Sunday Sermon: The Love of Christ that Surpasses Knowledge (Ephesians 3:14-21)

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You are listening to the teaching ministry of Gabriel Hughes, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas.

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Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday on this podcast, we feature 20 minutes of Bible study through a

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New Testament book. On Thursday is a study in the Old Testament, and then we answer questions from the listeners on Friday.

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Each Sunday we are pleased to share our sermon series, presently going through the book of Ephesians. Here's Pastor Gabe.

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We're in Ephesians 3 and closing out the chapter today, verses 14 through 21.

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Ephesians 3, verses 14 through 21. The apostle Paul writing to the church in Ephesus, for this reason,

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I bow my knees before the Father from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of His glory,

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He may grant you to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

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Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think according to the power at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever, amen.

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Let us pray. Heavenly Father, as we come to Your Word today, I pray that we are reminded of the goodness that You have shown through Your Son, Jesus Christ.

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What immense love is this. As Jesus said to His own disciples, no greater love is there than this, that a man should lay down his life for his friends.

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And as John would then go on to write in his epistle, we love because God first loved us.

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And so may we recognize the love that is demonstrated according to the word of the apostle to the church in Ephesus.

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May our hearts be renewed. May they be convicted in spirit and purify us as we prepare to come before Your table this morning as well.

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May the love of Christ be demonstrated among all of us. We pray this in Jesus' name and all

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God's people said, amen. Thank you. You may be seated. So last week

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I preached in Ephesians chapter 3, verses 1 through 13. And I did not plan this.

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This was never my intention. I didn't graph things out this way. It is simply by the providence of God. On September the 2nd of 2012,

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I began preaching in Ephesians chapter 3, verses 14 through 21 in my first sermon taking over after Nate Butler left and went and planted a church in Kentucky.

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So seven years almost to the day, I came right back around to finishing all the letters that the apostle

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Paul wrote in the New Testament. So now technically I've preached through all of Paul's epistles and in preparation for this sermon today,

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I did something that I have never done before. I went back and listened to myself in preparation for this sermon.

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I'm never doing that again. Guess how long that first sermon was that I preached here?

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22 minutes. Yeah, those of you laughing know

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I go way longer than that now. To make up for time though, the very next week it was about 47 minutes.

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So apparently that wasn't a pattern in the very beginning, but nevertheless. So this was the first sermon that I delivered.

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It was on Ephesians chapter 3, verses 14 through 21. As Dave has mentioned, my dad is in attendance today.

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My dad actually preached at this church before I did. So I remember when Nate had first come to me for the very first time and said,

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I'd like for you to preach your first sermon here. I'd already been associate pastor for about a year here. He said, I'd like for you to step into the pulpit and preach on this, such and such a

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Sunday. And I said, well, you know what, Nate? My dad's actually going to be in town. And so would you mind if my dad preached a sermon?

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He's been going around preaching at churches right now, and this is the sermon that he's doing. I think it would be great with the series that we're in right now.

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And Nate said to me, well, we approved you for the position of pastor. You've been tested in everything.

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And so we know you. So we know that you're qualified to step into the pulpit and preach a sermon, but we don't know your dad.

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We haven't tested your dad yet. And I said, well, Nate, you just said you know me, right? And he said, yeah.

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And I said, well, if you've seen me, you've seen the father. Thankfully he took that in good humor.

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And my dad actually did end up preaching a few Sundays later. So it would be a few months after that before I would do my first sermon, and I actually preached out of John.

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But then after Nate had stepped away, he had started in Ephesians.

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That was where he began. And when he made his announcement that he was resigning to go plant the church in Kentucky, I decided, you know what,

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I'm just going to pick up right where he left off. So he had finished at that middle portion of Ephesians 3, and I picked up in Ephesians 3, verses 14 through 21.

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And what a wonderful introduction for me to be able to step into the pulpit on this particular passage where we talk about the greatness of the love of Christ.

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There's probably not a section in Scripture, I would say, with the exception of maybe the tail end of Romans 8, that demonstrates in such lofty language the love of God.

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And more than just Paul teaching about the love of God that surpasses knowledge, this is not merely exposition that he's laying out here.

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It's not merely exhortation that he's giving to the church in Ephesus or any of the surrounding churches that would have been receiving this letter.

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Specifically, this is a prayer. He is praying that the church would know the love of God.

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Would know the love of God that surpasses knowledge. Would know a love that surpasses knowledge.

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That's an interesting statement. But we'll talk about that as we go through this passage together.

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So Ephesians 3, verse 14, For this reason I bow my knees before the

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Father. I was listening to a pastor talking to a group of pastors.

