A Prayer About Knowing Jesus

Well, if you have your Bible and I hope you do, turn to Ephesians chapter 1 as we
continue our ongoing study through the book of Ephesians. Back in 1992,
Dr. D .A. Carson wrote a book called A. Call to Spiritual Reformation.
And in the book, Dr. Carson worked through nine of the Apostle Paul's prayers in
his letters to the various churches, including the prayer that we're going to be
looking at over the next three Sundays here in chapter one of Ephesians and as he
began the book he offered this as his reason for writing the book this is a long
quote but he says this better than I can he says the one thing we need most
urgently in Western Christendom is a deeper knowledge of God We need to know God
better, he says. He says, when it comes to knowing God, we are a culture of the
spiritually stunted. So much of our religion is packaged to address our felt needs.
And these are almost uniformly anchored in our pursuit of our own happiness and
fulfillment. God, he says, simply becomes the great being who, potentially at least,
meets our needs, fills our aspirations. We think rather little of what he is like
or what he expects of us or what he seeks in us. We're not captured by His
holiness and his love, his thoughts and words.
These things capture too little of our imagination, too little of our discourse, too
few of our priorities.
In the biblical view of things, Carson says, a deeper knowledge of God brings with
it massive improvement in the other areas mentioned. Purity,
integrity, evangelistic effectiveness, better study of scripture, improved private and
corporate worship, and much more. But if we seek these things without passionately
desiring a deeper knowledge of God, we are selfishly running after God's blessings
without running after him. That's sobering, isn't it? But it's accurate.
He's saying in this quote that we are more interested in the blessings than we are
in the blesser. We care more about being blessed than we do about the one who is
blessing us, and that ultimately, if we want to experience God's blessings,
the key to that is to know him better. That's what Paul is saying in the prayer
that we're going to be looking at this morning. As we began this study in the book
of Ephesians, which is also, it's not just written to the church at Ephesus, it's
written to neighboring churches. It was a circular letter that Paul intended would be
distributed among various churches. We began where Paul begins, which is with a
cataloging, a listing of the blessings that God provides for those who are in him.
Paul is erupting in a prayer of praise to God thanking him for all of the ways he
blesses us in Christ. And now when you get halfway through chapter 1, you get to
verse 15, this prayer changes from a prayer of praise to first a prayer of
thanksgiving to God and ultimately a prayer of petition where Paul is asking God to
enlighten us with a deeper knowledge of him. The great prayer at the end of chapter
one is a prayer that God's people would know God better. The same thing D .A.
Carson is talking about in his book. Most of us, when we pray for other people, we
pray for material or emotional needs, right? Somebody says, you have any prayer
requests, and we talk about an uncle who has a broken hip, or we talk about
somebody who is going through a hard season. And that's not wrong to pray for those
things. Those are fine things to pray for. But Paul, when he is praying for the
Ephesians. He is not praying for their financial needs or their medical needs or
their emotional needs or their anxiety, their sorrow, whatever they're going through.
He's praying that they would know God and know at a deep,
know him at a deep experiential level. They would know all he has done for them
and for us in Christ. That's the prayer. Our staff just returned this week.
We went to Dallas for a Great Commission Collective, the annual conference that the
collective does. Our church is a part of the Great Commission Collective, which is a
group of about 150 churches in North America, in the U .S. and in Canada. And these
churches come together and collaborate to plant churches not only but around the
world. There are six, in addition to North America, there are six main areas on the
globe where GCC is planting gospel -centered churches. And that's in the Middle East
and North Africa. That's in Romania and Moldova, in India, in Pakistan,
in East Africa, and in the Caribbean. And the conference we attended was all about
multiplication. How do we Help people become disciples of Jesus.
This is what God commanded all of us to do, to make disciples. So how do we do
that more effectively? And by the way, it's a command not just for a church, it's
command for every individual. Each of you is Christians commanded by the Lord to
make disciples. And a good question to be asking yourself is, what am I doing to
make disciples? How am I spending, in what way am I making disciples of anybody.
