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­­­­LSB  Ephesians 3:14-21

14 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, 16 that He would give you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being firmly rooted and grounded in love, 18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God. 20 Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or understand, according to the power that works within us, 21 to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.

We took a first good run at this prayer of Paul's last week and we made it to somewhere in verse 17.  We didn't get beyond the concept of Christ dwelling in our hearts.  

A central doctrine of the protestant christian faith.  Christ IN you, the hope of glory.  Col. 1:27  If any man has not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His.  Romans 8:9  If we belong to Him, which is true of every believer, or they aren't His, He dwells in our hearts.  Our inner person is the dwelling place of Christ.

And then He does that L word thing.  He is Lord.  He dominates us with His love.  He bends our wills toward His righteousness and away from our old sins.  Little by little we look less like our sinful past and more like the righteousness of Jesus.

The change for some is more profound than for others.  I remember when I first believed, and many of my old friends said, yeah, we'll see how long that stuff lasts.  Well, 54 years later, I'm here to tell you, the love relationship has lasted.  And grown deeper.

Years ago I read a sermon title that has stuck with me.  The expulsive power of a new affection.  The expulsive power of a new affection.  The words were written in the latter Scottish Puritan era by Thomas Chalmers.  But we understand this today.  The expulsive power of a new affection.

Some new love interest comes along, and all the stuff you were working towards last week goes out the window.  The new expels the old.  What was important before, is left in the dust, forgotten.  All of our energy goes into the new love.

When we invite Christ to come and live in our hearts, the old sinful loves, idols, actually, are displaced.  Expelled.  The old is gone, the new has come.  Love does that.  Affection was the old english word.  We would just say love, and mean the same thing.

I've made that pretty black and white, haven't I.  Actually, we can sympathize with folks who are struggling with those old displaced loves that keep showing up and trying to worm their way back in.  Right?  It's an ongoing battle with some of the old idols.  Our flesh dies hard.

And that's why verse 17 is so expansive.  17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being firmly rooted and grounded in love,

No love relationship stays the same.  Loving another person is not static.  Over time the love goes deep.  My love for my wife today is not the same as it was 52 years ago when we were teenagers dating.  It changes and it deepens.  My goodness that woman has forgiven me about a quarter of a million times since those days.  There's an investment.  We've been through a LOT together.

She knows what to expect.  She knows my many weaknesses and my handful of strengths.  She knows she's not going to get cooked vegetables inside me.  She knows my work station and garage are never going to be tidy.  The knowing of each other is very intimate after such a long investment.

Our love relationship, our friendship, with the Saviour is not so different.  It's a long investment of failings and forgiveness.  I know more of His faithfulness after half a century of me failing and Him forgiving me.  The roots after such a long time are very deep.  

With a new love you constantly worry that something somehow is going to interrupt it.  Someone will leave.  Something will break it.  It won't last.  But after years of my faithlessness and His faithfulness, the roots have gone very deep and I am grounded.

I learned something years ago with a volunteer citizens advisory group for the BLM.  A rancher pulled up clump grass on the side of a fence where the cows eat it often, and a like clump of grass on the other side of the fence where the cows are fenced out.

The grass that gets eaten, attacked, if you will, often, by cows biting it off close to the ground, has a much more robust root structure than the clump with no challengers.  The side that gets eaten has a defense system, devised by the creator, where the roots go in survival mode, if you will, and they go down deeper and stronger than ever.

Paul prays for us to be in an intimate relationship with a person who dwells in our hearts.  And then he prays that relationship will have the depth of something with a root system that can withstand any challenge above ground because it's anchored, that's what grounded means.  Rooted and grounded in love.  Such a love, over the long haul, that Christ is reigning supreme in your hearts as Lord, and that you are thriving in His love which is unshakeable.

These days we have images from hurricane cameras in different places and you can watch those trees that bend at a frightening angle in the 150 mile per hour winds that are wreaking havoc on everything in their path.  But when the raging storm is over, the trees still stand.

Paul prays for us to have a love that has an anchoring below the visible surface, a rooting and grounding, so that after the storms rage and everything around us looks different, we will still be standing.  It is a depth of love that does that.  Not a shallow surface love with no roots.

And it's His faithfulness that makes those roots go deep down.  He it is who said;  I will never leave you or forsake you. Heb. 13:5,6 If it was up to me, I'd have been gone long ago.  Swept away in some hurricane.  He is the roots that hold onto me.

