Join us in this engaging episode of Expository Truths as Dr. John Kyle delves deep into the intricacies of the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. Unpack the profound doctrines that highlight our rich inheritance in Christ, the unfathomable mystery of the Trinity, and Paul’s heartfelt prayers for the believers in Ephesus. Through vivid illustrations and passionate exegesis, discover the transforming power of seeing God’s wisdom, glory, and love with enlightened hearts.
Welcome to Expository Truths, where we exalt Christ by bringing clarity of truth through the scriptures with Dr. John Kyle, pastor of Faith Community Church in Vacaville. As Christians, we’re called to know the truth and be able to proclaim it. We can know truth when we know the Word of God, which is precise without error. powerful and effective for both salvation and spiritual growth. Enjoy digging deeply with Dr. Kyle as he takes us verse by verse through the powerful book of Ephesians, giving us a marvelous summary of the good news of Christ and its implications for our daily lives.
SPEAKER 02 :
Please turn in your Bibles to Ephesians chapter 1, verses 17 through 19. Ephesians 1, 17 through 19a. The letter of Ephesians was written by the Apostle Paul to the faithful saints living in the city of Ephesus. Paul wrote this while he was under house arrest in Rome in about 8062, and he wrote it to lay a proper doctrinal foundation for these believers so that they could then live out those doctrines for the glory of God. We’re now in the doctrinal section of this book that’s found in chapters 1 through 3. And it’s very interesting because this doctrinal section begins with one single sentence in the original language, the Greek. A sentence that consists of 202 words and a sentence that’s 12 verses long, verses 3 through 14. In that one sentence, Paul praised God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit for the many amazing blessings that we have in Christ, and it’s truly remarkable all those incredible blessings. And then after that 12-verse sentence of praise, Paul immediately began another long sentence that’s found in verses 15 through 23. Last week we looked at Paul’s words as he led up to his prayer for these believers, and today we begin to look at that prayer. So let’s look at the first part of that prayer, verse 17. Paul prays this. That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation and the knowledge of Him. The eyes of your understanding being enlightened. that you may know what is the hope of his calling, what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of his power toward us who believe. Now that prayer continues on, and we’re going to focus a bit more on power next week, but that prayer continues on. But we’re going to stop here for today, and we’re going to look at the rest of that prayer next week. So first, as we look at this, note how God is described by Paul. Look, Paul… calls God first, the God of our Lord Jesus Christ. Why does he do that? Because we’re only admitted into the presence of Holy God by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus God the Son. It’s very interesting. Who’s Jesus? Well, back in verse 3, Paul said that God is the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that phrase equates Jesus with God, since calling God as Father denotes the same nature, the same essence. In Hebrews chapter 1, Jesus is called the Son, and that title also speaks of His essence. He is God, specifically God the Son. See, He has the same nature as God the Father. So, what then does the Bible tell us about God? This, that there is only one true God, and that that one true God eternally exists in three distinct persons, God the Father, God the Son, Jesus, and God the Holy Spirit. So, biblically… The Bible is clear, the Son is God, the Father is God, the Spirit is God, and they are one. And while each of the three persons of the Godhead is fully God from all eternity, each of the three persons of the Godhead has a different role within the Godhead. For example, generally speaking, when it comes to redemption, the Father is the Creator, the Son is the Redeemer and the Mediator, and the Spirit is the agent of sanctification. And while each of the members of the Godhead is involved in all of these things, look, each member of the Godhead is distinct and fulfills his role perfectly. We even find Jesus submitting to the Father. And again, while both the Son and the Father are fully God, submission refers to the relationship within the Godhead, not to the essence. So Jesus can submit to the Father and still be fully God, for submission doesn’t mean that He’s less than the Father in any way. So, how can three be one? Alright, let me give you an illustration that might help, and I know every illustration falls short of truly explaining the nature of God. So, I’m going to try, here it goes, bear with me, this might not sound great. God is like a three-pronged fork. Bear with me, this isn’t bad. However, what we as human beings perceive as Only the three prongs. Each separate prong is what we perceive with our understanding. Not the full fork. See, as God reveals Himself to us with our finite human understanding of things, this is what we see below here. We only see each of the three prongs. Father, Son, and Spirit. And to us, they seem totally separate because that’s all that we can see with our human minds. That’s all that we can see with our human understanding. But when you pull back our understanding and get the full picture of everything, it’s all one fork. Now, that illustration falls short, but it does show us a bit of how three can be one with just a bit more understanding of things. But again, here’s the biblical truth. Did that fall short? Did that make any sense to you? All right. All right. I tried. All right. Here’s the biblical