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Prayer for the Impossible – Ephesians 3:14-21

This is the second time in the book of Ephesians that Paul just breaks in the middle of a passage and prays for people.

As a church, we are praying for opportunities to share the gospel as well as for wisdom and direction. We take cues from Paul in that we should be ready to drop everything and enter into prayer.

In that first prayer, in chapter 1, he prays that the Ephesians will experience the wisdom, knowledge, hope, presence and power of God. It often does not feel like we have access to any of these, but that’s part of why Paul is praying that they would grow in all of it.

In this part, Paul is after something similar. Paul opens with very universal language. He goes to his knees in prayer, rather than following Jewish tradition and standing. He speaks of the father, Pater, giving his name to the family, patria, and to every family in the world, not only the family of Abraham.

He asks that Christ would dwell in their hearts, much like the language from earlier in the letter when he wrote that believers are being built together as a dwelling place for God.

And that dwelling of Christ, his being deeply rooted in us, is what gives us the strength to comprehend the “breadth and length and height and depth” – something so vast that it surpasses our knowledge and understanding. The love of God is bigger than we or the world could possibly understand.

It also means that we can’t look to the world for its understanding of love. When we love in our marriages, family, friendships, we have to look to the example of Christ and be powered by the strength of Christ. It is for this, and for some dim understanding of Christ’s love, that Paul prays for here. Knowledge of that which is beyond knowledge.

And Paul prays to the one with power beyond power, able to do the impossible, and so worthy of being asked for the impossible.

– Sermon Notes, Bart Hodgson, Seed Church, Lynnwood WA, October 11, 2020

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The Gospel & Manifold Wisdom – Ephesians 3:7-13

Paul ended the passage we looked at last week talking about the mystery of the gospel, and that’s where he picks up in today’s passage. The mystery means that it was not something that could be reasoned out alone, but requires revelation, which Paul received from Christ.

But what is “this gospel” that Paul is talking about. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul gives his most succinct recounting of the gospel: “that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.”

If this is true, it means that we owe Christ everything – it crashes into how we approach our finances, career, family, politics, identity, everything about us. What he did for us means that we owe him everything.

And the gospel is not something we ever outgrow. No matter how long we have been Christians, the gospel is relevant – it is the fuel for our ongoing sanctification, and it is the core of the mission we have been given to reach the nations. This is what Paul is talking about here.

He goes on to put himself into this context, as the “most least” of all the saints – if “leaster” was a word, he would have used that. This is the context through which we are to communicate the gospel – deeply felt humility. It is in that humility that he brings the “unsearchable riches of Christ” and manifold wisdom of God” to the world and even to the “rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms.”

Paul is talking about the evil, supernatural forces arrayed against him, us and the gospel. As the church, we are how God’s manifold wisdom is reflected to those forces.

So we need to understand the gospel – both as our shield, in understanding the love Christ has for us, and as our sword, the power of God for salvation.

– Sermon Notes, Bart Hodgson, Seed Church, Lynnwood WA, October 4, 2020

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Renewal for Paul and for Us – Ephesians 3:1-6

In the first chapter of Ephesians, Paul goes on depth on what it means for us to be “in Christ,” reconciled to God. In the second chapter, he talks about us as a church, unified within Christ together and reconciled to one another. Now we come to the third chapter, where Paul starts taking about… himself?

He begins by identifying himself as a prisoner – not of Nero, even though he is in a Roman prison, but rather if Christ. In fact, he portrays his imprisonment as a positive thing for his readers.

Paul’s imprisonment is a story that started in Ephesians 21, when he was arrested, ostensibly for bringing a gentile into the temple, though in reality for teaching Christ. Paul is living out Jesus’ blessing in the beatitudes, “blessed are those who are persecuted.”

Then, Paul talks about himself as a steward or manager of God’s grace that was given him for the Ephesians. This is something we can ask ourselves – what have we been given to steward? Our resources, our relationship, our location – God has given all of us things, just as he gave Paul. “Follow me as I follow Christ,” as he wrote to the Corinthians.

