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[0:00] The reading is from Ephesians chapter 3. God's marvellous plan for the Gentiles.

[0:11] For this reason, I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus, for the sake of you Gentiles, surely you have heard about the administration of God's grace that was given to me for you, that is, the mystery made known to me by revelation, as I've already written briefly.

[0:30] In reading this, then, you will be able to understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to people in other generations, as it has now been revealed by the Spirit of God's holy apostles and prophets.

[0:47] This mystery is that through the gospel, the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus.

[1:00] I became a servant of this gospel by the gift of God's grace given me through the working of his power. Although I am less than the least of all the Lord's people, this grace was given me to preach to the Gentiles the boundless riches of Christ and to make plain to everyone the administration of this mystery, which for ages past was kept hidden in God, who created all things.

[1:29] His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, according to his eternal purpose that he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord.

[1:45] In him, and through faith in him, we may approach God with freedom and confidence. I ask you, therefore, not to be discouraged because of my sufferings for you, which are your glory.

[1:59] For this reason, I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches, he may strengthen you with power through his Holy Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.

[2:19] And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power together with all the Lord's people, holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

[2:44] Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

[3:06] You're probably getting worried, wondering how long I'm going to preach, given the fact I brought Luca's aid up here with me. It's so concerning, isn't it? Thanks for reading that, Marina.

[3:18] So, can I have the first... Can you hear me okay to start with? Yes? Excellent. Can I have the first slide, which should be...

[3:32] Yes. So, I'll just move that down a little bit. Morning. My name's Tim. I'm one of the members here and on the leadership team.

[3:44] It's a pleasure to welcome you, especially if you're visiting with us or don't come here very often. As Richard mentioned, we are working our way through the book of Ephesians.

[3:56] And this is our third week thinking about Paul's letter to this church. And we've been focusing on this idea, how the book tells us about new life.

[4:09] New life that we can have by knowing about Jesus and new life that we can have when Jesus lives in us. I often teach in the youth group downstairs.

[4:23] And we often use this. It's a fantastic website. It's called thebibleproject.com. And they go through whole books of the Bible in about three to five minutes.

[4:34] And they tell you the overall theme of the book. And so, I'm going to put a link to this in the church news. Please go and have a look at it. But I thought I'd just, you know, sort of bring you up to date in case you haven't been here.

[4:46] It's sort of, you know, previously in the book of Ephesians. The book of Ephesians was written by the Apostle Paul. He visited this area of modern-day Turkey. You can read about that in Acts.

[4:58] He set up a church there. And it was interesting because it was quite a varied community. It had a combination of Jews and non-Jews, who they called Gentiles.

[5:10] It was a lot like modern London. It was a very cosmopolitan area. And people there had very, very backgrounds and very varied views.

[5:21] But he wrote the book to summarize two things. To summarize the gospel story, the good news that Jesus brings us.

[5:33] And to help us understand how that should affect every part of our story. And this website is fantastic because it sort of zooms in on different bits of the book of Ephesians.

[5:47] And it makes it clear that overall, it's a book about reconciliation. The first half talks about how we are reconciled to God.

[5:57] How we're put back in a right relationship with him. And it sort of focuses on all kinds of different areas. So the book can sort of be divided into these two chunks.

[6:09] One bit, chapter one to three. Where it's really talking about how we and God come back into relationship together. It talks about how God's plan was that this would first happen with his people, the Jews.

[6:23] And then introducing the Gentiles. And building them together into this wonderful body of believers that we call the church. And in the first week, John August spoke to us about how God has called each one of us.

[6:39] He's called and chosen us. And John used a really interesting picture. One that I can relate to. He said he used to go and play football on a green. And I don't know if you know what it's like when, you know, there's two captains.

[6:53] Normally self-select themselves. And then they all pick people to be part of their team. And he picked the fittest and the strongest and the best first. And John, a bit like me, was one of the last people to get picked.

[7:08] And he says, God has chosen us because he made us and he valued us. But it's so much more than just being part of a football team.

[7:19] John went on to tell us how God says we are adopted into his family. How we can become sons and daughters of God.

[7:29] Given all the rights of naturally born children. And then in chapter 2, it talks about God's grace. And Ephesians is just full of sort of verses that lots of you will have heard before.

