Sermon Transcript
Ephesians chapter 3. For this reason, I, Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles, assuming that you have heard of the stewardship of God’s grace grace that was given to me for you, how the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I have written briefly. When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations, as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. Of this gospel I was made a minister according to the gift of God’s grace, which was given me by the working of his power.
To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things, so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, Lord, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him. So I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory. For this reason 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 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. Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever.
Amen.
Thanks, Dean.
We have probably all seen someone close to us endure a difficult season, a painful season, and yet they remain steadfast, confident. Not that they didn’t have any amount of sadness or any amount of disappointment, of course they did, but they handled their circumstances with great poise. We’ve been next to people like that. And then on the other side, we have also been next to people who just completely fell to pieces when they faced similar circumstances. There is a spectrum of reactions to challenging seasons, and we’ve— and we have witnessed the whole spectrum, and we ourselves have been all over the spectrum ourselves, right?
From one extreme to the other. So what makes the difference? What makes the difference between great confidence, peace, poise, or being totally shattered? And are there any tools or steps that would help us move toward confidence and poise? We’ve been working our way through Ephesians, like Nate mentioned, and it is this ancient letter written to a church in the first century.
It was written by Paul, who helped a number of churches get started or organized, and then after he left them, he would correspond with all of those churches, which works out really well for us 2,000 years later because it means we have a record of what the earliest Christians were telling each other, what they were working through, what they believed, how they encouraged one another through difficulties. And it gives us a roadmap for how to work through many of the same issues that we face today, even though we are 2 millennia removed from them. The human experience, the challenges of life, where we can find hope, all of that remains remarkably similar. And in this section of the letter, Paul tells the Ephesians about remaining poised in hardship and disappointment. Paul is the one who is actually enduring the hardship, the one— he’s the one actually going through the struggle, but he anticipates that the Ephesians might be losing heart because of what is happening to him.
They might be anxious or worried about Paul. So Paul tries to comfort them. We see his pastoral heart. He wants them to feel encouraged. He cares about them.
He tries to help, which means if you are currently discouraged or losing heart or anxious or stressed about something, off balance, balance in life. Paul’s guidance to the Ephesians church may help. It is just as relevant today as it was all those years ago. As we study this passage today, we will see the cause of their distress, why the Ephesians would lose heart, why Paul has peace, and then how the Ephesians can find peace as well. So the cause of their distress, why Paul has peace and how the Ephesians can grow toward peace themselves.
So first, the cause of their distress. Paul is in prison even though he obeyed God. We could probably even say he is in prison because he obeyed God. Paul confirms, verse 1 and verse 13, that he is in prison as he writes the letter, and from the book of Acts we know Paul wrote to the Ephesians while he was under house arrest in Rome, which lasted at least 2 years. And the thing about the Roman penal system was that the costs associated with inmates being incarcerated were not paid by the— were not paid by Rome.
The costs were paid by the prisoner. And if the prisoner couldn’t pay for food or other provisions to be delivered, then, well, the prisoner die, which didn’t bother Rome one bit because, hey, that improves efficiency, right? One less case clogging up the system. Great. So Paul, as he writes, is not only bound to one location and he’s not only assigned a guard who watches him day and night, but on top of that, he must rely on others to provide life’s necessities.
He doesn’t know what or when his next meal will be, right? And then on top of that, there’s the looming trial date sometime in the future and that has an uncertain outcome. And Paul being in such a circumstance would have been quite upsetting for the Ephesian church because we also know from the book of Acts how close Paul was with the leaders in Ephesus. If you go back and read Acts chapter 20, you learn Paul spent 3 years with the Ephesians and during that time Paul and the Ephesians developed such a love for each each other that when he left, everyone burst into tears. They said, please don’t go.
And even Paul is described as needing to tear himself away from them. The moment, uh, probably looked like dropping your kids off at college, right? Everyone’s crying. Maybe one parent needs to tear the other parent away, like, no, we really gotta go now. Just leave the kid here.
You’re wrenched apart. That’s Paul and the Ephesian church. They had grown close to one another. Conversations were probably effortless and uplifting. They felt relationally filled by being together.
They’re, they’re working on the same mission during the day and then probably talking, laughing, eating into the night. And then the next day they do it all over again. Sometimes the work is hard, but the relationships are That’s how Paul and the Ephesian church felt about one another. And now he’s in prison far away from them. It’s difficult for them to help, and they were sad.
