Eph 3:14-4:2

Unity in the Faith

Ephesians 3:14-4:2

¹⁴For this reason I kneel before the Father, ¹⁵from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. ¹⁶I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, ¹⁷so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, ¹⁸may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, ¹⁹and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

²⁰Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, ²¹to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. ²Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.

A few years ago, a construction worker named Robert Lawler, began to complain of a toothache, so he finally went to visit the dentist to get some relief. The x-ray at the dentist’s office revealed a stunning surprise—a four inch nail embedded in his skull, which barely missed his right eye and stopped short of entering his brain. The nail was safely removed and he is fine. In a similar incident from last summer, Margaret Wegner of Berlin, Germany discovered that she had a three inch pencil stuck in her brain which had been lodged there for over fifty years.

Beside the fact that both of these people had huge objects in their skull and lived to tell about it, what these two incidents have in common is that the xray revealed something that was hidden. You can’t blame the xray machine—it was just doing what it was designed to do. I would guess that both of these people were quite grateful for what the xray machine did reveal—for without it, they could not have rid themselves of these dangerous objects.

In a similar way, the building project that we are beginning, will serve as a type of xray machine for all of us. Ministry has a way of doing that, especially the intense type of ministry we are entering. The ministry of constructing a church facility will work like an xray, revealing the attitudes of our hearts.

There will be many of us working long hours over an extended time period on a project about which we care deeply, we have invested a lot of money and time and one which we have waited for many years. In many ways this project is a perfect storm for creating lots of conflict and aggravation. There is such a certainty of conflict that I think we should post a warning sign on our property like this one: “Danger-inevitable conflict ahead!”

But I don’t want us to be afraid of this perfect storm. I don’t want us to run away from the inevitability of conflict, but rather I want us all to understand that this is how it’s going to be. We should be warned and prepared for such conflict, but we need not fear it. In fact, in a little while I will show you why a little conflict can be a good thing.

Do you remember what I said last week about the secret to a successful building program? The secret to our success is…good theology. (To illustrate the importance of good theology, we can turn to the most important book on pastoral theology ever written—1 Timothy. Verse three reads: “stay there in Ephesus so that you may command certain men not to teach false doctrines any longer.” False doctrine must be fought against and sound doctrine and good theology must be developed at every turn. A practical outcome of this is to ask, “What are you listening to?” What kind of teaching do you fill your mind with on a daily or weekly basis?) Like David, we need to remind ourselves again and again that our cups are overflowing—they are running over with the presence and glory of Jesus Christ. Through the gospel of Christ, he has poured out himself in such infinite quantity that we cannot contain his presence. Our cups are filled and continually overflowing, not just with his gifts, but with himself. We must always start with good theology, but as necessary as it is, good theology by itself is not enough. Good theology must always result in good actions and good service.

This is how Paul begins this fourth chapter of Ephesians. As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle, be patient bearing with one another in love. The key word in this verse is the word “then.” It serves as the link between the first three chapters and the last three chapters. The first three chapters of Ephesians explores and expounds the pure gospel message. Ephesians is often called “little Romans” because of its theological depths in the gospel. Again and again Paul fleshed out various descriptions of the gospel, like the end of chapter three. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Do you see the implications of this verse? If the love of Christ in the gospel is something that surpasses knowledge, then this means that even in eternity, we will not be able t fully grasp the power and depth of the Christ’s love. This is the opposite of the way most people view eternity. How many times have you heard someone say, or perhaps said yourself, “I can’t wait until I get to Heaven so I will understand (fill in the blank)”. The idea that people have is that when we pass from this life to the next, all of the things we ever struggled to understand will suddenly become clear to us. The popular notion is like this: we will pass through the pearly gates, God will immediately connect our brains to a near-infinite speed firewire through which all of God’s truth will be downloaded in about ten seconds. But I don’t think this popular notion does any justice to verses like this which say the love of God surpasses knowledge and is beyond knowing. Not that we can’t know it, for then Paul’s prayer for us to know it would be futile, but that no matter how much we learn, we will never fully know the love of Christ.

What this means is that if you do not understand the book of Romans now, you won’t understand it any better on your first day in Heaven. It’s true that we will no longer be burdened by sin and this will enable us to understand and learn in a way that we cannot in this life, but it will not be an immediate or complete knowledge. If you have never read the book of Amos, do you think God is going to press a button and download Amos to your internal hard drive? If you tend to skip over the book of Leviticus, do you imagine that God will sprinkle some Levitical pixie dust over you which will instantly transform you into an Old Testament scholar? I digress a bit, but my point is this: the love of Christ is so immense that after a billion years in eternity, we will still not fully understand it; we will still be amazed and astounded by it. In fact, I believe that not only will we not understand the love of Christ after a billion years, but that every year that passes, the love of Christ will become more and more beautiful and our enjoyment of it and satisfaction in it will continue to grow.