That's both evangelism and discipleship. What am I doing to do that? At the
conference we talked about the need for the church, all of us, to take the message
of the gospel to more people, but we also talked about the need that there is to
take the message of the gospel and plant it more deeply in the hearts of those
whom we're serving in our own hearts and in the lives of those around us.
Paul was all about taking the gospel as far and as wide as he could, but he was
also all about planting the gospel deeply in the hearts of those to whom he
ministered. He didn't just want a superficial surface relationship with Jesus among
God's people. He wanted God's people to know Christ deeply, because in knowing him
deeply, everything changes. The mission of the church is to spread the gospel around
the world, but it's also to press the truth of the gospel more deeply in the
hearts of those who believe. So we're going to see how Paul articulates this at the
beginning of his prayer in verses 15, 16, and 17, but I'm going to read the whole
second half of Ephesians as we get started. Again, let me pray. Father, we need
your help now. As we come to your word, we ask that the Holy Spirit would be our
teacher, that you would open our hearts and eyes to hear and to understand and to
plant this truth deeply in our own hearts, that we would not just be hearers of
your word, but doers as well. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.
This is the Word of God for the people of God, Ephesians Chapter 1, beginning at
verse 15. For this reason, 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 all my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ,
the Father of Glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and the 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 work of his great might, that he worked in Christ
when he raised him from the dead and seated him at the 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 and all. Amen.
May God bless this reading of His word. The grass withers and the flower fades, but
the word of our God will stand forever. As I said, we're only going to look at
the first three verses in this section this morning, verses 15, 16, and 17.
And here are the three things we're going to look at. We're going to look at the
distinguishing characteristics of the Ephesian believers. What did Paul see in them
that gave him a confidence that these believers were actually in Christ. We're going
to look at Paul's pattern of persistent faithful prayer. He evidences it here.
It's a pattern throughout his ministry. And we're also going to see Paul's plea for
his readers to grow in their knowledge of God. So that's our outline for this
morning. Let's look at what Paul identifies as the distinguishing characteristics of
the Ephesian believers, those who are in Christ. Look back at verse 15. I told you
that in verses 1 through 14, Paul uses the phrase, in Christ 14 times over and
over again, in Him, in Christ, in Him. And what he says here in verse 15 is the
reason that he believes that these Ephesian believers are in Christ, are in Him.
There are two reasons why he believes it. First, it's because he has heard of their
faith in the Lord Jesus, and second, it's because of their love for the saints. He
believes that they are actually in Christ because they have both orthodoxy and
orthopraxy. Do you know those words? So orthodox is from a Greek word,
two Greek words actually, which mean ortho means right or straight or correct,
dachsa means belief, glory, or worship. So to be orthodox is to have a correct or
a right belief or the right worship. An orthodox person worships rightly, believes
rightly. Orthopraxy means the right practice. Orthos again,
straight, right, correct. Praxis means behavior or practice. Paul says he gives thanks
to God for what he has heard about
whether somebody is actually in Christ. Let me say that again. It is both right
beliefs and right behavior that are the evidences of genuine conversion and that
somebody is actually in Christ. We live in a world today where the only requirement
most people have for someone being a Christian is right behavior.
Right belief doesn't matter a whole lot to people in our day. As long as you're a
nice, kind, loving person, most people think that's really all that matters to God.
This is what your neighbors think. Ask somebody, why should God let you into His
heaven when you die, and your neighbors will say, well, I've tried to live a good
life. I've tried to do things for other people. I've tried to be good.
I try to love my neighbor, at least occasionally, right?
Most people in our culture, if you say, I don't think you're a Christian, what they
hear is you saying, I don't think you're a good moral person.
They don't think you're talking about their beliefs. They think you're talking about
their behavior.
They think when you say, I don't think you're a Christian, or when you say I'm a
Christian and you're not, they think you're saying I'm a better person morally than
you are. And we need to know this because it's a part of our dialogue as we're
talking to people. This is what's in the mind of most of our friends and neighbors.
And of course, the first thing we have to recognize is that trying to be a good
person will never make anybody acceptable acceptable to God. The Bible's pretty clear.
