Life In Christ – An Exposition of Ephesians

Our Enlightenment in Christ

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Good morning, church. It’s good to see all of you here this morning. We’re continuing our series through the book of Ephesians called Life in Christ, and we’re going verse by verse through the book of Ephesians. And over these 6 weeks, we’ll cover the first 3 chapters, and then we’ll take a little break for the holidays, and we’ll come back in 2027 and cover the last 3 chapters of the book of Ephesians. The key phrase in the book of Ephesians is in Christ, in Christ.

Some form of this phrase is repeated 36 times in the book of Ephesians, in Christ, in Him, in the Beloved. The key according to Paul is that being a Christ follower, being a Christian means that you are living your life in Christ and Christ in you. And so the book of Ephesians is really very naturally and evenly divided between the first 3 and the last 3 chapters. The first 3 chapters, Paul gives us our position in Christ. Who we are in Christ, our identity, our possessions, our position in Christ.

And then in the last 3 chapters, he gives us the practices of what it looks like to live that out. And so it very naturally falls in these 2 ways. And when he describes the Christian life, he doesn’t talk about it in this way. He does not say it’s merely a life for Christ, nor is it a life living like Christ, but it’s a life lived in Christ and Christ in you. And he wants to be clear about that distinction.

Now the Apostle Paul is writing this letter to a group of believers, a church in the city of Ephesus, and he spent about 3 years there as we read in the book of Acts chapter 19 and 20. And a good way to read the letter to the believers in Ephesus would be to go and read the book of Acts chapter 19 and 20 so you get the context of the people that he’s writing to. But he spends longer there than probably any other city where he planted a church. So we see that he refers to being there about 3 years and establishing that church. But now he’s writing this letter to the believers there 7 or 8 years later from a Roman prison.

And so he’s writing to the people that he knows, although the church has grown, And he’s writing to the people that he loves there, this letter to the believers in Ephesus. Now, Ephesus is a real place, and I’m always reminding us of this, that the Bible’s about real places, real people, and real events. It’s not a book of myths, it’s a real book, a historical book, and Christianity is a historical faith. It’s not just something dreamed up, but it’s something that’s based and in history. And so for that reason, that’s why I love maps and charts and all this stuff.

So it’s just to give you the reality of it. And so here’s a map of the ancient world during Paul’s time. And Ephesus at that time was one of the 4 largest cities in the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire took in all of the land really around the Mediterranean Sea. And Ephesus was probably among the 4 largest cities.

It had about a population around 200,000, 250,000 people. It’s a big city. It was also where the Roman proconsul, it was the seat of the Roman proconsul, and it was a very wealthy city in Asia Minor, which is modern-day Turkey. Now Paul’s from this area, he was born in Tarsus, and he was born a Roman citizen, the Scripture teaches us. He was born with the name, given name Saul from the tribe of Benjamin, Saul being the first king of Israel, Saul a Benjamite, and so he was given a royal name.

But he changed his name after he became a believer and he was known as Paulus, which is the idea of little one. He went from royal name to saying, I’m the least of the apostles, I’m one untimely born. So this is Paul and he’s writing this from Rome to the church at Ephesus. Go to the next slide. This slide shows the ruins of Ephesus today.

And so my wife and I visited there some years ago and the photographs here are photographs I took. And so this is going down one of the major, streets in Ephesus down to the Library of Celsus, which was one of the most amazing libraries in the ancient world. In the distance, you can see a valley that would have been the Mediterranean Sea during Paul’s time, but the river, the silt in the river kept going out, there was an earthquake, and the port that had been here dried up. And so the wealth of the city dried up with it and the people left. And so today it’s one of the most amazing ruins in, in the world to go and see what first-century times looked like.

Go to the next slide. I just put that in there so you’d know I was really there, okay? And this is Robin and I standing in front of the Library of Celsus. Go to the next slide. And so the next slide is— this is a picture of the 25,000-seat theater or stadium where we read about in Acts chapter 19 where a riot broke out.

And Demetrius, who was one of the leaders of the silversmith guild, was very upset because their business was drying up. They were known for making little figures of Artemis. And by the way, that’s where one of the 7 Wonders of the World was during Paul’s time. That was the temple to Artemis or to Diana. And so an earthquake caused that to fall, but it would’ve been amazing, this white marble that you would’ve seen atop the mountain overlooking Ephesus and over top of the city, this 25,000-seat stadium, and that’s where Demetrius led a riot that broke out against Christians, and he was saying, Great is Artemis of the Ephesians, and Paul wanted to go in there and preach, and his people kept him out of there.

But you can read about that in Acts chapter 19. This street would have gone out from that stadium to the port where all the marketing goods came in and out of that city. So this is a real place, You can go and visit there today. And so Paul is writing a letter. He opens up with a wonderful salutation.

Then he takes a little break, verses 3 through 14, and gives us what we studied last week, a eulogy, if you will, a doxology of the amazing things that we have in Christ Jesus, that we have every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. Now we hear the word eulogy, we usually think of a funeral, But it literally just means good word. He has a good word about what we have, the possessions we have, our identity in Christ. But now in verse 15, he’s going to get back to what he normally does in a letter, and that is after the salutation, normally he talks about how he’s thankful and what he’s praying for us. And that’s where we’ll be today.

He’s praying that we will be enlightened to know that list of blessings that he had just prayed over us in 3rd, or just taught us in 3 through 14. Now he’s praying that we will really know the reality of it, not just head knowledge, but like it would really sink into our hearts. And so he begins to pray that out, that we will fully understand what we possess in Christ. Now I remember some years ago when I was a college student, I had the privilege of hearing Bill Bright speak. Bill Bright was the founder of Campus Crusade for Christ.

Now known as Cru. And so I was hearing him speak and I remember he talked about telling the story of Ira Yates. Ira Yates was a sheep rancher in West Texas and his ranch was about to go under. His family was living on government assistance. He was about to go bankrupt and lose the ranch when some people came and offered to do a study of his land to see if they could find oil there.

And it just so happened that they drilled and they struck oil and it became the famous Yates Oil Field, one of the most large reservoirs of oil so that even today they’re still pumping oil from the Yates Oil Field in the Permian Basin of West Texas. But here’s what makes that story so powerful. He always had that oil. When he owned that land, he owned that oil. He just didn’t know that he owned it.

It was already his, but he was living in poverty while wealth lay just below the surface. And many Christians today are living in spiritual poverty.

They’ve received Christ, they’re a Christ follower, but their hearts have not been enlightened to know the reality of what they have and what they’ve been given. So Paul writes this to the people of Ephesus from a Roman prison. He goes, I love you and you’ve got all of this, but I’m praying that it would move from just intellectual knowledge to where it’s in your heart. I’m praying that the eyes of your heart would be enlightened so that you know what you have in Christ. Many Christians today are living spiritually impoverished lives because they don’t know what they have in Christ.

As we look at the text today, Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, prayed that God would enlighten their eyes of their hearts so that they could know what they have in Christ. And I believe today we can know, we can have our hearts enlightened so that we know the reality. And as we look at the text, we’ll see 3 realities that we can understand about what God has given us in Christ. So put your seatbelts on, we’re getting ready to pull out from the bus stop, okay? Getting ready to pull out, starting at verse 15, and we’re going to be talking about what we have in Christ.

For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which He has called you? What are the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints? And what is the immeasurable greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His great might that He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at the right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and above every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come. And He put all things under His feet and gave Him as head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all. This is God’s Word, amen, amen.

