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Oct 17, 2010

The PrAir War

Passage: Ephesians 1:15-23

Preacher: John Repsold

Series: Postcards from the Front: A Wartime Romance

Category: Ephesians

Keywords: hope, inheritance, power, prayer, church

Summary:

This is the second sermon on prayer from the end of Ephesians 1, looking at what Paul prayed for when it came to the church.

Detail:

 

The [Pr]Air War

#5 in the series “Postcards from the Front:  A Wartime Romance”

October 17, 2010

Ephesians 1:15-23

 

INTRO:  My dear wife Sandy had cataract surgery on both eyes this summer.  One of the things she repeatedly commented on after the surgery was how much sharper colors were everywhere she looked.  Little-by-little, she had grown accustomed to a dulling of the color spectrum. In actuality, she was beginning to see like our Golden Retriever. (That’s as close as the analogy comes, so don’t go out of here telling people I compared my wife to a dog. J)

      Do dogs see in color or black and white?  Answer:  color… but not the range of color humans have…which would explain why you may stop and stare at a beautiful sunset while your dog all the while keeps his nose to the ground sniffing and peeing. J

[See color spectrum slide.  Dogs have fewer cones than humans which suggests that their color vision won't be as rich or intense as ours. However, the trick to seeing color is not just having cones, but having several different types of cones, each tuned to different wavelengths of light. Human beings have three different kinds of cones.]

 

Recently David and I were over at Manito Park taking his senior pictures.  As we strolled through the Rose Gardens and Duncan Gardens, we got to talking about how difficult it would be to explain color to someone who had been blind from birth…or simply whose vision was limited to black and white.

 

MIXING IT UP question:  Try and figure out how you would explain to someone who had either been blind from birth or had only seen in black-and-white what seeing different colors is like. (See colorful nature shots.)

[Share results.]

 

The reason I had you do that is because I want us to experience just a little how difficult it is to really grasp something when you lack sight or your vision is limited. 

 

Well, we’re continuing our look at the book of Ephesians today.  It’s a sort of “wartime romance.”  And Paul’s words are like postcards from the war front. 

      Today we’re looking deeper into the prayer he says he prays for the Ephesian believers.  In vs. 18 he says,

      “I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he [God] has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe.”

 

Paul longs for his spiritual children to have the full range of spiritual vision.  The Bible is pretty clear that much of the world is not just spiritually color blind; they are spiritually blind. 

  • 2 Cor. 4:4-- The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

It can even be a problem for believers.

  • I Jn. 2:11-- But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness; he does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded him.

 

PRAYER #1—Stop and pray for spiritual sight, for the light of God and his word to shine brightly in our hearts, for God to remove any blindness from our hearts, for the spiritual vision of the people seated around you.

 

Well, just like there are 3 different kinds of cones that humans have in their eyes, so Paul points to 3 different parts of the spiritual light spectrum that he is praying God’s people will be able to see and enjoy.  Here they are.

1.)    The hope to which God has called us.

2.)    The riches of God’s glorious inheritance in the saints.

3.)    God’s incomparably great power for us who believe.

 

Let’s look at these 3 spiritual vision components.

The HOPE to which God has called us…

EXERCISE:  Write down 2 things you are hoping for still today.

  • What is characteristic about the things you wrote?  (Future, not yet realized, something we see as good, etc.)

 

Just how important is hope to the human experience? 

Viktor Frankl, a well-respected and leading Austrian-born Jewish doctor, was sent to the Nazi concentration camps in September of 1942 along with his brother, parents and wife.  He alone survived the experience. 

      In his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl tells of his years trapped in the indescribable horrors of Auschwitz and Dachau.  He was transported there like a despised animal, given 2 minutes to strip naked or be whipped.  Every hair was shaved from his body, and he was condemned to a living death.  His life was full of cold, fear, starvation, pain, lice, sickness, vermin, dehumanization, exhaustion and terror. 

      Frankl wrote that he was able to survive because he never lost the quality of hope. Those prisoners who lost faith in a better future were doomed.  When a prison lost hope, Frankle said he would let himself decline, becoming subject to mental and physical decay.  He would die from the inside out.