You can't be, you can't make yourself good enough for God to go, well, you belong
with me. You can never be that good. Here's God standard according to Jesus.
Be perfect.
Never sin.
And anybody who says, that's me, is a fool or a liar or just completely misguided.
Thinking that God will accept you because you've attained a right level of goodness
is wrong -headed thinking. The Bible tells us that all we,
like sheep, have gone astray. All of us fall short of the glory of God of his
standards. Last Friday was the 508th anniversary of the day when in a little town
in Germany in Wittenberg, the parish priest Martin Luther decided to start a debate
and he tacked on the church door a list of 95 feces. These were his 95 charges
against the church in his day where he said, here's where I think we're getting it
wrong. As a Catholic, Luther had believed that the essence of Christianity was to
offer his own righteousness to God. The way to be a Christian is you present your
righteousness to God. Then when Luther started reading the book of Romans,
got to chapter one, he said that's not how it works at all. The essence of
Christianity is that we receive a righteousness from God. We don't offer a
righteousness to him. We receive righteousness as a gift from him because of what
his son has done. It's not your goodness that makes you a child of God. It's God's
grace. He gives you a righteousness that is not your own. It's an alien
righteousness. It's from outside you. He accepts you as his child because of the
righteousness of Christ being credited to your account. This is what we saw back in
verse 7 when Paul was talking about being redeemed. Redeemed is you receive the
righteousness of Christ and you're bought out of slavery. So this group that thinks
what makes you acceptable for God is just that you're a good, nice person has
missed the mark. They've not seen the full picture. But there is another group.
There's another group that is so fixated on the right set of beliefs. As long as
you have the right doctrine, the right set of beliefs, that's really all that
matters. As long as you say Jesus is Lord, you're good. Some who would say, just
say the magic words, pray the prayer, and you're in no matter how you live after
that. But here's the thing.
It's not just saying Jesus is Lord that matters, it's living like Jesus is Lord
that matters.
Living like he's in charge.
Like you're to submit to him, you're under his authority.
Let me back up here for just a second. Right beliefs and right behavior, ultimately
these aren't the things that get you into heaven. You understand that, right? They
are the evidence that you're a child of God. Your right beliefs and right behavior
are not what make you acceptable before God. It is what Christ has done that makes
you acceptable. Your right beliefs and your right behavior are the response to what
Christ has done. God accepts you as his child because Jesus died in your place,
paid the price for your sins, and you have come to believe that he is who he
claimed to be, You have trusted in his death and resurrection. You've submitted your
life to him. And once you've submitted your life to Jesus, you start living your
life in a new way. You start following him. You start doing what he's called you
to do. You're not following your own desires, passions, and appetites anymore. You're
following Jesus. He's your Lord. So in Ephesians 1, back to where we are, when Paul
says, I thank God, because I have heard of your faith, he's not just talking about
a profession of faith that they made, he's talking about the living faith that they
are displaying. I have heard that you've confessed Jesus' Lord, but I've also heard
that your faith is confirmed by the way you're now living. The new choices you're
making, the new priorities that are shaping your life. It's a living faith that's
not just a lip service faith that he's talking about here. And he says the best
evidence of what you really believe is how you live your life. If somebody says,
I believe one thing and then they act a different way, you have to ask the
question, do they really believe what they say they believe? The best way we can
know what you really believe is to see the choices you make. The Bible says it
this way in James 2 .26, for as the body apart from the spirit is dead,
so also a profession of faith apart from works is dead. Now, I added a profession
of faith, but that's what he's talking about there. Faith articulated but not lived
out is a dead faith. If you have a body with no spirit in it, that body is dead.
If you have a profession of faith in God with no works to show for it, no changed
life, no new priorities, your profession is a dead profession. Paul says to the
Ephesians, I thank God because I've heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus. I've
heard about the evidence that God has truly done a saving work in your life. And
don't miss the fact that he says, I've heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus.
Because some people have faith in their faith. You know, they just think all it
matters is that you have faith. No, you have to have an object of your faith.
