Let me invite you to take your Bible and turn with me to Ephesians chapter 1. If you’re using the Bible in the rack in front of you it’s on page 976. We are part-way through a short series on the prayers of Paul, and my text for tonight is here in the second half of Ephesians chapter 1, but to understand the significance of why Paul prays what he prays, the way he prays it, you really have to go back to the beginning of the chapter, to the doxology, the part of the first chapter where Paul just bursts out into exuberant praise. That first part of the chapter, verses 3 through 14 in the original language, is one long sentence; no periods. As a matter of fact, it’s 257 words in the original, which is almost exactly the same number of words in the Gettysburg Address in its entirety. And that’s what you have in this first paragraph. And the reason you have to see the prayer in light of the doxology is because Paul often prays for what he knows to be true about God. Like he says, “May the God of hope fill you with all hope and joy in believing. May the God of peace grant you His peace. May the God of encouragement encourage your hearts.” That’s what he’s doing in this prayer, and you need to see the prayer in light of the doxology. And so let’s read together, actually we’ll pray and then we’ll read together verses 3 through the end of the chapter. Let’s pray.
Lord, we ask for the blessing of Your Spirit enabling us to see what would otherwise remain hidden, not just that we understand, but so that we will grasp how deeply we are loved, that we will be changed by this God that we come to know better, that we will be freed and empowered and emboldened to move into places where we’ll be frightened otherwise, where we’ll be withdrawn. Would You please grant us grace to see Jesus more clearly and to love Him with greater joy and abandon. We ask in His precious and holy name, amen.
Ephesians 1, beginning in verse 3:
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.
In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.”
And now the prayer:
“For this reason” – all that he said above – “because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.”
This is God’s Word.
So when Rabbi Harold Kushner discovered that his three-year-old son, Aaron, was sick and was diagnosed with an incurable, degenerative disease from which he later died, he grieved beyond words and he wrestled as a man who claimed to know God but was trapped because this God he knew was both powerful and He was loving, and yet how could a God who was that powerful and that loving allow this kind of horror into his family. And so he wrote a book about his wrestling and the book summarizes these principles. Either God is absolutely loving, loves us immeasurably, but He’s limited in power, or He is unlimited in power but He’s somewhat disinterested and distant from us. His conclusion was his first of two options, hence the book titled, “When Bad Things Happen to Good People.” The takeaway is, God really, really is loving, but let’s face it. There are nearly 8 billion people on the planet. How could He take care of all those details? He loves us so much, He wishes He could do more, but He just can’t. And the book sold millions upon millions of copies.
I think it’s because of this kind of confusion and struggle that Paul prays what he does because in short, at the very center of his prayer, is one core request. He’s praying that you and I will know God better, that we will really come to know Him more deeply. You see, when the infinite, eternal and unchangeable God chooses to make Himself known to finite people like you and me, it really doesn’t fit in this brain or yours. No matter how intelligent you are, the infinite, eternal, and unchangeable God and all that He is cannot be comprehended by this brain unless God does a miracle in answer to our prayers. And this is what Paul is praying for. It’s the center of his prayer. Verse 17, he says, that “The God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him.” Or as the NIV translates it, “That God may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation so that you may know Him better.” Hence the title of our study this evening. It’s the core of what Paul is asking God to do – miraculously, that we would come to know Him better.
God’s Immeasurable Love
And to do that, he’s got to bring us to see three critical truths that grow out of both doxology at the beginning of this chapter and the prayer itself. The first truth we have to see is God’s immeasurable love. With Rabbi Kushner we would say He loves us immeasurably. He prays in verse 18 that the eyes of our hearts would be enlightened. Now Biblically you know that the heart speaks about that part of who we are that we don’t see. Right? It’s the intellectual, the spiritual, the moral, the inner workings of who we are. David says, “Man looks at the outward appearance but God looks at the heart,” that incomprehensible part of us, that part that we often don’t even really understand ourselves. The intellectual, emotional, spiritual, moral part of who we are.