So we’re looking for 3 realities of what God has given us in Christ Jesus. Here’s the first reality, it’s the reality of our hope in Christ. It’s the reality of our hope in Christ. Now, I’m going to explain where that’s at in the Scripture, but first I need to do a little background because he starts at verse 15 with what he normally does in his other letters immediately after the salutation. If you read Paul’s letters, they always begin with Paul identifying himself and then identifying who the letter is to, which we see in verses 1 and 2, he’s done that.

But then he did something unusual in the book of Ephesians. He inserts this new thing here, verses 3 through 14, this eulogy and this list of blessings. It’s kind of unusual. I think his letter to the church of Ephesus is unique in that he was giving a blueprint to the church at Ephesus, the place he spent the most time of any church he planted, the church I believe that was so important in Asia Minor that other churches were being planted out of it. It was one of those lighthouse churches that was affecting the whole world.

He gave them really a blueprint of what the church is.

That the church is this mystery revealed, the secret that God kept in His heart that is now revealed, and he’s giving this to us. And so he gives us this insert of this doxology, if you will, and then he gets back to his normal practice in verse 15, and he says, for this reason, What reason for this list of that you have every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places? Because you have all this, and also because I’ve heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus. How’s he hearing it? Well, he’s probably hearing it when he’s writing during this same time, he’s writing letters to Timothy, he’s writing letters to Titus from a Roman prison, he’s getting word back from Timothy, people are traveling back and forth and keeping him up to date.

He’s heard how not only the ones he led to Christ, but more people are coming to Christ. He’s heard about it. Because I’ve heard, because God’s given you all this and because I’ve heard about your faith, and then I’ve also heard the proof of your faith, the evidence of your faith. And what’s the evidence of their faith? That they love the saints.

I’ve heard about how you love each other. You hear this today, you ever hear this? I love Jesus, but but I don’t like the church very much. You ever? It’s a modern, kind of a popular thing for people to say today.

Yeah, I love Jesus, but I don’t think that much of the church. And that’s not how Paul thinks. Paul says, I see your faith in Jesus, that you love Jesus, and it’s evidenced by the fact that you love His people. Notice it’s love toward all the saints. Now look, I love most of you, but some of you are harder to love.

And some days you might run into me and you might think, well, he’s kind of hard to love today because I’m just one of you, right? But it says all the saints, that they’d learned to love all the saints. Oh Lord, may that be true of us. And be careful about saying, I love Jesus, but I don’t think much of the church because we see later on in verse 22 and 23 that the church is His body, His bride. If you talk bad about my wife, now look, you can talk bad about me and I’ll turn the other cheek.

Jesus told me to. But you talk bad about my wife, I’m liable to slap you upside the head.

Right? Okay, I don’t know if that’s Christian, but that’s the way I’d probably roll with it. Because I don’t want you talking bad about my wife. So be careful about talking about the bride of Jesus, the love of the saints. He says, for this reason, because of this great, this great doxology that he’s already listed, because of your faith, because of your love for the saints, I give thanks.

I don’t cease giving thanks for you and praying for you. And that’s kind of usually where he lands right after the salutation. This is unique that it finally lands here. And then he gives 3 prayer requests. Okay, I’m getting there.

I’m finally getting to point 1 here. He gives 3 prayer requests, but it really begins with this purpose statement. This is how I pray. I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, so he prays to the Father through the Son, that the Spirit, okay, so we see a Trinitarian prayer here in verse 17. I pray to the Father in the name of the Son that the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, and so that’s kind of a name for the Spirit here, the Holy Spirit, that He’s the Spirit of wisdom, He’s the Spirit of revelation.

We see some names revealed here about who the Holy Spirit is and what He does for us. So I’m praying to the Father in the name of the Son that the power of the Holy Spirit, and then verse 18, he finally gets to his prayer request. The key prayer request is, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened. Unusual language. My heart has eyes?

Well, he’s not talking about the one beating in your chest, he’s talking about the center, the driver’s seat of your life. He’s talking about the seat of your will, your intellect, and your emotions. If you talk about who you are, that’s that, that who you are, the center. And he says, before, and you can read about this as we keep getting into Ephesians farther, before our hearts were darkened, the eyes of our hearts was dark and we lived in darkness and we were in rebellion against God. But now that you’re in Christ, and the light has come on, I pray that your eyes are wide open so that your hearts are enlightened.

The word has the idea of to be illuminated.

For what? And then he gives the 3 prayer requests. I told you I’d finally get here.

That you may know what, what, what? Well, 3 whats. That you may know what is the hope, what are the riches, what is the power. Let’s deal with hope first. I told you I’d get there.

Paul lists 3 whats, 3 realities that he’s praying for the believers in Ephesus. You have all this, he says in verses 3 through 14, you have every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, but you don’t live like it. You own all the spiritual oil in heaven, but you’re living spiritually impoverished lives. You’re living by your own strength. You’re living as if what you’re living with in your circumstances is all that’s real, but there’s so much more.

So he says, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened that you may know what is the hope to which He has called you. You’ve been called to hope.

Hope is, it’s confident expectation. It’s not a wish, it’s not, well, I hope it doesn’t rain today. I hope my team wins today. Those are wishes without any power or object of making that happen. It’s just like you’re throwing a wish out there, but that’s not biblical hope.

Biblical hope’s confident expectation based on the promises of God and the reality of what He’s already done. And so He’s called you to that kind of hope. That kind of hope is not a pessimistic hope. Frame of mind. To have your heart enlightened with the hope to which you’ve been called means you put away pessimism.

You have a joy, you have a certain kind of the cup is not only half full, it runneth over, rather than going around with a rain cloud over your head all the time.

And so the mark of one who’s had their heart enlightened, you might be going through hard times, you might be going through suffering, not be going through difficulty, but because you know the reality of the hope that you have in Christ to which you’ve been called, you live with a confident expectation that all things are well, all things will be well.

Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ underneath, Christ above me, Christ in the face of those who greet me. All things are well, all things will be well.

So Christians should be marked by this confident expectation of good, this not— I’m not talking about positive thinking, something like you’ve worked up in your own self, I’m talking about Christian hope, living hope, resurrection hope, confident hope in Christ. You’ve heard me talk about this before, but hope is like a rope, biblical hope is like a rope. Let me read some verses to you and then I’ll explain what I mean. 1 Peter 1:3 says, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. So our Christian hope is anchored, it’s tied off at the empty tomb, the resurrection of Jesus.

So it’s not just flopping in the breeze. Christian hope is like a rope, it’s anchored in the empty tomb. And then we see in Titus 2, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ. So it’s anchored on the other end in His return, His promised return. So we have these 2, we have the historical reality, it’s already happened, it’s a promise kept that He’s overcome sin, death, and the grave, and our hope is tied off there.

And then we have His promise that’s not yet been realized, but it’s anchored, and our hope is anchored on both ends that He’s coming again. And so we have a past hope and a future hope. And then we have, it says in Hebrews chapter 6, this hope is a strong and trustworthy anchor for our souls. It leads us through the curtain into God’s inner sanctuary. So we have a present hope that it passes through the curtain to where Jesus is seated now.

And so this hope is a confident expectation. Do you know this? Do you possess it? Have your eyes, has Paul’s prayer been answered in you. And so across the centuries, we hear this prayer that God is calling us to have this kind of confident expectation of hope in Jesus.

This hope means that we stop interpreting our future through our present circumstances, and instead we interpret our present circumstances according to our future. So we set our Hope on things, we set our minds, we set our hearts, Colossians 3:1-3, we set our hearts and our minds on Christ Jesus. We set our hearts and minds on things that are above, not things here, and this is our hope. And so when we are discouraged, we can say, this is not the end of my story. When we are facing loss or we are facing grief and loss, my hope is a living hope in the resurrection.