He goes on in verses 3 and 4 to talk about the mystery and insight he was given by God. The word for insight implies synthesis, the combining of two rivers running together. This story goes back to Paul’s “origin story” as one of those who disputed with Stephen and held the coats of his murderers. In Philippians, he described his old self in detail:

…circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless.

Paul got the mandate to go round up Christians in Damascus, and on the road there was met directly by Christ and set on the path of preaching to the gentiles. This is what he is talking about in being a steward, and of the insight and mystery.

“Mystery” here means a truth that cannot be reached by reason or observation, but must be shared by revelation. The insight is a running together of the rivers of revelation by the Holy Spirit and God’s word, which promised that gentiles would somehow, someday meet God. That was the mission God gave Paul, and it’s a mission that reverberates down through the ages to his church full of Gentiles today.

To come to this place, Paul had to go through several steps. First, he needed to establish a spiritual renewal through his encounter with Christ. Second, he had to go through relational renewal with his fellow Christians, which enabled him to go through a missional renewal – loving God, loving others, loving the world.

Do we need to go through this? Even if we have been going to church for a long time, we may need it. Paul is one example himself. So were the Ephesians themselves, called to this renewal by Christ Himself in His letter recounted in Revelation – they had forsaken their first love, and He beseeched them to repent and be renewed.

-Sermon Notes, Bart Hodgson, Seed Church, Lynnwood WA, September 27, 2020

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Building the Church – Ephesians 2:19-22

Paul here is taking about the church, moving from a metaphor of the family of God, into a metaphor of a building, and the construction of a building.

But to understand what Paul is saying hehe, it is important to understand the methods of construction that Paul is referencing, which are different than those that are used today. He is using the language of stonecutters and masons. The terms he is using, “joined” and “built together” are trade terms that are not used elsewhere in the bible.

“Joined” in particular means to fit or pile together – the stones had to be worked significantly, by hand, to make them as smooth as possible, with as much surface area as possible between any two stones.

The “cornerstone” also is a specific thing, not the decorative stones you’ll see today, but the first stone of a foundation – every stone placed afterwards are placed in alignment with the cornerstone. Jesus is called a cornerstone also in 1 Peter, which quotes the prophecy of Isaiah 28. Isaiah is warning those who had rejected his own teaching that God was going to play a stone that they would have to come in alignment with. God goes on to say, “And I will make justice the line, and righteousness the plumb line; and hail will sweep away the refuge of lies, and waters will overwhelm the shelter.” In 1 Peter, Peter warns that, for those who reject him that cornerstone will be a “stone of stumbling.”

Paul calls the structure being built a temple, or a “naos”. In his letter to the Corinthians, he also refers to the church, corporately, as a temple. As we gather in Christ’s name to worship him and hear his word, that itself is a holy place, separate from the walls and floors and ceiling of the actual church.

God is in a building process here at Seed. Just as if we were building a new sanctuary or remodeling a parsonage, we worked need everyone involved, so too do we all need to be involved in this building process. God is the one who builds the church, but he does it through people like Paul, like Lydia, like the Ephesian jailer. Elsewhere, Paul call us all to “build with care” upon the foundation he has given us.

To do that, first we must work internally to conform to the alignment of the cornerstone. That is an individual task but it prepares us for the next, corporate tasks. We must “grow together” by letting the prophets and apostles speak into our lives, building connections and settling us into the wall like well-hewn rocks. And third, to serve one another, both by calling people into the body and by doing the practical work of teaching, operations and administration.

Paul, in 1 Corinthians, notes that all the gifts God gives us, are there for the building up of God’s church. What is God calling you to do to build up His church?

-Sermon Notes, Bart Hodgson, Seed Church, Lynnwood WA, September 20, 2020

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Unity in Christ – Ephesians 2:11-19

Paul is writing to a community that was made up of two very different groups. Many Jews in the time and region hated gentiles. Gentiles were “made to fuel the fires of hell,” it was written. If a Jew married a gentile, they would hold a funeral. There was significant hatred between the groups.

