Dive into our latest sermon on "Paul's Prayer for Illumination" from the book of Ephesians. In this episode, Houston unpacks the Apostle Paul's heartfelt desires for God’s family—illumination, knowledge, and power. Discover why Paul's letter, written for wide circulation among early Christians, remains profoundly relevant today as it ties back to foundational Christian beliefs about being renewed in Christ.
Houston explores how Ephesians encapsulates the essence of Christian life, urging us to see beyond mere text and to live out the truths of our faith. This sermon is more than just a message; it’s an interactive journey where listeners are encouraged to engage deeply with the concepts of seeing, believing, and experiencing the transformative power of God’s word.
Join us to reflect on how Paul's prayers for wisdom, revelation, and strength are crucial for today's believer, and how these prayers can illuminate the darkest corners of our faith, leading to a deeper, more personal connection with God. This episode promises not just to inform but to transform, inviting you to experience the profound shifts that come from truly knowing God.
Dive into our latest sermon on "Paul's Prayer for Illumination" from the book of Ephesians. In this episode, Houston unpacks the Apostle Paul's heartfelt desires for God’s family—illumination, knowledge, and power. Discover why Paul's letter, written for wide circulation among early Christians, remains profoundly relevant today as it ties back to foundational Christian beliefs about being renewed in Christ.
Houston explores how Ephesians encapsulates the essence of Christian life, urging us to see beyond mere text and to live out the truths of our faith. This sermon is more than just a message; it’s an interactive journey where listeners are encouraged to engage deeply with the concepts of seeing, believing, and experiencing the transformative power of God’s word.
Join us to reflect on how Paul's prayers for wisdom, revelation, and strength are crucial for today's believer, and how these prayers can illuminate the darkest corners of our faith, leading to a deeper, more personal connection with God. This episode promises not just to inform but to transform, inviting you to experience the profound shifts that come from truly knowing God.
All right, good morning guys. Good morning, my name's Houston. If you don't know me, I always feel like when someone says if you don't know me, it's like you should know me. But that's not what I mean. Hello, I'm Houston. You heard Kinsey read it.
Speaker 1:We're talking about Ephesians 1 today. We're continuing in this series in Ephesians and I'm sure you remember, but the start of the year, we started this series asking the question who was Jesus, who is Jesus and what is he about? And so we looked at the book of John, took this journey. We learned a lot of things about Jesus, saw a lot of things that he did, and once we had a picture of Jesus, we wanted to move on to this question who are Jesus' followers and what do they do? And so that's why we're in Ephesians. This book is written to answer that question who are Jesus' followers, what are they about, what do they do?
Speaker 1:If you remember, apostle Paul wrote this book. He wrote it late in his life and this is a unique book because, unlike most of Paul's letters, this was meant to circulate to everybody. This was written explicitly for circulation and so, consequently, it's a much more generic letter, but actually key. Generic does not mean insignificant. When we go through the book of Ephesians, we find one of the clearest summaries of the Christian life and what it means to be Christian. We said last week that there's one theme that ties this whole book together. If you remember it, it's that in Christ, god has made us new people, and last week we talked about one specific aspect of that that God has made us his family. And so today we're reading a prayer, paul's prayer for God's family, and we're going to see Paul pray for three things for us. He's going to pray for illumination, he's going to pray for knowledge and he's going to pray for power. And here's what I want you to do If you have your bulletins, if you have a pen or something, there's an interactive element.
Speaker 1:Right now, graham's got a spork and that's probably not going to work, but it's great that you have that. I gave it to him while we were singing and it was very confusing, I know. Here's what I want you to do. So, next to these three points, I want you to write something else in parentheses, if you can't. If you can't, then just remember it in your heads and I'll trust you. So, next to illumination, write C Illumination. Write C. Next to illumination, write C, s-e-e. Next to knowledge, write believe, and next to power, write experience. So it should say in parentheses, see believe, experience.
Speaker 1:Next to these three points and here's why we're doing that it's because Paul is praying for the three things I have listed here. He's praying for illumination, he's praying for knowledge, he's praying for power. But what we really see when we dig into it is that, ultimately, paul is praying that the Holy Spirit would illuminate our hearts, and what that means is that he wants the Holy Spirit to help us see what is true, and he wants us to see that so that we can have knowledge of him. But what he means is that he wants us to believe what is true, and he wants us to see and believe so that we can have power, and that means that he wants us to experience what is true. So we're gonna look at each part of this prayer and we're gonna figure out why does Paul pray this? Why does Paul open his letter, written to Christians everywhere, with a prayer for power sorry, excuse me for illumination, for knowledge and for power? So we're going to pull this apart, we're going to consider each one of these and we're going to consider why we ought to be praying for them too.
