Ephesians 1:15-23 - God's Revelation
Sermon by Pastor Brent Kompelien
June 26, 2022
INTRO (SLIDE 1)
ILLUST — How many of you would say that summer is your favorite season?
The summer solstice was last Tuesday, June 21, which is the longest day of the year.
There was over 15 hours of daylight on Tuesday. That’s almost 7 hours more than we get on the winter solstice in December.
Daylight is so wonderful, isn’t it! There’s something about us, something hardwired into our human nature that loves light. God made us that way. Light allows us to see, it reveals things as they are, and it even brings joy to our bodies physically. We are creatures who thrive in the light, and there’s so much to enjoy about the extra daylight we get to experience in the summer.
We don’t just need light physically, we need light spiritually. We need to see things as they really are, we need to see the path forward, we need to experience the joy of the light of the gospel.
This summer we are focusing on all the passages of the New Testament where the Apostle Paul prays for the church. Last week, we looked at the first chapter of the letter to the Ephesians, and we saw Paul make this bold claim: That the gospel is all about God.
It is all about God’s initiative in his plan, God’s power displayed, God’s grace poured out, and God’s work of renewal in us. And the fact that the gospel is all about God drove Paul to praise.
For those who missed last Sunday, we defined what we mean when we say that we are a “gospel-centered” church, and when we say we are a “gospel-believing” Christian. The gospel is about… (SLIDE 2)
Revelation from the Father — God’s revealed truth and his revealed will are supreme and trustworthy.
Redemption by the Son — God’s perfect work through Jesus to atone for our sin is the only way to salvation, and it comes by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.
Regeneration through the Spirit — We are born again, we have new life, and we are formed into a new people who have the very presence of God within us by the Spirit as a foretaste of the coming Kingdom of God and universal reign of Jesus over all things in the new heaven and new earth.
KEY: These three things crystallize the sovereignty of God in the gospel, and they are what drove Paul to praise.
ASK: How do we pray in the reality of the sovereignty of God? (SLIDE 3a) How do we pray for situations, for challenges, for people’s needs, for help for today and guidance for the future, and all the things that concern us? What do we need the most when the gospel is all about God?
PROP — When Paul thought about God’s sovereignty in the gospel, he prayed for one thing: That the Spirit of God would bring light to the eyes of your heart. (SLIDE 3b) He prayed for a supernatural inner transformation, a clarity and a conviction of truth, an awareness of the gravity of Jesus’ sacrifice on your behalf, and an awakening and renewal of your heart so that you would know God better.
Friends, this is my prayer for you today. That you would realize that gospel transformation can only come from a work of the Spirit of God within your heart. (SLIDE 3c) If God is sovereign in the gospel, then it must be a work of God to change you, to bring light to your inner being.
Open with me to Ephesians 1. We are going to pick up right where we left off last Sunday, in Ephesians 1:15-23. (SLIDE 3d) Paul moves from praise to God to offer a specific prayer for the church in Ephesus. READ Ephesians 1:15-23.
ORG SENT — Here’s how we will tackle this. There are two parts to Paul’s prayer. First, he prays for supernatural wisdom and understanding in your heart to know God better (vv. 15-19a). Second, he explains why this awakening in your heart is possible: the resurrection and reign of Jesus (vv. 19b-23).
MAIN 1 — To Know God Better (vv. 15-19a). (SLIDE 4a)
The entire goal of Paul’s prayer is that we would know God. This word “know” or “knowledge” is critical to understand here. (SLIDE 4b)
Why is it so important? Proverbs 9:10 says, (SLIDE 4c) “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.”
ILLUST — A.W. Tozer, a pastor and theologian from Chicago, wrote 60 years ago in his book The Knowledge of the Holy (SLIDE 4d) about the state of the church in America and how we don’t really know God and we’ve lost a sense of his majesty and glory. He said, “With our loss of the sense of majesty of God has come the further loss of awe and awareness of God’s personal presence. We have lost our spirit of worship…Modern Christianity is simply not producing the kind of Christian who can appreciate or experience the life in the Spirit. The words, ‘Be still, and know that I am God,’ mean next to nothing to the self-confident, bustling worshipper in this middle period of the twentieth century.”
He thought people were self-confident and bustling around with no time for God 60 years ago! How much more today with the advent of the smartphone, social media, and the myriad of ways we pacify and entertain ourselves!
You see, Tozer is identifying something critical about knowing God: You can’t know him theoretically; you have to know him personally. (SLIDE 4e)
And when you know God personally, you WILL be in awe of his majesty, and you WILL submit to his authority, and you WILL know the compassion and grace of a God who loves you so much that he sent his Son to die for you.
IMPORTANT — The word “know” or “knowledge” (SLIDE 5a) in verse 17 has the sense of “knowing someone or something by experience”. (SLIDE 5b) It is a familiar knowledge, not merely conceptual. It is a knowledge you come to ascertain by closeness, or a knowledge of a person you gain when you spend lots of time with them. (SLIDE 5c)
ILLUST — Think about the person who knows you best. Maybe its a parent, a spouse, a sibling, or maybe a life-long friend.