      Frankle said that this usually happened quite suddenly.  One morning a prisoner would just refuse to get up.  He wouldn’t get dressed or wash or go outside to the parade grounds.  No amount of pleading by his fellow prisoners would help.  No threatening by the captors would have any effect.  Losing all hope, he had simply given up.  He would lay there in his own excrement till he died. 

 

American soldiers held as POWs in WWII said this same behavior pattern existed among them.  They named it “give-up-it is.”  In his book Winning Life’s Toughest Battles, psychologist Julius Segal wrote about the 25,000 American soldiers who were held by the Japanese in POW camps during WWII. 

      “Forced to exist under inhumane conditions, many of them died.  Others, however, survived and eventually returned home. There was no reason to believe there was a difference in the stamina of these two groups of soldiers.  The survivors, however, were different in one major respect:  They confidently expected to be released someday.”

      As described by Robins Readers in Holding On to Hope, “They talked about the kinds of homes they would have, the jobs they would choose, and they even described the kind of person they would marry.  They drew pictures on the walls to illustrate their dreams.  Some even found ways to study subjects related to the kind of career they wanted to pursue.” 

      Since then, researchers have found that a hopeful outlook and attitude can lead to physiological changes that improve the immune system, thus greatly improving one’s ability to fight against toxins and disease. 

 

Maybe that is why the verbal and noun forms of the word “hope” are found nearly 100 times in the New Testament.  In the N.T., it usually carries the idea of “confident expectation” or “solid assurance.” 

      The reason it can be that (rather than just wishful thinking) is that biblical hope is rooted in God himself.  The O.T. psalmists talk some 30 times about putting our hope “in the Lord.”  Job, one of the most gut-wrenching writings of all times about horrible suffering, refers to hope more than any other O.T. book besides Psalms (some 17 times). 

      Listen to what God says biblical hope will do to you:

  • Real biblical hope, according to Paul in Rom. 5:5, will “not disappoint us” because of the love God has poured out into the heart of a believer.
  • Col. 1:5 tells us faith and love “spring from the hope that is stored up for us in heaven….”
  • 2 Cor. 3:12 says that biblical hope leads to boldness in relationship to coming before God.
  • Romans 12:12 & 15:13 teach that Christian hope actually brings joy.  And it is the Holy Spirit, the very “God of hope,”  that enables us to “overflow with hope” as we trust in Him.
  • The hope that comes from knowing Christ is an anchor for our souls, according to Heb. 6:19.
  • Peter says that it is a “living hope” (I Pt. 1:3)
  • The Apostle John in I John 3:3 tells us that biblical hope of becoming like Christ when we see him at his return moves the child of God to “purify” himself/herself…to change our lifestyle, our thought life, our every move. 

 

So just what IS our “hope”???

Most simply, it is God himself-- “Christ in us, the hope of glory” (Col. 1:27).  Paul just keeps leading us back to Jesus, doesn’t he?  He knows that the more we know Jesus as he really is, the more hope-filled we will be in this life.  And since hope is the soil of wonderful things like faith, love and joy, Paul prays that the whole church will “know the hope to which He has called” us.  That “hope” looks forward to…

  • The return of Jesus Christ (Titus 2:13)
  • Our own resurrection from the dead (Acts 23:6)
  • God’s ultimate and complete salvation of his people (Titus 3:7)
  • Eternal life with God in a restored creation (Rm. 8:20, 21, 24; Titus 1:2)

 

Paul’s prayer was that they would “be enlightened (given spiritual sight and understanding) in order that you may know the hope to which [God] has called you….” 

 

There used to be this old saying about Christians who spent too much time thinking and talking about the “by-and-by in the sky”.  It was said of such people that “they were so heavenly-minded that they were no earthly good.” 

      I think we are in danger more today of the reverse.  We’ve become so “earthly minded that we’re no heavenly good.”  Few of us spend so little time contemplating the superiority of the life God has promised to us in the future that we have very little real hope in the present. 