I have often repeated a quote I heard somewhere that the church in America is 3000 miles wide and an inch deep.  I not only think we're waiting for the perfect storm, but I would tell you that Covid was a warning shot across the bow.  

After Covid, 43% of what called itself evangelical in America, never returned to church.  If that was the shot across the bow, what will the storm look like?  I believe that rooting and grounding in love has an implicit connection with a deep love and heart knowledge of the things in this book.

The two ideas are inseperable.  You are not rooted and grounded in love if you are not sending your roots down deep in the knowledge of this book.  There is a mystical connection with the Christ in your heart, and the revealed words of God in this book.  

Perhaps that's why the apostle John begins his book with the words;  In the beginning was the logos, and the logos was with God, and the logos was God.  Logos is the greek word for words.  Communication.  Revelation.

To be rooted and grounded in love, that Paul prays for here, is to be rooted and grounded in the words of this book.  It's inseparable.  Jesus is the Logos.  To be rooted and grounded in His love is to be rooted and grounded in the deep heart knowledge of this book God gave to us.

Why do you think David repeatedly cried;  Oh how I love thy law. Ps. 119  It isn't an idolatrous love of a physical object.  David was in love with the person in a mystical union of Christ and the words of this book.  Even in the old testament.  The love of the book is the love of the person of the book.  They are inextricable.  

17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith;  Faith doesn't stand alone.  Faith has to have a connection to something you're believing in.  Faith as Paul uses the word here is the connection to this book.  Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.  Ro. 10:17

So Paul is praying for us to fall in love with the person and by inextricable mystical union, the words of this book.  Somehow they are the same.  Until we see His face, on that day, this book is what we have to hold onto.  

17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being firmly rooted and grounded in love, 18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge,

In case you think I'm getting rather esoteric here, way out on a limb talking about some kind of super christians, Bible egg head types, who like to argue with each other daily over miniscule bits and pieces of the book, I'm not.  

I want to zoom in on who Paul is addressing in this prayer.  that you, being firmly rooted and grounded in love, 18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints

This isn't for some super set apart class of christians, this is for all the saints  Did you get that.  What Paul is describing is normative for all christians.  

Is there a disparity between what Paul prays for as normative for the church, and what we're experiencing?  How many christians do you know who are on fire with a hunger for both more of Jesus and by extension, more of His word.  Until we see Him face to face, can't get enough of this book.  

I run into "christians", (in the manuscript that word is in scare quotes;)  "christians" who not only have no desire for more of Jesus, more of His book, they can't be bothered to come to church.  At all.  

I'm not tooting my own horn, but it's somewhat rare to find a qualified bible teacher who actually engages week in week out in expository exegesis of the word.  But all of these christians in this town, who according to Paul, should be breaking my door down to have more of this book to quench their thirst for more of Christ, the last place they want to be is here.

So much for "all the saints".  You can draw your own conclusions.  But Paul seems to be saying it would be normative for all saints everywhere to be thirsty to experience more of Christ.  How much more?  

17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being firmly rooted and grounded in love, 18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge,

Paul seems to be saying that "all the saints" should be experiencing the breadth and length and height and depth  of Christ.  He moved into your heart to dwell deeply with you.  What happened?  Did we lock Him in a closet?  Let Him out once or twice a month for an hour and a half?  Not the Christ I know.

and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge,

The love of Christ surpasses knowledge.  That indicates that knowledge has no words, no limit that can describe this love, this intimacy with the Saviour.  

How do we define it.  Perhaps Foxe's book of martyrs might be a beginning place.  It isn't a description of the indescribable, but it is evidence.  For centuries, people have had to choose between leaving Christ, walking away from their love affair with Christ, or death.  And they choose death.

The world looks on and says, that's insanity.  Those people are crazy.  Insane.  To trade your life in order to keep Christ.  It doesn't compute.  And that's what Paul just said.  and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge,

It surpasses knowledge.  It doesn't compute.  And this world who hasn't experienced Him, thinks we've lost our minds.  For them it's utter foolishness to equate the value of having Jesus as higher than life itself.  

For this world there is nothing more precious than this life we cling to.  To choose Jesus over your life, is to those who have not experienced the love of Christ, madness.