truth. The God of the Bible is one God who eternally exists in three distinct persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Each is God fully and completely, and each is worthy of our love. Each is worthy of our worship. For each member of the Godhead is working a great work to choose us, to save us, and to bring us safely home to glory. Ephesians chapter 1. Why does Paul call God the God of our Lord Jesus Christ? Jesus is God. Well, remember, when Jesus God the Son left heaven and came here, He took on full humanity minus sin. And so He was 100% God, and He was 100% man at the same time. But note that in His humanity, and while He walked on this earth, He approached the Father as a man. See, he never abused his divinity, his Godhead, while he was here. No, but he lived as a man who felt pain and hunger and thirst and poverty and sleeplessness and everything else. And so Jesus, God the Son, relied on the Father for everything while he was here on the earth. And so Paul is saying this, that the God who I am approaching in this prayer for you, Ephesians, is the same God of Jesus, the same God to whom Jesus, God the Son, prayed to. Look, in his earthly life, Jesus received strength and power and all the sustenance he would ever need from the Father. And think about it. Paul is praying to that one true God, to the God of our Lord Jesus, the God who sustained him, the God who never forsook him, the God who sustains you. The God who will never forsake you, His beloved child, see? As Martin Lloyd-Jones noted, our God is a God in whose presence the Lord Jesus Christ is at this moment. The God in whose presence Jesus is our advocate and our intercessor. He is seated at the right hand of the Father, ever living to make intercession for us. And so, in light of all that, we can go with assurance to the God of our Lord Jesus Christ. And it’s very, very comforting. Look, we can’t truly know God the Father without God the Son. John 1.18 says that no man has seen God at any time, but the only begotten Son, the unique Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him. And so it’s on the basis of that declaration that I go to God, the God who has been revealed by Christ, the one Jesus Christ who brings me to God, the one who died so that I might have access to God. See, I can only be admitted into the presence of God by the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. And look, God sent Jesus to do all of this to rescue us. And all of the riches of grace, God’s amazing grace and God’s sustaining grace, they come to me from the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the God who sent His Son to save undeserving sinners like us. So, this is just a reminder. The God who Jesus relied on while He walked the earth, the God who sent Jesus God the Son to come here to rescue sinners like us, the God who loves us and showers us with His undeserved grace, the God that the Lord Jesus Christ relied on while He was a man, the one true God of all, the God who loves you as child so very much, that’s the God that Paul is praying to, and that’s the one true God that we too are praying to. It’s a reminder of His love for us, of His grace and mercy, of His goodness and of His kindness. The God of our Lord Jesus Christ. The God, our God, whom we love with passion and fervor. Note that Jesus is Lord, our Lord, and is very personal. He’s not just Lord over all, Master over all, Ruler over all, which He is, but He’s also my Lord. He’s my Master. He’s my King whom I gladly give up all for. It’s very personal. I am His, and He is mine. See, we belong to Him. He bought us with a price, His life, and He loves us with passion, and we should love Him back in the same way. My Lord, He’s mine. Amen. Note also that he is Jesus, which means Savior, and he is Christ, our Christ, our Messiah, our Deliverer, who alone brings salvation. Jesus Christ, Jesus Messiah, and Deliverer, Jesus Christ, our Lord. That’s who Paul is praying to. How else is God, our God, described? As a Father of glory. That means that our God is not only a glorious Father, which He is, but He is a Father to whom all glory belongs. It’s an interesting phrase. Father implies intimacy, love, and acceptance, but glory implies that He is transcendent and unapproachable in His awesomeness and His total and complete brilliance. See, God’s glory refers to His brightness, His majesty, and the awesome splendor of His presence, which is something that no one else has. No, it’s reserved for God and for God alone. Whenever anyone in the Bible got a glimpse of God’s glory, the response was always fear and trembling. So this God that Paul prays to… For the Ephesians and the God that we love and the God that we get to pray to is indeed a beloved and good father to us and don’t we know it? But please don’t take that to mean that we can then treat him flippantly or take him for granted. No, because he’s also the glorious one to whom all glory and all splendor belongs. And we do well to remember both of these truths when we approach him in prayer and when we live out our faith. He is the father of glory. Think about that. All glory, splendor, honor, adoration, majesty, and greatness. Look, all things have been created to glorify Him, Him alone, and we do well to remember that. It’s all about Him, the glorious One. So, cast yourself aside and glorify Him with your fading life. That’s your true purpose, and that’s what brings joy to life. All else is meaningless, but knowing Him as Lord and Savior by grace through faith in Christ, and then glorifying Him with the few days that you have left… That not only has eternal value, but it also brings you the greatest joy in life that there is. Glorifying the Father of glory is what life is truly all about. Is that what you’re about? This is the God to whom Paul prays. And this is the God that we, too, get