When the world seems uncertain and the news is continually bad, we go, my future’s anchored in the living Christ. We can live in joyful and confident expectation, having our hearts enlightened with this hope to which we’ve been called. Come on, Christian, come on, believer, have this hope. This confident expectation in Christ. Here’s the second reality, the reality of our inheritance in Christ.

We’re still in verse 18. This is the second what that he prays, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened that you may know what is the hope to which He has called you, what are the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints. There’s something wonderfully rich about Paul’s language here. He seems to be searching for words big enough to describe what belongs to us. He says, what is the riches?

What are the riches? The wealth of His glorious, magnificent, excellent inheritance in the saints. He seems to be searching for wonderful words to describe this. Now grammatically speaking, this little section might surprise you. I wanna slow down and lean into it a little bit.

What are the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints? Unusual. Not for the saints, in the saints. And so you might’ve missed this. It might mean, and I believe it does, that the inheritance He’s not speaking primarily here of that which we have, but that we are Christ’s inheritance.

Now stay with me. Having the eyes of your hearts enlightened that you may know what is the hope to which, what are the riches of His glorious, His, speaking of Christ, glorious inheritance in the saints. Is that possible? That Christ went to a cross, died for our sins, and paid for a people, that we would be His inheritance, His possession?

Forgive me for a minute, but I feel like He got the short end of the stick here, that He who had all, created all, all things are We were His, but we rebelled against our Creator. And so He sent His Son and He bought us back out of our sin, back out of our slavery, back out of our rebellion and made us children of God. And so we are His inheritance. Seems to be saying that. Let you get your mind around that, that He loved us so much that He would do this for us, that we would be His inheritance, but it also means what we first think when we read it, I think, I think it’s both and, but in Him, everything that belongs to Him belongs to us.

So we are His and He is ours, it’s both. It’s both, it’s glorious, it’s magnificent, it’s riches, spiritual riches beyond anything worldly. And so Peter writes, we have a priceless inheritance. You can’t put a price tag on it, it’s priceless. It’s an inheritance that is kept in heaven for you, pure and undefiled, beyond the reach of change and decay.

Everything here runs down, entropy is active in this universe, everything is running down.

Some of us are running down.

A lot of us, our 401s look more like a 101, right? The stock market.

But our heavenly inheritance is priceless and it’s kept perpetually for you.

Possessions in this world are temporary, but our spiritual inheritance is priceless and eternal.

Most clearly we see in Romans chapter 8 that we are adopted as children and we’re now co-heirs with Christ. Look what it says, now if we are children, then we are heirs, heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ. There it is, whatever belongs to Jesus belongs to us and whatever, and we belong to Him. And so that every, how much? Every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places is ours.

Because it belongs to Jesus and we belong to him and he belongs to us. That’s a wonderful thing. Some years ago, a man named Bud Post won $16.2 million in the Pennsylvania lottery. Overnight, he possessed enormous wealth, but within a few years, the money was gone and he declared bankruptcy. His problem was not that he lacked riches, His problem was that possessing riches did not automatically give him wisdom to match, and so he blew it all.

That helps us understand Paul’s prayer. He’s not praying for us to have an inheritance, we already have one. He’s praying that the eyes of our heart would be enlightened so that we know it.

That’s his prayer, that we would have the wisdom and revelation, that the Spirit of wisdom and revelation would help us to realize the reality of what we already have so that we would begin to live like we already have it. That helps us understand his prayer better. It’s not enough just to possess the riches of Christ, we need the wisdom to live in light of So Paul is able to write in his letter to the Philippians, and this same God who takes care of me will supply all your needs from His glorious riches, which have been given to us in Christ Jesus.

How many of your needs? Most of them, right? He’ll supply most of your needs. Some of your needs? All your needs.

Not your greeds, doesn’t say greeds. ‘Cause some of us are in trouble because we’ve bowed down to the idolatry of materialism and we’ve spent more than we should. We probably have to deal with that. You know, be sure your sin will find you out. But He’s there to forgive you and help you and meet all your needs according to His riches in Christ Jesus.

Oh my goodness. That’s not just book knowledge for me. I’ve experienced this. I remember in the early days when we planted the church, I was— I planted the church and I was still finishing seminary at the time. I just felt like I’d waited too long to give my life to Jesus, so I was just trying to get it all done.

Something about a young 30-something guy, that’s how— that’s how when we’re young we think. That’s how I was thinking at least. And so I’m driving my little Subaru to Wake Forest, going over to Southeastern Seminary, and I would leave some mornings with the gas on E, and I would be like, I don’t know how I’m gonna get there, but I’m gonna go. I’ve got an 8 o’clock class, don’t have any money, just planted this new church, I don’t get paid regular, but Lord, you said in your Word that you’d meet all my needs in Christ Jesus, and you said that he owns the cattle on 1,000 hills, I hadn’t been seeing any at stake lately, but I’m believing it. My Subaru’s on E and I drive to seminary and you might think I’m, this is just true, I drive home on E. Happened more than once.

I mean, that’s fear and trembling there, boy. But I had kind of decided, well, if it runs out, I’ll pull over and stick my thumb out, but I’m going to just walk by faith. Sometimes you have to go down to where you don’t have anything before you’ll trust Him with everything. And little by little, He made sure this preacher didn’t just have book knowledge, but he had real eyes of his heart enlightened so that you could recognize that He never lets His children go begging bread.

He will meet all your needs. This leads to the third reality that Paul prays for, the third what, it’s in verse 19. He said, what is the hope? What is the inheritance? And then in verse 19, he says, what is the immeasurable greatness of His power toward us who believe?

What is the immeasurable greatness? If you think Paul was running out of words to describe earlier the hope and the inheritance, man, he just piles on when he starts talking about God’s power in Christ Jesus Toward us who believe, the immeasurable greatness. Oh, I wish you could read it in the in the Greek original. It’s it’s just this list of these these amazing words like hupo hyperbalo, hyperbalo. Hyper is where we get the word hyper or super, and balo.

This is perfect. It means to throw, right? And so hyperbalo means to throw it so far it’s out of sight. Like that. And so he says that’s the word immeasurable, huperballo.

And then he says the greatness, which is megathos, the megathos. So the huperballo megathos dunamis, dunamis, that’s where we get the word dynamite, dynamic. It’s explosive power, it’s resurrection power. He’s just piling on the power words here, immeasurable greatness, power, working is energia. Energy, great, mighty.

He just keeps going. He’s saying, look, do you realize that the power in Christ is toward you who believe? That you have that kind of— and then he illustrates it like this with 5 quick moves here of the supreme demonstration of that power which God exercised When He raised Christ from the dead, verse 20, when He seated Him at the right hand of the Father, verse 20, placed Christ above every spiritual power and authority, verse 21, put all things under Christ’s feet, verse 22, gave Christ the head over everything to the church, verse 22. He just keeps going. This is what the power demonstrated looks like.

So the measure of God’s power toward us is nothing less than the exaltation, the resurrection and exaltation of Jesus.

That power that raised Christ from the dead and seated Him at the right hand of the Father and put Him over all things is now available to us in Christ.

Well, wow, what do I do with that kind of power? Well, I want you to open your eyes. I want the Holy Spirit to open your eyes so you recognize that this power that raised Him from the dead is yours. It worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead. It seated Him at the right hand far above every rule and authority and power and dominion, that His name is higher than any name.