They were worried. Of course they were. So, of course, they could be discouraged. Someone they care about deeply is suffering. That’s one thing that they could be upset about, but in Paul’s case, there’s actually another level to their distress because not only is Paul in prison, he is in prison even though he obeyed and followed God.
Again, back in Acts 20 when Paul pulls himself away from the Ephesian leaders, he says he is compelled by God’s Spirit to go to Jerusalem, proclaim the message of Jesus there, which he does. He goes to Jerusalem, preaches Jesus, gets arrested. There’s a politically connected group that didn’t want Paul to talk about Jesus and they worked their connections to get Paul imprisoned in Jerusalem. Then later Paul gets transferred to Rome and from there he writes to the Ephesian church. But Paul never would have been in Rome if he hadn’t been arrested in Jerusalem for doing exactly what God wanted him to do.
And experiencing such apparent disaster right in the middle of being obedient, that is a harder pill to swallow because we might ask, I mean, if you’re doing exactly what God wants you to do, how could it go so badly for you? See, that’s worse than just regular suffering, isn’t it? It’s another layer you have to work through because if you’ve been trying really hard to follow God, you’ve made sacrifices for him, you might expect life to work out well Well, for you, you might be expecting the book of Daniel, right? Here’s Daniel in a foreign land. Suddenly there’s a law against prayer, but Daniel says, who cares if there’s a law against prayer?
I am going to pray anyway. So he does, and of course he gets caught. And then, you know the children’s story, he gets thrown into a den of lions for obeying God. Right, but have no fear because God is with him. Daniel and the lions end up just cuddling with each other all night.
Daniel isn’t eaten. And then in the morning when the authorities see that Daniel is still alive, they’re amazed. They pull Daniel out and they throw his enemies in. And then the lions devour Daniel’s enemies. And we think, that’s what I’m talking about, right?
If I do what God says, then I need to be rewarded like that. And bonus, sure, my enemies could be eaten by lions. Why not? Quid pro quo, right? I sacrifice for God, he comes through for me.
We might have that expectation, but when Paul sacrifices for God, he ends up in prison. He never sees his accusers overturned. And eventually, on down the road— this is a different time when Paul is arrested. Paul’s executed. He dies.
Paul doesn’t get the Daniel ending. Obeying God got him killed, not vindicated, in this world anyway. And we might protest. We might say, that’s not fair, right? If you do what God wants you to do, then you should get rewarded, not imprisoned and executed.
And if you do get imprisoned for following God like That’s unjust. Then God should come through for you. If he doesn’t, that’s an even bigger injustice. And the injustice might be the worst part of it. It might be the injustice that hurts the most.
We might say things like, how could this be happening? If I’ve been good, if I’ve done the right thing, I deserve better than this.
See, with Paul, it’s more than simply the inconvenience of being imprisoned. Imprisoned. And for the Ephesians, it’s more than only seeing their dear Paul experiencing some amount of discomfort. It’s that life has seemingly gone poor for Paul when he was following God. And Paul is concerned that the Ephesian church might lose heart.
He says, verse 1, I’m a prisoner, yes, I’m a prisoner because God, I did what God wanted me to do. And then throughout the passage, Paul explains, I preached for the people God wanted me to preach for, the Ephesians, I mean the Gentiles. We’ll talk more about that in a minute. Then verse 13, he says, even though I’m a prisoner for doing exactly what God wanted me to do, don’t you guys lose heart. Don’t be discouraged.
So Paul is the one in prison, yet he is the one comforting those who care about him. He’s so confident that his focus can be on others even though he’s the one suffering. It’s rather striking how settled he seems. He doesn’t complain about his chains. He doesn’t say, God will eventually get me out of this.
He doesn’t say, God will vindicate me against my enemies in the end. He doesn’t even ask the Ephesians to pray that he could get out of there.
But yet, he seems totally poised. Like maybe it never even crossed his mind that he should be upset about his circumstances. You read these verses and it’s not the tone of someone trying to convince himself into some kind of inner peace. He just has it. It’s oozing out of him.
So how could that be? Why is Paul okay? Well, he tells us. Really, he tells us 3 reasons why he has peace. Purpose, glory— or purpose, grace, and glory.