[7:45] And not, you know, if you're like me, you can't figure out quite where they came from. But it's things like this. Sort of verses 1 and 4. It says, but as for you, you were dead in your sins.

[7:57] But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ. So it's this reconciliation that brings life.

[8:08] Or verse 8, that lots of us might have heard of, where it says, it's by grace you've been saved. This is something that all comes from God. Through faith. It's not from yourselves.

[8:20] It's a free gift from God. And last week, Claire spoke about how we are being put together. That second half of Ephesians 2 talks about how God puts these diverse people together in an amazing, joined up, multi-ethnic family.

[8:39] A new, unified humanity that should live in peace. And that's the first half of Ephesians.

[8:49] And we're going to look at chapter 3 today. But it then goes on to sort of describe how that good news, that story, should then affect our story.

[9:02] And it goes through how we should live as one group together. And how we should live as a group, but how we should live as individuals as well.

[9:17] All reconciled to God. And chapter 3 comes sort of right at the junction of those two bits.

[9:28] And I'm really grateful to Marina for reading the whole chapter. You'll be pleased to know I'm not going to try to preach on the whole chapter. It's interesting.

[9:39] Paul, I think, gets hugely excited a lot of the time in Ephesians. On the first week, John told us how there's this whole chunk of Ephesians that we've broken down into more than a dozen verses.

[9:52] That in the original Greek doesn't have a single punctuation point in it. I don't think there was Red Bull about when Paul preached. But if there had been, I think he might have had a can or two before he talked about some of these things.

[10:08] And actually, if you read this beginning chapter of Ephesians, you'll see it starts off with him saying, For this reason. And then he sort of shoots off on this beautiful tangent where he talks about the mystery of Christ and Jews and Gentiles again.

[10:27] And how he has been called specially to bring Gentiles to him. And I'm not going to talk about that today other than just to say this.

[10:38] I think we can sum it all up. And that then launches us into this prayer that he has. With this sort of bottom line. The mystery of Christ and the mystery of the gospel is that the whole world, doesn't matter who you are, where you've come from, has access to the riches that come from a right relationship with God.

[11:01] And that Paul's special mission was to this group of people called the Gentiles. But it's interesting, I think, because as Paul comes to this junction in the book, where he knows he's going to stop talking about everything that God's done for us, and then he's going to move into a really challenging set of chapters in the book.

[11:25] What does he do at that juncture? He stops, and as he often does in his letters, he pauses and he prays for the people.

[11:37] And today I just want us to look at that second bit of the smaller half, if you can have that, of the chapter. And think about Paul's prayer. Think about why he prays the prayer.

[11:49] Think about how he prays it. What's his posture? What he prays for? And what sort of result was he hoping and anticipating and wanting?

[12:02] So let's start by thinking why Paul prays. And if you've got your Bible, it'd be good to have it open, because I'll be sort of referring to some verses, and you can, you know, tell me when I read it wrong.

[12:16] Chapters 1 to 3, as I've said, are just sort of impossibly amazing. This idea of God bringing us being brought back into a right relationship with God, not just Jews, but Gentiles as well.

[12:30] And then it's actually pretty amazing if you know something about the history of Paul, who was like, you know, this ultimate Jewish leader being asked to preach specifically to the Gentiles.

[12:44] Chapters 1 to 3 are full of this amazing stuff, amazing miracle. But maybe we think, well, you know, that's God. You know, of course he can do things that are hard.

[12:56] Or we think, that's Paul. He wrote half the New Testament. You know, that's him. But actually, if you think sort of what is in chapters 1 to 3 is difficult, when I looked at chapters 4 to 6, and over the next few weeks, I think it reads in our own power like a bit of a mission impossible.

[13:19] Over the next few weeks, we're going to think about how God calls us to be, as a people, in unity. And it's full of these incredibly challenging verses.

[13:33] In chapter 4, it says, Be completely humble and gentle. Hmm. Not something, I'm the best at doing that.

[13:43] No, okay, I've blown it. Be patient, bearing with one another in love. Easy or hard? Pretty hard.

[13:54] We're going to think about our new walk. It talks about how God wants our behavior to be completely transformed, not just brushed up a bit.

