of those dimensions. And it's stated again in Romans. I wanna show you Romans 8, verse 38, where he says,

And so in this passage, Paul is praying that nothing will separate you from the love of Christ. I know many of you, and as I look over the room, my guess is that there are many life experiences that have tried their hardest to separate you from the love of Christ. There have been disappointments in your life. There has been grief. There has been abandonment. There has been betrayal. There has been uncertainty. All of these experiences that we have try to separate us from the love of Christ. So do you see why Paul is praying that they would comprehend the love of Christ and hold onto it so tightly? Because there's things going on that want us to separate. I don't know, I just don't feel like God loves me. Have you ever said that or at least thought it? Because you're going through something difficult. Where's God in this? I'm not sure he loves me. So we need this prayer that we would comprehend the love of Christ. And so Paul finishes with this great benediction, verse 20, '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.' And I just love how we can just sit back. It's almost like this beautiful sunny October days that we're having, and just feel the sunshine here at the end that's focused on God's ability, okay? God's ability not necessarily to change the uncomfortable things in our life. The uncomfortable thing in Paul's life in this moment was being in prison. There's no mention of that, okay? It's not wrong for us to pray for that, but here we are concentrating on God stabilizing us and rooting us and helping us to comprehend his ability. So I'm gonna put this on the screen for you. I think this is one of the best ways to look at this verse. It's kind of like a fat Christmas tree. And I'm just gonna read through this, and you're gonna see what I mean, what a delight this is. First of all, we just start with what is the main point? What's the theme of this verse? Able, able to do, able to do what? What we ask, able to do what we think, able to do all that we ask or think, able to do more than all than we ask or think. Do you see these superlatives just keep going and going? I love it. Able to do far more than all we ask or think. And finally, Paul says, able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think. God is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think. It's our delight, really, to pray for each other, to pray for our spouses, to pray for our children, to pray for the people in our life, just like Paul did, that we would comprehend this kind of love, this kind of ability in our lives. Isn't this the encouragement that we need? There's something going on in everybody's life that we can just lay this over and walk away in a sense of rest, in a sense of delight, knowing that God is able. So let's pray about that. Father God, we thank you for this passage. Lord, I thank you that we're able to spend some time really concentrating and meditating on these things, the way that Paul prays, the things that he prays. Lord, I pray that you would help us all to just bring that into our hearts and that no one would walk away from this message uncertain about God's ability, that we would know, that we know, that we know, that it has been in love that God brought us into his kingdom and that he is able to do all the things that need to be done. And Lord, we just admit, you are able to help us comprehend your love and to hold onto it. You are able to help us make our lives, live our lives in such a way that Christ would be at home in our hearts. And Lord, you are able to help our roots to go ever deeper, our spiritual roots, so that we are stable and steadfast, immovable and abounding in the work of the Lord. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. ---