Purpose, grace, and glory. We’ll look at those individually as quickly as we can, but I’ll say up front, as we go through Paul’s reasons for being okay, his reasons may not sound very compelling to you. Some of you might think that, okay, that works for Paul, but I’m not sure how much that can really really help in my struggle. And if that’s you, I want you to know that’s okay. You may not be where Paul is.
That’s why there’s a third point. Paul anticipates the Ephesians may need something else, something additional to what is up and running for him, and we’ll cover that too. But first, Paul explains what gives him confidence. So why Paul okay? First, purpose.
He sees his situation as part of God’s plan. He starts off by saying he is a prisoner of Christ Jesus. He doesn’t only say he’s a prisoner because he’s been preaching about Jesus, though that is true. He says, I’m a prisoner of Jesus, not a prisoner of Rome, a prisoner of Jesus. Which means ultimately he believes it’s Jesus who has him where he is.
Jesus is in charge of everything. Paul’s like, yeah, I’m under arrest, but guys, everything is going exactly according to plan. He mentions down in verse 11 there’s even an eternal purpose to his work, which to us in the U.S. in 2023 certainly sounds strange because at least as a culture we don’t think there could be any purpose to suffering. In fact, we think the purpose of life is to avoid all suffering. We think if we’re suffering something must have gone wrong.
That’s today. But Christians in the first century saw suffering differently for a variety of reasons, but perhaps mostly they saw all suffering differently because they had seen the worst suffering imaginable achieve the greatest purpose imaginable. They had literally watched Jesus die. They saw him brutally tortured and executed unjustly. And initially, when they first saw the crucifixion, it seemed like the worst disaster that could ever happen.
It seemed like there could be no purpose to death at all. They did lose heart. But then post-resurrection they came to realize Jesus’ crucifixion was actually the best thing that has ever happened and it was God’s plan all along. It’s how God was going to save the world. All of our sin paid for so that we could be forgiven.
So even though there was betrayal and lies and injustice that led to the crucifixion, none of that sin stopped or thwarted what God wanted to do. All of that mess was in fact part of God’s plan to accomplish the best thing that had ever happened. There was a purpose, an eternal, wonderful purpose to the worst suffering imaginable, and they had seen it with their own eyes. So now here is Paul in jail, and from our viewpoint it would be easy to think, oh no, No, the power brokers who got Paul arrested, they’re messing everything up. They’re going to ruin the goodness that God had planned for Paul’s life.
But Paul doesn’t think that because he has an understanding that even the worst evil cannot stop what God has planned. To Paul, sitting in jail is— that’s small potatoes. His chains are nothing compared to the crucifixion. And if the crucifixion could be part of God’s plan, and it was, then Paul’s imprisonment could also be part of his plan. It’s like Paul saying, hey, Rome thinks they are in charge.
Rome thinks I am their prisoner, but God is using what they are doing for something else. I am here by the will and for the purpose of God. That’s one reason why Paul has peace— purpose. Second reason: grace. Paul sees his assignment as a gift of God’s grace.
3 times in this passage, Paul refers to God’s grace to him in reference to the task that God gave him. Paul loves his job. His job is to tell Gentiles— those are non-Jewish people— to tell them that they too can have full access to the God of Israel. Not because of anything they’ve done. Not because they’ve earned it or deserved it.
But because of what Christ has done on their behalf. They can be included because the one and only true God of the universe, Creator of heaven and earth, didn’t only love Israel but loved them as well. That’s what Paul was doing with the Ephesians. They were Gentiles. So Paul told them how they could be included, how they could be forgiven, and favored.
That was his God-given assignment, and Paul has seen Gentiles everywhere believing and receiving that message. It’s just the best thing he can imagine. The problem is— except it’s not a problem in Paul’s mind— but the potential problem is that his assignment that God gave him has landed him in jail. What he was doing for the Ephesians is the kind of thing that got him in trouble in Jerusalem and then transferred to Rome. So, the Ephesians could be thinking, oh no, we’re the benefactors of the very thing that got Paul in prison.
It’s kind of our fault, sort of. Like, if Paul hadn’t been preaching for Gentiles just like us, he wouldn’t have this suffering. So, it could discourage encourage them. But Paul wants them to know he rejoices that he gets to preach for Gentiles. He explains throughout the passage it was God’s plan from the beginning to include Gentiles just like you, and I get to be the one to tell you about it.
