Okay, friends, please grab a Bible and open with me to Ephesians chapter three. It is in page 1,160 in the chair back Bibles, if you wanna use that. We encourage you to have a copy of God's word open. Don't just rely on the pastor to say what the Bible says. Open it and have it in your lap. You can take a seat seat for just a second.

Also in the cheer backs in front of you. You'll see a connect card, and if you would take that connect card and, and fill that out, all of us who are, whether you're a member or you're a first time guests, would you take that connect card sometime during the sermon and fill that out and drop it in the offering basket as it comes by after the sermon.

That'll help us know how we can be praying for you. There's a place where you can actually tell the elders of the church, Hey, please pray for me in this way, or our prayer team. And every Tuesday night, the elders gathered a. Intercede for all those requests, and it's our delight and joy to pray for every one of those cards.

And so please fill that out as you're able. You of course may know that we're in a series on Ephesians. The book of Ephesians called A Beautiful Mess because Paul writes after his third missionary journey where he visited them and stayed with them for three years. Now in prison, he thinks, what? Who do I need to write a letter to?

And the first letter he writes in prison. Is the letter to the Ephesians and he writes this letter, not because there's a crisis to be dealt with. He writes this letter because he wants the church to know what she can be and all of her potential and all of her brokenness, and all of her imperfections, and all of her messiness.

Of course, this church is included in that. In all of our sin though, we are being formed more and more, Lord willing into the image of Christ. The church, though messy is still beautiful. And so we come now to the argument in chapter three, beginning at verse 14, and you're gonna see a key word here for this reason.

And that phrase in Greek precedes Every time in Ephesians, Paul begins a prayer. And last week we looked at, for this reason in beginning of chapter three, and Paul went on this parenthesis in his thought from verse two of chapter three, all the way through verse 13. And now he picks that prayer back up and we get to see what indeed he prays for us and what we too ought to long for as his people.

So if you're willing and able, let stand together as you read God's word from Ephesians chapter three, verse 14 through 19.

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. The grass withers and the flowers fade, but God's word stands forever. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. You may be seated. Father, would you now take your word and would you change us by it?

Would you give me the words to say and would you help apply it to our hearts in the time we have together? In Jesus' name, amen.

We have today more access to information than any time in human history. You can Google any fact that you want. You can fact check the pastor on site. You can find out immediately, almost any known fact in the world, simply through your smartphone. And yet this generation, as with the generation before us, is what see us Lewis called men and women with hollow chests.

We know a lot of information and friends. A lot of, you know, a lot of theology, but the Apostle Paul argues that there is a vast difference between knowing something in your head and letting it transform you in your heart. Lewis said, we have a con, a generation of people who know lots of stuff but have not been formed by the information that they know.

They know lots of stuff, but they haven't been transformed by the reality of it. They haven't felt it, they haven't lived into it. They had, they haven't let it actually change their life. And some of you in this room, oh, there are some very bright people in this room. But Paul calls us not just to be people who know, but to be people who are transformed by what we know in light of the gospel.

Uh, there's a, there's a movie called Goodwill Hunting that some of you undoubtedly know, and in that movie, it's a story of a genius from South Boston. His name is Will Hunting, and Will was forced to meet with this therapist. It played by Robin Williams. His name is Sean McGuire in the movie, and there's a point where Will and Sean are sitting at a park bench and Dr.

McGuire says this to Will, reflecting on their sessions, he says, will, if I asked you about art, you'd probably give me the skinny on every art book ever written. Michelangelo, you know a lot about 'em, but I bet you can't tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. If I ask you about love, you probably quote me a sonnet, but I've never, I bet you've never looked at a woman and been totally vulnerable.

You think I know the first thing about you, how hard your life has been. You think I know all that stuff because I read all of her twist. Does that encapsulate you will, unless you wanna talk about you who you are, then I'm fascinated I'm in. But you don't wanna do that, do you? You're terrified of what you might say.

You're a move champ. And Sean's point in this movie, of course, is that you can know all the facts in the world, but unless you are transformed by the experience of love and loss and pain, you can know all the Sunday school answers. You can know all the stuff, but there is a difference between knowing about something and truly knowing it isn't there.