In the Greek, that's Curiasiosis. In the time of the Roman Empire,
the Caesars wanted Roman citizens to say, Kaiser Curias.
Caesar is Lord. And the Christians had faith that Jesus is Lord.
That's why a lot of Christians got thrown to the lions because they refused to say,
Kaiser Curias. So verse 15, I give thanks. You have the kind of faith that affirms
what is true about Jesus, that he is the Lord, it's not Caesar. You're willing to
face persecution for that. And listen to me here.
What we believe about Jesus matters, but only if what we believe is making a
difference in our lives and our choices.
Just saying Jesus' Lord doesn't cut it. If you really believe Jesus is Lord, you
live like Jesus is Lord.
The Ephesians were doing that. Paul had heard about their faith, and he thanks God
for their faith in Jesus. He knew the orthodoxy of what they believed, their right
beliefs, and that matters to God. To have an orthodox faith matters to God.
He also had heard and was thankful that they loved the saints. On the night before
his crucifixion, Jesus said to his disciples in the upper room, by this, all people
will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another. The evidence
of your faith is going to be a love for the brothers. The Apostle John, who was
there that night, would later write, Beloved, let us love one another, for love is
from God. Whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not
love does not know God because God is love. Paul says,
I've not only heard about your faith, which is commendable, but I've heard the
second thing that confirms for me that you are actually in Christ. You have a love
for the saints. You love one another.
Those who say that they love others, or those who say that love for others is all
that God really cares about are wrong, but God does care that we love one another.
It's not the only thing, it's necessary, but it's not sufficient for someone to be
a Christian. In fact, when God converts you, he puts in your heart a love for
others that was not there before. And if you're saying, I don't have that love for
others, then you have to ask the question, has my heart been changed by God?
You're here this morning with a whole bunch of people with whom you have only
really, if we put it all together, we all only have one thing in common. Some of
you are fans of different sports teams, you have different occupations, different
economic levels, different backgrounds, different interests. But the one thing that
unites us together is we're all here saying, Jesus is Lord, and we love one another
because of that, because that's the most important thing. Who you root for on
Saturday in college football doesn't really matter, especially this season, I'll just
say that, right?
But who you, who's your Lord? That's what really matters. Because we have experienced
the grace of God in our lives, and we have that in common.
back in verse one is a word for all Christians. If you're in Christ, you've been
set apart, you're a saint. And the Bible prioritizes for Christians a love for
others in the body of Christ. That doesn't mean you don't love your enemies or
don't love those who are outside of the body of Christ. It means that we have
committed ourselves to loving one another. That's first place. That's our first
priority. We are to love those who our fellow believers. Galatians 6 says, so then
as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, especially those who are of the
household of faith. And the Ephesians were doing this. They were caring for one
another's needs. They were meeting one another's needs. So Paul here is saying, I
thank God, when I hear about the genuineness of your walk with God, the evidence of
your active living orthodox faith in the Lord Jesus and your self -sacrificing love
for one another in Christ, I am grateful to God that that's true about you. Last
week we talked about evidences that you have been sealed with the Holy Spirit, but
it can be dialed back to these two basic questions. Do you have an active living
faith in the Lord Jesus? Let me just give you some ways to diagnose that.
Do you believe what the Bible teaches about who Jesus is and what he's done for
you? Does what you believe make a difference in how you live and the choices you
make? Is it a faith that propels you to walk in righteousness and holiness and
honor God in how you're living? That's what a living faith looks like.
These are the evidences of an active faith. And there are good questions for us to
be asking ourselves when we want to know, is my faith real, genuine, alive, and
active? Also, do you have a self -sacrificing love for your brothers and sisters in
Christ? And there are some ways to diagnose that. When you see a brother or sister
in need, do you turn away or do you respond to the need?
Do you extend grace to others as a first impulse?
Do you forgive other people easily, or do you hold grudges against others?
Do you serve others? And how do you do that? Think about that for just a minute.
We are to serve one another here in the body of Christ. There are a bunch of
people who have already served us this morning to make this worship service possible.