It had its root in God’s command to Israel to be separate from the peoples around them, though obviously taken too far.

Similarly, God Himself was set apart, within the Holy of Holies, within the inner court, set apart from the outer court, itself set apart from the Court of Women, itself set apart from the Court of Gentiles by a dividing wall and threat of death.

When Solomon built the temple, neither the court of women or gentiles existed. In fact, when he dedicated the temple, Solomon asked God that “when a foreigner comes and prays towards this house, then hear in heaven your dwelling-place, and do according to all that the foreigner calls to you, so that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you, as do your people Israel.”

Paul himself is writing this letter from prison specifically because he was accused of bringing a Ephesian man into the temple grounds.

So that is the context of this letter. Paul here talks directly to the gentiles, slurred by the Jewish community around them. And Paul acknowledges that they indeed were separated from God alienated from God and his people.

But Christ broke down that separation explicitly, breaking it “in his flesh.” The reformed preacher Richard Baxter wrote “Every time we look upon our congregations, let us believingly remember that they are the purchase of Christ’s blood”.

We are born again and made new creations, beyond any other distinctive – in Galatians, Paul writes that it goes beyond ethnicity, gender, social status and every other division. What he has done in us is eternal – all the rest is temporal.

In 2 Corinthians 5, Paul writes that “the love of Christ compels us.” Is that true for us? In our interactions with each other, are we controlled by Christ’s love? Are we seeking the unity Paul writes about here, that Jesus prayed for in the Garden of Gethsemane? Are we engaging in the ministry of reconciliation that we have been given?

Of course we will have conflict, but we have instructions for how to deal with those. Mainly, we need to deal with it and move on, and to work with all people in love. We need to walk in reconciliation so that when the world looks at us they see the love and unity of Christ in our midst.

We should examine ourselves today for any bitterness, any divisiveness, anything that is keeping us from the unity that Christ died to bring to us.

– Sermon Notes, Bart Hodgson, Seed Church, Lynnwood WA, September 13, 2020

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Not of Works, but For Them – Ephesians – 2:8-10

This is one of the most beautiful passages in the New Testament, but it is also calling us to something. It’s confrontational, it gets into your face.

There is a gift being offered to us, freely, but it’s a stark choice. “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters,” says Jesus in Matthew.

We need to understand that God is not like us. Evil cannot stand in His presence. He is a righteous judge and we are a criminal standing before him. But he offers us life instead of death, freedom instead of bondage.

But that offer is, as Paul writes here, a gift, with nothing that we can do to earn or deserve it. We have no way to point to our own deeds or our own goodness. If we are going to boast, Paul writes elsewhere, we should boast about Christ.

We receive the gift by faith, and that faith is impossible outside of the revelation of God. One of our jobs is bringing that revelation – Paul writes in Romans 10:14, “How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?”

But when we respond in faith, we are re-created by the creator and united with Christ. As Jesus explained to Nicodemus, we must be reborn to enter the kingdom of God.

And what that rebirth means is explained in verse 10. You can’t detach verses 8 & 9 with their beautiful message of grace and faith from verse 10. We can’t use the truth of grace as an excuse to do whatever we want. We are a new creation, “God’s workmanship,” specifically outfitted to do good works. Salvation is by faith alone, but faith itself is never alone.

In Matthew 7, Jesus tells us that we will be assessed by the fruit, the result, of Christ in us. Good works do not lead to Christianity, but Christianity leads to good works, says Martin Lloyd Jones.

We can’t mistake this for legalism, but we also can’t miss the truth that we are called to works. But the works prepared for us are not for ourselves, but for others and for Christ.

– Sermon Notes, Bart Hodgson, Seed Church, Lynnwood WA, September 6, 2020

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United With Christ – Ephesians 2:4-7

This passage starts with two beautiful words after the last few verses about how we are dead in our sins: “but God.”

Because of God’s matchless grace, we are united with him spiritually, and in the hereafter, we will be united physically.

This is the basis of all of Christianity. We are defined, not by particular doctrine or even by particular moral standards, but by being united with Christ.