Between reading about the Sistine Chapel and standing under its ceiling between studying love and being transformed by it. And many of us in the church even find ourselves in Will's shoes. We have plenty of information about God. We know all the Sunday school answers, and yet if we're honest, many of us are spiritually dry, exhausted, distant hollow.

We struggle with dryness. We lack assurance. We have a sense of distance from our father in heaven. We feel weak and overwhelmed by life's demands. We are unsure whether God's love is truly deep enough for us. Listen, some of us are isolated. We are missing the kind of community that makes faith come alive.

Others of us are uncertain about our purpose and our destiny in Christ. Listen, if you are weary or you are doubting or you are longing to know more of God than Ephesians three 14 through 19 is for you because Paul's prayer here friends, is not just that you know about Christ, but that you experience him.

You don't just recite truths about him, but you are rooted. In him, you grasp the dimensions of his love together with all the saints that you may be, as Paul says, filled with all the fullness of God through Paul's prayer. If I had to put the sermon in a sentence, it would be this. God invites us to be strengthened by his spirit, to experience Christ's presence and to be rooted in his limitless love and to seek his full together as a people O Trinity.

Especially in our weaknesses, our doubts, and our longing for belonging. So this morning, Paul invites you, not the person next to you, you to see the means, the grounds, and the goal of your strengthening relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. To move from hollow chested men and women, to people who are hope filled from people who are just informed of people who are transformed by the gospel.

And so he walks us through this in these verses, first, the means of our sustaining strength. Look at your notes if you're a note taker. Verses 14 through the first part of verse 17. We are to rely on the spirit's power to experience Christ's living presence. Paul begins for this reason. As I mentioned this phrase, for this reason, pre always precedes the time that Paul prays I bow my knees before the father.

It's an interesting phrase because in that day, people stood to pray. And so Paul is saying I with humility, the commentator Harold Honer says this in Greek is a phrase that says Paul's deep humility and the intensity of his intimacy with his father. He bows his knees before his father pat in Greek, from whom every family patria.

In Heaven on un Earth is named. There's a little Greek word play here to say that we bow our knees before a father, so that we see how good and generous he is. The commentator Peter O'Brien says that we call him a father who is named everything in heaven and on earth, taking us back to the garden when Adam had sovereignty over all the animals and named them one by one.

So our father names our families. He calls us his own. He says, you're part of my Covenant family. Boltons. I want you. Jones, your mine, Johnson's Yes. Lakes. Yes. I want you Zion's Pops. You're mine. He names you. He claims you. He wants you, he desires you. He bows his knees before this father in heaven, uh, in whom heaven, uh, in earth is named.

And he says to them. That according to the riches of his glory, that he may grant to you to be strengthened with power. How? Through his spirit. Now, we've said this many times, you know the motto of the state of this great state is work conquers all, which is the exact cultural narrative that we believe.

Ever since we're young enough to read, we're taught you achieve you. You will be what you achieve. But only it's in the gospel that we actually find that you cannot be what you achieve because what you be is sinful and therefore what you achieve is death in hell. And so Christ bees for you, he came as the second a D am the second Adam.

As the first. Adam was in the garden and he lived the perfect life for you, and he died. The death that you deserve to die. Why? So that you could finally become not fallen human, but be gradually made more human, declared righteousness, declared righteous in the father's eyes to the work of the son, and gradually over time be made more and more like him.

And how does he say that We do that? It says we do it through his spirit in our inner being. The inner being speaks to this, the heart of our personality, of our thinking, of our feeling, of our willing. Spiritually, it is. We are often battered by discouragement, but Paul says, you can be strengthened in your heart of hearts, in your inner man, in your inner being, through the Holy Spirit.

He works there to transform you. And remember, as he works to transform you, he always worked. You are always connected to the body, so he works. In you, but you're connected. So the decisions that you make and the privacy of your own life affect the covenant community to whom you have made vows. And many of us know these truths, like we know this.

We go to conferences. We listen to podcasts,

but we still hold back from following Jesus with our whole selves. We want Christ, but we're not sure we want his rule. Eugene Peterson described the dynamic for his congregation in this way. He said, there are many, of course who know all of this, but don't follow Jesus. It is not because they think that he is or was a bad person.