I don't know if you've thought about that, but there was a worship team that served
us by leading us in worship. There were people who got here early, filled up the
communion cups and put out the communion elements. There are people who are taking
care of the babies in the back right now. There are ushers and greeters who were
here when we arrived to welcome us and greet us. These are people who are loving
us and serving us with their service. What are you doing?
What's your area of service? How are you serving the body of Christ? It's one of
the ways that we evidence our love for one another. And then finally, do you find
joy and fulfillment in the company of fellow believers? Do you prefer their company
over the company of unbelievers? Let me just say something. Students, young people,
as you're thinking about this for a minute, would you rather hang out with
Christians or with the cool kids? I mean, I don't know if they're called the cool
kids anymore like they were when I was growing up, right? But there's this group
that when I was in high school, it was like hanging out with them helped your
reputation. It was, it helped your status.
And oftentimes you'd rather hang out with them and do what they're doing because it
made you cooler than to hang out with the Christians but if you have a love for
the brothers you want to hang out with those who are your brothers and sisters in
Christ Paul was convinced that the blessings that he had enumerated in verses 3
through 14 were true of these believers in Ephesus because he had heard and saw the
evidence that they were in Christ, that evidence they had an orthodox faith in the
Lord Jesus, and they had a love for the brothers. Would he be able to say the
same to you today?
These verses also show how Paul, for Paul, prayer was common,
and that's the second thing I want us to look at here this morning. It was a
common practice in his life. He had a persistent pattern of prayer. I'm not going
to belabor this point, but look at verse 16. He says, I do not cease to give
thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. You know, the first thing we're told
about the Apostle Paul after he is converted in Acts chapter 9. He meets Jesus on
the road to Damascus. Jesus tells him to go on to Damascus and to wait there and
someone would come to him. Then the Lord comes to a man named Ananias and says,
I want you to go, Paul is over at Simon's house, I want you to go meet him, and
Ananias says, you mean the Paul who kills people, that Paul? And he says, it's
going to be okay. He will be there, he will be praying. That's how you will know.
He will be praying. It's the first thing we hear about Paul after his conversion.
Behold, he is praying. And throughout his letters, Paul stressed this.
In the book of Romans, he told the church in Rome, be constant in your prayers.
Later in this book, in chapter 6, he tells the Ephesians, be praying at all times
in the spirit. He tells the Colossians, be steadfast in your prayers. He tells the
church in Thessalonica, rejoice always, pray without ceasing. He tells Timothy,
I urge that supplications, prayers, sessions and thanksgiving be made for all people.
Paul understood that a life without prayer is a life of declared independence from
God.
The less prayer is a part of your life or a part of our church, the more you are
saying, we got this, we don't need you, we got this on our own,
and a life filled with prayer is a life that is marked by dependence on God. An
old hymn we sing sometimes. The old hymn, brethren, we have met to worship. And I'm
struck by one of the lines in that hymn. It come back to it all the time. It
says, when we gather for worship as a church, all is vain unless the spirit of the
Holy One comes down. Us getting together is no good unless the Holy Spirit comes.
And so it goes on to say, brethren, pray. And Holy Manna will be showered all
around. We have to pray for God to be near, to draw near,
to be with us. We have to pray and recognize His presence.
So let me just ask you, do you pray for me?
As I work to put this message together every week, do you pray for me? Do you
pray for the elders in our church as they serve? You pray for the staff of the
church. Do you pray for your small group leader? Do you pray for other people in
your small group? Do you ever open up, you ever do this? Do you ever open up the
church directory on your phone and just go through and pray for people by name in
the church directory? And by the way, if you're new and didn't know that we had a
church directory, we do. And you can, Becky Perez, Becky raise your hand right with
it. So Becky, if you want to know how to get the church directory set up on your
phone, Becky's the key, but it's real simple here. You can go to your app store
and download, you've got to look for instant church directory.
Make sure you look for instant church directory. You download that app and then you
can create a login. You can add yourself your info so that we can be praying for
one another, you know how to get in touch with one another. If you're not in the
directory, you want to be in the directory, talk to Becky about that. I'm grateful.