But then he says, “I pray that God would cause the eyes of your heart to be enlightened.” And here he is asking God to give us a vision of what would otherwise remain absolutely incomprehensible. We would never understand it unless God does a miraculous work, for which he prays. Of course you know that your walk with the King, your spiritual life began by God doing a miracle. Right? He removed the heart of stone that was within you and gave you a new heart. He wrote His Word on your heart and He inclined you to want to know Him, to want to obey Him. You were spiritually dead and He did a miracle of resurrection and made you spiritually alive. That’s how your Christian life began. And it’s going to take the same kind of miraculous intervention of God for you to come to know Him better. And it’s for this specifically that Paul is praying.
So what does he want us to see? What is it that he is praying that the eyes of our hearts would be enlightened? Well in verse 18, he talks, first of all, about the hope to which we have been called. When the Bible talks about this kind of hope, it’s not wishing for something good to come out. It’s actually – this may be overly simplistic – but it’s the ability to see the future. Not with respect to time travel or gazing into a crystal ball to predict what’s going to happen next, but it really is the ability to see the future in a way the Bible tells us this is how the story ends and to live today in light of the confidence that we have that, “I know how this ends. I know who wins. I know who reigns and I know how I am going to be invited into that rule with the King.” Paul is praying that the eyes of our hearts would be enlightened, that we would know the hope to which we have been called, but also that we would know the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints.
And we could talk at length about the word “inheritance” but at the core it simply means this – “something better is coming.” It’s not yours yet, but something way better is coming. But what’s fascinating about how Paul prays this is he looks at it in two contexts. First of all, in verse 11, it says “in Him we have obtained an inheritance,” something better is yet coming. But in verse 18 he says, “we are His glorious inheritance.” And that’s fascinating. How can we be God’s, or better, Jesus’ inheritance? So much theology here, but to boil it down very simply, God the Father has chosen to give a precious, treasured love-gift to His Son, and that love-gift is you and me, the Church, the Bride of Christ, and He is gathering in and perfecting that Bride as a love-gift to the Son. In truth, we are His glorious inheritance. That’s staggering.
Paul is picking up on the language that Moses used when he described the people of God. This is in Deuteronomy 7 verse 6 where he says, “The Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples of the earth to be His people, His treasured possession.” Has that landed on you yet? You are Jesus’ inheritance; you are His treasured possession. Not because there is something special about you or me, but because you were expensive. It wasn’t with inexpensive things like gold, silver and precious stones that you were purchased, but you were purchased, bought back, ransomed by the precious blood of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. Look at it in verse 7. He says, “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished upon us.” You are His treasured possession because you were expensive for Him to buy back, to make His own.
I remember watching an interview with Neil Armstrong. Of course you remember that he was the first astronaut to walk on the moon. And one of the questions he was asked was, “When you stood on the surface of the moon and you looked at planet Earth way off in the distance, what went through your mind?” Neil Armstrong smiled and said, “I remembered that that spacecraft that I was trusting to get me back home was built by the lowest bidder.” And so it works with government contracts, right? How untrue that is of you and me. You weren’t ransomed or rescued by the lowest bidder, at the lowest common denominator, at the cheapest cost possible to bring you back. You were ransomed at the most indescribably expensive cost imaginable – the precious blood of Jesus. As such, you are precious to Him. You are His inheritance, His glorious inheritance. That’s the first thing that the apostle Paul wants us to see – that the eyes of our hearts would be enlightened, that we would know Him better, first of all by seeing how deeply, immeasurably God loves you and loves me. That we are His inheritance, His treasured possession.
Let me pause just for a moment there because one of the reasons I struggle to know God better is because I struggle to believe that He really does love me. It’s so much easier for me to believe that He is just plain disappointed with me or frustrated with me or maybe even bored with me because I keep making the same mistakes, I keep giving into the same temptation, I keep pursuing the same addiction, so surely He’s disappointed, irritated, or bored. That comes naturally for me to believe. But if I am going to know Him better, I have to start here. He really, really does love me and you.