That’s a cause for celebration, not despair. Paul is saying something like, I would go to jail 10,000 more times if it could help 10,000 more groups like you. He tells the Ephesians, verse 13, my suffering is for your glory. So yes, the thing that landed me in jail is the thing that brought you to Christ, but that’s not a cause for despair. That’s— I rejoice over that.
I rejoice that I’m in jail, right? Like, I’d sign up for it again if it could help someone else. Paul is saying, worth it.
And really, even more than that, Paul being in jail isn’t going to slow down his mission. He talks to every everyone that walks by about Jesus. That’s the last verse of the book of Acts. He shares with everyone wherever he is. So in Paul’s mind, whether he’s traveling around the Mediterranean or he’s sitting somewhere in chains, he can still do the best job in the world.
It’s God’s grace to him that he can do what he’s doing. That’s the second reason he has peace, grace. The third reason is Glory. Paul sees his situation as an opportunity for God’s glory. He believes his circumstances can be used to display how great God really is to someone.
We’ll find out who in a minute. Now, if you’re not a Christian, that may not immediately make sense to you, so let me connect some dots. Christians are willing to endure a great deal of difficulty if we think it can somehow make God look as good as he really is to others. And we kind of instinctively know that seasons of suffering provide maybe the best opportunity to do that. So for instance, the Christian athlete who loses the game in heartbreaking fashion versus the Christian athlete who wins the game and rides out on shoulders of teammates victorious.
Which scenario is a better opportunity to display God’s all-sufficient goodness? Right, both athletes get a microphone and a TV camera pointed at them after the game, right? They both might say something like, whatever happens, I trust God. God is always enough. Both winner and loser could say that.
But the athlete who says God is enough in the middle of disappointment appointment might, maybe, could be a little more believable or memorable. So suffering might be a better opportunity to show how all-sufficiently good God is. And Paul doesn’t want to waste that opportunity. Microphone is in his face. His circumstances are unpleasant, unjust, even.
And he’s like, okay, time to talk about God’s goodness. Don’t want to waste this opportunity to bring glory to him. And it’s not manufactured with Paul. Paul isn’t faking it. He’s not saying God is enough when really he’s falling to pieces.
He’s, he’s really okay. This really is a moment Paul can show God’s all-sufficient goodness to someone. Now here’s the interesting thing. Paul has no idea how many people will ever know about his circumstances. Paul could not anticipate 2,000 years later 3 billion people would know that he was in prison.
He could very likely think that he and his circumstances will be quickly forgotten in world history just like all of ours will.
But even still, he knows that he has a huge, maybe immeasurable audience nonetheless. Paul’s point in verse 10 is that there is a spiritual world with powers and principalities. We’ll talk more about those when we get to Ephesians 6. And it is to them, all the entities of the spiritual world, that the manifold wisdom of God is being made known through his efforts and through the church. They are the someone to whom Paul can make known God’s goodness.
So Paul has an immeasurable audience. Even if the letter never arrives in Ephesus, even if only one person in Ephesus ever read his letter and no one remembers how he rejoiced in the middle of difficulty, he still has a huge audience. He still has a huge opportunity to display God’s all-sufficient peace, wholeness, wonder. Which means for us, even if we don’t have anyone putting a microphone in our face asking if God is enough for us. We still have a gigantic platform.
How big? Who knows? Who knows how many principalities there are in the spiritual world? But whether you’re considering the book of Job or Hebrews 12, great cloud of witnesses, Scripture is consistent that there is a spiritual audience, which means we always have a microphone in our face. Even if we die in prison alone and no one on this planet knows about it, no one’s sees it, we can still proclaim God’s goodness and wisdom.
It’s still an opportunity to bring glory to him in front of untold masses.
Okay, so there you have it. That’s why Paul is okay. He sees this situation as part of God’s plan. He sees it as God’s grace to him. He sees it as an opportunity to bring God glory.
Now, like we said, There could be some of you that hear that and say, it’s not going to work for me.
That’s great for Paul, but I’m not quite there.
Others of you may react to Paul and say, wow, I never thought about it that way. I actually think that helps. I think I can face my circumstances with greater poise and confidence. And if that catch you, that’s wonderful. But for those of you who are struggling through Paul’s reason, who might say, you know, I can’t really see that God would have a plan for the difficulty I’m facing, and I really struggle to believe that my circumstances are part of God’s grace to me, that doesn’t make any sense.