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And he was preaching this to a room full of ministers out of Ephesians 3, verse 14.

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And the emphasis that he had placed on his sermon before these ministers was this, Pastor, if you are not a minister willing to get on your knees for your people, then you have no business standing in your pulpit.

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But as this pastor had said this to a group of ministers, I say that this should be our posture before the

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Lord in any and all circumstances. That as we are praying for each other, are you one who is willing to get on your knees?

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When Becky and I were first married, and I was already thinking to myself about, now

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I'm a husband, now I've got a family I've got to take care of, I have to lead in devotions, I have to lead in learning

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God's word and lead in prayer. And I said to my wife one night, why don't we get on our knees and pray?

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And she said to me, no. I went, okay, well this isn't off to the start

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I was hoping it would be off to. And I said, well why not? And she said, because it seems strange. And I said, you're right, it does.

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Because it's not a common posture for us. This is especially, now get this, it's especially not a common posture for us in America.

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Because we don't know as a people what it's like to bow and submit to a ruler or an authority.

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There are other places in the world where that's the way you're expected to address somebody who is of great importance.

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You're expected to bow before them or take a knee. Like you might think of somebody being knighted by the queen, which is pretty much a formality these days anymore.

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It doesn't really give you a particular title. But somebody comes before the queen and they are knighted, they take a knee.

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And she knights them and they receive a knighthood. So that's not something that we're common to thinking about, even as Americans.

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But nevertheless, in humility before the Lord, and in humility on behalf of one another, that we would be on our knees before God.

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A posture of such that demonstrates the acknowledgement of His holiness and glory, which is way above and beyond who we are.

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And who we will ever be. Yes, it's true, we will enter into glory and be with God forever.

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And as it says in 1 John 3, 2, we will be transformed to be like Him because we will see Him as He is.

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But we won't be God. That is a title that He and He alone owns, and no one else will have.

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He is King of kings, He is Lord of lords, and we will never be that. And so on our knees before God acknowledging,

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You are God and I am not. You are everything. I can do nothing except what is in the will and gracious mercy and love of God.

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So even for each other, we would come before God and bow, be on our knees before the

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Father. I would say, I will say, admit to you, it's very rare that I lead my family to pray in this way.

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But there are certainly times, particularly on Saturday night, before I am then to come and preach the word to the congregation in the pulpit the next day, that I am somewhere in the basement in our home, on my knees in prayer.

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I might be praying for somebody in particular, or I might be praying for this whole church, but that we likewise would grow in a knowledge and an understanding of the love of God which surpasses knowledge, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named.

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For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named.

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Now, we must be careful with this particular passage, because this is one verse that has been used to say that God is

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Father of everyone. It is true that God is the God of everyone, but to know God as Father means to know

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Christ as Savior. And through Jesus Christ, we've been adopted into the family of God, and now as His sons and daughters, we can call upon God, as Paul instructs in Romans 8, as Jesus did before His Father in heaven, we might call upon Him as Abba, Father.

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Abba in the Aramaic, pater in the Greek, which is why it gets translated that way in the scriptures in Galatians and in Romans, it gets translated as Abba, Father.

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We call upon Him as Father because we've been adopted into His family. This does not mean that God is

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Father of all in the sense that all are His children. And that's a very common teaching.

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I've heard Oprah say it. Because we've been made in the image of God, and that's what the Bible says, then we all are therefore

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His children. Well then, how do you understand the word of Christ to the Jews in John 8 when

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He said to them, you are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires.

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We were in Ephesians chapter 2, we read, you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air.

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So there was a time before we came to understand the gospel and become worshippers of God, we were not worshipping the king of kings, we were not following him, but rather we were worshipping the prince of the power of the air, who is

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Satan. The spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.

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There was a time when we were children of wrath, rather than children of the promise.

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Remember what Paul said to the Galatians in Galatians 3, 7, it is those who are of faith who are children of Abraham, and then at the end of that chapter, if you are

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Abraham's children, then you are God's children. So it is by faith in Christ that we become children of God.

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Without faith in Christ, we are still children, the offspring of Satan.

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You are either children of Satan or you're children of God, whether or not you decide that that's going to be the case.

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I don't have to be a child of Satan, I'm going to be, you know, I don't follow Satan, that's the way the world will be.

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You go out into the world and you tell them you're a child of Satan, they're going to go, what are you talking about? So it's whether or not they are knowledgeable of that, everyone is either a child of Satan or a child of God.

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And it's only by faith in Christ that we become children of God. And so what do we mean here when we see in verse 15, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named?