Paul said;  For me to live IS Christ.  And to die is gain.  Ppn 1:21  Paul said, I'm ready to leave this world behind . . . anytime.  To be here is to have the downpayment.  The Holy Spirit of Christ living in my heart.  But to die will be the full experiential consumation of the promised marriage.

The world has no concept of that.  They think we're fools.  They think we've given up something.  They think we're limited.  Self constrained.

But actually, and I have 53 years behind this statement, it turns out, the few constraints against the sin that the world thinks is everything, actually resulted in maximum thriving.  Here and now.

I wouldn't trade a faithful wife of 48+ years and a loving family, and kids and grandbabies, and a comfortable roof over us and all the blessings we've had because of minimally living according to God's design.

Even if there was no Saviour and no heaven, we had a better life, we thrived far better than the sad world around us.  But we not only thrived, we've had the inner rooting and grounding of joy because of the intimate love of Christ in us.

I talk to non christian camera friends on the phone and decent people are looking around at this world and saying, mercy, what's going on!  Civility is vanishing like a morning fog.  Decency is laughed at.  Common manners are something from a Norman Rockwell picture.  It's like, "hey boomer, go watch the turner classic movie channel and get lost".

The world is angry.  The preservative salt that kept the world from being a festering sore . . . seems to be missing.  Have you noticed that?  The world wanted a divorce from God and His people, and sadly, for them, it seems like God has granted it.  Now it seems like the world around us is getting more bitter and angrier by the day.

Pam and I and our children and grandchildren have enjoyed the blessings of a love that surpasses understanding.  The world doesn't get it.  

Well, we come at last to the final end result of what Paul has been building to in his prayer for all the saints.  Us included.  that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.

Beloved, this is what we were built for.  By God's design, we were created to worship and glorify our Creator.  And by His design, when we do that, we are filled up to bursting with joy.

Why is the world so bitter and angry?  Because God designed us for the joy that is indescribable when we are worshipping Him and glorifying Him.  That's what we were designed to do.  

So then, if you get a divorce from God and move as far away from Him as you can get, what's left.  Well, by design, if we're made for worship and fellowship and that's impossible, you're just empty.  You just have a hollow spot inside you.  And the world tries to fill that void up with sex and drugs and rock and roll, but sooner or later it dawns on you.  You're empty.  Hollowed out, empty.  Vacant.  And then the anger comes.

Look around you if you think I'm wrong.  

What Paul prayed for the Ephesians, and by default, for all saints everywhere for all generations is the polar opposite of the world's emptiness.  that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.

You may think I'm weird, but looking back over all the years of my life, if I were to pick out a few high's, they wouldn't be anything the world could even understand.  For me the highest high points were in rooms with thousands of people, all christians, singing praises to God at the top of their lungs.

That's what makes my eyes leak with joy.  Exhilerating worship is the highest high I've experienced.  T4G conferences in Louisville Kentucky and Shepherds conferences in Southern California.  Extreme corporate worship is as close as I've ever come to what Paul prays for here.  that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.

But Paul isn't praying for mountain top experiences.  What Paul's really praying for is additive over time.  Not the momentary highs.  The long haul of years stacked on top of years of walking with Jesus.  Listen to his doxology, and see if you don't get a sense of what that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.  actually means.

20 Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or understand, according to the power that works within us, 21 to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.

Last week, during our little body life segment, better known as hugging time, I was visiting with Richard and Jeff.  Richard said he had listened to a sermon by A. W. Tozer and that prompted me.

So I found a 1957 recording and listened to A. W. Tozer.  And that made me think of Mr. Maxwell, who was the principal at Prairie Bible Institute when my parents attended in 1956 - 1959.  

I had gotten to experience L. E. Maxwell as a new christian in 1971.  My mom had a new Volkswagen and offered it to me and a friend if we wanted to attend the spring conference at Prairie.  They provide meals and a room for anyone that wants to attend.  It's all free once you get there.

Mr. Maxwell was still in full stride in 1971.  And if you wanted him you had to get up early and go to his little morning Bible study before breakfast.  Most didn't but I'm glad I did.  

So after listening to Tozer I went looking for recordings by Mr. Maxwell and found some.  I listened to him teach about Samson.  A poor quality 1963 recording.  A lot of fun and I highly recommend listening to these dinosaurs that walked the earth in olden times.