Not only in this age, Jesus is not only the highest name in this age, but forever in the age to come. His name will always be the highest. That’s what His power has done in Christ. And He’s put all things under His feet and He made Him head of the church, which is His body, and His fullness, His Spirit, fills His body. Oh man, I pray that that would be our church, that the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ would so fill us, fill me, fill you, fill our body so that when people drive onto the parking lot, when they drive onto the property, they go, what is that?

So that the glory of the Lord is present in our church.

This power’s available. This is why when Jesus is teaching about the vine and the branches. He says in John chapter 15, apart from me you can do nothing. Oh, you can do stuff apart from Him, but it amounts to nothing. But to bear the fruit that’s everlasting, that’s eternal, it’s in Christ, that power to do that, to find that strength in Christ.

And so God never intended for us to live spiritually impoverished life. But to live powerful lives, not in our own strength, but in the strength of Jesus. And so Paul says this in Philippians, he says, I can do everything through Christ who gives me strength. How many things can I do? I can do all things, I can do everything through Christ who gives me strength, Paul says.

Think about the Ephesians who are receiving this letter, think about where they were coming from. This wealthy city. Some were formerly caught up in magic and astrology and witchcraft.

That was then, we don’t have that problem today, right? No, that’s just as prevalent today, maybe more so.

They were caught up in the Artemis cult of this pornographic— if you ever saw an image of Artemis during that time, it’s a pornographic image.

They worshiped by, the sailors loved coming to Ephesus because they’d go up to the Temple of Artemis, the Temple of Diana, with the temple prostitutes, the priestesses, and they would worship that way. It was a pornographic, it was a sexually messed up world that they lived in.

And emperor worship. I showed last week a photo of the arch that was built to honor Caesar. And so they worshiped politics and the king, and that doesn’t sound like today, does it?

Yeah, we really haven’t changed. Think about where they were coming from, and here’s Paul saying, you used to live dark and perverted lives, but now you’ve Come into the light and let the light shine in your heart so that you know the hope, so that you know the inheritance, so that you know the power that raised Christ from the dead now lives in you.

So when we say, I can’t forgive that person, you don’t know what they’ve done to me, I say, And the Word says, I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength. When I say, I can’t go through this, I can’t go through this word I’ve heard from the doctor, I can’t go through this suffering, yet in the midst of it, the One who suffered for us, I can say, ’cause He lives in us, I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength. When we say, I can’t endure this trial, I can’t overcome this addiction, this temptation, I can say, I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.

When I say, I can’t change, or I can’t do this, every time I say I can’t, we need to hear the prayer of Paul.

That the Spirit would open the eyes of your heart so that you recognize, I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.

But when I face that my marriage is in trouble, when I have a rebellious teen, when I have a— well, it’s the end of the month, isn’t it, Gary? I mean, there’s a mortgage payment coming, a car payment coming here in a few days.

I can. Jesus, that’s your house, your mortgage is due.

You know, we give it all to him and say, I can do all things through Christ. Paul wants us to have our eyes open to the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe. Maybe our greatest need today is not to pray for some new thing from God, We’re always praying, hey God, give me this, hey God, give me that. Maybe our greatest need is not to ask God to give us something more, but to open our eyes to what He’s already given us now, that we already have. It’s already right there below the surface, the spiritual riches that is already ours in Christ Jesus.

If only our eyes would be open to see what we already possess. Our hope is secure in Christ. Our inheritance is glorious in Christ. Our power is immeasurable in Christ. He’s risen and reigning and returning, and He’s at work in us if only we would open the eyes of our heart and know.

At the cross, Jesus paid for everything that separated us from God. In the resurrection, He conquered the grave, and now He’s seated at the Father’s right hand far above every power and dominion dominion and ready for the day when He will return. So church, let’s stop living like paupers in spiritual impoverishment.

We have been made rich in Christ. Let’s pray with Paul. Father, open the eyes of my heart that I may see all that belongs to me in Christ. Father, open the eyes of my heart And if you’re here today and you’ve never given your life to Jesus, you’ve never trusted Him, these riches are only available in Him.

So repent of your sin, come to the cross, put your faith in the crucified and risen Savior, and ask Him to take your life over as your Lord and Savior and receive the life that’s found in Christ. Let’s pray.

Lord, I first humbly pray for myself, Lord, that I would grow in being enlightened in my heart to know the reality of Your hope, of Your inheritance, of Your power, not to live according to my circumstances, but according to my position according to my identity in Christ. Lord, start with me.

And Lord, I pray that for everyone here. Start with this church, start with us, start with this people that have put their faith in Jesus, this people to love all the saints. I pray, Lord, that You would enlighten the eyes of our heart So that we would know what we have in Jesus.

And Lord, I pray for that one that’s arrived here today far from you. They came in on a thin thread. Someone invited them. They’ve been looking for something. Would you admit right now that you’re a sinner and that you need a Savior right where you are?

You can talk to Jesus about it. The Bible says if you confess Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart God raised Him from the dead, you’ll be saved. Why not talk to Him right now? You can follow with me. Dear Lord Jesus, I’m a sinner.

I repent of my sin and I just turn my life to You now. I believe You died on the cross for me, that You were raised from the grave, that You live today. Come and live in me by Your Spirit.

Adopt me into your family. I wanna be a child of God. I wanna follow you all the days of my life as my Lord and Savior. If you’re praying that prayer of faith believing, he’ll save you.

Oh Lord, enlighten the eyes of our hearts that we may know what we have in Jesus. Amen.

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Good morning, church! Thank you for being here this morning. We’re so grateful you’re here with us today. If you didn’t notice on your way in, feel free to head out in the lobby and grab yourself a donut if you didn’t get one yet. That’s not just because we love you, although we do.

It is our 11-year anniversary today, and so this is the exact day— yeah, give the Lord a hand! This is the exact day that we planted our church, September 27th of 2015. And so 11 years we’ve been doing this crazy thing we call church. And I’m very thankful to be preaching this morning, to be with you. Thank you for being here on our sweet anniversary.

And we’re in part 2 of our series called Life in Christ. We’re going through the book of Ephesians together, and we’re gonna complete the first half before Christmas, and then we’re gonna come back to it after the holidays some point next year. And so we’re gonna cover these first 3 chapters in Ephesians, and we’ve rightly, I think, titled this Life in Christ. 36 times Paul says these words, in Christ, in the book of Ephesians. This is really the point of his letter to them.

He’s writing this letter from a prison cell and he wants to remind the people of Ephesus, hey, life is, is so amazing in Christ Jesus. And if he can say that from a prison cell, we can certainly say that this morning here sitting in this room. He knew very well how good things are in Christ Jesus despite what our circumstances look like. Now, I talked about this last week. Ephesus is this city.

I’m going to show you one image of what it looks like in modern times, but it’s one of the greatest cities of the Roman world in the first century. Somewhere around 250,000 or more people lived there. It was like number 4 largest city in the known world of its day. And so, the Ephesian believers there really had a lot of work ahead of them. In fact, one of the things they dealt with most was false god worship there.

There was a temple there to Diana or Artemis, depending on if you were Greek or Roman, and they were— much of their economy was based around worshiping that false god, goddess, in fact. And so, riots are occurring in Ephesus as the people, when they come to Christ, they stop buying the souvenirs, they start burning all the false books, and it creates a stir in Ephesus that people are now worshiping Jesus instead of Artemis or Diana. And so, this is the people that Paul is writing to, knowing that they’re dealing with not only the wonder of the gospel, but also the turmoil of living in this dark culture. Now, I would say that things are so different for us in the 21st century, but I would not think that was true to say. We’re not living in Ephesus for sure.