God’s Sovereign Power
The second critical truth we’re going to have to see in order to know Him better is we’re going to have to see His limitless, sovereign power. You see that in verses 19 through 20. That part of the prayer is loaded with power language. Listen to the vocabulary in these words. I have them highlighted in orange because they leap out at me. “What is,” verse 19, “what is the immeasurable greatness of His power, according to the working of His great might, that He worked in Christ Jesus when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, above every name that is named.” Verse 22, “He put all things under his feet and gave Him as head over all things.” And he goes on. But I want you to see one phrase, one unusual phrase that’s repeated twice here. It’s repeated in the doxology and in the prayer. Verse 3, he talks about our being blessed with every spiritual blessing “in the heavenly places.” And did you see the powerful language in verse 20? He raised Christ from the dead and seated Him at His right hand “in the heavenly places.” It’s an unusual and rare phrase in the Greek and it’s used only five times in the whole Bible. And all five times are in the book of Ephesians.
That should make us stop and pause and say, “What is he talking about ‘the heavenly places’ five times in this short letter?” And he talks about that nowhere else. Listen to his other references about the heavenly places. Chapter 2 verse 6, “God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus.” Chapter 3 verse 10, “His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.” And then finally chapter 6 verse 12, the place where you’re probably most familiar with this phrase, “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” Five times he talks about the heavenly places, the heavenly places, the heavenly places, the heavenly places, the heavenly places – what is that?
The heavenly places are the throneroom. It’s the place where Christ is right now seated and He rules, He reigns with unrivaled power and with unchallenged will. And the Bible tells us that the assembled hosts of holy angels and fallen angels, even now assemble in the heavenly realms in the presence of God. You read about a moment like that at the beginning of the book of Job, right? And you read about it in other places throughout the Old Testament in particular. But here it is in the New Testament. Paul is saying this is the place of power. When Christ rose from the grave and ascended into heaven, He sat down in the heavenly places at the right hand of His Father on the throne. It’s the place of power.
Here’s what you need to see. Chapter 2 verse 6 says He’s not alone. Chapter 2 verse 6 says, “and God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus.” Look, I’m not entirely sure how to explain this because this doesn’t fit in my brain. This is not just our future reality; it is that. But Paul is saying this is your present reality. While you are seated on a very soft red cushion on a pew, you’re actually seated in a more real way than you could possibly imagine in union with Christ in the heavenly realms right now – the place of power. The apostle Paul wanted his readers to understand that this limitless sovereign power belongs to Christ and those in union with Him. There’s no shortage of power. God’s arm is not too short. It’s hidden from our eyes but it is our dominant spiritual reality in union with Christ.
And of course, you heard all of the “union” language in Ephesians chapter 1, right? Thirteen times you read “in Christ, in Him, in the beloved.” Paul is hammering your and my union with Christ, and in union with Him we are already seated with Him in a place of power, unrivaled power, unchallenged will of God; not just our future but our present. So Paul is praying that we will know Him better, that we will know Jesus better, first of all by understanding His immeasurable love, and secondly by grasping His limitless, sovereign power. And there we have a tension, right? Because how can God operate by immeasurable love and limitless power and there still be suffering and hurt in our lives? How can there be a war in Ukraine where innocent people, children, are dying if God is limitless in sovereign power and immeasurable in tender and merciful love?
God’s Infinite Wisdom
The answer comes with the third part of this doxology and prayer to which Paul points us. The third radical truth is God’s infinite wisdom. This is the critical part that we have to wrestle with if we are ever going to know God better. And you read about this wisdom both in the doxology and in the prayer. The doxology, verse 8, speaking of the riches of God’s grace “which He lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight.” Then in the prayer, verse 17, “that God may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him.” And what you discover is that it is God’s wisdom, His infinite, perfect wisdom that holds in tension His immeasurable love and His sovereign power. It’s His wisdom that holds them in tension.
