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Title: The Five Prayers of Paul (Part Two)
Intro:
Last week we covered the first two of the five prayers that Paul offers up for the Ephesian Church, today we will look at the other three.
Prayer Request Three: “…that you, being rooted and grounded in love…”
Paul’s third prayer serves as a sort of launch pad for the final two prayers. He pauses here to consider the posture, if you will, of the hearts of the Ephesians church, to make sure that they are desiring the right things, for the right reasons.
Paul is no stranger in his writing to emphasizing the supremacy of love as what needs to be the driving force for all our actions.
Consider what Paul says elsewhere about the supremacy of love:
If you’ve been to wedding in the last hundred years, chances are you’ve heard the opening words ofI Cor. 13 read:
If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing. I Cor. 13-1-3 NASB
A Look At The Language
Now, what I find noteworthy here is that Paul is not just saying it’s essential that we HAVE love, that we POSSESS love, or even that we PRACTICE love, but specifically that we are two things: rooted and grounded in love.
Now the greek word for rooted (rhizoo) is pretty straight forward, but the word for grounded (themelioo) is a bit more interesting.
Themelioo: to lay the foundation, to found, to make stable, establish
So we see that Paul is actually continuing to use the metaphor of this house that is being built, made and growing of both Jews and Gentiles, and that the literal foundation of this structure is love.
Reflection Questions:
What might a Church be rooted and grounded in, if not love?
- Tradition
- Finances
- Pride/Reputation
- Others?
And what happens if love is not the foundation?
- We deceive ourselves about our closeness with God.
- We often miss His Spirit’s instruction.
- We damage our witness and ability to share the Gospel.
- Others?
How do we keep this from happening? Let me attempt to answer this in one sentence: It is essential that when we are self-evaluating, we ask, “Why am I really doing this? Is it truly for the Glory and love of God, or is something else at play?”
Prayer Request Four: “To know the love of Christ which passes knowledge”
Now, before Paul gets to that prayer request, he uses some pretty vivid language to illustrate the expansiveness of how large the “structure” of Christ’s love is.
J.I. Packer:
These measurements of space recall the temple image of Eph. 2:21. As the “living stones” (1 Pet. 2:5) are linked in love, God’s dwelling grows and is filled with Christ Himself.
God uses the love among “all the saints” Jew and Gentile alike, to build a whole that is greater than any of its individual parts. The spatial language exalts Christ love for His people, a love that is inclusive, in-exhaustable, and self-sacrificing.
Let’s focus on the phrase “which passes knowledge” (NJKV). I think the NIV, NASB and ESV are on to something when they chose to translate this as “which surpasses knowledge”
(Are there any other translations present here today?)
The Greek here is hyperballō which translates as:
to surpass in throwing, to throw over or beyond any thing, to transcend, surpass, exceed, excel, excelling, exceeding
The point I’m making is that Paul is telling us he wants us to be able to comprehend something that is not comprehendible.
How is this possible?
Have any of your experienced something so powerful, so overwhelming, but you don’t fully understand it?
Does this thing that Paul is praying for (that we would comprehend something that is unable to be comprehended) sound like something we can do, or something that is done unto us?
Prayer Request Five: “…that you may be filled with the fullness of God…”
Paul prays the first four requests, that this final thing may be the ultimate result: that we my be filled with the fullness of God.
This is a bit different from the request we just looked at. In that fourth request, Paul is praying that we may understand something that is beyond understanding, here he is asking not just that we understand it, but also experience it.
(Illustration about the roller coaster and death that I use with Hospice, use Silas as example and show a picture of the Millennium Force.)
Point: Some things have to be experienced beyond mental knowledge to be known. Paul wants us to experience “all the fullness of God”. He wants us to have a comprehensive (mental, emotional, spiritual, visceral) experience so powerful, so life altering that it changes how we process everything in the universe.
How does this happen?
(Take answers)
I’m going to slyly avoid the question, and close the message with this hint: Read the next two verses in Ephesians three, and we’ll discuss them next week.