Leslie Earl Maxwell was called to teach farm kids in the long winter break, in Three Hills, Alberta Canada, in 1922.  Immediately upon his completion of Bible school education.  And he taught there and was the principal of Prairie Bible Institute for 58 years.  

Sometimes we need to look at the legacies of men like that when we think about Paul's doxology.  Mr. Maxwell had no idea what God would do when he got to the wheat fields of Canada a century ago.  

But God turned that school into a machine that cranked out missionaries that went all over the world and endured hardships we can't imagine.  We'll never know this side of heaven the full number of lives changed and lived for God's glory because of one man.  58 years with a legacy 20 Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or understand, according to the power that works within us, 21 to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.

Likewise I think often these days of my own pastor and mentor, though he doesn't even know he's my mentor, John MacArthur.  In his 54th year at Grace Community Church.

When he first got there his total plan was to get next week's sermons done.  He couldn't see anything beyond just doing that, as best he could.  But 54 years later, he is translated and heard around the world millions upon millions of times each week.

First it was a tape ministry.  We'd buy these little cassette tapes and listen to his expositions.  Verse by verse.  It took him 44 years to make it completely through the New Testament.  One verse at a time.

He will tell you that he thought he had some pretty big impossible dreams 50 years ago.  Beyond all I can ask or think?  I can think pretty big, God.  But now, 54 years later, what God has accomplished, and is still accomplishing every day, while he's still alive to see it all, is beyond his wildest big dreams he thought he had.  

Grace Church has a world wide ministry.  The Masters College, the Master's Seminary, The Masters Academy International.  Well beyond anything he ever thought or dreamed.

Those are just two examples I've been thinking about this week.  If you think about it, Satan's people leave no legacy.  They live, they die, they're forgotten.  They don't do anything lasting, really.  Most don't.  A few do.  Adolf Hitler comes to mind.  And Darwin's theory of Evolution.  I wouldn't want to be him in hell.  But most just do their mischief and die.

But God's people have a living legacy, even after He's taken them home.  I mentioned Thomas Chalmers of 200 years ago.  He was the seventh in a student group at St. Andrews College in England six of which went far and wide into mission fields and we'll never know the final tally of lives rescued because those 7 students.  Even this morning, just the title to one writing has stirred us up to think.

A. W. Tozer left us books that we pore over and enjoy 60 years later.  Even us, as insignificant as we are, here in the fly over hinterlands of Nevada.  We had 134 visitors to our web pages this week.  Did God use something there to help someone who will then help others in the kingdom?

Jesus told the parable of the yeast.  “The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three sata of flour until it was all leavened.”  Matt. 13:33

The legacy christians leave is alive.  Yeast is a living organism that reproduces itself and spreads, literally, forever.  God can take something you've done, or taught, and it can live on in others He's touched through using you, forever.  We have no idea what He has done, until we reach glory some day.

Listen again to Paul's doxology.  
20 Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or understand, according to the power that works within us, 21 to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.

In verse 20 we have what is called a pyramid argument.  What does that mean.  It's a word pile.  A word pile.  Paul just keeps piling words on top of words until you've got this pyramid of words.

20 Now to Him who is able to do all that we ask  wait.  Needs to be more.
20 Now to Him who is able to do beyond all that we ask.  Nope, not quite there yet.
20 Now to Him who is able to do abundantly beyond all that we ask  Ok, it's getting there, but still needs more piled on.
20 Now to Him who is able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all that we ask  OK, we're getting there but still haven't quite said everything.
20 Now to Him who is able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all that we ask or understand,  He can do stuff we never even thought of.  Stuff we didn't understand enough to even ask for.  Things we never dreamed of.

Jesus has got this wealth redistribution plan.  That's real big these days, right.  Wealth redistribution.  Jesus does that too.  He takes from the poor and gives to the rich.  Remember that, in the parable of the talents.  The guy with one talent.  Jesus takes it from him and gives it to the guy with 10!  

We'll have wealth we never even thought of.  Never entered our dreams.  Such is our benefactor.

20 Now to Him who is able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all that we ask or understand, according to the power that works within us,

Why?  Why are we praying for things we haven't even thought of?  Glory.  Worship.  God is worthy of glory and worship.

21 to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.

Our goal is God's glory.  That's our purpose.  That's what we were created to do.  And that's when the fulness of joy flows in us and through us, when we are accomplishing His glory.  That's what He made us to do.  And when we do that, the fulness comes.