Photo by Jametlene Reskp on Unsplash
Remsen Bible Fellowship, 06/11/2023
Introduction
Last week we began a short summer series on the topic of biblical hope. What is hope, and why does it matter for your life as a Christian? To answer the first part of the question: hope is a settled conviction of the future fulfillment of the promises of God. Faith is the action of the will whereby you decide to trust. Hope is the result of that trust. Humans plan around hope, we live based on our hopes. And, for the Christian, our hope is to be centered in the person and promises of Jesus; this gives our hope a distinct and life-giving quality.
As we continue to consider this topic, I want to turn to the book of Ephesians and look at one of the most-dense doctrinal passages in the New Testament.
Revisiting Inheritance
11 In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, 12 so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory.
Here Paul reminds us of the theme we just encountered last week: in Christ we have an inheritance. Three aspects of our inheriting are worth pointing out from verses 11-12:
* We receive this inheritance as the result of God’s election. “Having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will.” Many Christians resist the doctrine of election. We want to cling to a notion of “free-will” that doesn’t actually exist in the Bible. The Bible does not picture human beings as free, but as slaves to sin (see John 8, Ephesians 2). If we are to be saved it must be the sovereign work of the God who works all things according to the counsel of his will. We do make choices, but we are not the root cause. This reality, that coming to Christ is dependent upon the eternal election of the Father, ought to have two effects upon you. First, it should level your pride. We did not come to Christ bearing our own wisdom or might or power or intellectual ability. Before you were ever born, before you chose right or wrong, he chose out of the freedom of his glorious strength, wisdom, and mercy. We have no ground for boasting. The second effect which election should have upon us is to give us great confidence in the loving generosity - the kindness - of God toward us. He had no need in himself which demanded he save us. And yet he chose to. And so we should have confidence - and this will feed our hope - that he who never changes will not change his mind about us.
* The second aspect of our inheritance in verses 11-12 is to our point in this series: this inheritance is received by those who “hope in Christ.” Why is it that we must hope in Christ to receive such an inheritance? Because part of what we believe by faith is not merely that Christ has acted for us in the past, but that he continues to intercede for us today, that there is an inheritance stored up for those whose hope is in him. This inheritance is not for everyone. It is only for those whose hope is in Jesus.
* The third aspect of the inheritance is that, in some sense, we are also God’s inheritance. Notice the end of verse 12: “we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory.” We exist as hopers-in-Jesus, not for our glory, but for his. We exist for the sake of his glorious name. He receives sinners redeemed by Christ’s blood into his family as adopted children, and in doing so puts on display not their worth, but his. Those who hope in Jesus don’t simply praise him for what he’s done - we exist as trophies of his grace. We exist to display the love of God in Christ.
That last point matters profoundly for our hope, because if the whole point in salvation is putting the staggering love of God on display, his power and wisdom and might in redeeming rebels and bringing them into his family, then you can have incredible confidence that the work he began in you, he will complete (Philippians 1:6). Jesus won’t give up on you when you fail. You don’t need to feel insecure in your salvation, because he wasn’t waiting for you to be perfect or have your act together to start with. You are far worse than you think, and yet God has poured out his love to you in Christ.
Do you doubt the efficacy and stick-to-you-ness of his love? Then look at what he has done: for everyone who has trusted in Jesus, God has given the Holy Spirit as the down payment and seal of salvation:
13 In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, 14 who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.
The Holy Spirit is at work in you if you are trusting Jesus. If this is true of you, then you should have no doubts about his continued love and steadfastness toward you. Those who are in the Father’s hand are safe.
“I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand” (John 10:28-29)
Paul’s Prayer
It’s with this foundation that Paul turns in verses 15 and following. He praises the church for the faith and love which he has heard that they demonstrate. Faith in Jesus working through love to the saints is one of the chief marks of true Christianity. But he wants more for them. And so beginning in verse 16 we see the shift into prayer. Paul tells the church how he prays for them. And as I thought through this passage this week, and even as I preach it right now, this is my prayer for you.
15 For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, 16 I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, 17 that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, 18 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, 19 and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might 20 that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, 21 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. 22 And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, 23 which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.