      HOPE CHANGES PEOPLE!  And the people who should have THE most compelling and powerful “hope” in all the world are God’s children.  It is to be as “sure” and certain as the very Word and person of Jesus Christ himself. 

 

APP:  When we are disappointed and joyless, that is a sure sign that we have not been experiencing the vision God wants us to have about our own future.  So I want you to do 2 things right now:

1.)    Identify what has disappointed you most or stolen your joy in life most in the last few months?  Maybe it’s your own past.  Maybe it’s your present: you aren’t all that you wish you were.  Name those things to God.  They are probably the things that you have pinned your “hopes” on and may be in danger of being false gods. 

2.)    Ask God to replace those disappointments with His hope, a hope that is fixed on Jesus and what he has promised to you in your future.    Let go of the wrong hopes, our self-focused and human-bound hopes…and embrace the real and living hope God has for us in Christ.  God wants our focus to be on the future—where we are headed and what we will become in Christ yet in the future. 

ILL:  Philip Henry was the father of the great Bible commentator Matthew Henry.  Philip and a young lady had fallen in love with each other.  She belonged to a “higher” level of society than he did, and although she had become a Christian and therefore regarded such things differently, her parents saw the disparity in social status as an obstacle to the marriage.  “This man Philip Henry,” they said, “where has he come from?” 

      To this question the future Mrs. Henry gave the apt reply, “I do not know where he has come from, but I know where he is going.” 

      We must be far more than people who simply know “where we have come from.”  We must be people who know even more deeply in our hearts where we are going…what we are headed TO…who we are destined to be with for all eternity. 

 

[Pray silently?]

 

It is not surprising that the next thing Paul mentions in his prayer to God for the Ephesians is that they may “know…the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints…” (vs. 18).  The structure of this phrase could mean one of two things:

1.)    Paul is praying that we might know how richly God values us as his inheritance as saints.  OR…

2.)    Paul is praying that they might know better the riches they have in the inheritance of salvation in Christ. 

While it is true, almost unbelievably so, that we are, for some inexplicable reason, God’s treasure, the second interpretation actually fits the context better.  Paul is narrowing his focus from the broad and grand “hope” that we assuredly have in our future with Jesus to a specific component of that hope—“the riches of his inheritance in the saints.”  Paul wants us to probe the scope of this inheritance. 

Inheritance: How many of you have ever received an inheritance?  Was it something you were glad to get…or just a bore and a burden? 

      For most of us, if we are of the age where are parents might pass away, we undoubtedly take a sort of mental inventory of what we think they may some day pass along to us.  Maybe it is a partial interest in their house…or something special in the family heirlooms.  Maybe it will be some retirement assets they still have…or maybe it will be a complete surprise that leaves us thinking, “WOW, I never imagined they had this in store for me!”

I Cor. 2:9 says (quoting Is. 64:4),

“No eye has seen,
      no ear has heard,
      no mind has conceived
   what God has prepared for those who love him"

 

But notice where that unbelievable inheritance is going to be found:  “…the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints….”

ILL:  A couple of weeks ago, I was at a luncheon that had about 15-20 pastors and church planters in Spokane seated around a large table.  We were throwing out subjects about which we would like to discuss in months to come. 

      One of the pastors proposed that we spend a session addressing an issue that got a hearty “amen” from just about every pastor around the table.  It had to do with why are so many people completely abandoning the church today in favor of a privatized faith that has little or no room for shared life with God’s people?  It’s happening today, not just among denominational or mainline churches, but also among evangelical, Bible-based and Christ-centered churches.  We’re all seeing it and no matter what theological persuasion, no matter what size, no matter what age or demographic or worship experience the church has, people are checking out in droves from a shared faith experience right here in Spokane.  

 

ACTION PT:  I’d like you to take the red/yellow participation sheet in your bulletin and write me a response to this question:  “Why do you think so many people today are moving away from the church?” 