Chances are you current spend a lot of time with that person, or you have spent a lot of time with that person in the past.
You see, quantity time is just as important as quality time.
APPLY — So, let me ask you a tough question. Do you spend enough time with God to actually know him? (SLIDE 5d)
This doesn’t just mean the few minutes per day when you sit down to read the Bible or pray about specific things—as important as that devotional time is!
I mean, do you have an on-going conversation with God? Do you seek to know him and acknowledge him throughout the day when you’re at work or at home or with family or friends? Have you begun to see everything in this world in a different light, with a different clarity and understanding? Is your life saturated in his personal presence?
This question gets to the heart of Paul’s prayer: The only way to truly know God is through the work of the Spirit of God within you. (SLIDE 5e)
Just look at what Paul prays here: READ v. 17.
This is exactly the role of the Holy Spirit in the life of a believer. Remember what Jesus said in John 16:13-14, (SLIDE 5f) “But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you.”
Friends, truth is not relative, it is not self-defined, it is not culturally conditioned. Truth is something given by God. Truth is given in God’s Word. The Holy Spirit reveals all truth. The Holy Spirit glorifies Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit will guide you to know God’s ways and to know God’s majesty and to have a sense of AWE for God through Jesus Christ.
Now, how exactly does this work? Don’t miss this…this is one of the most important things you need to know about the gospel: You need light for the eyes of your heart. (SLIDE 6a) READ v. 18a. You need the Spirit of God to shine light into your heart so that you can know God.
WHY? — The very next chapter of Ephesians tells us. If you go to the first line of chapter 2, look at what Paul says, “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins…”
Can dead people make themselves come back alive? NO!
That’s why Paul doesn’t stop there, skip down to vv. 4-5 and vv. 8-9, “But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions…For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.”
Friends, this is the gospel! You were dead, now you have been made alive! (SLIDE 6b) This is a spiritual rebirth, a regeneration of your inner being, a renewal of your heart—through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, applied by the Holy Spirit within you!
ASK: If you were saved by a work of God when you were dead, don’t you think you’ll need a work of God in your heart to come to understand God’s ways (SLIDE 6c), to know what is right and wrong, to love what is good and discern what is evil, and to know true hope and true joy, and to come to personally know God through a daily surrender to him?
Let me put it another way: the gospel isn’t just about God’s miraculous work to get you saved at the beginning of your Christian life…you need his miraculous work day-by-day, through the personal presence of the Spirit of God, to continue to bring the light of clarity and understanding of God’s truth and God’s ways.
What does Paul specifically pray for the church in Ephesus to know as the Holy Spirit brings light to the eyes of their hearts? There are three specific things he desires them to know (SLIDE 6d):
Hope: v. 18b (SLIDE 6e) “in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you”
Only the Spirit of God will give you real hope day-by-day.
Inheritance: v. 18c (SLIDE 6f) “the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people”
Only the Spirit of God will confirm in your heart that you are a child of God who has a secure inheritance in God’s kingdom with other believers.
Power: v. 19a (SLIDE 6g) “and his incomparably great power for us who believe.”
Only the Spirit of God will display God’s power in your life.
We need to camp on this last one for a few minutes, because Paul takes this last line about the power of God displayed through the work of the Spirit in you and he provides an explanation about why the awakening of your heart to know God is possible.
MAIN 2 — How is knowing God possible? (vv. 19b-23). (SLIDE 7a)
There is a simple and profound reality here that is a game-changer: The power of God that raised Jesus from the dead and seated him in a position of all authority over the entire cosmos… (SLIDE 7b) that same power is at work in your heart to raise your soul from the dead so you can know God, and to gift you an inheritance as a child of God in God’s kingdom, and to raise your physical body at the last day so that you will experience the resurrection and reign with Christ in his redeemed and renewed creation!
What!!! That’s crazy! The same power that destroyed sin, defeated death, and subjected all things under Jesus’ perfect rule and reign is destroying sin in your life, defeating death on your behalf, and subjecting your whole life to Jesus’ perfect rule and reign as the Holy Spirit does his work of inner transformation in your heart. (SLIDE 7c)
Do you realize the implications of this? Let me read these verses again so that you can get your mind blown again. READ vv. 19b-23.
Jesus’ resurrection proves that you can’t be too dead in your sin for him to be able to bring you back to life. (SLIDE 8a)
Jesus’ resurrection proves that no other person, no other power, no other human institution, no other material thing, and no other competing influence in your life can ever be superior to his rule and reign. (SLIDE 8b)
Jesus’ resurrection proves that this present evil age is not all there is; you have a hope in a future age where all things will be renewed and we will live in the face-to-face presence of Jesus forevermore on the new earth. (SLIDE 8c)
APPLY
Friends, I want to join my voice with the Apostle Paul’s…I want you to know God better, to know him intimately and personally, as the Spirit of God guides you into all truth and reveals the glory of Jesus Christ.
The only way you can be saved and the only way you will know God is through his sovereign and miraculous work of grace to redeem you and transform you through the gospel of Jesus Christ.