We’re not worshiping a false goddess named Diana, but we have many of our own cultural problems that we face as the church, as Christians. And so, this letter to me is so timeless. 7 years after Paul has been in Ephesus, he’s imprisoned in Rome, and now he’s writing that they would be— he’s going to use this word today— that they would be enlightened to know what God has done for them, that they wouldn’t miss the riches they have in Christ. So today’s title is Our Enlightenment in Christ. Now, I want to share a story with you that I hope will start getting your mind thinking about this.

This is a classic story. There was a man way back, about 100 years ago, named Ira Yates. You know he’s an old guy because you don’t meet many Iras anymore. Ira Yates was a struggling West Texas sheep rancher. His family was living on government assistance, and Yates was in danger of losing his ranch.

In 1926, an oil company drilled on his property and struck what would become the famous Yates Oil Field, one of the greatest oil discoveries of its day. Suddenly, Ira Yates went from this struggling man who might lose it all to a very, very wealthy man. Now, the reason I tell you that story is not so you’ll go digging in your backyard. It’s probably not going to work out. All right, the reason I tell you that story is because something powerful happened here that is true for you and me, and it’s this: all along, the land he owned, the land he was walking on, all along it was rich.

Nothing changed at any point other than that they discovered it. So for years of his life, Ira Yates was struggling, not knowing that he was literally walking on the very land that was full of riches. Now, the reason I tell you that story is because that is, I believe, where most of us, if not many of us, are as Christians, is that we’re walking around feeling impoverished, feeling like everything is going to turmoil, while at the same time we are walking on the very ground where God has blessed us with great riches. And I’m not talking about earthly wealth, I’m talking about something way, way better. And so to me, Ira Yates represents us.

He already owned the land and the rights and living— he was living in poverty despite the fact that everything he needed was right under his feet. That’s us. Many Christians today, we live the same way spiritually. We live though we’re impoverished spiritually, though we don’t understand the riches we already have in Christ Jesus. That was Paul’s prayer.

We’re going to dig in today to really a, a prayer to the church of Ephesus. Kind of an interesting passage of Scripture, but I think it’s going to truly encourage and bless you. I hope more than anything you would walk out today feeling encouraged in the Lord. That’s Paul’s desire, and so I hope that for you, because his prayer to them is not that God would make them rich, but that they— that God would open up their eyes to the fact that they already were rich in Christ. And so are you, and so am I.

So here we go, we’re going to be in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, chapter 1. We’re going to see his prayer that God would enlighten the eyes of their hearts so that they might know that they know that they know what they had in Christ Jesus. And we can understand this too. I pray the text would show you 3 realities we can understand about the God who’s given us so much in Christ. So let’s read this handful of verses, chapter 1, verses 15 through 23.

Here’s what Paul writes: For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him, Having the eyes— this is a key one, church— having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which He has called you, what are the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His great might. And here’s how He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead. And seated Him at the right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age, but also the one that is to come. And He put all things under His feet and gave Him head, as head, over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all. This is God’s Word.

Amen. I hope you can hear just in the way that Paul is writing and speaking to them how excited he is for them. Now, I mentioned this last week. Last week we had a long run-on sentence from verse 3 to verse 14. It was 202 words in the Greek.

Now he’s just really quickly exhaled all that wondrous blessing from God, and now he takes a deep breath spits out another long sentence. That’s a run-on sentence in the Greek, 160-some words, just boom, boom, boom, that you would know what is the immeasurable riches, what is the glory, what is the— and on and on he goes. Why? Because he wants us to get this truth, that we would actually see it, not just know it, but that we would see it and experience it in our lives. So the first reality of what God has given us in Christ is is a reality of our hope in Christ.

We have a hope that’s different. It’s a different kind of hope. Now, I would say the first thing that comes to my mind when I think of this hope is some of the recent occasions I’ve had, both personally and as a pastor, where I’ve seen the hope of believers when God calls people home. There’s a certain kind of hope that we have in Christ Jesus knowing that our loved ones are are going on and waiting for us there. There’s a certain kind of hope there that doesn’t diminish grief.

Grief’s real. And the missing person, that’s real. And I’ve experienced that recently. Many of you have as well. And most of you, if not all of you, have experienced this in life.

But there’s a huge difference in doing a funeral for someone who was not in Christ and those who were. It’s hard to do the ones who weren’t. You just try to give hope to the family, but the confidence that we have for those who are in Christ gives us incredible hope. Paul says in his letter here, he says, for this reason, and the reason is I’ve just told you about all these wonderful blessings, that you have a Father who’s chosen you, that you have a Son who has died for you and redeemed you and ransomed you, and you have a Holy Spirit now in you who has sealed you, you have a guarantee of this inheritance. For all those reasons, I want to tell you, you should live in this reality that you have a hope in Christ Jesus.

That’s the first. Now, if you’re reading the text with me, if you’ve got your bulletin in front of you, I want you, if you want to, to underline— there are 3 whats that start in verses— they start in verse 18. The first one, he says, what is the hope to which he has called you, comma, what are the riches, and then verse 19, what is his glorious inheritance? Now, if you want to know how I’m about to unpack this with you, it’s based on those 3 whats. Statements.

The first is, what is the hope? We’re going to talk about the riches, we’re going to talk about the inheritance, we’re going to talk about those 3 what statements. He says, for this reason you’ve been blessed, and I’ve heard, I’ve heard you guys have faith, I’ve heard you guys have love for the saints. That’s, that’s encouraging for me to hear, Paul writes, because it tells me that maybe you’re, you’re beginning to grasp these blessings you have in Jesus. And I want you to know, verse 16, that I am praying for you, I am thankful for you, and I’m asking for something.

Here’s what he’s asking for. Now I’ve got to admit something to you, church. People ask me to pray for them all the time. And people might ask you to pray for them, and maybe you have a habit— I pray you have a habit of prayer— but I’ve got to admit something to you. It’s not often I pray like Paul prays here.

Not all of us are called to preach like Paul. Not all of us are called to write like Paul. In fact, very, very few of us are. But I think all of us are called to pray like Paul, and I like what Paul prays here. I’ve been thinking about this one a lot this week is, what would be the best thing that I could pray for you when you ask me for prayer?

It would be that God would give you eyes to see, eyes to see the glorious riches you have in Him despite your circumstances. I love that it’s Paul writing this from a Roman prison where he’s freezing to death because he asks them later to bring him a coat and some things. He’s struggling, and in that he says, If you guys could just see what I see, that God is so good, that his rich spiritual riches are far beyond these these earthly circumstances. I wish, I pray, his hope God would open your eyes. Verse seventeen, that the spirit of wisdom, spirit of revelation, would open the eyes and lighten your eyes, that you would know.

This word revelation here in verse seventeen is where we get the word apocalypse, apokalupsis in the Greek. It’s the idea of a revealing when we. We think apocalypse, we think some kind of catastrophic end event. There’s reasons for that, but what the word really means is a revelation, a revealing. He’s asking God, he’s saying, God, would you please reveal yourself to this church in Ephesus that I know, I know they’re struggling, I know what they’re dealing with, I spent a lot of time in Ephesus, I know that the culture is opposed to Christianity, but God, open up their eyes to see God, you’ve already blessed them, and if they would just live into that and experience that, they would feel free.

They would understand what it’s like to trust you. They would have hope that withstands a prison cell. That’s the kind of thing he’s asking for. That’s the kind of thing, church, I want for myself and I want for you. Oh, it’s good that there are blessings of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but unless we can see it and have our, our hearts open to it, It’s just knowledge.