Speaker 1:So let's start in prayer. Would you pray with me? God, I just thank you for this beautiful day. I thank you that you're so good that the seasons remind us that every year that winter ends and that spring and summer begin, and that, in the same way that the seasons of darkness in our life will end and that the season of light will begin. And, god, I just pray that for all of us, wherever we're at this morning, I pray that you would help us to be present here and not outside in the nice weather, like some of us might be tempted to do. And, god, I just pray that you'd be glorified today as we open your word, as we consider what it means, as we pray to you and learn how to better pray to you. I pray that you would work these things into our hearts, and I pray that all of this would be for your glory and our good. I pray that the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts would be glorifying to you, lord, our God and Redeemer, in Jesus' name, amen, amen, all right, all right, all right.
Speaker 1:First thing, let's look at Paul's prayer for illumination. Okay, so we're going to look at the first few verses of our passage, verses 15 to the first part of 18. I'm going to reread it For this reason, because I've 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 my prayers 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 hearts enlightened. Now, in the heart of this prayer is verse 17. Okay, look at verse 17 again. He prays that the God of our Lord, jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom. And now this is a beautiful we call it a Trinitarian prayer.
Speaker 1:All three persons of the Trinity show up here and Paul prays that the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ would give us his spirit. And this is significant. It's neat, but it's also significant. It's significant because Paul appeals to all three members of the Trinity, because he's drawing out the ideas that he started to impact in the previous section. So, if you remember, in verses 3 through 14, we talked about last week we saw Paul thank God in this big, complicated, long winding, beautiful blessing. And one of the things we saw is that Paul thanked God for adopting us, for making us his family, and as he impacted this idea, he emphasized the Trinity to do it. And if you remember this, if you have your Bibles, look up to last week's passage just a few verses up. We'll see.
Speaker 1:In verse three. In verse 3, paul blesses the Father. He says I bless the Father of our Lord, jesus Christ, who has blessed us. He's saying the Father chose us to save us before the world was made. We talked about that last week. And then go down a little bit more to verse 5. One of the things the Father did was predestine us for adoption to Himself as sons through Jesus Christ. So here the Son is represented. Because of what Jesus did, we're adopted, we have forgiveness, we have redemption. And you look down a little more at verse 13. It says In Him also. When you heard the word of truth, the gospel of salvation, and believed in Him, you were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit. So the Holy Spirit is the guarantee of our inheritance to come, meaning one of the things the Holy Spirit does is like promise us that God is going to deliver on these things that he said. So why do I bring all this up, besides the fact that I'm a Bible nerd and this is fun to me, why do I bring this up? So he goes.
Speaker 1:Paul is drawing on these ideas from the previous passage when he prays for us. See, these are the foundational truths that set the foundation for what Paul is building on today, and it's important because it helps us to understand one of the trickier parts of this passage. See, when we look at our passage today, in verse 15, there's something sorry. In verse 17, there's something tricky to understand. He's asking the Father to give us the Spirit. And now sometimes we can read this and we can think that it means something different, like we want God to give us something he's not given us yet. But if we look at verse 15, paul says yeah, I've heard about your faith, I know that you love the Christians. So we know it's really clear Paul's talking to Christians. And then, verse 16, paul prays that God would give Christians a spirit. And then verse 18, paul prays the spirit would enlighten their hearts. So we've got these three pieces and we put them together. We get this idea that Paul's praying that Christians would be given the Holy Spirit so their hearts can be enlightened. And now here's why this is a big deal.
Speaker 1:This language makes it seem like Paul is hoping that God would give the Holy Spirit to the Christians in a new way, as a first time, or something like this. That's not the case, because last week we heard Paul said you have the Holy Spirit. This is one of those things that is tough. In different Christian traditions, depending on the tradition that you came from, they can emphasize receiving the Holy Spirit in a different way, and people will point to this passage as one of those examples of look, we can pray as Christians to receive the Holy Spirit, but that's not what Paul's talking about here. What Paul's talking about here, he's using this language of giving and receiving filling. This is the way that Paul talks about the Holy Spirit and what the Holy Spirit does for us, and the picture that we're supposed to see is not that God withholds his spirit from Christians and gives it at certain times or after certain things have been met, but that Christians need God to intervene so that we can take full advantage of the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 1:And so here Paul prays that God would give us his spirit of wisdom and revelation. He's not asking for something new. He's praying that God would, through his spirit, give us wisdom and revelation. Specifically, he's asking that the spirit would enlighten our hearts. And this word enlighten is very loaded in our culture, right? It's like we think about enlightenment like it means to learn special things or to become better in some way, or to know truths more deeply. In the Bible, this word is a literal word. This morning, when I got out of bed and I flipped on the light switch, I enlightened my room. That is literally what Paul is asking. Paul is asking that God would turn the light switch on in our house. And that's key, because Paul is not asking for God to give us something new. He's asking God to help us better understand what he's already given us. So it's like this.