Think about your favorite food. I don’t know what Tony’s favorite food is, but I have a guess that you will find it somewhere within the walls of a Golden Corral buffet. When Tony and I traveled to the conference in Wausau a few weeks back, we were excited to realize that we would be passing a Golden Corral in Plover right about lunchtime. We were even more excited when we saw that the lunch price was much cheaper than the diner price. We were pretty happy about all of this, kind of like two kids in a candy store. Out of all of the choices of food in the restaurant, Tony and I both made a beeline to the steak grill. We were both standing there holding our empty plates in one hand while we wiped the drool dripping from our mouths with the other hand. Just then a Golden Corral employee sees us and asks, “Can I help you?” I thought this was the dumbest question a person could ever ask. If you saw two hungry men holding their empty plates and drool soaked napkins standing next to the steak grill, what would you think they were after?! I hid my surprise at his ridiculous question and simply replied, “Yes, we were waiting for our steaks.” Then the man behind the steak grill said something that sent shivers down our spines. It was like he had uttered the deplorable word that was spoken by the witch in C.S. Lewis’ The Magician’s Nephew. What he said had the power to darken the sun, to defeat all of the combined armies of the world, to pull the earth out of its orbit and send it hurling toward the edge of the Milky Way! In answer to my obvious question, the man said, “I’m sorry, we only serve steaks at the dinner meal.” OK, maybe it didn’t pull the earth out of its orbit, but it nearly made two grown men cry.

Alright, we have established that Tony and I are good, old-fashioned carnivores. (Though Tony likes his steak well done, which is almost as bad as not having steak!) Imagine your favorite food piled high and deep as ten Mt. Everests. Now also imagine that all of the gluttony and sinfulness that we associate with eating is gone. We will eat and never get indigestion. We can enjoy the food and we’ll never grow tired of it. It will not become gluttony or addictive for us. If it is ice cream, it will never melt. If it is steak, it will always taste like it is hot off the grill. Get the picture! That mountain of food has become an infinite supply of guiltless pleasure and enjoyment. No matter how hard we try, we will never exhaust it, never grow tired of it and each bite we take will be better than the last. This, I believe, is a small picture of what Paul meant in 3:17-19 but instead of food, the mountain of enjoyment is Christ. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

I am convinced that this last phrase is what David had in mind in the 23^rd Psalm when he wrote, “My cup runs over.” If David had read Ephesians, I think he would have said, “Yes, that is what I meant. I am filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. My cup runs over!” Don’t you want to be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God? The gospel message is an inexhaustible mountain of pleasure in God. For all eternity, our enjoyment of him will never run out, never grow tired, and each day will be sweeter than the previous one. If your cup will be overflowing for all eternity, how much more is it filled right now?! But here is where the analogy begins to break down. We can almost begin to imagine a mountain of guilt-free ice cream pleasure or guilt-free steak pleasure, but it’s a little harder to imagine a mountain of Jesus pleasure. When it is framed in this way, many of us would much rather have a mountain of ice cream or steak than a mountain of Jesus. But that’s the problem, isn’t it? Steak and ice cream and human relationships and warm, Spring days have been given to us for our enjoyment. We can twist any and all of them into sinful pleasures and addictions, but at their core, they are gifts from God. But the challenge for us is to enjoy God more than we enjoy his gifts. His gifts are the means to an end of enjoyment of God, not the end itself.

Our cup is already filled with the love of Christ. We don’t have to do anything to fill it because it is already running over. What we need to do, as Paul prayed for the believers in Ephesus, is to grasp the depth of his love. Paul said it is wide and long and high and deep. Picture a three dimensional object like a box. A box is long and wide and high and deep. Now picture this box getting larger as it grows in every direction. It grows until it fills this auditorium. It grows until it fills the city of Viroqua, five miles high, five miles wide and five miles deep. Then the box continues to grow until it fills the earth, until it touches the moon and until it expands to every edge of the universe. Is that the size of the love of Christ? No, because the universe, as immense as it is, does have a limit to its size. The universe is not infinite, but the love of Christ is. The love of Christ is infinite, whether or not we grasp its infinitude. If you are a believer, it is the infinite love of Christ that fills your cup.

If this is true, why then do we feel so empty at times? There can only be one of three reasons why our cup feels empty.