It’s just noise over here that doesn’t impact the way we live. The truth is this, friends: we have a hope in Christ Jesus that is rooted in the cross of Christ and the resurrection, and it changes not just what happens in eternity, it changes what’s happening right now. This isn’t some kind of faith that is just an eternal faith that one day I’ll experience. It is a faith that that changes things right now. I pray you would experience this, this hope that is secure even now.

1 Peter, Peter writes, blessed be the God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to his great mercy, he has caused us— caused, past tense— to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Our hope is not future. Our hope is not dead. Our hope is alive and it’s secure in Christ.

But Jonathan, I’ve got this going on. I’m having trouble in this relationship. I’m having trouble at work. I’m having trouble with my bills. I’m having trouble with my kids.

I hear that. I have those troubles sometimes. I have some of them all at once. I bet you do too. In spite of that, there is a hope That should be a through line for all of us to where we look at all of those, and yours I may have not listed, these other dramatic things that are going on, causes us to stare at them and put all of our hope and our peace in those things that are going to be ever-changing.

These circumstances, they will never stop changing, I can promise you. Until Christ comes again or takes us home, these circumstances will constantly be in flux. I want a hope that isn’t based on that stuff. I want a hope that’s locked in something that doesn’t move, that’s an anchor for me. Titus 2, Paul writes to Titus, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.

I’m locked in on that. I’ve got my eyes set on that. The writer of Hebrews says, in fact, these words about anchoring ourselves in hope, Hebrews chapter 6, this hope is a strong and trustworthy anchor for our souls that leads us through the curtain into God’s inner sanctuary. I know that even right now I can come before the Father of all creation, I can come before the King of Kings because of this hope, the security I have in Christ Jesus. Now I’ve heard my dad use this illustration so many times that it’s hard for me to not hear his voice in my head.

He would say, hope is like a rope. He loved to say that. He’s probably saying that right now in Wilson, probably in this very moment. Hope, hope is like a rope, and that rope is connected first to the past, connected to the cross of Christ and His resurrection. It is tied there, and then that rope extends into glory, and there it is tied, and it’s tight.

And I can get on this rope, and I can hang on to that and secure myself in it, knowing that it doesn’t move from the past, and it doesn’t move from the future. My hope then is secure on both ends. Now I know it’s scary. Picture this, we’re going over a great abyss together and all of us have got to put one of those cool little, little things on the line, one of those little metal clamps, and we got to get on there and we got to pray to not look down. All right, stop looking down, church.

Look up. Maybe it’s like a little one of those little bike things and we have to come across like this and we’re trying to go to glory together, but don’t look down.

And that’s what we do. This is why our hope is lost. You want to know why our hope is lost? It’s not that we lost our hang on this, because good news, friends, we couldn’t hang on to begin with. Our salvation is secure in Christ Jesus.

Praise God, he’s strong enough. I’m not. So I’m secure. My problem is I keep going, it’s really, it’s really far down. It’s— oh my goodness.

No, Paul says, I I’m determined to do something different. Sometimes I’ll look back and go, man, thank you for that. Sometimes I’ll look here, I go, man, but I’m never looking down. I’m looking at where my hope is secure. I pray you would hear that today because I know some of you are struggling.

You got some hardships and they’re real. I’m not diminishing them, but that’s the abyss below you that we all see. Instead, let’s look at what gives us true hope. These circumstances, they’ll change. This hope means that we can stop interpreting our future based on these present circumstances underneath us.

When we feel discouraged, we can say, hey, this isn’t the end of my story. It’s barely the beginning.

When we face loss, we can say, well, no, my hope is in a living hope and in the resurrection. I’m telling you, the thing that gives me confident hope as I face the loss of loved ones is to say, hey, I believe in a resurrected Savior.

That means I believe there’s something after and that the resurrected body is better. So I don’t wallow too long in that place because I want to look ahead and say, God, you are good and I trust you and my hope is secure there. My future is anchored in the living Christ. I hope you get that point if you get nothing else today, that you would anchor your hope in what is true about the cross of Christ and what is true about the resurrection. About the, the, this future glory we will all experience because of the resurrection.

Now, the second reality is this: we have an inheritance in Christ. We have a hope in Christ connected to the past and future. We have an inheritance in Christ. Now, there’s something really interesting about the wording here. This point comes strictly from verse 18 where he says that you would know the riches what the riches of His glorious inheritance.

Now, the His there is interesting. Several commentators I read this, this week say grammatically that this could mean either the inheritance that God receives, which means we are His inheritance, which is beautiful, or it’s our inheritance that we receive from Him. It’s kind of hard to know exactly. Either way, I’m kind of a fan of both. That first of all, we are the inheritance of God.

In fact, God has done everything necessary to receive us unto Himself. But there’s something beautiful here that there’s a rich and glorious inheritance that He has set aside for us. It’s like Paul in this moment is searching for synonyms. I mean, do you hear it? I got to admit, when I write a paper, I do this all the time.

I’m like, give me some more synonyms. I keep saying the same words over and over again. Paul’s like, I’m going to give y’all some new words. All right, let’s talk about this rich, glorious inheritance. He hadn’t used glorious yet.

He’s throwing that at us. Oh, there’s this wonderful hope, but let me tell you about this rich inheritance.

I’m feeling it too. I’m feeling this, this spiritual gift that God has given that he says is not lacking. He uses the word rich.

There are times, church, I have to admit, I feel impoverished in my faith. I bet you do too. There are times where I would never say it out loud, I would never say this out loud, but the way I act really tells the story that I don’t believe God can get me through whatever this is. I start working things out in my own human strength. I start moving the finances where I think they need to go to somehow survive this catastrophe.

I start making plans that don’t include prayer. I just start making plans and taking action because in my heart, though I would never say it, I feel an impoverished faith.

It’s not true. Paul is telling the Ephesians and he’s now telling us, I know you face much. I know the culture is often opposed. I know life can be quite difficult, but I want you to hear something. You have a rich inheritance.

It— this word has to do with lacking nothing. Abundant.

I don’t always feel like my life’s abundant. Well, it’s probably because you’re like me. And your life isn’t filled with prayer.

The more I pray, church, I’m just saying, the more I pray, the more I start to see things the way God sees them. And the more I start to see things the way God sees them, the more I start to go, okay, I’ve made some mistakes actually I need to repent of. And the more I see things as God sees them, the more I start going, okay, he’s going to take care of this. A lot of this is out of my control, so why am I putting my eyes on it nonstop? Why is my worry and my anxiety so there on things that are completely out of my control?

Church, I’ve made the decision that when it comes to my being a husband and my being a dad, and so many of you are in that role, those things— guess what I’ve observed? People outside of my control. I can barely control myself. Bible only ever really promises— I want you to go back and study this at some point— God gives us a gift of what? Self-control.

He never gives you the gift of wife or husband control. Never. He never gives you the gift of son or daughter control. What does he give? He gives the gift of stewardship of those things.

He tells husbands how to act and how to love, how to respect and how to parent. He tells wives, but he doesn’t say you ever have control of these things. What does that cause for me then? Now my rich inheritance, I start to going, okay, well, everything that’s out of my control, I’m not going to be anxious about those things if I’m being faithful.

Pastoring, I think, puts this on like steroids. I can’t make you guys do the right thing. Sometimes you mess up. So do I. Well, I can start going, well, I must not be an effective communicator.

I must not be counseling well. No, no, no. Let me be faithful. God said, unpack my word this way, love people this way, care for them this way. He said that as a husband, hey, hey, be, be a dad who, who raises them up in the way that they should go, raises them up in Christ Jesus.

And sometimes they make decisions. I’m like, I don’t know why they did that, but I trust. I remain faithful.