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Well, that's the way it comes translated to us in the English, but it could be translated another way. In fact, in your

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Bible, you might even have this footnote. If you look down at the bottom of your Bible, you might have a little marker there right next to family, and in the footnote section it says, or from whom all fatherhood, or the

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Greek word patria in verse 15, closely related to the word for father in verse 14.

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So in other words, we might read it as from whom every fatherhood in heaven and on earth is named.

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Another way that could be understood is from whom every household in heaven and on earth is named.

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It's everyone who is in Christ. We have received His name.

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We wear His name. We are His children in His family by adoption through Christ.

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Don't forget that Paul had said that at the very beginning of this letter, and this still needs to be understood in that context.

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Ephesians 1 .3, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him.

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In love, verse 5, He predestined us for adoption to Himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will, to the praise of His glorious grace.

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Remember the audience that Paul is speaking to. He's not talking to every single person on earth.

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He's speaking to the church, those who have been brought out of the world into Christ, who have been forgiven their sins, and now glory in God and pursue righteousness and holiness.

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That's who Paul is speaking to. So it is these people who are receiving this letter, who hear the word of God through the

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Spirit of God, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named.

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Those angels who are in heaven, the people of God who are on earth, they wear the name of God.

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We bear His name because we are His children. There seems to be a movement in liberal academics right now of women in particular, feminists who want to eschew taking on the name of another man.

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And so you might see, although this would not be a judgment of any woman you see that has a hyphenated name, there might be a story behind that, but you might have a liberal feminist woman who will get married and instead of taking on her husband's name, she will either keep her last name or she'll hyphenate that name because she's not going to submit her name to somebody else.

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This is common in our modern feminist movement at the present. But the irony behind that is her last name came from somewhere.

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So though she may think that she's clinging to some sort of liberalism, some sort of liberty, some sort of self -ownership of this name, it's mine and no one else's, the reality is that name that she had came from her father.

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It came from another man. That last name came from somewhere.

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You didn't come up with it. You were not born and gave yourself your own name.

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And so, my friends, it is the same when we are born again, when we hear the gospel of Christ and we believe it.

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When you are born again, you are given a name. And the name that we are privileged to wear is the name that is above every name,

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Jesus Christ our Lord. Hey, this is Pastor Gabe. I hope you don't mind me breaking in here. We actually lost a segment of this sermon.

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The recorder had stopped and our tech guys had to get it started again, so we missed about 10 minutes in the middle.

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So I'm jumping in here to kind of bridge the gap between these two segments.

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So where I went next was Romans 8, where Paul talks about God's everlasting love.

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And in Romans 8, verse 31, it says, What then shall we say to these things?

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If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?

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Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? Those who wear the name of Christ, those who have been adopted into the family of God, through Jesus Christ our

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Lord. It is God who justifies. Romans 8, verse 34, Who is to condemn?

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Christ Jesus is the one who died. More than that, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.

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Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?

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As it is written, for your sake we are being killed all the day long. We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.

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We jump back into the sermon from there. In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

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For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our

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Lord. There is nothing, everybody say with me, nothing, nothing that can separate us from the love of Christ.

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This is the promise that he has given to us according to his word. And we have such security and favor in these promises of God.

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And so again, Paul prays for the Christians in Ephesus, the surrounding churches, anyone who would be reading this letter, that they would be strengthened, that God may grant you strength with power through his

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Spirit in your inner being. And what would this power enable us to do?

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To know the love of Christ that we cannot be snatched away from.

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That in each and every circumstance, God has not abandoned us. He is with us.

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He is working this out for our good and for his glory if we would trust him and seek his face.

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And again, though we may not understand the reason for it, now a day is coming.

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I promise you, friends, and I can promise you this not because of any knowledge that I've surmised in all my wanderings of this earth, but because it's what the word of God says.

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I promise you this. A day is coming where it will make sense. It may not now, but it will when you reach glory.

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And you will praise God for it. You will praise him for it.

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So is this the way that we pray for each other? Do we pray that one another would be strengthened to know the love of God with the power through his

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Spirit in your inner being so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith?

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Now, he certainly already did dwell in their hearts through faith at the time that Paul was writing this letter, but Paul is saying more so, that you're growing in faith and knowledge of him, that you being rooted and grounded in love, unmoving, steadfast, firm in your faith, without doubt that you may have strength to comprehend with the saints.

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And see, the beautiful grace in that phrase, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints, is that if you are in Christ Jesus, you do not go through your situations and your circumstances alone.

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Open up and welcome your brothers and sisters into your trial, and may the rest of us understand the instruction in Romans 12 to weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who are rejoicing.