[14:05] It talks about, it uses this analogy of clothing. It says, put off all of those things, the sort of greed, the malice, the unkindness, the self-centered emotions, and put on God's character.

[14:24] When I read about the things, and it even says, there should not even be a hint of sexual immorality is the one that it starts with. So that's an easy one.

[14:37] Not even a hint. And then it goes on to talk about new relationships. And others will preach on, again, incredibly challenging verses about the relationships between husbands and wives.

[14:50] Children, I'm looking over here, children and parents. And between slaves and masters. These were incredibly challenging things to hear then.

[15:01] And they're still really challenging to hear now. Or, and on the last week, we're going to think about new strength. We're going to think about the armor of God. How easy it is for us to rely on ourselves.

[15:13] But how he wants us to rely on this new way of defending ourselves. And Paul knows that it's going to be difficult. And I think that's why he says, for this reason, for this reason, I pray for you.

[15:30] That you would be able to take that wonderful gospel story and integrate it into every part of your life. Let that story become your story.

[15:43] For this reason. That's why Paul prays. And then if you look at how he prays, it starts off by saying, for this reason.

[15:54] The first thing it says is that he kneels. He kneels before the Father. Posture is important. And I'll be honest, I don't often kneel when I pray.

[16:10] But sometimes I do. And I think it really shows this powerful image of how we should have reverence towards God.

[16:21] That he is the creator of everything. And we should approach him with awe and wonder. But he then goes on to say, before the Father.

[16:34] That's how he approaches. He remembers that he's also adopted as a child. And that although he goes respectfully, he doesn't need to go afraid.

[16:48] There's a difference between respect and fear. And the Bible tells us that perfect love, which we're going to think about, casts out fear.

[16:58] So he goes reverently. But he goes knowing that he is loved and adopted into the family. And finally, he goes and asks out of God's glorious riches.

[17:14] Paul knows that the only way in which we're going to be able to appreciate that story and apply it in our story is if God helps us.

[17:24] He says, we can only do this with your power and your riches. So that's how and why he prays. But what does he pray for?

[17:36] I wonder if you were going to, you know, if you were just about to unleash chapters 4, you know, to 6 on people, what you would pray for.

[17:48] Whether or not you'd be a little bit like, my wife loves a good book like this. We have this in our house, I think. The seven habits of highly effective people. I wonder what the seven habits of highly effective, you know, Christians in Ephesus would have been.

[18:04] You know, he would pray that we have a really intimate understanding of each other. He would pray that we know that there's real strength when people are unified. He would have prayed.

[18:16] It's a little bit like when we had our independence referendum, that we are better together. But those aren't the things he prayed for. He didn't even pray here for a determination to do the task or a 10-point action plan about how they could stepwise get to love one another.

[18:39] He takes a leaf from Jesus' book, and he prays for something internal, not for something external.

[18:50] And ultimately, we'll go on and see that the main topic of this prayer is love. He starts by saying this. So chapter 3, verse 16, if you're looking, he says, May he strengthen you with power through his spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.

[19:15] Quite a lot to sort of unpack there. But the key points, I think, are that he wants Jesus to live in us, in our inner being.

[19:29] Being a true follower of Jesus and letting that story affect our story isn't just about having, you know, a fish symbol on your lapel.

[19:40] I don't have one on my car for lots of reasons. Or a cross on a necklace. Or even, I'm a Chelsea football fan.

[19:54] And I really love the fact that one of the Chelsea footballers actually has tattooed on his neck, I belong to Jesus. Pretty powerful. But God wants it to be so much more than that.

[20:10] That Christ may dwell, not just on the outside, but in your hearts through faith. And that that comes and sort of radiates out of us.

[20:22] I love, and someone saw this earlier, and it would be in our inner being. Does anyone know who that is? The Reddy Brett kid. I love the image of the Reddy Brett kid.

[20:35] Something has gone inside, and it radiates. It radiates out, doesn't it? And if you read that passage, it's not power to keep us warm.

[20:46] It's power to believe. It's power to have faith. And it's power to grasp this other thing. It's power to grasp the love of God.

[21:00] And if you read this prayer again, and please read it again when you get home. He said, I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all of the Lord's holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge.

[21:26] So he wants us to appreciate God's love. I love the fact he doesn't just say it's big. He actually takes the time to say high and wide, and long and wide.