Do you— I hope you hear that today. Some of you are going, man, it seems like every time that a promotion comes up, I’ve worked hard and someone else gets that promotion. Why is that?

Well, have you been faithful? Have you been prayerful? Then God must have a different plan. That job would eat you up. Perhaps that promotion would have killed you.

I don’t know what His reasons are, but do you trust Him? Hey, there is a rich inheritance that begins to make me less and less anxious when I just say, hey, the areas in which You’ve trained me and called me, I’m going to be faithful in those areas, and everything else, Lord, so be it. Whatever You choose, I’m Your man. Would you go there? I mean, would you make that decision?

If you will do that, you’ll start to understand this reality that I think the Apostle Paul now feels sitting in a jail cell going, I can’t wait to write this letter. I can’t wait to tell them that it doesn’t matter where they put me, they can’t shut me up. It doesn’t matter. I’m going to write my prayers to you. And I love you, Ephesians, and I love you, Eastgate Church.

I can just feel the pen going 2,000 years later saying, hey, I wish you guys would just see it. We have a rich inheritance. Peter writes, you’ll notice these 2 guys are a lot together today. A lot of my arguments from Scripture are from Peter. He’s feeling similar as Paul.

1 Peter chapter 1, Peter writes, we have a priceless inheritance, an inheritance that is kept in heaven for you, pure, undefiled, beyond the reach of change and decay. Hallelujah. I’m glad. I need something that’s unchanging. Paul writes to the Romans, he says, if we are children, then we are heirs, heirs of God, co-heirs with Christ.

We are co-heirs with Christ?

I looked up some statistics this week that kind of blew my mind. I had always heard this was true, and I had to verify it. Probably most of you are aware that those winners who win the lottery, things often go very poorly for them after winning. Have you heard that? I bet many of you have heard that.

I looked up the stats on this this week. Did you know that roughly 1/3 of lottery winners eventually declare bankruptcy? Isn’t that crazy? That’s wild to me. And as I pondered this, I started to recognize something that I think Paul is talking about here.

Their problem is not a lack of riches, not at all. Their problem is that they never received the wisdom necessary to actually live according to what they now have.

That’s some of you in the room when it comes to just financial things. Some of you have maybe recently, or maybe over the last few years, you’re making more and you’re, you’re wondering as you look at your bank account, why do I not have more? And you might could blame that on the economy, and yeah, there’s some problems. Gas is up, food is up, that’s all true. But for a lot of us in the room, we didn’t, although we got a raise, we didn’t get more wisdom.

Now, that’s not the point of this text today, that might be a sub-point, all right, that you should be prayerfully asking God for the wisdom to steward your stuff better. ‘Cause I gotta admit, this year I’m looking at my stuff going, here’s what I want to learn this year, Lord. ‘Cause things are not, things are not like perfect for me and Nicole. Things are, things have been kind of month by month for us this year, and there are a lot of reasons for that. But what I’m asking, and I think I’m, I think I’m onto something finally, is Lord, I want to learn something.

I want to learn what Paul said in this one passage where he says, I’ve learned to be content with much and I’ve learned to be content with little. Some years ago, I learned to be content with little. Then I started doing a little better and I couldn’t figure out how to be content there. And I bought a lot of stuff.

I want to be somewhere in this sweet spot where I can just say, hey Lord, I have enough. Whatever you give is what you give. Here’s what I want more than anything, Lord. I want peace.

I just want peace. I don’t need another thing. I do want simply for you to care for my needs as you once prayed, give us this day our daily bread. I’m good with that. I’m good with that.

But I’m having to learn that through hardship. That’s some of you in the room. Maybe you’re hardheaded just like me. I wish you weren’t so, but it is the case. Here though, Paul isn’t talking so much about the physical.

He’s essentially saying, hey, you’re lottery winners spiritually, and you don’t have the wisdom to see it. You don’t have the revelation to be aware of the fact that God has given you eternity. An inheritance undefiled, unchanging, pure, blameless, that you would wake up tomorrow and be discouraged about Monday?

I pray tomorrow you’ll wake up and go, wait a minute, eternity’s a long time, and God so loves me that He took my sin upon Himself. God so loves me that He has heaven in store for me. Oh my goodness, that I would have a mind for that? Would change how I feel about Monday. Now, I know tomorrow you’ve got unique things you’ve got to face.

I want you to hear something. There’s going to be a whole lot of Mondays, but in comparison to eternity, that’s a blip. That’s barely a drop of water.

Paul, I would imagine, is writing this not only to them, but he’s praying it over himself. Lord, here I am, and the end of my days is coming. Paul is becoming aware of this. He writes this in 2 Timothy. We’re not covering that here, but He writes later, hey, I know I’m being poured out like a drink offering, he says.

I know my last days are coming. And yet somehow he can feverishly write, but if y’all just knew, God is so good and His inheritance is coming. That helps us to understand Paul’s prayer that God has already given us a glorious inheritance. He’s prayed it for the Father. He’s prayed it through the Spirit that we would have it open up our eyes God, I pray today, Lord, open up our eyes that tomorrow we might wake up and say, man, life is good.

Not because I’m looking at everything and saying, oh, that’s good. No, that might be tremendously hard, but in the scheme of everything, I have an inheritance in Christ Jesus. So God, help me to live out that reality. I’m saying this to you to say this: it is getting old for me to see these humdrum, downcast Christians all the time. It’s bumming me out a little bit.

You should be the most pumped person in your workplace, not because everything’s good, but because God is good in everything that’s bad. It’s just astounding to people. They’re like, hey, I’m, I’m pretty happy. I’m living life pretty well, and it seems like you Christians are real mopey. I don’t want to go and be a part of this Christian church thing.

You guys are down. Why are we down? It’s like somehow we’ve been inoculated to this truth that God is so good to us and has done all of this stuff, and instead of being unlike the culture, we just like them.

Paul says to Ephesus, and now to us, you have a new reality, a hope locked in, an inheritance that’s coming. And then lastly, and this one took me a whole page to write on. I don’t know if I’ll be able to get through it. Let’s see. I can barely see.

This last one is everything. This reality that we have a power in Christ. We have a power in Christ. This is where it seems like Paul like runs out of ink, like the synonyms, he’s just going nuts here. His language becomes even more extravagant.

What is the immeasurable greatness of His power working out in great might raised from the dead above all. I mean, he’s just, he’s pumped and so am I. He starts using all these words, these huper in the Greek words, which are translated for us hyper, hyper, hyper, hyper. It’s just better. It’s above.

The word hyper means to go beyond or above and he starts just throwing these.

I want you to hear, you have in Christ Jesus an immeasurable power and what does it look like? He tells us. He tells us 5 things. It’s the kind of power that raises the dead. It raised Christ from the dead, that kind of power.

It’s the kind of power that seats Christ at the right hand of the Father, verse 20. It’s the kind of power that puts Christ over every spiritual power and authority. It’s the kind of power that puts everything under the feet of Jesus. It’s the kind of power that puts Christ as head over everything, including His church. Now, I’m more than thankful for the fact that Christ is King of His church, but I’m super thankful for all of these things.

The very power that raised Christ from the dead lives in me, the very power that puts Him above all things. I think it’s so perfect that Paul writes this to Ephesus and that now it comes to us, because what’s really perhaps underneath our stress, our worry, our anxiety, what’s really underneath this This thing we would never say to God that we’re not sure we trust, and what’s underneath it maybe is that stuff over here feels very powerful. This, Jonathan, this seems like this could change my life. If I lose this relationship, if this person, if I lose this person, if I lose this job, if I don’t handle this well, if I can’t figure out how to get my kid to do right, There’s a power over here that we become convinced is more powerful than anything else.