We've got folks, I don't know if you know this, folks who come early on a Sunday
morning and pray for the worship service every Sunday. And in doing that,
they are acknowledging that all is vain unless the Spirit of the Holy One comes
down. Beth Urey gives leadership to that. Beth's up here. If you want to talk to
Beth about how You can join that group early on Sunday morning. You can do that.
Let me also look here at exactly what Paul is praying for in verse 17.
So I want us to move to the third thing here. In verse 17, he says, I pray that
the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of Glory, Paul uses these two
descriptors about God, the God of our Lord Jesus Christ and the Father of Glory. He
uses these phrases, the first phrase he uses because he's differentiating,
he's reminding them of how Jews and Gentiles are not brought together in Christ. So
in the Old Testament, when people in the Old Testament would pray, they would pray
to the God who is the father of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the patriarchs.
But he's saying, now I give thanks to the God who is the father of our Lord
Jesus. He's uniting everything together in Christ. He's shifting from the old way of
praying to the God in the Old Testament to say the God who is the father of our
Lord Jesus Christ. He also calls him the father of glory because of what he's
praying for here. See, how God, or excuse me,
how Paul describes God in his letters correlates to what it is Paul's going to pray
for. So if you're reading in 2 Corinthians chapter 1, for example, he talks about
the God of all comfort. Well, that's because he's about to pray that this church
would receive comfort from God. They need comfort, so he prays to the God of all
comfort. Here he prays to the Father of Glory because he knows what this church
needs is a revelation of the glory of God. So he's describing God that way because
he knows they need to see God's glory. And God's glory is revealed,
ultimately, in his son. God's glory is his radiance,
it's his perfection, it's his power. In fact, Michael Haken, who was writing in the
Lexham survey of theology defines it this way. He says, God's glory is the
manifestation of the perfection of all of God's attributes. The doctrine of the glory
of God emphasizes his greatness and transcendence, his splendor, and his holiness. And
the reason Paul says, I'm praying to the God who is the Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ, the Father of Glory, is because he knows that what the Ephesians need most
now is to grow in their knowledge and their understanding of the glory of God. They
need to see just how glorious God is. And his prayer,
as we'll see in verse 17, is that God might give them a spirit of wisdom and of
revelation in the knowledge of him, which brings us to the heart of what these
verses are about and what Paul is unpacking as he continues in chapter one.
Paul's plea for the Ephesians is that they would grow in their knowledge of Christ.
Now that brings us back to where we started this morning with Dr. D .A. Carson who
said the thing the church in Western Christendom needs now is a deeper knowledge of
God. We need to know God better. Specifically, Paul wants these Ephesians to develop
a deeper, richer, fuller understanding of God as he has revealed himself in the
person of Christ. Paul had a knowledge of God before he was converted, didn't he? I
mean, he was a rabbi. He was in training. He was a Pharisee of the Pharisees. He'd
gone to Bible school, Old Testament Bible school. He had a knowledge of the Old
Testament. He had a knowledge of God. But when he met Jesus on the road to
Damascus, his head knowledge of God, they were switch flipped. He went from a head
knowledge of God to a relationship with Jesus. And it made all the difference.
It went from his head to his heart. His understanding of God exploded in his life.
When Jesus revealed himself to Paul, Paul's life was radically turned upside down.
Everything changed. And that's what Paul wants for the Ephesians. and he wants it
for you and me.
He wants our knowledge of God to move from a knowledge about God to a knowing that
goes deeper than just information.
Knowledge about God, again, is necessary, but it's not sufficient.
You have to know details about God is to have a relationship with him, but having
a knowledge of God is not the same as having a knowledge of God. The Bible tells
us that the knowledge of God, apart from truly knowing God, will just puff you up.
A knowledge about God, apart from truly knowing God, will make you proud and
arrogant. Early in my life as a Christian, I pursued a knowledge of God so that I
would impress my friends, so that I could be the smartest person in the room, so
that I could get the right answers, and hold up my hand when the teacher asks the
question and get it right and have everybody go, he's so wise. I was pursuing it
for my own glory.