They just don't think following Jesus will get them where they want to go in the world, get them success or wealth, or satisfy their ambition or lusts, or guarantee them obedient children or a comfortable retirement. And friends. Paul knows that the Christian life is not lived out of our own resources, but only out of God's.

He knows we are weak, that we grow tired, that we have spiritual dryness, and he knows that our discouragement is real. Am I scratching the itch? Do you feel what Paul is trying to do? Oh, pastor Paul Ministry into this precious congregation, this people in Ephesus in 80 60. Do you feel what he's trying to say?

Not only to them, but through his word to you?

He says that we are not to try harder, but we are to depend more deeply on the resources of God himself. In Paul's phrase, on the riches of his glory, that means that he doesn't just have a little bit of change to give to you that his grace is infinite, that he has storehouses of God's own strength to give us in the midst of our weakness, that my friends is good news.

But this is where we often go with drift because there's a very real cultural narrative that we believe that says you have to hustle, you have to try harder, you have to work to achieve, and sometimes that drifts into the church and even into your own walk with Jesus. We turned Christianity into a kind of self-improvement program.

More prayer, more reading, more serving, more doing, always striving, always measuring ourselves. And one of the ways, if you volunteer at this church, one of the ways that you know that is you can't stop. You can't with peace say, okay, I think I need to take a break, which is totally okay. God doesn't call you to exhaust you.

He calls you to help you continue to rest using your gifts. And it's the role and the delight of the session, the ministers and the staff of this church to help us continue to serve in a state of rest. And that is hard to do and we will fail at leading you in doing that, but oh, we want to continue to minister out of a sense of rest and all that God has done for us.

And you know that if you've lived in this, this. Uh, narrative of work harder to achieve more. You know what it's done to you spiritually. It has worn you out. I've seen it in your eyes in my office, and I see it in some of your eyes right now. And if you look at the chairs in front of you, you'll see those cards Rest in worship, grow in community.

Would you take the Grow In Community Card out just for a second and would you look at it with me? On the back of the Grow In Community Card, you'll see that there is a gospel transformation chart. And this gospel transformation chart is to help speak against this cultural narrative that you work hard in order to earn God's favor, because you'll notice that you go from your current state to be changed by the gospel.

You can't just work harder. You have to work downward, which means that you have to recognize sin and that presenting sin is often not the real sin that plagues you. It's the sin beneath the sin. And you have to recognize the idol commanding the sin, and you have to walk in repentance. And once you've bowed your knee, before your father in heaven, do you see the, the way that Paul moves down in order to go up, then you can believe that God is indeed good, that he is gracious, that he is.

Better than sin and that he is in control of everything. And when you go down to the cross up in faith, then you're able to be changed by the gospel. This isn't just for those who come to believe Jesus for the first time. Oh Christian. It is for every person in this room, whether you are a new Christian, who today's the day of salvation for you, where you've been a Christian for many years, you grow up by growing down.

And if you've lived in that narrative of trying to work harder for any length of time, you know it only leads to further exhaustion and weariness and even deep, deep insecurity. You're always wondering whether you've done enough, and Paul says, what is the result? With power through his spirit in your inner being.

Notice the Hena clause in Greek Sow that it's a henna C clause in Greek. It shows you the result. Sow that and he gives us three different results so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. That's the first one. So he may dwell. He may make a home in you. He may settle there. He may help you be at peace.

Those of you who are online a lot, you know, you know how you feel when you, when you finally turn your phone off. I just want you to notice this week when you turn it off, like turn it all the way off. Your phone will actually turn all the way off. I just want you to notice, do you notice a sense of peace that comes over you when you just turn your phone off?

Try it this week and just dwell in the presence of being with your family. And the reason I'm telling you this is because I need to do that too.

To dwell means to be present with you. Christ is dwelling in you. He doesn't just stop by for a visit. He makes his home in the center of your life. This is friends. The difference between knowing that Christ can be the sinner of your life and actually having him as the living presence in your life made real to us.