What are the key components of this prayer? If you start trying to piece out all of the clauses you can absolutely find yourself lost. But I think the prayer basically comes down to this: Paul wants the Ephesian church to become better acquainted with God.
That might sound like a basic or obvious value, but I would suggest that in our day we spend precious little time even thinking about the idea of knowing God, let alone pursuing such a goal or praying that we would know God more deeply or that others would. One late Christian writer commented that to the Puritans the great thing was to know God. For modern Christians, however, the great thing is ourselves. What we are up to, what we are feeling, what we have done. So when Christians get together it’s always a discussion of what you have done for the Lord (for pastors this often means ministries, attendance, etc.), or how you are doing. Whereas the Puritan focus - and I would say, the focus of the New Testament - is on knowing God and making him known. Experiencing and enjoying God himself, and out of the overflow and that joyful relationship wanting to introduce others to him.
All of which is to say, in the mind of Paul here in Ephesians - and thus, as he is writing under inspiration of the Holy Spirit, in the mind of God himself - we will not come to a point of hope by looking inward. We come to hope by looking outside of ourselves and gazing at Christ.
So, as we examine this prayer we’ll do so under four headings: Hope with Your Eyes Open, Hope Because God’s Power is Bent for Your Good, Hope Because Jesus Reigns, and Hope Because God Gave Jesus to and for Us.
Hope with Your Eyes Open, v16-18
Look at verses 17-18. There Paul prays,
“that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your heart enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you.”
How does Paul speak about hope in these verses? He speaks of it as something which we come to know once we are given “the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him.” That translation is perhaps a little obscure; I think the NIV’s slight paraphrase of verse 17 is helpful: “I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better.” Which is to say, that God gives us the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit does not impart new information into the world through us, rather the revelation we receive is the Spirit opening our eyes to the glories of Christ. The Spirit testifies to Jesus (John 15:26).
And as our eyes are opened to who Jesus is - namely, the perfect revelation of God the Father - we come to know and love God. Hope ceases to be an abstract concept, and our hope takes on a certain shape, a particular doctrinal content: that the Risen Christ rules over all, and that he is preparing a place for those who repent of their sins and trust him, and he will return one day to call his own to himself and to judge all unrighteousness. This is what Paul calls the “blessed hope” in Titus 2:13. Are your eyes open to this hope? Do you look forward with joyful expectancy to seeing Jesus face to face?
Friends, this is not simply the way to have hope in the midst of a dark world: it is also how we pursue a holy and God-honoring life. 1 John 3:2-3 says this,
“Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. 3 And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.”
When the Spirit comes, he opens up our eyes to these glorious riches. My prayer for you is that he would open your eyes to the treasure trove of Hope that is found in knowing God, and knowing that he personally has prepared such riches for you.
Hope Because God’s Power is Bent for Your Good, v19-20
In verse nineteen, Paul goes on to describe the “immeasurable greatness of [God’s] power toward us who believe.” While such power is immeasurable, he nonetheless does give us a measuring stick: the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead (v20).
Have you considered that the very same power that raised our Lord Jesus is the power at work in your life? What are the things that worry you, that breed discontent and unease in your soul? Do you believe that God has power to address those issues?
One of the common patterns in the Psalms is for the author to recount a previous working of the Lord. The Exodus story is of particular importance, as people tell over and over again how God worked a mighty deliverance for his people. The Psalm we read this morning, Psalm 81, is an example of this. V10, “I am the LORD your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.” God reminds his people of his past work. At other times, the people remind themselves:
Psalm 78:4, “We will not hide them from our children, but tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the LORD, and his might, and the wonders that he has done.”
Why did the people of Israel see a need to recount to coming generations the works of the Lord in the past, why did God remind them of such events? Was it simply to relive the old glory days? No, it was to remind the people of who God was, and his immeasurable power, to use Paul’s phrase. He is the God who stopped the mouths of lions for Daniel, split the Red Sea and then the Jordan for the children of Israel, who delivered the nation from the hands of oppressors time and again.
But now, in Jesus, we find God’s power on even greater display. God the Son took on flesh (a great and triumphant act in itself!), and bore the wrath of God against all our sin: but he took that wrath and drank it down to the absolute last drop, because God raised him from the dead! More than that, verse 20 says he has been seated in the heavenly places! We are people with this kind of God.