[21:43] I've probably added one. All the dimensions he could probably think of. But it's not just sort of an academic book.

[21:54] You know, I'm a scientist, so I quite like the idea of measuring things. And if you measure them, you can work out how large or big it is. But he wants our knowledge of his love to go way beyond this academic understanding so that we could answer a quiz, or pass a test, or measure it accurately.

[22:18] He uses this interesting phrase, and it sort of doesn't make sense. Know love that passes knowledge.

[22:31] Know something that you can't really know. And it's because the word know can mean lots of different things. Last week in the youth group, we were discussing the difference between knowing about something, or knowing about somebody, and really knowing somebody.

[22:52] Some of the young people down there have incredible knowledge about pop stars or sports people. And their knowledge about them is amazing.

[23:04] But if you say, so what are they really like in the morning? They have no idea. Because they have no personal knowledge. And it's that personal knowledge of God's love that he wants us to have.

[23:22] It's, I read a book that said, it's, I'm going to, an experiential knowledge. Knowledge that comes from real personal experience.

[23:32] And that word know, actually is a really intimate word. Now I don't want to get indelicate, but if you read in Genesis, and it took a while for one of my youth leaders to explain this to me, it says, Adam knew Eve, and she had a child.

[23:52] I thought, Adam knew Eve? Of course he did. She was the only other person around there. Now, the knowledge it's talking about is a little more intimate than that.

[24:04] It's personal. It's up close. And that's the kind of knowledge that God wants us to have of his love.

[24:15] When I was a kid in our church, we did a lot of action songs. Then if anyone ever sang, yeah, Jesus' love is very wonderful. I used to, I was one of three brothers, and I was the middle one, so I was always in the middle, which for this song was a good place to be.

[24:32] Because you go, Jesus' love is very wonderful. Jesus' love is, I'm not going to sing it. So high you can't get over it. So low you can't get around it. So, and we always used to go wide. And you'd basically sort of elbow the person next to you in the ribs, or sort of, you know, knock them in the face.

[24:48] I was singing about love whilst next to my brothers, who I was being incredibly unloving about. I wonder how easy it is for us to have a head knowledge, even seem to have a spiritual knowledge, sing about it, whilst displaying absolutely nothing of the love of God.

[25:11] When I was, when I was, much younger than any of my children, I'd like to say, when I was about 11, I used to steal money from my dad.

[25:24] He, when he used to come home, he used to take the loose change out of his pocket, and he used to put it in a, in an ashtray. No one smoked in the house, it was a free ashtray he'd been given, and he used to put it in there.

[25:39] And for 15p, you could buy a bottle of Schweppes ginger ale, American style. And I used to take 15p when I thought so much had gone that he wouldn't notice.

[25:58] And this went on for probably about two years. 15p. I know. I know. 15p. And one night, I was so wracked with guilt, I told him what I'd done.

[26:15] And he looked at me and he said, I know. I was just waiting for you to tell me and to ask for forgiveness. And I burst into tears.

[26:29] I knew my dad loved me. But then, I knew that my dad loved me. It really went from the head to the heart.

[26:42] And that's what Paul is asking for us here. This true heart knowledge. And I wonder if that's how we pray for us.

[26:55] I wonder if that's how we pray for our children. I wonder if that's how we pray for the people that we love. Do we really pray that God would show them his love?

[27:07] Or are we just happy praying for behavior modification? God, let them stop doing that. Let them start doing that.

[27:18] Let them not get caught for doing that. Because ultimately, God wants to do something so much more. In Ezekiel, he says this.

[27:30] I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you. I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

[27:42] And that's the miracle that makes that story able to impact our story. When I was at university, a girl that I knew started coming along to church and found her own relationship with God.

[27:59] And I remember she wrote something in the front of her Bible, which you have to stop and think about. She wrote, love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and then do whatever you want.

[28:14] And actually, if you think about it, it's true. Because if the first part is true, the things that you want will be the thing that God wants. And actually, at the prayer meeting on Friday, Leslie read this part of Psalm 37 to us, where it says, take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the delights of your heart.

[28:41] That when you know how much you are loved, and accepted, and cared for, it will change the way you act, and the things that you want. So what, that's what, why Paul prayed, that's how he prayed, that's what he prayed for.