I would not sign up for it. I would not say worth it. And while, okay, if someone sees how good God is through what I’m dealing with, that’s fine, but that’s not really enough for me to walk around with my head held high right now. And if that’s you, that’s a totally fair reaction. Paul has anticipated you, actually.
He understands people are in different places. So he prays for people just like you in the Ephesian church. He prays that they would have such an experience of God that they would be overwhelmed by the fullness of his goodness. Starting in verse 16, he says, on my knees, he’s praying on his knees, that God 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 the breadth and the length and the height and the depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Paul thinks that’s what they need.
He’s begging for it on his knees. He’s thinking something like, if they had that, they would have peace. That would answer all the questions. It would solve all the riddles. And even if they couldn’t get on board with the purpose, grace, glory stuff, if they could experience God like that, like all the fullness of all of him, if they had that, they would have confidence and poise.
So he prays it for them.
And before some of you roll your eyes at maybe the simplicity of, oh, so all I need is God. Of course, the church says, you know, having God is the real answer, just go ahead and smooth over all extreme levels of suffering with, if I could feel God, it would be okay.
That might be some of you, but hang on. Respectfully, you don’t know what you are dismissing.
Charles Spurgeon, a 19th century English pastor, described an experience of God similar to the one that Paul prayed the Ephesians would have. Spurgeon says it doesn’t happen all the time, but when it happens, it’s like this.
He says, God’s people do not always know the greatness of His love to them. So it comes and goes. Sometimes, however, it is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is given to us. Some of us know at times what it is like to be almost too happy to live live. The love of God has been so overpoweringly experienced by us on some occasions that we have almost had to ask for a stay of the delight because we could not endure anymore.
If the glory had not been veiled a little, we should have died in excess of rapture or happiness.
Then he says, God’s wondrous ways of opening people’s hearts to the manifestation of His grace, He can pour in not only a drop of his love but great and mighty streams.
That’s the type of experience Paul praised the Ephesians would have.
Now let me ask you, particularly if you just rolled your eyes, if you had that kind of experience where you were almost too happy to live because of how deeply God’s love had been poured out in your heart.
Do you think it would help you have confidence and poise with whatever you’re going through?
I’m sure it would.
So Paul, in his love for the Ephesians, prays they would have it, and he knows if they had that, they would have poise and confidence in their despair. So how can the Ephesian church find peace as well, it’s fervently pray for and seek an experience of God. And I hope we have set up the type of experience that we’re talking about where you don’t just brush it off as, of course, that’s what the church would say. It’s too deep to be brushed off.
And some of you have had an experience like that, not all the time, like we said. Some of you have haven’t, even though you may both be Christians. Paul is talking about something beyond simply becoming a Christian, because remember, he is writing to people who are already Christians. Ephesians 1, he addresses his letter to all the saints in Ephesus, and from there he goes on into great detail how secure they are. They are forgiven, they are accepted, they are favored.
He wouldn’t be telling them all that unless they were already Christians, but then here in chapter 3, he prays for those exact same people, that Christ may dwell in their hearts through faith and that they would know the love of Christ. And we may ask, well, if they’re a Christian, isn’t Christ already dwelling in their hearts? Don’t they already know the love of Christ? Isn’t that how you become a Christian in the first place? And the answer is yes, Christ is already in their hearts.
Yes, they already know the love of Christ. But the answer is also no. Because we will never get to the bottom of our knowledge or experience of Christ’s love. Paul prays that they would know the height, width, depth of it, that they would get ever deeper into it. So even though they already have God, there is more of God they could have.
Do you have a sense of how bottomless God is, how infinite his fullness is, have you ever had so much of Him that it was almost too much to bear?
Have you had to ask for a stay of the delight?
May we all experience God like that again and again and again. Sure, it’ll come and go, but Paul thought such an experience of God could make all the difference for the effect Ephesians? I’m sure it did. I’m sure it can for us as well.
Let’s pray. Father, thank You for the goodness of Christ.
Thank You that You are willing to give of Yourself to us.
Lord, I pray that That you wouldn’t just drop a few moments, fleeting moments of your love over us, Lord, but that we would have the great and mighty streams, that we could see you in a way that makes everything else okay, that we would be confident that your plan is working in us, that you are being gracious to us, and that someone as good as you, that we would want to show all others how good you really are. We pray those things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