Hell through the Holy Spirit by faith and the Spirit gives us not just knowledge about Christ, but it gives us a real experience. When that happens, it feels like being seen and known in Jesus in your actual struggles and fears. It feels like peace settling over your anxious soul, hope rising up where there is only discouragement.

It, it feels like a gentle conviction that you are not alone even when you failed. It feels like warmth in the cold and dark places of your heart where you've wondered if God could ever draw near to someone like you. It is the real living Christ, not a distance, not a concept of some esoteric theology out there.

But as your personal present savior, the Puritan John Owen said that Christ is most present with us when we are most aware of our need for him. Christ is most present with us when we are most aware of our need for him. Of course, Christ is always present everywhere, but you don't know it until you recognize how much you need him, and then all of a sudden you have eyes that are opened.

And Paul tries to show us this all throughout the course of Ephesians. In Ephesians chapter one, the father chose you before the foundation of the world. Verse four, he adopted you as his child. Verse one. He blessed you in Christ with every spiritual blessing. Verse three. The son redeemed you through his blood.

Verse seven, he forgave you of your sins again. In verse seven, the son made known to you the mystery of his will. In verse nine, he sealed you as God's own possession. In verse 13, the spirit is the guarantee of your inheritance. In verse 14, Paul is just pounding you with knowledge, knowledge, knowledge, knowledge.

Now he says, do you know it? And he continues. In chapter two, Paul says, though you were dead in your trespasses and sins, he has made you alive in Christ. It is by grace that you're saved, not by your works. Christ did the works for you so you can rest in his finished work on your behalf. And he did this amazing mystery.

He United Jew and Gentile people who have historically been at odds with each other. He brought them together in the church and we saw last week that this is a picture of what it means to be the church in the world. That people that see Trinity, see all local churches where the gospel is preached. Not only those on earth, but even the array might in heaven.

Angels fallen and holy. Look at the church and they. Strain to look and see the way that Grace is working out in their life because they see the true work of the Holy Spirit in and through them in ways that they themselves have never experienced nor need to.

So if we are called rely on the Spirit's power to experience Christ's living presence, what's the ground of that means? Secondly, we are to be rooted. And we're to be grounded in the limitless love of Christ. Verse 17 through 19, look at how Paul continues. He says, I pray that you being rooted and grounded in love may have strength to comprehend with all the saints.

Notice that you are grounded. You are rooted. Now that you are, you can understand. You are rooted and grounded, and therefore you can comprehend. It's one thing to know about something. It's another thing to experience. Do you see how Paul is getting at this knowledge, this formation, this transformation?

It's deeper than just knowing something. It's being transformed by it to change you for his glory. And Paul doesn't assume that we grasp the fullness of his love. He wants us to comprehend it, and so he gives these four beautiful adjectives of his love. The commentators are mixed on why Paul chose these four.

Some think it referred to the magic arts of the first century Ephesian world, where they talked about the breadth and length and height and depth. We don't know exactly, but certainly the breadth speaks to his provision for us. His grace always extends beyond the bounds of your sin. The length speaks to the duration of it.

He will love you forever and ever for all eternity. His height speaks to the beauty and the loftiness of it. Oh, let our mind soar to see the love of our risen savior Christ who loves you in his church. And the depth speaks to the profound nature of it. It actually answers all those cultural narratives that you believe by default.

And he says, you want to achieve rest in my righteousness. You wanna earn you look to the righteousness that I give you. You wanna be comforted. I'm coming again to make everything new.

Jonathan Edwards once said, the love of Christ is an infinite ocean. There is enough to fill the hearts and satisfy the souls of all the saints to all eternity. And yet after they have all been filled, there is as much left as there was before. God's love for you is not measured out in teaspoons. It is measured out in an infinite surging ocean of Christ's desire that you would be immersed in his love, especially when you feel unworthy or unsure.

Are you picking up what I'm putting down? Are you hearing me? He radically loves you, rely on his Holy Spirit to experience the presence of Christ, be rooted and grounded in the limitless. Love of Christ. If your doubts are deep, you feel unworthy. If you're painfully aware of your sin, hear this, that Christ's love is deeper still.

