©2003 Larry Huntsperger Peninsula Bible Fellowship

01/11/04

Hope For The Future Pt. 3

Ephesians 3:20-4:1

1/11/04 Hope For The Future Pt. 3

For the past two weeks now

we have been chewing on three verses in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians.

Even though two of the verses are found in chapter 3

and the third is found in chapter 4,

the three belong together as a single unit,

presenting to us two concepts that Paul wanted to make certain

that we always keep united in our thinking.

This passage reads,

EPH 3:20-21, 4:1 Now to Him who is able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen. I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, entreat you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called...

This passage contains two distinct sections,

two distinct thoughts that are linked together by the word “therefore”.

The first section contains

what we have already seen as one of the most powerful single-sentence proclamations

of God’s commitment to work within the lives of each of His people

found anywhere in Scripture.

Paul doesn’t just suggest that God will help us if we cry out to Him.

He doesn’t just tell us that we have access to His strength, and wisdom, and healing, and comfort

only at those critical times in our lives

when we have utterly exhausted all our own resources.

What he actually says is that God has already committed Himself to doing

not just what we ask for,

not just what we hope for,

but “...exceeding abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us...”.

I was talking with a good friend of mine during this past Christmas vacation

who has seen his Lord do some really wonderful things in his life recently,

things that have given him the hope of even greater things to come.

In my conversation with him he said,

“I just can’t believe this is happening. I just keep thinking something is going to happen to mess it all up.”

Of course I don’t know the mind of Christ,

or the His specific plans for my friend,

but I do know the heart of Christ,

and I know that from the very beginning of all that is,

His goal,

His intention for us is that we would be able to discover the true nature of His love for us.

By the way,

does that surprise you?

Did you think that perhaps His goal,

His intention for us was to get us to straighten up and behave?

Did you think that His primary focus for the human race

was to reduce the amount of immorality in the world

and pour out His wrath and judgment on those who refuse to comply?

Did you think that the great battles He now wages on this planet

are battles against sin?

His battle against sin has already been fought,

and His victory over sin is now absolute and eternal.

It was a battle He fought on a massive wooden cross

plunged into the ground of a garbage dump outside Jerusalem nearly 2000 years ago,

a battle he fought not against His own sin,

but against all of the accumulated filth, and evil, and immorality, and corruption

of the entire human race,

from Adam and Eve’s first act of disobedience

until this world as we know it ceases to exist,

a battle in which He offered His own perfect life in our place for our sin,

and through that offering

paid our debt in full forever.

1JO 2:2 ...and He Himself is the propitiation (the full and complete payment) for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.

God’s battle on this earth is not a battle against sin.

That battle is over forever.

His battle on this earth now

is a battle for our discovery

of the true nature of His love for each of us,

a discovery that begins

when we allow Him to take our own certificate of debt,

our own moral guilt before God because of all of our sins against Him,

and allow Him to nail it to that cross along with Christ.

But that’s just the beginning.

From there we then enter into a friendship with God Himself

in which He seeks to lead us step by step,

day by day

into the endless ongoing discovery of His love for us.

It’s true, of course,

that there are times when our own blindness

both to what we need,

and to what our God is doing

makes it impossible for us to see the love that motivates our God to do some of the things He does in our lives.

When I was putting words into the mouth of Peter in The Fisherman,

when I reached that point in the hours immediately following

the crucifixion and death of Christ,

I had Peter say,

“ The love of God is poured out within us in so many different ways. At the time, walking the streets of Jerusalem that evening, unseeing and now almost unfeeling because of the numbing narcotic of ceaseless pain, the concept of the love of God was to my mind the ultimate absurdity. If ever I thought I had needed the miraculous intervention of a loving God in my own life, it was in that garden as I fought for the release of my King. If ever I knew with absolute and unquestioned certainty that our world desperately, urgently needed the miraculous intervention of a loving God, it was as I stood below that cross, watching Jesus die. And yet, there I was, having just witnessed what I would later come to recognize as the two greatest expressions of the love of God I would ever know yet possessing at the time not a glimmer of that love.”

We all have times like that in our lives,

times when God has just accomplished what we will later come to recognize

as one of the greatest expressions of His love we will ever know,

and yet at the time being absolutely convinced

that our Creator has failed us utterly at the time of our greatest need.

But the truth is,

from the very begging of all that is,

and certainly from the very beginning of our union with Him,

His every action toward us is motivated by absolutely pure and perfect love,

and His great goal for us

is that we develop the eyes to see

and the ears to hear that love.

And when my friend talked with me

about his fears and anxieties over what might lay ahead,

I told him that I understood those fears perfectly,

that I had a whole pack of similar ones myself at times,

but that I knew for certain

that God’s heart desire was to be good to him,

and to demonstrate that goodness to him throughout all eternity.