1. You are not a Christian. If you have not repented of your sin, believed the gospel and thrown yourself on the mercy of Christ, then you really do have an empty cup. To be Biblically accurate, your cup is not empty, it is just not filled with the love of Christ. In fact, the Bible says that your cup is filled with the wrath of God. But why would I make such a suggestion? Is it possible that in a Bible believing church like ours that there could actually be people in this room right now who are not genuine believers? While I cannot know the hearts of even a single person, I would hazard a guess that there is at least one person in this room who is not yet saved.

Last week I was talking with a man from another church. We got talking about our church backgrounds so I asked him when he became a Christian. I was surprised to learn that he believes he got saved a mere two years ago. He had been in another Bible believing church in town before he got saved, and before that, he attended a Free Church for many years, all the while he sincerely believed that he was a Christian. Can you imagine anyone attending a Free Church for several years and not being a Christian? It’s inconceivable, right?! J About two years ago the Lord showed him that he was living in sin and going his own way. In other words, his cup was completely empty. He repented of his sin and the Lord reached down and radically saved him. I was so encouraged by his story because it shows that God is still alive and active in Viroqua—that men and women in their thirties, forties and fifties are still getting saved. Of course I know it is happening, I just wish I heard about it more often. I was so encouraged by his story, but I was also a bit alarmed, because it reminded me how easy it is to sit under Biblical teaching for years and years and still and not be saved.

I would not want to cast doubts on anyone’s salvation, but if your cup always feels empty, please consider the fact that you might not be saved, that your cup really is empty. But it doesn’t have to be this way. You can turn form your sin and turn toward God. You can believe the gospel and throw yourself at the mercy of God and you will be saved. If there is even one person in this room, I implore you not to wait even a single day or a single hour before you take that step of faith.

2. The second reason your cup might feel empty is because you have filled it with a lot of things other than Christ. This goes back to what we said last week, how we are constantly waiting for something better to come along. If he was my boyfriend, I would be happy. If she was my girlfriend, I would be happy. If my spouse only did such and such, I would be happy. If I had a different spouse, a different job, a different family, a different house, a different life, then I would be happy and my cup would be filled. We try to fill our cups with these other things and the problem is that it really seems to work for a while. Our cups can be filled with these other things, but because we were not created to hold such things, they drain from our cups as fast as we can pour them in. All of them are fleeting pleasures that only satisfy for a moment. We fill our cups with one of these things and for a moment it feels so good, but then it drains from our inner being as fast as it was poured in. Filling our cups with these things is like grasping the wind—just when we think we have grabbed a hold of it, it slips through our fingers.

3. The third reason your cup feels empty, is what Paul is praying for: that we would grasp the infinite depth of the love of Christ. Our cup feels empty, but it really is running over, it’s just that we cannot see this. Or perception is dulled. Our minds are darkened and our eyes are blind to its presence. My guess is that most Christians have issues with number two and number three. That is, we do both of these things—we fill our cups with something other than Christ and we fail to grasp the overflowing love of Christ that already fills our cup.

Do you know what Karen asked me yesterday? I got a little uptight yesterday over—get this—spilled milk! And I was the one who spilled it! But it wasn’t just ordinary milk, it was Rich’s famous chocolate milk. Those who have tasted my chocolate milk would agree—you have not really tasted chocolate milk until you’ve had my chocolate milk. This isn’t a boast, just a brute fact of life!J But I wasn’t upset over the chocolate milk so much as the fact that the spatter of the chocolate milk reached a distance of eleven feet!! (I was so amazed, I actually got a tape measure out and measured the splatter distance.) So right in the middle of this chocolate milk disaster, Karen asked me, “How’s your cup?” Can you believe she would do that to me—that she would dare to apply what I talked about last week?! This is what I mean by the xray of ministry. I wasn’t even engaged in what we usually call ministry, I was just having a normal day at home (though that is ministry, right?). My impatient actions were like an xay into my soul revealing to me that I was living as if my cup was empty. Even before Karen asked the question, I had been thinking about it, but it was helpful to have someone say it out loud. If this is true on an average day for me at home, how much more true will it be when our entire church body faces the inevitable conflict which will occur in the next six months of building?

Remember earlier when I said this inevitable conflict can be a good thing. If your xray revealed a four inch nail in your head, it’s a bad thing that the nail is in there, but the xray is a good thing, because now something can be dome about it. In the same way, when conflict reveals that we are living with an empty cup, it’s not good that our cup is empty, but it is good that this truth is revealed to us so that we can do something about it. I don’t care how the empty cup is revealed to you—whether it be through chocolate milk, the Holy Spirit, your spouse or your children, when it is revealed, I want you to see it as a gift. It’s a gift to realize an area that is empty. It is a gift to be told that you have “a four inch nail stuck in your head.” It’s a gift to have your empty cup revealed to you, so then you can ask God to fill it—or more precisely—to allow you to see that it is already filled.

Rich Maurer

May 4, 2008