 

Paul is telling us here that this amazing inheritance God has for us is “in the saints”.  It’s in the church.  It’s in God’s family, NOT “in privatized faith”…NOT “in my own experience with God.”  It’s NOT in running away from the challenging work of learning to love imperfect people like us.  It’s in the church…precisely the place where so many people are running away from today.   

 

Remember Viktor Frankl from German concentration camp experience?  Let me read to you a short excerpt from his book in which he shares a transformative moment in that experience that has a lot to say to people like us today.  He is tell us how he came to his hallmark conclusion that even in the most absurd, painful and dehumanized situation, life has potential meaning and that therefore even suffering is meaningful.  Here’s what he writes about what he experienced while working in the harsh conditions of the Auschwitz concentration camp:

“... We stumbled on in the darkness, over big stones and through large puddles, along the one road leading from the camp. The accompanying guards kept shouting at us and driving us with the butts of their rifles. Anyone with very sore feet supported himself on his neighbor's arm. Hardly a word was spoken; the icy wind did not encourage talk.

Hiding his mouth behind his upturned collar, the man marching next to me whispered suddenly: "If our wives could see us now! I do hope they are better off in their camps and don't know what is happening to us."

That brought thoughts of my own wife to mind. And as we stumbled on for miles, slipping on icy spots, supporting each other time and again, dragging one another up and onward, nothing was said, but we both knew: each of us was thinking of his wife.

Occasionally I looked at the sky, where the stars were fading and the pink light of the morning was beginning to spread behind a dark bank of clouds. But my mind clung to my wife's image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look was then more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise.

A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth -- that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way—an honorable way—in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, "The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory...."

 

He goes on to say, “The more one forgets himself - by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love - the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself. What is called self-actualization is not an attainable aim at all, for the simple reason that the more one would strive for it, the more he would miss it. In other words, self-actualization is possible only as a side-effect of self-transcendence.”

 

I think Christians today are looking to the church to DO something for or to them that God never designed it to—to be some perfect environment that gives us all our hopes and dreams—heaven right here on earth…NOW.  What if it is to be that imperfect environment where we learn the riches of the love of Christ through suffering…suffering which sometimes comes by means of the church and because of God’s people? 

 

ILL:  In some ways it is like marriage today.  People want the joy, the security, the stability and the unconditional love that marriage was designed to bring.  But they don’t want the commitment and responsibility, yes, even the hardship and suffering that comes with vowing your life to someone.  God knows, we can’t get the one without the other.  You can’t have the blessings God designed into marriage without being deeply committed to the kind of marriage God calls us to—one of unconditional, unending love, respect and submission.   

 

So…be very careful about turning away from “the church” or viewing it as something optional or incidental to God’s plan for your blessing.  Blessings don’t usually grow out of the soil of ease and comfort.  Toil and trials are usually better compost for spiritual growth. 

 

The remainder of this passage really focuses on one thing—the power of Christ.  Now, remember that Paul is praying for people when he launches into this wonderful explanation of the power of Christ.  Ephesians 1:18ff--

18I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know… 19 his [Christ’s] incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, 20which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, 21far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. 22And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, 23which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.

 

Look carefully at the kind of POWER Paul is wanting us to both know is ours in Christ as well as have the “spirit of wisdom” to apply to life.  What kind of power is this?

  • Vs. 19—It’s “incomparably great.”
  • Vs. 19-20—It’s the “mighty strength” of God’s resurrection power that brought Jesus out of the grave after 3 days.
  • Vs. 20—It’s the same power that gave Jesus the most exalted position in the universe for all eternity—“seated…at his right hand in the heavenly realms….”
  • Vss. 20-21—It’s the power that puts Christ, not just a little bit above all the spiritual forces in the universe, but put Him “far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.” This power transcends time and eternity, this universe and any other universe God has or will create. 
  • Vvs. 22-23—It’s the power of God that “placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church…”

 

WHY is God’s power being exercised and manifested in so many different ways and arenas?  It is all“…for the church, which is His body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.”   As strange and sick and dysfunctional and downright dopy as “the church” may be, God wants to demonstrate the power of his resurrection body through the church today.  Jesus isn’t satisfied to have a “resurrection body” that just resides in heaven in the presence of the glory of God.  God wants his “resurrection Body” to be visibly powerful and present in this world today…through our lives, the church.   