Listen to how Paul unpacks this. In verse 11 he says, “God has a purpose by which He works all things according to the counsel of His will.” Sounds a lot like Romans 8:28, doesn’t it, but it’s rooted in His wisdom. Verse 10, “God has a plan for the fullness of time.” Nine times he uses the language of “God’s will, His purpose, His counsel, His plan,” all under the umbrella of His infinite wisdom. Look, there is so much that you and I don’t understand. There’s so much that this side of eternity we’re not going to understand. It just won’t make sense to us. We end up saying, “God, how can this be?” Some of us participated in the Zoom call with Doug Shepherd, one of our missionaries in Ukraine this afternoon. And we heard story after story that made Emily and me look at each other and say, “How can this be? I mean God loves us. God is powerful. He could stop this today. Why is this still going on?” The answer is rooted in the wisdom of God, the matchless, infinite, wisdom of God. We’re going to be perplexed by His workings. We are going to be confused, frustrated, maybe even angry or deeply grieved until with the apostle Paul we learn to say what he says in Romans 11 verse 33. “O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable are His judgments and how inscrutable His ways. For who has known the mind of the Lord or who has been His counselor? Who has ever given to God that God should repay Him? For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory, forever and ever.” All of this functions under the matchless and infinite, perfect wisdom of God. It won’t fit in our brain today, but there is a plan, there is a purpose, and at the end of it all we’ll look back and we’ll say, “That was hard. That was hard, but I’m so glad He did it that way. I’m so glad. I’m so glad He didn’t answer my prayers the way I was asking Him to and I’m so glad He did something that I didn’t even know to pray for because He is infinitely wise which holds in tension His goodness and His power.”
I shared a story with a dear friend of mine two weeks ago. He said, “Ed, I’ve never heard you tell that story. You need to tell that story.” so I’ll tell it to you. Part of it you’ve heard. Of course you know that in September of 1995 I began walking through the darkest crisis of my life up to that point. My wife, Amy, who was 31 at that time was diagnosed with a brain tumor. After further tests and surgery it was discovered to be a glioblastoma multiforme, a death sentence. No one had lived with one of those cancers. And I was terrified. I descended into a place of blackness and terror such as I have never known before because I looked at my young wife who was capable, vivacious, beautiful, amazing, and then I looked into the faces of my four little kids who at that time were 7, 5, 2 and 1 when she was diagnosed. And I was terrified. And you can imagine my prayers. “God, I thought You loved us. I thought this stuff happened to people that You were angry against. God, I thought You were all powerful. What is going on here?” I can’t describe to you the blackness I felt in that season. I still get chills remembering the horror of that.
And yet God in His kindness lifted the lid a little bit on one day in September. One day where I received three separate phone calls from three different women who lived in different cities, several in different states. None of them knew the others. The first phone call I received was from our former babysitter who lived in Vicksburg, two hours away. And she said, “Man, I heard the news. I wish there was something I could do. I would do anything to help your family.” Our kids loved this babysitter. She said, “I’ve got to get a full time job. I’ve got to save up money to go to college, and I’ll be praying for you. Let me know if I can help.”
I hung up the phone and within an hour I got another phone call from a different woman who lived in our community. And her husband had recently died and she told me how much she was struggling in his absence. She was living in this big house, she was alone, she didn’t want to be there by herself but she didn’t want to leave the house. She said, “If you know someone who might be willing to move in with me, I’d love a single young girl to move in and just to be with me primarily at night. She could stay here for free.” And I thought, “I don’t have the bandwidth to deal with that but I’ll pray for you.”
I hung up the phone. Less than an hour later my phone rang again. And this time it was a woman from Philadelphia whose daughters had grown up with Amy, my wife, at that time. And she said, “Ed” – and I should say, they lived in a mansion. They were wealthy. She said, “Ed, I heard about Amy’s diagnosis and I’m deeply concerned. I won’t go into this and I don’t want to argue, I’ll just say this…” Here were her words – “The Lord has laid it on my heart to write you a check to cover your needs because I know you can’t take care of your wife and all the chemotherapy, radiation, all that she’ll need, take care of your children and be a pastor of that church. I’ve written the check, I’ve put it in the mail, it should be there in the next day or two and it will cover the expenses for you to hire whatever help you’ll need.”