But what does it mean to be seated with Christ in the heavenly places? It is easy to let our imaginations run wild, but what does scripture say?

Seated with Christ means we are no longer under threat by Satan. ItWe have been plucked out of a kingdom of darkness and placed in a kingdom of light. We are no longer under the dominion of Satan, but citizens of a fast better country. We have a dim picture of this cosmic struggle, enough to understand that there is much that we do not see. We have an adversary, a bully who tries to scare and intimidate us. But we have an “older brother” who protects us, and if we keep that in mind, we have nothing to fear.

It also means we have passed from spiritual death to spiritual life. In Hebrews, the author writes:

Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

Hebrews 10:19-22

How does all this matter in our day to day lives? What does it mean to us while we are trying to install a water heater that won’t turn on? It means that we can’t go about assuming that what we see is all that there is. There is more happening than we realize. We need to believe what we read in scripture, because the information we get from the outside world is imperfect and limited.

When we walk around in the world, we are very focused on what we see around us. But we need to know that God is doing things we cannot see. “The Lord is my shepherd, I will not want.” The sheep can’t see where the shepherd leads them, don’t know his plan for keeping them safe and fed. But they trust him – just as we can trust our Good Shepherd.

This is what it means to be seated with Christ, at his right hand, a vassal under His protection, protection from threats we cannot even set, through methods we do not see and often cannot understand.

– Sermon Notes, Bart Hodgson, Seed Church, Lynnwood WA, August 30, 2020

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Dead in Our Sins – Ephesians 2:1-3

At the close of chapter 1, we saw that the job of the Church is to do the will of Christ – we are the body of Christ and he in turn is the Head of the church. And we are to seek that will in prayer and the study of the scriptures, and to pray for opportunities and boldness to share God’s love and Christ’s message of hope.

That followed the opening of the epistle, when Paul erupted with the praise of God for his gifts, in particular, salvation. Then he moved on to a prayer for the Ephesians, of both thanks and for the further refinement of their faith.

At the beginning of chapter 2, Paul zeroes in on “you,” dead in your sins. We are not on our deathbed and needing to accept medicine, we are dead and decaying. We are not drowning and needing to grab a life preserver, we are dead, bloated and sunk to the bottom of the ocean. We need the Father to do for us what he did for the Son – to raise us from the dead. We have no part in our justification – we were helpless to accomplish any part of it.

He uses the death metaphor, and then slavery. We are enslaved to three things – the course of the world, the ‘prince of the power of the air’, and the desires of our flesh.

The world of full of ideas and philosophies that are contrary to the truth of God, and we much be aware and on our guard against them. Likewise, the devil, the prince of the lower atmosphere, also at work in the “sons of disobedience” – not something we talk about a lot as a church, but maybe we should? Jesus did, and Paul will even more as we go through Ephesians.

So we have these outside influences, but ultimately we all have lived in our own passions and fulfilling our own desires. We have all broken faith with God and are “children of wrath.”

We must understand the hopelessness and despair that surround the status that God saved us out of, so that we are properly grateful for the greatness of our salvation.

This should also guide how we see others. Those around us are dead in their sins, and we have the secret of life.

-Sermon Notes, Bart Hodgson, Seed Church, Lynnwood WA, August 23, 2020

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Knowing God – Ephesians 1:15-19

Paul here is just coming down from the high of describing our relationship with God, 180 words straight of praise to God for “every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms.” He moves directly off of that and into 160 words straight of prayer.

Perhaps we should be more like that. What would it be like if, the moment needs came up in our minds or in conversation, we brought it to God in prayer immediately?

He begins this section be calling back to all that he said about salvation, as well as citing all the great things he has heard about the faith of the Ephesian church.

Because of all this, he prays for them constantly, both with thanks for them and prayers that they would receive the Holy Spirit.