Speaker 1:It's like imagine, you know you rent this house and it's a big house. It's been broken down into different apartments. Now imagine one of these apartments lives the landlord's handyman. Okay, when something goes wrong in your house when the faucet leaks, when the basement floods, for example, when the siding is damaged what are you going to do? You're going to call the landlord right, and the landlord is going to say okay, I will send my handyman to fix that. But look, he doesn't mean that he's going to send someone else from outside. He's going to call that guy that lives in your house with you and he's going to go and fix the thing. He is going to come up out of his deep, dark basement that he lives in I just assume handymans live in basements and he's going to go fix the problem. So you don't fix the problems in your house by sending someone outside. You appeal to the person inside. And so, christians, we take this idea. We don't fix the problem, our problems in our hearts, by bringing someone or something new into our lives. The solution is there. You don't need someone to come in and fix the faucet. You need to utilize the handyman that is there, and so this is key.
Speaker 1:Through prayer, paul is showing us that the thing that you and I need is not for God to move in our lives in a special way. We don't need new experiences, we don't need new truths. We need God to help us to see what he has already done for us. This is tough. This is hard Because, if you're like me, I often go looking out for new experiences when I'm in these hard places in my faith, when things are not going well.
Speaker 1:I want a new experience for God to tell me that I'm okay and that we're going to be okay, rather than a deeper appreciation of what I do currently have. And it's good. It's good to have experiences with God. It's good to set aside time. The Bible says that we're in a relationship with him. You don't get married and then just never talk to the other person because we've already had the pinnacle moment. But you don't need these new experiences in the same way that you need to remember what he's done.
Speaker 1:Man, how often in our faith journey do we define how we're doing by how many unique experiences we've had? Or how often do we define how things are going by the things that we know? Or do we define it by the depth of experience and knowledge of the things we already have? And it's like, if we think about faith like a house, it's like what we need is not a bigger, wider house. We don't need more things, because the idea is that we've already got this massive basement, bigger than we could possibly imagine and what we need is help to turn on the lights down there so that we can go down and experience it more deeply. We need to help to utilize the space better. So what we need is for god to turn the lights on in our hearts. We need to illuminate so that we can see what's true. And that brings us to the second point. We need this so that we can better know what is true.
Speaker 1:Paul prays that his readers would have knowledge and, specifically, Paul prays that his readers would know three things. Okay, if you look at your passage starting in verse 17, sorry, verse 18. He wants us to know three things that we would know what is the hope to which he's called us, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power towards us who believe. He wants us to know the hope of God's call, the riches of his inheritance and his great power towards us. So Paul prayed that God would illuminate our hearts so we could better see what's true. Now Paul is praying that we could know what is true. And, specifically, paul wants us to know God. What about God? Well, paul wants us to know the hope that we have because of God's call. Paul wants us to know the glorious inheritance that we have in Christ. He wants us to know the power, god's great power towards us. I think this is interesting because do you ever wonder this is a prayer right. God's praying, paul's praying to God. Why doesn't Paul just pray that we would have these things right, rather than praying that we would know hope? It's like Paul just cut up the middleman pray that we would have hope, or rather than praying that we would know the riches of our inheritance, paul prayed for them. I wouldn't mind a little more money right now, right. And why does Paul not pray for God's power for us and rather prays that we would know God's power? Here's the deal.
Speaker 1:One key thing about the Christian faith is that we believe that we have received much, if not all, that we need when we receive Christ, and so the challenge for you and me is not to learn new things, to experience new things. The power is not the. The challenge is not to acquire hope, to acquire inheritance, to acquire power. The challenge is to grab hold of the things that we already have. Paul's saying that we have these three things. He doesn't pray that you would have hope because you have hope. He doesn't pray that you will have an inheritance because you have an inheritance. Of course, paul doesn't ask God to move powerfully in the believer's lives because, friends he is, he is moving powerfully.
Speaker 1:Our problem is not that we don't have these things, it's that we don't know these things, we don't believe them deep in our hearts. Because if we did know them, man, it would change us, it would transform us, our lives would be radically different. And here's the problem If you're like me, man, you can feel this gap of knowledge. You can feel that there's a chasm between you and that experience of knowing these things. And if you're like me, if you're like me, you know that you don't really know deep down in your heart these things that Paul is talking about. And if you're like me, the way that you try to solve that problem is by going out and looking for more things, more information, more experience, more knowledge. It's like the solution to my problem might be in a new book, the solution to my problem might be in a new article, might be in a new YouTube video, might be in a new TikTok. Like the solution is out there somewhere. I have to get to it, but you know, I don't know about you.