to pray to. The God who saved us. The God who loved us. The God who has blessed us in so many undeserving ways. Our God. So Paul prays to this one true God and he prays five things for the Ephesians and note that his prayer for them is not only something that we should constantly be praying for ourselves and for one another, but it’s something that we should all be earnestly pursuing in our own lives. Five things. First, Paul prays that God may give them the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him. The prayer here is simple yet very profound, that the saints in Ephesus would have a deeper understanding of what God has accomplished for them, specifically in Ephesians 1, 3 through 14, and that they would know that in a deeper, more intimate, more experiential way. That their knowledge of God and the things of God wouldn’t just be a head knowledge, no, but that it would impact their hearts, that it would impact their lives, right? Look, these Ephesian believers already had a saving knowledge of the Lord. That’s very clear. They knew Christ in a saving way. What’s that mean? It means that they believed in Christ as Lord and Savior. It means that they had repented and turned to Christ in true saving faith. See, they knew that they were not only sinners, but they also knew that the wages of sin is death. They knew that sin banishes you from heaven and condemns you to hell because sin committed against an infinitely worthy and glorious God is worthy of infinite wages. Hell. They knew that. They also knew the good news. that while their sin condemned them to hell, they knew that Jesus, God the Son, can save wretched sinners like us. Only He could do it. He who was both God and man, and so that’s what He did. He did it. Look, Jesus, God the Son, left heaven… came here and became a man, he lived a perfect life, and then he died on the cross, and then three days later, he rose up from the dead. And the good news is this, that on the cross, the sin of every believer in all of history was placed onto Christ, and God punished Jesus for all that sin as our substitute. And in return, God can now shower you, the believer, with mercy and forgiveness and grace and heaven. See, when you believe, when you truly believe in repentant faith, you give Jesus all your sin which He took and paid for in full, and in return, He gives you His perfect righteousness that covers you and fits you for heaven, and also that ensures your safe arrival there. So Jesus died for all who believe, paying the penalty of our sin in His own body on the cross, and then He rose up again from the dead three days later, which proved that what He did on the cross was a reality, and also that He has a power to conquer the sting of sin, death, and hell forever for all who believe. And the Ephesians believed that. They clearly believed that. They had repented and they had entrusted their lives and their souls into Christ’s care. They were truly saved, those that Paul was writing to. And here, Paul’s prayer is that they would continue in that wisdom and revelation and the knowledge of Him. that God’s Spirit who lives in them as true believers would give them a fuller, continuing revelation of Him. The word wisdom is best translated as insight. See, wisdom is more than just knowing the facts about something. But true biblical wisdom has insight into the true nature of things. Some of the men in our church are going through a book on biblical doctrine, and there’s a lot of great information that’s packed into that study. But the goal isn’t gaining a better head knowledge of doctrine. That is not the goal. The goal is that that head knowledge would transfer into knowing and loving God Himself better. Because if it stays in the head, then it means nothing. No, it has to translate into true wisdom, true insight into God and his truth where it penetrates the head and then the heart and then affects your life. And that’s what Paul wants for these Ephesians. Yes, head knowledge is vital, but it can’t end there. See, no, it begins there. but it can’t end there. The word for revelation means to unveil and to disclose something that has previously been hidden. So, what then is Paul praying here? I mean, they already know God. They’re already saved. Paul prays this, that they will continue growing in their knowledge of God. That God will continue to be unveiled to them. That they will continue to uncover that which isn’t known about God to them, which is a lifelong pursuit for all of us. Why? Because God is so big, right? And He’s so vast that even the most passionate seeker of God will never be able to uncover everything that there is about God as revealed in His Word. But the key is to keep uncovering. The key is to keep growing and knowing Him more and more and more until glory. It’s all about knowing Him, right? Drawing closer to Him. Not just head, but heart and life and love. Or as Paul says in Philippians, it’s about apprehending Him. Why does Paul pray this prayer for them? Because this is what Paul wants for himself. In Philippians 3 verse 8 says that Paul counts all things lost for the excellence of the knowledge of Jesus Christ my Lord. He goes on and says that everything else pales in comparison to that goal that all else is rubbish, it’s dung, it’s meaningless compared to knowing Him more and more. Paul’s motto? Christ. That’s his motto. More of Christ. And he wants that for these Ephesian believers as well. And he wants that for us. The word knowledge speaks of full knowledge, intimate knowledge, of a personal relationship that’s filled with love. And so Paul’s prayer is clear that God alone would be there all in all. That they would earnestly seek to know Him with more fervor and passion until they finally get to see Him face to face. But until then, what do they do? They keep digging. Right? They keep