Nothing’s new here, church. This isn’t a new problem. He’s telling this to the first-century church who are facing persecution and real danger of life. The people are coming out and rioting and saying, hey, if y’all don’t stop this Christ thing that is ruining our economy, We’re going to put all of you in prison unto death. This is what they’re facing.

Persecution’s rising.

It is to those people he says, I want you to hear that there is a power that is above all.

It’s stronger than the way you feel about your situation. It is stronger than this persecution. And Paul, he gives himself great credit by writing this from a place where he’s about to die. He says, I want you to hear something. I know this full well, that all authorities, both heaven and earth, are under his feet.

You want to know how to trust God better? You want to know how to get past your circumstance? Begin to fully believe he’s actually in charge of all things. All things are under his feet. Start praying that way and thinking that way, and it’s going to change a lot in your life.

It will.

And he closes this idea here, verse 23. It’s like he says, the fullness of him which fills all in all, that you guys would experience this fullness that It’s this filling of the Holy Spirit, this filling of Christ Jesus that essentially, I think he’s arguing, pushes everything else out. I’m so full of Jesus that I got no room for anything else. Now I know we don’t often use that phrase that way. Oh, you’re full of it.

That’s not so good. But if I’m to say, well, actually I’m full of Him, I’m full of Jesus, I got no room for anything else. Now all of a sudden everything has shifted, everything has changed. That we would know the power that raised Christ Jesus from the dead. God never intended for us to live this Christian life in our own power and our own strength.

He fully provided it that we would yield to it and lean on it. In fact, Jesus says, chapter 15, verse 5 of John, He says, apart from me you can do nothing. Now that sounds mean. Sounds like Jesus is literally saying, you guys are useless apart from me. And guess what, church?

He is saying that. That’s exactly what he’s saying. You want to do great things? Do them in his name. You want to live a full life, purposed, meaningful life?

It’s lived in Christ. God never intended us to live this Christian life in our own strength. Paul writes similarly in Philippians 4, and this has become a lot of people’s favorite verse, but they miss something real key. He says, I can do everything through Christ who gives me strength. And they write that and tattoo that somewhere and put that somewhere and say, well, this is going to make me throw the football farther.

That’s not what he means.

Anything you do in his name by his power, he will give you the power to do it.

Paul’s talking there about a whole lot of other things in Philippians 4. He’s not necessarily talking about throwing the pigskin. He is, though, promising something that is true. Believer, when you’re being faithful to the things in which God has called you to do and you ask, Lord, strengthen me, give me wisdom, give me power in this, He shows up. He just shows up.

We often struggle in these places not because we lack power, but because we lack prayer.

And this very place, this Ephesian place where many of the believers who are now coming to Christ were once caught up in mysticism and magic and this Artemis-Diana cult and even emperor worship— you can see all of this in Acts chapter 19 if you want to understand these people. Their lives were dark, they were perverted, and Christ completely changed them.

And now they’re living in this hostile world. That’s some of your stories. God brought you out of darkness into light. Now the question is, how will you live in it? Will you now live changed Paul is reassuring them, you have the power that raised Christ from the dead.

You have it. You have an inheritance that’s sure. You have a hope that cannot change.

As we close right now, I want you to hear our greatest need today, and I know some of you have been praying differently. I’m not trying to mess with your prayers totally, but our greatest need today is not that God will give us something more. I know some of you are praying for more of something. There might be reasons for that. I’m not trying to knock your prayers, but I think there’s a greater prayer than, God, give me something more.

It’s, God, open my eyes to see what you’ve already given, because I think I’ve missed it.

How is Paul this excited in prison? How? ‘Cause I’m not.

My mess is broken. How is it Paul can be this way in prison? ‘Cause he has his eyes opened to the truths and riches he has in Christ Jesus. I want that, don’t you? God, would you do that in our life?

Would you help us to see that our hope is secure in Christ because Christ has died for us and risen from the grave and he’s coming again? Would You help us to understand that our inheritance is glorious? We’ve been adopted into the family of God. We are now heirs with King Jesus, and this power, immeasurable power at work in Christ even now. So, church, as we pray here in a moment, let us Let’s consider to not live like spiritual paupers anymore, the spiritually broken, because we’ve been made rich in Christ.

Let us be praying as Paul prayed here, Father, open the eyes of my heart that I might see what You’ve given me and live it, know it. And if you’ve never trusted Christ Jesus today, If you never trusted Him, this is an invitation to you. This isn’t meant to discourage you or guilt you, but rather you might see that God has given you a free gift that’s beyond compare, and you have the option to decide to open that today. And I would suggest to you that there’s no reason to wait even another moment because you were made for Him and you’ve not been living for Him yet. Turn from your sin, put your faith in the crucified Jesus, and receive this life found only in Him.

Let’s pray now together, church. Heavenly Father, we love You.

We thank You for all that You’ve done for us. We admit something to You, Lord, that many of us, if not most of us in the room, we pray a lot that You would give more of something.

And we know that there are times where we should ask those kinds of things. But Lord, I admit to you, as our church, we admit to you, Lord, most of the time what we really need from you is that you would open our eyes to see, open up our hearts to know that, God, you have given incredibly of your riches, that we have a hope that transcends even death. That we have an inheritance that we can’t, we can’t even fathom. It’s beyond what we can imagine. We picture houses in glory in heaven and fields of, of, of grain and sunshine.

We picture all that, but it’s more.

And it’s not just more there, it’s more here.

God, help us to see it, that it would change our lives and the way we function knowing these things. God, help us to Live in this power that raised Christ from the dead and that will one day raise us. This resurrection isn’t just a fiction, Lord, it’s real. We put our faith in it. God, I pray for Your people that tomorrow when they rise from their beds, Lord, that something powerful would happen.

They would think of You and the riches of Your glorious, immeasurable greatness. They would think of you and they would lean in. God, open our eyes. Lord, for that person who’s come today, they need to take the first step of opening their eyes to you in salvation. Lord, would you give them the, the freedom to do that now?

Remove barriers. Perhaps there’s been many reasons they haven’t said yes to you in the past. I pray today you would tear down those walls. That they might pray with me this very simple prayer. Jesus, I believe today that you died on the cross for me, for my sin, for my mistakes, my mess-ups, my brokenness.

You paid. I believe. And God, I believe you raised Christ Jesus from the dead. And because of his death and resurrection, I have hope now. That not only have you given me salvation, but you have a glorious inheritance in store.

Thank you, Jesus. Thank you. Help me to now live that with an awareness of all that I’ve received in Christ Jesus, that it would change the way I speak, it would change the way I think, the way I act. Lord, would you change my life because of all that you’ve given me?

Dear friend, if you prayed with me, I’m thankful for you today. I pray that you would let someone know. There’s probably been some people in your life praying for you. Would you let them know what God has done? Maybe they’re here with you today.

Let them know before you leave. Write it down. Let our staff know so we can be praying for you. Lord God, we pray along with that person. Help us to live for you entirely.

Change every Monday into a worship day that we might live wholeheartedly for you. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Last week, we looked at Paul’s greeting and his opening praise to God for the blessings believers have in Christ. Now this week, we’ll be looking at Ephesians 1:15-23 and Paul’s prayer that believers would be enlightened to know the reality that these blessings are already theirs in Christ Jesus.

Many Christians live as though we are spiritually impoverished because we don't understand the riches that already belong to us in Christ. In Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, he prayed that God would enlighten the eyes of their hearts so that they might know what belonged to them in Christ.

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