Speaker 1:I have found in my life, especially my time here at Eastside, I mean, the thing that I need most is not new knowledge. I need a deeper knowledge, deeper knowledge of God. I mean, how do we navigate the difficult times in our lives? How do we make hard decisions? How do we deal with loss that hits so hard that it shakes us and we wonder if we'll ever recover? We don't need a book that says God loves us. We don't need a book or an article that says it's gonna be okay. We need to know it. That's why Paul prays that we would know God.
Speaker 1:Paul is not concerned about information, friends. He's not concerned about how many things you know, but how much we know God, because that'll change our lives. It's the kind of knowledge that burrows down deep in our hearts and attaches to our souls. It's the kind of knowledge that screws itself into the floorboards of our house and actually supports us and changes us. Because when something terrible happens, when you lose a loved one, lose someone really special to you, you face potentially losing a church that you love. What is going to get us through that? It's the knowledge that we have hope in God, that he is at work in our lives right now. It's not mentally assenting to the facts Because, friends, when you're suffering and we sing these wonderful songs today.
Speaker 1:I love things like Psalm 66, shout for joy to God, all the earth. Friends, when you're suffering, does a simple command shout for joy. Does that fix it? No, it doesn't. Does it Does just hearing the words. How awesome are your deeds, so great is your power that your enemies come cringing to you? Does that fix it? No, no, Does that fix it? No, because what we need is not head knowledge. What we need is heart knowledge. You and I need to know that we have hope in God. We need to know that there is a day coming when he's going to fix things, and we need to know that God is not sitting idly by while it feels like our lives are careening off the road. We need to know God. In other words, we need to believe deep in our hearts. And that is why Paul prayed that God would turn the lights on, help us see, and that's why Paul prayed that God would help us to know, to believe that these things are true. And that brings us to our final point.
Speaker 1:And Paul prays for power. But it's key to understand like we said, paul is not asking for a new power. Paul is praying that you and I would have the power that comes from knowing God and knowing what he has accomplished through Jesus. Because when we really understand Jesus and what he's done, like I said, it changes everything. In other words, when we don't just assent to the gospel but know the gospel, then we can experience the power of God in our lives. And so it's key to meditate on the gospel story, and that's what Paul's doing In the end of our chapter, our section. That's what Paul's doing.
Speaker 1:Look at verses 19. Through the end, paul prays that we can know God's power, the immeasurable greatness of his power towards us who believe. Verse 19,. According to the working of his great might, that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his 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 everything 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 in all Friends. You see what Paul is saying here, verse 19,. He wants us to know what is the immeasurable greatness of God's power towards us. In other words, paul wants us to experience how God is at work in our lives right now. And, friends, this is one of the biggest claims that the Bible makes is that God cares and that he is involved in your life right now.
Speaker 1:If we're Christians, we know that God is working. We know he's working in a lot of ways, but here are three, three examples. We know that he is preparing eternity for us, meaning that we know that one day this world is heading towards an ending where God remakes everything and everything is good. He's going to fix this broken world. And we know that God is working in us to help us grow, to help us become more like Jesus. And we know, in Romans, 8 says that God works everything together for those who love him and are called according to his purpose, and he works everything together for our good. We call this God's sovereignty. We know God is at work doing these things. We know God is at work doing these things.
Speaker 1:But, man, that's hard to believe, isn't it? That's hard to grab hold of sometimes. I mean, these are easy things to say, they're wonderful things to say. They are hard things to believe Because when I look out in the world. Man, I really want to believe that this thing has got a good ending right, like when I look out and I see this broken, messed up world. I want to believe that this has a good ending. That is hard.
Speaker 1:And, man, when I consider my own journey and how God's at work, I want to believe that he is making me more like Jesus. But, man, I was just telling my counselor on Wednesday that I am tired of being messed up and feeling like I'm not getting anywhere. And, man, when I think about the circumstances in my life, I want to believe that it is all for good, that my life is not actually just an unfortunate series of events. Living in a chaotic world. That is hard, but here's the good news, here's the good news, here's a. Here's the good news of the gospel number one it doesn't matter if you believe it or not. God is working. It's true.