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May we have the strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of God that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

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Now, there are several ways to understand this. Like I said in the very beginning, this is an interesting phrase, to know the love of God that surpasses knowledge.

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How do you know something that surpasses knowledge? Well, there's a couple of ways to understand this. First of all, God is infinite, and so whatever knowledge that we can have, we're never going to come to the end of that knowledge.

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We're always, even when we enter into glory, going to behold the wonderful riches of God forever, because he's that great, and he's that awesome.

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So there's a sense in which that is true. There's also a sense in which we know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, because, as I had mentioned earlier, we may not know or understand the situation clearly now, but God is working in the midst of this situation in such a way that is beyond our scope or our imagination now.

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So the love of God that exists even in these moments is beyond what we're able to perceive, so certainly the love that he is demonstrating for us now is beyond knowledge.

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Here's a third way that we can understand this passage. We will never know on this side of heaven just how far our sin had separated us from God, and how great his grace through his

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Son Christ had brought us near to him. Like the gap that separated us, and then the closeness that we have, we can't fully understand that in this finite existence in which we live.

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So there's also a sense in which that is true. The love that God has demonstrated for us. As you grow in maturity in your faith, you grow in an understanding of that love, and it looks greater and more awesome to you than it did yesterday, right?

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So in that sense, we also grow to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.

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But here is really what I believe that this is meant to mean. You could interpret it any of those three previous ways, and that would certainly be correct.

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Those things certainly apply. But here's what I think Paul truly means with this. When he says to the church, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.

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Now bear with me as I explain this. I don't want anybody to be embarrassed by this, okay?

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So in Genesis, when Adam knows his wife

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Eve, how does the Scripture explain that? Adam knew his wife, and she conceived and bore a son.

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You ever heard this euphemism that we might use sometimes, where we might say of somebody else, and he knew her biblically, wink wink.

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You ever said or done that before? We might come about that rather irreverently whenever we use that euphemism in that way.

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The Bible does not use that as a euphemism. It wasn't Moses writing down the book of Genesis and then going, you know what,

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I want to mention that Adam had sex with his wife and had a kid, but I don't want to say it like that, because it's kind of embarrassing.

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So maybe, let me come up with another way. He knew her, there we go. That's not the way that Moses was coming about that when he was writing in Genesis chapter 4.

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There is an intimacy by which a husband knows his wife, and the fruit of that intimacy bears children.

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And that intimacy is only meant to be known between a husband and a wife as God had intended it to be.

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And it's such a knowledge of one another that what it produces is fruit, it's fruit bearing.

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When God said to Adam and Eve, be fruitful and multiply, we know what that means. We know that means to have children and multiply on the earth.

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So the intimacy by which Adam knew his wife became fruitful to the point of bearing children.

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And my friends, there is a spiritual intimacy that we are to have with God, and it likewise bears fruit.

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And it bears fruit in this way, that we would grow in the knowledge of Him, that we would grow in holiness when we obey

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His word and walk in His statutes, and that we would also grow in our love that we have for each other, because we've received the love of God, so we must also demonstrate it to each other.

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Let me repeat those three again. This is the fruit that we should be bearing in our Christian walk. And we'll talk about this more next week when we get to chapter four.

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Number one, we must grow in our knowledge of God through His word, through study, through prayer.

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Number two, we grow in holiness and righteousness. And these two things have to do with our relationship with God.

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So it's an intimacy that is growing with God, not just head knowledge, okay, but a love and an affection that we have for God, so much so that it produces in us holiness and righteousness.

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And number three, we grow in the love that we have for each other, because the love of God has been demonstrated to all

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His children, so we should show that love to each other and even likewise grow in that love with one another.

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That's the fruit that is born from an intimate love of God that we are to have.

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That's what Paul means when he says, I pray that you would know, intimately know, the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge.

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This isn't like a head thing, okay? We can go through the scriptures, I can parse verbs for you, I can give you the

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Greek, I can give you the Hebrew and Aramaic, we can talk about background, we can talk about culture, all this kind of stuff.

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You might have a historical knowledge of what the Bible says, but would you grow in any closeness to God?

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Those things are certainly important. We're not talking about textbook knowledge here. When it comes to knowing the love of God that surpasses knowledge, we're talking about an intimacy with God that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

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The way that we pray for one another, we often pray that, I pray that Matilda's liver would feel better, something like that.

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I pray that John wouldn't be sad anymore. That's usually the way that we pray for one another.