But the other function of those stories, following on from seeing the power of God, the children of Israel learned who they were: children of the Exodus. An Exodus people. People who had been brought out of the house of bondage and into the land of promise. Brothers and sisters, if you are in Christ, then you have been brought into his people, you are children of a greater Exodus: an Exodus from bondage of sin and death, and Resurrected into the promised land of New Life in the Spirit. There’s a sense in which this earthly life, for the Christian, is like the 40 years in the wilderness - we know the promised land is coming, even if we aren’t quite there. But we know arrival is certain, because Christ crossed the Red Sea for us, the battle has been won.
Are you discouraged? Do you struggle to defeat sin in your life? Are you frustrated by the brokenness around you? Lift up your eyes to heaven and see your King, seated on the throne!
Hope Because Jesus Reigns, v20-22
This throne from which Jesus reigns isn’t simply figurative, as if to say, “yes Jesus is very powerful.” What kind of power does he have? The kind that has him seated above “all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but in the one to come.” That is to say, there is no earthly power equal to or above Jesus.
World leaders throughout time have often thought of themselves as being gods, mighty above other men to the point of having divine status. But if men want to set themselves up in this way, Scripture shows us clearly just how impressed by them or worried by them God is: Nebuchadnezzar the great building and rule is reduced to eating grass like an ox, Herod the Orator with the voice of a god is consumed by worms when receiving such praise, and the entire Roman Empire, which proclaimed, “Caesar is Lord” eventually crumbled before a church which countered with the claim “Jesus is Lord.” The empire of the Caesars is something we now read of in history books. The empire of King Jesus continues to grow by the day.
And his power is not limited to those powers we can see: just a couple of weeks ago, we saw in Mark 5 how Jesus had power to drive out not only a demon, but an entire legion of demons. The power of Jesus is far above all rule and authority. “All things,” verse 22 says, are “under his feet.” Demons are under Jesus’ feet. Satan is under Jesus’ feet. Are you afraid of the chaos in the world? Dear Christian, remember: Jesus reigns.
Hope Because God gave Jesus to and for Us, v22-23
And what’s more than the fact that he reigns is this: he reigns for us.
22 And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, 23 which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.
As the church, God has given Christ Jesus to us. He is given to us as the head of the body that we form. Ultimately, this church is not led by me. This is Jesus’ church. I don’t ever plan on leaving Remsen, but someday I could. And whether I do or not, at some point I’ll die. But the church doesn’t depend on me, because the church is headed up by Jesus himself. And what’s true of the local church is true of the universal church. There is no mere man who can rightly claim to be head of the church. Only Jesus is the head of his body.
This is incredibly important to grasp: the centrality of Jesus himself, and the fact that he is the source of life from which all other true life flows. If we don’t have that as a solid foundation, we won’t be ready for what comes next.
What comes next is absolutely staggering: the church is described as “the fullness of him who fills all in all.” Jesus, as the eternal Son of the Father, very God of very God, has no lack. There is nothing missing, there is no deficiency in him. And yet, what Paul seems to be saying is that, as Savior, Jesus’ body is incomplete until the church is added in. The church whom Christ purchased with his own blood, the bride whom he washes now in water with the word, is united to Christ. As in marriage, the two have become one flesh. The church is joined to Jesus in a way that the two can never be truly separated.
This is why it is so foolish to say you love Jesus but not the church. According to John 13 and 1 John 5, if you don’t love the church you can’t love Jesus. Jesus has made himself inseparable from his body. I want to conclude on a practical note: this is also part of why I think formal church membership is such a healthy practice. When we talk about formalizing a process for “officially” becoming a member, it’s not a matter of joining a club or trying to seem exclusive. Rather, it’s recognizing that Christ made a covenant with us by his blood, and bound himself in covenant marriage to his church. He’s not married to individuals, he’s married to the church. So part of how we follow him is by joining with one another in a covenant to love one another, even as he has loved us. Church membership is a formal commitment to one another, to encourage and challenge one another to pursue the Lord together. It helps us obey Ephesians 4:3-6,
“eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. 4 There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call— 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.”
He is our hope.