You see, underlying all of those surface fears we face in our relationship with God,

is the one great underlying fear that God really doesn’t like us very much,

that He really doesn’t want to be good to us,

or kind,

or compassionate,

that He really isn’t FOR US.

It is a fear born out of our own knowledge of ourselves,

a fear rooted in the assumption

that our attitudes toward God,

and our actions of utter rebellion against Him

surly must have long ago removed our names forever

from that list of those people God really likes.

Do you remember that remarkable statement we found last year

when we were studying the first few verses of Ephesians chapter 2,

that statement in which God reveals to us why He has chosen to accomplish this great redemptive work in our lives?

In Ephesians 2:7 He tells us that He has done what He has done, “...in order that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”

He has poured out on us His kindness through Christ here, now, in this life,

so that He will be able to continue pouring out His kindness on us in the endless ages to come.

Does that make sense?

Does that seem logical?

Not to me.

I still wrestle sometimes with the truth that God even notices me,

or that my life,

and my tiny, insignificant churnings in life make any difference to Him at all.

And yet they do,

and He not only notices each of us,

but He aggressively, eagerly seeks a friendship with each of us,

a friendship that will enable Him to pour out on each of us

His kindness for all eternity.

It is that truth that we find imbedded in the first part of these three verses we’ve been studying the past few weeks

where Paul tells us that our God is committed to doing,

“...exceeding abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us...”.

From there Paul then goes on to offer the natural response of the human spirit

whenever and where ever we begin to grasp this truth.

“...to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever.”

That’s Bible language for, “WOW, Lord! You’re GREAT!!”

And I can’t let this pass without adding one additional thought.

This statement right here,

where Paul proclaims, “...to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever...”,

is perhaps the best single-statement test we will ever have

of when we are seeing our God correctly.

Whenever and where ever we are seeing our God as He truly is

we will find our spirits crying out with Paul, “...to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever...”

Which means, of course,

that all those places in your life right now

where you are fighting Him,

all those places where you are trying so hard

to find some way around what you know He’s asking you to do,

all those places where His morality,

or His call for your submission to His will

appears to be an unreasonable demand He is making upon you,

a demand that you believe will deprive you

of those things you believe you simply must have in order to meet your needs,

all of those are simply indications of those places in your life

where you are seeing your God incorrectly

or hearing His voice inaccurately.

Paul then adds one additional word at the end of the first half of this two-part statement we are looking at,

and it is, I think,

the presence of this word at this point in the text

that has made it so difficult for us to keep these three verses locked together in our minds.

It’s the word “Amen.”

Paul says,

Now to Him who is able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.

The problem, of course,

is that we relate to the word “Amen”

as if it were the Biblical equivalent of saying, “I’m finished” or “The end.”

Every public prayer we pray ends with “Amen!”,

and from early childhood we just assume that it is Bible language for “That’s all folks!”.

And because we have this word dropped into Paul’s writings at this point

we just naturally assume that he has finished saying whatever it is he wanted to say

and he is letting us know that this section has ended

by tossing in that “Amen!”.

And unless I take a couple of minutes to clear this up,

given the fact that I have made such a huge thing about these three verses all fitting together,

some of you may find yourselves thinking

I might just be forcing this passage to say what I want it to say

even though it doesn’t really say that.

You see,

the word that we have translated as “Amen” in this passage,

and in fact translated as “Amen” throughout the entire New Testament

does not mean “the end”,

or “that’s all folks”,

or anything even remotely like it.

The word means “truly”,

and it is used throughout Scripture

as the equivalent of a verbal exclamation point.

It would be more accurate to translate it as “WOW!”,

or “listen to what I just said! (or am going to say!)”,

or “do you hear what I’m saying?”.

It is a written tool with which the writer

reaches out to us,

places both hands on our shoulders,

makes direct eye contact with us and says,

“You can have absolute and unquestioned assurance in what I’m saying right here.”

The Greek word that we have translated here as “Amen”

appears 130 times in the New Testament.

But it is only translated as “Amen” 31 times.

The other 99 times it is used

it is translated as “truly”.

MAT 13:17 "For truly I say to you, that many prophets and righteous men desired to see what you see, and did not see it; and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.

MAT 18:3 "Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.

MAT 18:18 "Truly I say to you, whatever you shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

Truly...truly...truly...

It’s the same word,

and “truly” would have been a better translation here in this passage

than “Amen”

because Paul is not ending anything,

he is simply emphasizing the truth and the importance of what He has just said,

and what he is about to say.

Now to Him who is able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. TRULY!! I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, entreat you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called...