Speaker 1:Believing god's power is not the key to receiving it, okay, it's the key to experiencing it, and I hope that's comforting, just at the base level. I hope that's a comforting statement today is that God is at work in your lives if you're a Christian, and whether you know it or not, whether you believe it or not, it is true that he's at work in your lives. There's not some barrier of some super spirituality or belief or faith that once you cross that God's at work, he's already at work. So let's just leave that as the baseline here today. What we are talking about is we're talking about the experience of God's power. What we're talking about is feeling God's power.
Speaker 1:Okay, because, friends, if you're like me, you need the Holy Spirit to shine a light on your heart. You need the Holy Spirit, the Lord, to show himself to you so that you can really understand those deep, dark corners of your heart, and you need to see what God has done. We need him to keep reminding us of the truth, to keep teaching us the truth. What we need is not just to assent to the gospel. We need the power that comes from knowing that 2,000 years ago, god became human, that he lived the perfect life, died a sinner's death, took our punishment, and we need to know that on the third day, the same power that is at work in our lives raised Jesus from the dead, and we need to know that the same power that is at work in our lives enthroned Jesus, at the right hand of the Father as the king of the universe.
Speaker 1:We need to know that our Lord Jesus, who loves us so much, is at the top of this cosmic food chain, that he has defeated sin, he's defeated death, that he has defeated the tyrants of evil. His name is the highest name. Nothing stops him, nothing gets in his way, nothing can thwart him or his plans. None of the things in this world, in us, none of the things we do, can thwart this good plan that he is working out for us. Friend, there's no power in the universe like the power of God and in Christ it's at work in us.
Speaker 1:And so I joined Paul today in praying that we could have the heart, the eyes of our hearts, enlightened, so that we could know God, we could experience his power. And I think the images is that it's not like someone trying to generate electricity for their home. It's like finding out that your house was connected to the grid the whole time. You just need help finding where the light switches are and how to utilize that power. And so I want to end with this what do we do with this? These are lovely things that I've said. What do we do with this? These are lovely things that I've said. What do we do with this? And I think two things. The first is this is a prayer. We have to pray this for ourselves too. We have to pray that God would illuminate our hearts, give us knowledge and the power that comes from that. There's a sense in which, like we're not going to be able to do this on our own, we need God to intervene so that we could grab hold of this power. And the same thing that I think we should think about.
Speaker 1:I was reading this article on desiring God and there's this idea that I believe the Puritans came up with. There was this Puritan doctor, like a medical doctor, and he was trying to treat melancholy, which is their name for feeling defeated all the way to like depression. He's trying to treat melancholy, which is their name for feeling defeated all the way to like depression. He's trying to treat depression and it was super interesting because, you know, in his treatment plan, you know he said this guy's a Christian and so he knows the good things, like he knows good truths, but there's a sense in which he doesn't experience these good truths and it's not some like hey, try harder, buck up, be more spiritual. I mean, the guy talks about diet, exercise, even the posture that you should sit in while you eat. I don't know about that, but the idea is that you know, this is a complicated thing, it's not one-dimensional. But he emphasized this idea of pressing ideas, pressing truth into our hearts, and I've heard many people say this.
Speaker 1:I love this expression of like screwing something into our hearts. It's like if I go downstairs into my basement or I'd say my first floor, if I go downstairs into my basement or I'd say my first floor, and I want something to be a part of the foundation of my house, I'm not going to just set it there and hope that it catches right. I'm going to take my drill and I'm going to screw that sucker in so that it stays there. I'm going to attach it myself to my heart, to my core, and I'm going to try to have it play out and bring out these truths in my life. And one way that we call this is we call this like preaching to yourself, preaching to your own heart.
Speaker 1:It's like we wake up in the morning and we think, we believe deep down that things are bad, that things are not going to be okay, that this darkness will never end and what we have to do is we have to take that piece of truth and go down and attach it to our hearts again. We have to tell ourselves no, this is not the truth. It feels like the truth right now. It feels like this will never change. But that is not the truth. And I'm going to tell myself the truth again and then, five minutes later, when we feel it again, we're going to do the same thing. And then, five minutes later if you're like me, maybe it's a one and a half minute interval it's going to keep coming back right and we're going to keep preaching the truth, we're going to keep reminding ourselves, we're going to keep screwing that thing down into our hearts and we're going to use all the screws we can find at the Home Depot to try to get it to stick until it does something, until it changes something.
Speaker 1:It's like the image in the Old Testament when Jacob wrestles with God. There's a point where Jacob really understands who he's wrestling with and he's got the greatest line in the world. He says I will not let you go until you bless me, friends. That's it. That's what we have to do. We have to keep grabbing these truths and holding them so tight to our chest and wrestling them, we say we will not let you go until you bless me. Let's pray.