When Paul says, I want you to grow in your knowledge of God, that's not what he
has in mind here. And we need to be on guard against that. The Hebrew word for
Knowledge is the word yada,
and it means not just information, it means a personal encounter.
To have a knowledge of God is to have a personal encounter with him. It's a
knowing by experience. Again, Paul knew about God before he was on the road to
Damascus. When he met Jesus, he had a Yadah, a personal knowledge of God.
Now, Paul is writing to people who are already in Christ, so we'll presume that
these people already have some Yada, they have some personal relationship with God,
they know him, but Paul's prayer is that that knowledge would expand, that it would
grow, that they wouldn't just know him, but that God would give them,
what he says here, the spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him.
Now, in your Bible is this, is the word spirit capitalized or not? So different
Bibles handle it differently. Some have it capitalized and some don't. Some think
it's a reference to the Holy Spirit. Some think he's just talking about having this
spirit of knowledge and revelation. Of course, we've already seen a reference to the
Spirit back in verses 13 and 14, Paul is not praying that these Ephesian believers
would receive the Holy Spirit, they already have the Holy Spirit. He's praying, I
believe he's talking about the Holy Spirit, and I think he's praying that the Holy
Spirit would expand through Revelation and wisdom their Yada with God.
They would have a deeper, richer, greater knowledge and understanding of who God is.
I think it's significant to note that what Paul is not praying for here. He's not
praying that they would endure the persecution they were undoubtedly facing in
Ephesus. And there's nothing wrong with praying for something like that, but Paul's
first impulse is not to pray, I know you're facing hard times, I'm praying that God
will bring you comfort and perseverance. He's not praying for them to have comfort
in distress. He's not praying like he does for the Ephesians that God would supply
all their needs according to his riches and glory. He's praying that they would come
to a deeper level of understanding and knowledge about God at an experiential level,
that they would know God better.
Because listen carefully here, at the end of the day,
This is what you and I need, first and foremost. You and I need a deeper walk
with Jesus than the one we have. We need to know him better. When Christy Acuna
was out of a job, she needed a job, but you know what she needed more than a
job? She needed to walk with Jesus closely in the midst of the path that she was
on. She needed to, and she would tell you, if she was here, she would say that
what happened during that season was a drawing near to Jesus, and she learned more
about him in that process. That she grew in her relationship with Jesus going
through a season of unemployment. What Paul and Shirley Cherry need right now,
we prayed for their healing, and we should. What they need right now is a deeper
walk with Jesus that will carry them through the path that they're on.
Paul, who is writing this letter, already knows Christ, but when he writes to the
Philippians, after talking about having a head knowledge of God, which he had as a
Pharisee, here's what he says. I count everything as loss, all my head knowledge,
because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord. All the head
knowledge I had about God is rubbish, he says, compared to the personal relationship
I have with Jesus and the yada I have with him. And then in verse 10,
he says, the longing of his heart is that I may know him, the power of his
resurrection, may share in his sufferings, becoming like him in death. Paul says, I
know him, but I want to know him. I already know him, but I want to know him
more. I want to know him more deeply.
Paul's goal was to know Christ as completely as it's possible in this life and
ultimately to know him fully when they meet face to face. Here's the point of all
of this. The better you know God, not the better you know about God, but the more
you know him personally and have a living vital relationship with Him and Christ,
the better you know him, the better equipped you will be to handle whatever comes
your way.
Whatever life throws at you.