With tears streaming down my cheeks, I hung up the phone and the pieces pulled together. God, in His wisdom, had looked into the horror of where we were and He said, “I’ve got you. I’m not going to fumble you. I’m going to send a young lady who your kids already know, you guys trust this young lady, I’m going to have her stay in this house where this woman is pleading for someone to move in, and oh, by the way, you’re going to pay her a full time salary and health insurance.” In one day, in three separate phone calls. Did God need to do it that way? Of course not. But my Father in heaven wanted me to know Jesus better and so He lifted the lid and by His wisdom in perfect timing He pulled together three phone calls to say, “I love you immeasurably. My arm is not too short. I’ve got you.”
It’s going to take a miracle for us to know Jesus better. And some of what He is going to take us through will lead us through some really hard and dark places. I’m looking into some of your faces and I can see pictures of the hard you have been through. I can’t look at some of you right now. I have to say, I praise God for the hard He has brought into your lives, our lives, because He’s answering our prayers. We want to know God better, and most of what it’s going to take is going to be some really hard places where He will meet us in profoundly unexpected ways, ways we never imagined He would. But I want to know Him better. Don’t you? Isn’t that what you are asking Him to do as Paul is asking Him to do?
One last question, just briefly. Why? Why do we need to know Him better? Why would we even want to know Him better? Isn’t it easier just to hold Him at arm’s distance? The Bette Midler song, “From a distance God is watching…” Why do we need to know Him better? The answer is, it changes us. Knowing Him will change us permanently from one degree of glory to another. We had a little game that we played with our children when they were little. We used to say, “Have I told you lately how much I love you?” and the expected answer was, “No. Just tell me again!” And I remember once I was driving in the car with Katie, our older daughter, who at that time was 7, sitting behind me. And I looked at her through the rearview mirror and I said, “Katie, God sure gave me a wonderful present when He gave you to me.” And I watched her eyes. She looked down and a smile spread across her little face and she looked up at me through the rearview mirror and she said, “Daddy, I love you with my whole life.” What great theology for us as adults. The reason we need to know God better is so that we can say what my 7 year old daughter said. “God, I love You with my whole life. I trust you, even in the places where I can’t understand what You are doing. And I’m going to obey You, even when it’s really going to cost me, when it’s going to take me into places of real sacrifice. And I want to know You so that I can fulfill the purpose for which You created me.” Right? “What is the chief end of man?” – the first question of the Shorter Catechism – to know Him, to glorify Him, and to enjoy Him forever. You can’t enjoy someone you don’t know. You can’t enjoy someone you don’t trust. Paul prays and we pray with him that we would know Jesus better so that we will know Him, so that we will trust Him, so that we will be willing to obey Him even when it costs us so that we will enjoy Him now and for all eternity.
I’ll end here with the words of Charles Spurgeon. I quoted this at the Winter Grace service. “God is too good to be unkind. He is too wise to be mistaken” – and I added, “He is too powerful to be inadequate” – “so when we cannot trace His hand, trust His heart.” Which reminds me of singer Eva Cassidy when she sang my favorite song she ever sang, “Because I Know You by Heart.” This is what we want. This is what we are praying for – that we would know God, not just intellectually but we would know Him by heart. Then we’ll trust Him. Then we’ll obey Him. Then we’ll really enjoy Him. That’s going to take a miracle.
Let’s pray that He would do that.
Father, we ask that You would do that miraculous work for which Paul prays, that You will enable us to know You by heart. It is with some measure of anxiety that we say out loud what we fear to say out loud. We’ll trust You to take us through whatever path necessary so that we’ll really know You, and that we’ll trust You and obey You and really enjoy You. So we look to You and ask You to do that miraculous work for the sake of Jesus and for our eternal good. We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.