His love is broader and longer and higher and stronger than any barrier that we could ever try to pick up. Paul prays and God desires you, that you would be so rooted and grounded in love, that even when your doubts and your failures come, they would not uproot you. You have been rooted. Oh, you have been grounded.

It's Amelio grounded in his love. Thirdly, the goal of our sustaining strength is that we would seek the fullness of God together as his people. Paul's request in his prayer is staggering. He prays this for the Ephesians. Yes, but it's also a prayer for you through the Holy Spirit that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

He's not saying that we become God. He seen that our lives individually and as a church would overflow with God's presence, his character, and his joy. It's as if Paul longs for each of us to be so saturated with Christ's presence, that the world sees the need of their own need to be filled by something that the narratives of our culture can't fill, and only the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ provides.

Think of how many voices in our culture promise full somewhere else. More success, more experience, more control, more applause. And you are so tempted. Oh, friends, so discipled to believe this in your heart of hearts. But those cups run dry. You may remember the Psalm of ASAP in Psalm 73. There's a psalm called Song of Song of ASAP in Psalm 73, and he sees all of the, the wealthy.

It seems like nothing ever bad happens to them, and he just. You know, seems so frustrated and he cries out in his frustration, and who do I have in heaven? But you, oh Lord, the Earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but you are the strength of my life and you are my portion forever.

And Paul being a good Jew, pulls asaps longing into this part of Ephesians and he says, oh, you'll be filled with. All the fullness of God. Lord, may they be filled, may Trinity be filled with all the fullness of God and rest in his righteousness, and truly find the kind of spiritual rest for which you are longing, so that you may have strength to comprehend with all the saints.

Thomas Goodwin, a great Puritan, says that the church is not a vessel. That contains the ocean, but it's a vessel in the ocean always being filled, yet never emptied, always receiving more of God's love, his presence and power. And we experience that in the covenant community of the church together. So friends, in closing, when you feel aimless, when you feel doubting that you doubt when you long for something more, do you know his presence, his love, and his fullness?

And the very places that we feel the weaknesses where his grace abounds to us. Through Paul's prayer, he advised us to be strengthened by his spirit, to experience Christ's presence and to be rooted in his limitless love and to seek his fullness together as his people, especially in our weaknesses and our doubts and in our longing.

And how do we know this is not just a beautiful idea and another nugget of knowledge for us? We know it. Because the answer is found in the cross, in the resurrection of Jesus Christ himself entered our weakness on the cross, and he rose again on the third day in victory to vindicate all that he said was indeed true, and to prove that he has victory over your greatest enemies of sin and death.

He bore our doubts, our failures, our loneliness. Jesus endured our weaknesses. He was forsaken so that we might be brought near. So that the presence, love, and fullness of the Father would be open to us forever. There is more mercy in Christ than there is sin in us. Hallelujah. And the beauty of Christ is that he is not just sufficient.

He is abundant and mercy, and his heart is gentle and lowly toward all those who come to him in need. So O Trinity, do not settle from your knowledge though. Know your Bibles. Do not settle from your theology, but be transformed by it. Christ offers you himself. Don't settle for dryness or distance when Christ offers you his limitless love.

Don't settle for emptiness or isolation when Christ offers you his fullness. So come to him this morning to the table. All you who are weary and heavy laden come. Those of you with confession of sin upon your lips and with joy of being welcome to this banquet table. Come to him and find the fullness that your soul longs for.

Amen. Let's pray. Father, would you strengthen us to rely not on the cultural narratives that speak so loudly to us that are discipling us and our children so easily? Would you help us to see that it's only in the gospel that we can find that we indeed achieve because Christ achieved for us that we have a nearness to our father because of the finished work of the Son?

And may we be strengthened through your spirit? But oh, holy Spirit, would you give us a sense of your presence? Would you help us to relish you to know you, not just to know about you, but to know the intimacy of you and to know this intimacy together as your people so that together with all the saints, we may be filled with all the fullness of God, and we pray these things in the name of the Father, son, and Holy Spirit.

Amen. Let's give generously of our tides and offerings and be sure to drop those connect cards in the baskets.

Sermon transcript is computer generated.