 

That requires, as Paul is well aware, a prayer life among the people of God that affirms and releases the power and authority of God over human experience.  Prayer, Paul knows, must remind us of God’s unrestricted power and authority as well as actually apply that power to human experience. 

 

ILL:  If you’ve watched many war movies or read many historical accounts of war in the 20th century, you know that most wars were won or lost on the backs of troops on the ground, most often the infantry.  Every battle that seeks to take recapture occupied territory demands that the “boots on the ground” take the battle to the enemy one step at a time. 

      But the infantry also know that their job often succeeds or fails based upon the kind of air, naval or artillery support they receive from other branches of the military. 

      In visiting Normandy this past summer, I read Stephen Ambrose’s history of the Normandy invasion entitled simply “D-Day.”  One of the reasons the invasion at Omaha Beach was so costly to the first infantrymen ashore was that both the preliminary air bombing and naval bombardment was not as effective as planned.  The soldiers were told during their briefings that there would not be a living thing left onshore when they landed after the Air Force and Navy finished their bombing and shelling. 

      The reality was, however, that, due to a dense cloud cover, the American and British bombers were afraid to drop their bombs too early and possibly hit their own men.  So most of the massive tonnage of bombs was dropped 10-12 miles inland from the strong costal fortifications they were meant to destroy.  Much of the Naval bombardment suffered from the same problem. 

      As a result, instead of finding the coastal area full of bomb craters and destroyed enemy fortifications, the Americans found themselves completely exposed without any protection on the beaches and embankments leading up to the bluffs above the shore.  Very few of the pill boxes and gun emplacements had been destroyed and the Allies found 80% of their first wave of troops falling as casualties under the withering fire of the Germans. 

      The good news is that, as the morning wore on, the Navy showed great skill and bravery in supporting the troops on land at sometimes dangerously close range but also deadly accuracy. 

      As we walked around, in and through the moonscape-like craters at Point DeHauc last summer, it was evident that the air and naval bombardment that day had still played a significant role in the success of D-Day and the Normandy Invasion. 

APP:  Every one of us here today is in a war.  It is a war against the principalities, the powers and the spiritual forces arrayed against the authority and supremacy of Jesus Christ.  The battlefield is often our minds.  At other times it is our emotions.  Sometimes it is our relationships with family members…or fellow saints.  Sometimes it is our habits or addictions or fleshly patterns. 

      Whatever it is and whenever it happens, the reality is that we are “at war.”  We are the infantry on the ground.  We are the ones in, through and around whom this cosmic war is raging.

      That is why it is SO critical that we pray.  Prayer is our “air cover.”  Prayer is our “naval bombardment.”  Prayer is what opens the way for us to invite and invoke the power of God in laser-like accuracy against the flesh, the world and the devil. 

     

Ours is not an unproven Commander-in-Chief.  Jesus has been through deeper battles than we shall every face.

      Ours is not a leader without authority. Jesus name, authority and power outranks all by multiples we will never comprehend.

      Ours is not a supporting army that lacks either soldiers or strength.  Jesus is the Lord of Heaven’s Hosts, the Commander of all the heavenly forces. 

 

That is why we must learn to communicate with God through prayer. 

That is why we must learn to rely upon and exercise the authority Christ has given us through prayer. 

That is why we must spend time in the presence of God, sharing our struggles and battles with him but more importantly hearing his commands and guiding voice for our battles. 

 

So let’s wrap this study up today with some action. 

  • Since we have access to both the resurrected Lord and the power that brought him back from the dead, what has fallen in the spiritual battle or seemingly “died” in your life that needs God’s resurrection power?  How about taking a moment to let God speak to you and then asking him to use his power to revive what He wants to revive?
  • Is there some part of your life over which you would like the supreme power of Christ to operate?  Take a moment to invite God to exercise his power and authority over that. Thank him for his supremacy in this universe and in your life.