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And like I said earlier, according to James 5, it's fine to pray for healing for one another. But are we praying for each other,

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I pray that my brother would grow in the knowledge of God. I pray that my sister would grow in their affection for him.

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Because my friends, we might pray for somebody's sins, like I pray that my friend wouldn't smoke pot anymore.

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I pray that so -and -so would be more grateful for the things they have, that she wouldn't be complaining all the time.

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We might pray for a person's attitudes and behaviors, but what's really going to get them closer to God is not if they stop doing that attitude or behavior, because then we're just praying for behavior modification.

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What's really going to change their outlook on life is to know God. And that changes everything.

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Ezekiel 36, I will put my spirit within you. I will give you a new heart.

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And I will cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. These things happen when we know and we love

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God. That's when the change happens. Years ago,

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I was praying for a certain temptation to leave me. You could take this, if you like, to be like Paul's 2

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Corinthians chapter 12 situation. Him asking God to take away this thorn that's in my flesh.

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A messenger of Satan to torment me, is what he says. Take it as this. I won't say exactly what the sin was, but this was my trial.

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It was in my 20s, and I'm praying and asking God to take this away from me. Paul says,

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I prayed three times for it to be taken away. I prayed way more than that. I mean, it was when I was going to bed at night.

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It was when I woke up in the morning. I continued to pray, God, take this situation, this thing from me.

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I don't want it anymore. And yet, my temptations didn't change.

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I was still being tempted by the same things in my flesh. And when that temptation would come, I gave into it every time.

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And I felt rotten about it every time. I'd get to the other end of it and go, why did

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I do that again? And here I am again asking God, God, take this from me. I don't want it anymore.

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I don't know how many years this went on, but something in my prayer changed.

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And I'm sharing my own testimony at this point, but it is totally in line with what

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Scripture tells us when it comes to how we approach the throne of God. Something in my prayer changed, in which

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I was no longer praying, God, take this from me, but instead,

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I was praying like this, God, show yourself to me.

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Let me know you. Let it be you that I see.

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And I want nothing else but Christ, my Savior. Let it be that.

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I want that. And as I would pray those things, and I pursued God with all my heart, my prayers would turn into songs, and I would begin singing in prayer, holy, holy, holy,

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Lord God almighty, early in the morning, my song shall rise to thee.

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Holy, holy, holy, merciful and mighty, God in three persons, blessed

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Trinity. When peace like a river attendeth my way, and sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul.

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And the more I prayed and asked for God, the less and less

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I ever thought about those sins that were tempting me in my flesh.

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My friends, behavior modification gets us no closer to God. James says in James 4, draw near to him, and the devil will flee from you.

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James 4, verse 5, do you suppose it is to no purpose that the scripture says he yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us?

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But he gives more grace. Therefore it says God opposes the proud, but he gives grace to the humble.

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Submit yourselves, therefore, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

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Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Oftentimes, my friends, in praying for the sins or the griefs that plague us to leave us, what that causes us to do is concentrate on the sin or the grief.

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And is our focus really on Christ? Do we really know his love for us if we're repeating over and over again to ourselves the griefs and the temptations that we continue to go through that we cannot escape?

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As Paul prayed for God to remove this tormentor of Satan from him,

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Christ spoke to him and said, My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is perfected in weakness.

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And so in this we come to know intimately the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God, that what we see in our vision, my friends, is

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Christ. We see Christ and him crucified for our sins.

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And then we have this wonderful doxology that closes out our orthodox section of our study of Ephesians, verses 20 and 21.

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Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever.

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Amen. To him be the glory forever and ever.

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Amen. Is our focus Christ? Do you know his love?

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Romans 5, 8 says God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners,

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Christ died for us. Sin hath left a crimson stain.

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He washed my garments white.

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Jesus made it all. Sin hath left a crimson stain.

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He washed my garments white.

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Jesus died my soul to save. My lips shall still repeat.

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Jesus made it all. All to him

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I owe. Sin hath left a crimson stain.

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He washed him white as snow. Jesus made it all.

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All to him I owe. Sin hath left a crimson stain.

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He washed him white as snow. My song shall rise to thee.

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Around the glassy sea.

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Share of him and set of him.

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Holy, oh sinful man, mighty.

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All thy works shall praise thy name.

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In earth and sky and sea. Holy, holy, holy.

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Merciful and mighty. God in three persons.

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Blessed Trinity. Thank you for listening to our weekly sermon presented by First Southern Baptist Church of Junction City, Kansas.

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For more information about our church, visit fsbcjc .org.

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On behalf of our church family, my name is Becky, inviting you to join us again this week, Growing Together in Christ, when we understand the text.