Then, after proclaiming God’s ability to transform our lives through His life and power working within us,

and praising Him for His willingness to do so,

on the basis of that truth

Paul then comes to his “therefore”,

calling us to walk in a manner worthy of our calling in Christ.

And when we put the whole thing together,

what he’s saying to us is this -

because Christ’s life within you has made it possible for you to walk in a manner worthy,

therefore choose to do so.

Because you can walk worthy,

do walk worthy.

And right here is where we encounter the heart of the attack

used by Satan to defeat this whole growth process in our lives.

For, what he does is to come along side us

and tell us that it simply isn’t true -

that, for so many reasons, we simply are not really able to choose to walk in a manner worthy.

In other words,

he lies to us.

They are lies that come at us in a number of different ways.

He will bring many of them into our lives

by simply pointing us back to the past

and telling us that the past will determine the future.

He will point to our past behavior,

to our past failures,

to our past defeats

and tell us that those are the things that correctly define

both who we really are

and what we can reasonably expect from ourselves now.

He will lie to us through the voices of those around us,

those we have relied on to tell us who we are,

and why or if we have value.

He will lie to us through our own carefully constructed perceptions

of what we believe our needs really are,

and how those needs can or must be met.

He will lie to us through our own flawed reasoning processes,

those reasoning processes that were built upon a world view

that denied the reality of God,

that refused to trust Him or His love for us.

In other words,

he will seek to bring his lies into our lives

through all of those avenues

that we have trusted in the past,

all of those sources that we just naturally assumed were reliable.

And I need to let you know

that there is a huge problem in what I’ve just done here.

It is a problem for which I have no answer,

a problem that each of us must fight our way through

each day we walk with our King.

The problem is this -

when I take these truths

about the way in which Satan seeks to undermine this growth process in our lives

by telling us lies about who we are in Christ

and the way in which our Lord lives out His live within us,

when I take these truths and turn them into a teaching, as I have this morning,

our minds will take this teaching,

and process it logically,

and accept the concepts as they have been presented,

and assume that, because we now know that Satan is going to lie to us

we are adequately equipped for those lies when they arise.

If I were to stand up here this morning

and tell you that I am now going to tell you a lie,

and then go on to tell you that I had just won a 225 million dollar lottery,

and that, because of my deep affection for you,

I’m going to give each family unit here this morning

one million dollars of that winning,

you’d recognize the lie for what it is

and dismiss it.

But it simply doesn’t work that way

in these battles we encounter with the father of lies.

You see, his lies do not simply come at us through our intellect,

they come at us through our emotions,

emotions that grow out of beliefs we have held for a lifetime,

emotions that seem to be rooted in fact,

in history,

in clear, obvious, verifiable evidence.

They are lies that frequently we feel long before we ever begin to process them intellectually.

We feel deep loneliness,

loneliness that we believe is clear and irrefutable proof that we are all alone,

that we have been abandoned by our God.

We feel intense fear,

fear that tells us we are helpless,

fear that tells us we have no way out,

no answers,

no hope in this situation.

We feel powerful feelings of lust,

lust for something,

lust for someone,

and the force of those feelings tell us

our hope for happiness,

our hope for any life worth living depends upon our obtaining what we lust after.

And because these lies so often come at us

not through the intellect,

but through the emotions,

unless we are pre-armed with a clear grasp of the truth,

and with a fierce commitment to trust that truth,

those lies can play havoc in our lives.

Maybe this will help -

we do not start by believing the truth,

and then come under attack through the lies,

we start by believing the lies,

and feeling the lies,

and living the lies,

and knowing on the basis of all human reason and logic that the lies are truth,

and from there we must listen,

learn,

believe,

and then cling to the truth

in the face of all of the apparent evidence to the contrary.

But then let me keep this whole thing in perspective

by reminding us of the other side.

For our Lord has provided us with two great allies in this battle.

The first is that new heart He has already created within us,

that new heart that knows the truth,

that new heart that loves God with an incorruptible love

and fills us with a hunger for Him and a longing to reach out in trust to Him.

And the second is the presence of His Spirit within us,

His Spirit who step-by-step

and battle-by-battle actively works for our understanding and trust of the truth.

And there is one more great ally I would mention as well.

It is one that grows in strength

as we grow in Christ.

It is the ally of our own personal history

of the growing freedom that comes into our lives

as we begin to trust the voice of our God

and build our lives upon His truth.

The author of Hebrews talks about this growth process in Hebrews 5:13-14 when he says,

For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.

The more we choose righteousness,

the more skilled our senses become

at discerning the difference between good and evil.

That isn’t to say that the attacks become less intense,

but it does mean that it becomes far easier to recognize them as attacks,

rather than simply accepting them as truth as we have done in the past.