How do we know that the term Paul uses here, the “Spirit of wisdom and revelation” means the Holy Spirit, rather than a spirit of adventure or the spirit of Christmas? It goes back to what Jesus told his disciples about the Holy Spirit when he promised he would come. Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit would “teach you all things” andconvict the world “of sin, and righteousness and judgement,” – ultimately, to know God. And that is what Paul is praying for here.

It can be easy to think we know God sufficiently – even though we know that God is eternal, and that if we spent a hundred years learning one new thing about God every century, we would still never got to the end of Him.

So that’s the journey Paul is praying the Ephesians for, that the “eyes of your hearts” would be opened. The Jews saw the heart as being the seat of a person’s life, will and very breath. The Greeks saw the heart as the center of our perspective and bias. We know both of these are naturally set against the will of God. That is why the “heart’s eyes” must be enlightened, showing it more and more of the things of God, so that we can know God more.

This passage about hearts having eyes, combined with passages elsewhere that talk about our “heart of stone” together bring to mind the blank eyes of ancient statues. Our hearts need to be given life like Pygmalion, so that their eyes can be opened and we can see God.

And not just God, but also the hope that he called us to in eternity past. That hope is confidence in the inheritance God promises us. Jesus tells us what that inheritance is like in the story of the prodigal son.

And Paul describes it in verse 19, using four different words for power to talk about what God does for us.

And God answers this prayer – what Paul prayed for the Ephesians and what we pray for each other – by speaking to us. He speaks through his word, he speaks through the spirit, he speaks through others, through circumstances and so much more. We must check all that against what the scriptures say and who Jesus is, but God has many ways of enabling us to know Him more and more and more.

– Sermon Notes, Bart Hodgson, Seed Church, Lynnwood WA, August 9, 2020

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Introducing the Holy Spirit – Ephesians 1:13-14

Sometimes when we think about God, we think of Him as being distant and in the past. But the Holy Spirit is here and currently working and present in us.

Verse 11 can be ready two ways, and both are true. We are being obtained as Christ’s inheritance, and in Him we are also obtaining Christ as our own inheritance.

We are going through the longest sentence in the bible, as Paul excitedly walks through the very nature of salvation. The Holy Spirit seals that salvation.

Paul uses the phrase “in Him” over 160 times in his letters. Why do you suppose? Paul knew a lot about God. He knew the whole Old Testament backwards and forwards and was zealous for what he saw as God’s truth. But until that moment on the road to Damascus, he was not “in Him.” For the rest of his life, he lived to show others what it meant to be “in Him.” You can know all there is to know, you can have all the theological training in the world, but none of it matters unless we are in Christ.

And when we are in Him, we are sealed by the Holy Spirit – like a luggage tag marking us as the property and family of God Almighty. It’s a mark of security that let’s us rest easy, and a mark of authenticity that keeps us pointed at what is true.

Let’s go into more about who the Holy Spirit is. First, the Holy Spirit is God – see 2 Corinthians 3:17-18. “Now the Lord is the Spirit.” We see the Holy Spirit before creation, “hovering over the waters.” We see the Holy Spirit enabling the Incarnation. We see the Holy Spirit actually visible at Christ’s baptism. We see the Holy Spirit poured out at Pentecost on believers.

The Holy Spirit is active in appointing leaders in the church, as it describes in Ephesians 4, and active in supporting them. George Mueller wrote, “The anointing of the Holy Spirit helps me greatly when I preach. I would never attempt to teach the truth of God by my own power.”

The Holy Spirit is a person – not an impersonal force, not just a method of God interacting with us, but a person who can be lied to and grieved and more.

The Holy Spirit is not an optional feature for the believer. He dwells in all believers and binds all of us as believers together. He fills us with praise and with boldness.

The Holy Spirit is there for us to cry out to. When we need more goodness, or faithfulness, or patience, or self-control, those are the fruit of the Holy Spirit within us.

The Holy Spirit is a communicator, and the Holy Spirit is powerful. He has been given to us as a down payment on the future God offers us in eternity, and gives us assurance that we are God’s. He does this through His presence and through His fruit.

-Sermon Notes, Bart Hodgson, Seed Church, Lynnwood, WA, August 2, 2020