[28:59] What was he expecting? Well, I know it sort of comes before, but I think if you read all of Paul's letters, he knows that love roots you, and grounds you, and establishes you.

[29:12] And in verse 17, it says this, doesn't it? It said, I pray that you being rooted, and established in love. Now, my surname is tree, which is why I like all reference, well, most references to trees in the Bible, because often they're very positive references.

[29:29] I love this picture of a tree, with massive roots, going deep, being fed, and sustained, by something that's beyond itself.

[29:41] It doesn't mean there won't be winds, and storms, and in the Bible, it even talks about periods of drought, but it says that if your roots go down deep, they will sustain you.

[29:54] And I wonder if that's how we always get our food, if that's how we get our approval, if it's how we get our affirmation, if how we get our acceptance, or whether or not we try to get it somewhere else.

[30:14] This week, I was at a sort of quite posh event, organized by a pharmaceutical company in Madrid, and I was told not to worry, food would be provided.

[30:28] And I walked in, and there were these sort of models, basically, dressed in the company outfit, serving food. And I had to sort of look very hard at the plate, to see the food.

[30:42] You know, sort of, a slice of a quail's egg, you know, with one grain of, of, caviar on it. And I, and I knew I was not going to be satisfied.

[30:56] And there's this great phrase, which students use, I'd like to say purely about food, where they say, you need to preload before you go to an event like that. It's never going to satisfy you, so you need to make sure that you get fed, where you know you're going to be satisfied.

[31:13] And I think this picture of the tree, tells us that in that love that God has for us, that's where we should be getting our satisfaction, and our approval.

[31:25] Because if you go looking for it anywhere else, if you look to get your likes from anywhere else, you are going to be unhappy, and unsatisfied.

[31:38] And ultimately, the result that Paul describes, I'm going to spend almost no time trying to unpack, because it, I can't. I don't have any theological training, and it, and it blows my mind.

[31:52] It says, that you would be filled, in fact, it says this, that you may be filled, to the measure, of all the fullness, of God.

[32:04] And I, I struggle to, understand, what that means. But I, I, I heard, Francis Chan, who's an American pastor, put it this way.

[32:17] He said, maybe try to understand it like, you are like a sponge. And God is like, the biggest sea, or ocean you can possibly imagine. And you, God wants you, through an, an understanding of his love, to be like a sponge, that's plunged into that sea.

[32:37] There's so much more sea, than is in you. But you can be filled, in every bit of your life, to the fullness, of that love, of God.

[32:51] And the, the ultimate prayer, that Paul has, is that, you know, when you pull the sponge out, there's, there's water just, dripping out of it. And actually, in every single hole, there's, there's water.

[33:07] God in us, soaking us. And what result will that have? Well, I'm going to go back to ready break. Not just because I didn't really have a very good breakfast today.

[33:21] But over the next few weeks, we're going to think about, what effect this should have. One effect it should have, is in our church, in our, in our family, here together. So this is the 1982, ready break advert.

[33:36] Did you see what, the school was doing in the end? The whole school was glowing. I think that's a picture of what this church should be like.

[33:47] That each one of us should know about God's love, and that it becomes a warm, accepting, amazing place, that everybody, wants to go in.

[33:58] But it's not the only place it should happen. Ready break made another advert, and actually I love this one, even more. Central heating for everyone.

[34:10] Not just those who right now, are appreciating it. So, as we come to an end, our mission, should we choose to accept it, which some of you will understand, is to be filled, with that kind of, experience, of God's love, for us.

[34:33] Not a sort of, marshmallowy, floaty, pink, kind of love, but a tough love, that isn't scared to go out, into the, into the cold, of the world.

[34:47] An action, inducing love. Because when you know, that you're loved, you can love. When you know that you're forgiven, you can forgive. And when you know that you're valued, you can value, you can value, all the people that God, puts in your life.

[35:04] And ultimately, I think, that is how God, wants to let, his, good news, impact, our, good news. And I love the words, that Paul ends with.

[35:16] And I'd just like to end by reading those. In verse 20 and 21, where he says, with his power, at work in us, to bring him glory, in the church, and in Christ Jesus, forever, and ever.

[35:33] Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.

[35:44]  Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.