Remember Moses on Mount Sinai? Going up there to get the Ten Commandments, what's
his one request of God? God, show me your glory. God says,
you will die if you see my glory. But turn, put your head in the rock,
glory's going to pass by. Remember, Moses came down, his face was shining, he was
changed because of the revelation of God's glory that he received.
prayer for the Ephesians and why over the next two weeks we'll see as we unpack
this. He explains more about how he is praying for the Ephesians to grow in their
understanding and their wisdom about God. Of course, the way God has revealed himself
most fully to us is how? In the person of Christ. That's how we know God most
fully is in the person of Christ. In verse 17, when he says, I want you to grow
and the knowledge of Him, I think it's Christ he's referring to there. I want the
Holy Spirit to reveal to you the knowledge of Him, Christ. 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, of our Lord Jesus Christ. In Colossians, Paul says that
Jesus is the visible image of the invisible God. If you have seen me, Jesus said,
you have seen the Father. I and the Father are one, according to Hebrews 1, the
radiance, Jesus is the radiance of the glory of God, the exact imprint of His
nature. Rick Phillips notes that Jesus has come not merely that we might know about
God more accurately, but that we should be reconciled to Him through Christ's blood
and become God's children, knowing him as our Heavenly Father.
In the city of Ephesus, where these Christians were living, it was a godless pagan
culture, worshipping pagan gods and goddesses, practicing immorality, flaunting it,
celebrating it. These Christians were living in that culture, and they were facing
persecution for holding to their faith. Roman oppression against the Christians was a
real thing. The emperor demanded worship from his subjects, bow the knee to me,
he said, If the people had tried to have a no king's rally or a no Caesar's rally
in their day, they would have been executed for that. The hardship they were facing
was real.
But when Paul prays for them, these are not the things he's praying for. He praised
that they would know Jesus for real, deeply, experientially, fully,
completely, As complete as we're able on this side of eternity. Yes, we see now
through a glass dimly, but the clearer and more fully able we are to see him and
know him and walk with him and be in a relationship with him, the more joy, the
more peace, the more hope we will have filling our hearts. So how do you come to
know him in that way? How do you have a deeper relationship with him? It starts by
turning from your own desires and passions and appetites and committing yourself fully
to following him, worshiping him, obeying him, putting his agenda at the center of
your life instead of your agenda. That's where it starts. And from there, you start
digging deep into God's revelation of himself, which is this. You dig deep here.
You don't just read this casually and superficially, you go deep to understand what
the Bible says. You grow in your knowledge and understanding of who he is through
His Word. And you pray that the God, the Holy Spirit would give you the gift of
illumination to reveal this to him. In fact, you don't just pray for that, but you
pray in general. Prayer is one of the ways we cultivate a deeper relationship with
God. We spend more time with him. And then you spend more time with your family,
your brothers and sisters in Christ, spend time in worship and praise. All of the
spiritual disciplines that we talk about are the ways in which we grow deeper in
our knowledge and understanding of who Jesus is. And the better you get to know
him, the closer you walk with him, the bigger the transformation you will experience
in your life and the more prepared you will be for whatever comes your way.
All the other challenges you're going to face in life will not go away. In fact,
when you become a Christian, they may intensify, but you'll be better equipped to
take them on the better you know Jesus. The more your knowledge and your
understanding is increased. You'll have a different power that works in you.
Knowing him deeply changes everything.
Let's pray.
Father, we thank you for these words. We thank you for the Apostle Paul's example
for his prayer for the Ephesians, and we know that this reflects your desire for
us, that what he was praying for them is what you desire for us, that our faith
would be a living faith, that our love for one another would be sincere, and that
we would recognize you as the Lord of glory, and that as we are exposed to the
reality of your majesty and your glory, our lives would be changed, and we would be
equipped to walk facing whatever we're going to face.
Lord, I pray for my brothers and sisters here that their knowledge of you would
grow deeply as they continue to search the scriptures and as they continue to
interact with one another and grow in their knowledge and understanding. And I pray
for those who are here, those who are visitors or guests or those who just don't
know you for whatever reason. They have not yet surrendered their lives to you.
They might look at their faith and say, I have a knowledge of God, but do I
really have that experiential relationship with God? They may look and say, I don't
know that I have a love for the brothers like I should. Lord, if they don't know
you, I pray that you would reveal to them their need, that they would humble
themselves, surrender themselves to you, and begin to follow you.
Lord, thank you again for the blessing of your word. May it have an impact on our
hearts and lives today, we pray.