pursuing. They keep growing and they keep going in this great lifelong endeavor. Him. Him. Him, knowing Him, head and heart, Him. It’s a great prayer. It’s a prayer that we should all be praying for ourselves. And it’s a prayer that we should all be praying for one another. And like Paul, it’s something we should be earnestly pursuing in our fast and fading lives ourselves. Second, Paul prays that the eyes of their understanding or heart will be enlightened. Here the eye is metaphorically the avenue through which light flows into the heart and into the mind. In the Bible, the heart can be the seat of feelings and emotions, the place of God’s residence, the seat of religious and moral conduct, both positively and negatively, the place of a person’s will or volition, and as used here, the seat of thought and the seat of understanding. So the prayer here is that the Ephesians would be enlightened in thought and understanding of God. And Paul’s just emphasizing the previous point. He’s just saying it with more emphasis, with more passion here. So what does Paul want? That even though their eyes have been opened up to God, which is a gracious gift of God, look, Paul prays that they would continue to see things. that they would continue to see God more clearly. Now they see dimly, and what they see is truly amazing, truly awesome, but don’t settle for a dim vision of God. No, stop doing that. Continue to open your eyes so that you can see Him more clearly throughout your life. That’s something to earnestly pray for, for yourself and others, and it’s also something to keep pursuing in your own life. So how do you pursue that? How are you going to see God more clearly? Through His Word. Again, Paul’s praying for Christians who are already saved and who have their spiritual eyes opened up to the Lord. And now the prayer is that they will continue to see Him more clearly. Why? Because a clearer sight of God will cause you to love Him more fervently and passionately. A clearer sight of God will cause you to pursue Him with more zeal and heart. A clearer sight of God will make everything else seem small and trivial. For to truly know Him, not just head knowledge, but true knowledge… is to love Him. And therefore, a clearer sight of God will change absolutely everything for you, and it will get you focused in on what truly matters, Him. And look, enlightenment comes to the Christian who already has a Spirit of God living in him through the Word of God. That’s how we know Him more, right? That’s how we’re going to see Him more clearly, His Word. So pray, yes, but also do something about it. Like what? Be in a church that preaches the Word of God with passion and conviction. Read the Word of God yourself as much as you can. Intent on living it out, of course. Go to that Bible study or faith group that will help you know the Word of God better. Why? So you can therefore know God Himself better. And then love Him with more fervor and passion. Many don’t do this. So they focus their time on things that fade away and rot at the expense of knowing the God who created them. That’s a dumb mistake. It’s foolish. It’s an earthly-minded mistake. Note this. Don’t just listen to any old preacher that comes along. Because many don’t preach the Word of God and some are heretics out there. But be wise and listen to those who teach you the deeper things of God. The true Word of God. Because the time is short and we need all the enlightenment we can get. And every second is precious. So be wise. And don’t ever be content to be a shallow Christian. No. Keep pursuing. Some these days say that it’s popular for them to say things like, I don’t concern myself with deeper things. But you should be. When it comes to God and the things of God, you should be. For others, they take great pride in knowing their… theology but in many cases all it is is a head knowledge that puffs them up and doesn’t affect their lives but that kind of arrogance offends God and the true knowledge that Paul talks about here will always translate into loving action and that’s what Paul wants for these Ephesians he wants for them what he himself was pursuing and we do well to pray this prayer for ourselves and each other and then to pursue it in our own lives for the glory of the God whom we love so passionately May we be encouraged today. Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, thank you, Lord, so much for your wonderful word of truth. Thank you for saving us. Thank you for delivering us, for rescuing us, for giving us hope, peace, joy, life, life, eternal life. Thank you for loving us so very much. It’s incomprehensible. Help us to grasp a bit more of that and to recognize what that means. Help us to live up to that, Lord. to respond to who you are and what you’ve done with obedience, loving, passionate obedience. And may we pray these things for each other and for ourselves as we pursue them in our own lives. Bless us now. We love you and thank you. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
SPEAKER 01 :
Thanks for joining us for today’s exposition from the book of Ephesians on expository truths with Dr. John Kyle. Continue on with us next week at this same time. And to find this sermon in its entirety as well as other sermons, visit vacavillefaith.org. Faith Community Church seeks to exalt Christ by bringing clarity of truth through the scriptures with a commitment to glorifying God through the pure, deep, and reaching message of the gospel through faithful exposition. Pastor John is the preaching pastor at Faith Community Church of Vacaville, a seminary professor, and a trainer of preaching pastors overseas. Join Faith Community Church for worship Sundays at 9 and 1045 a.m., Located at 192 Bella Vista Road, Suite A in Vacaville. To learn more, visit vacavillefaith.org or call 707-451-2026. That’s vacavillefaith.org.
