A PRAYER FOR RENOVATION IDENITY THEFT Ephesians 3:14-15 // Craig Smith November 20, 2016 CRAIG: Good morning. AUDIENCE: Good morning. CRAIG: So I had a little bit of a tense day on Friday and I don t wanna explain why. We moved in a new house last October and had this giant unfinished basement. So we re like, We gonna finish that thing in, we ll use it when the in-laws come. Missionaries can live there. All that s already happened by the way. Families that are in need of a place. And so far all that I ve missed to get done was two bedrooms and like a game room kind of an area and then people started using it. And so I ve been like, I can t do anything else because this is coming. We could live at Home Depot recently. You know it s on the way, right? We got all kinds of family coming so like, I gotta get a bathroom finished. I don t know what it is, it may be me. I made it for my whole family but we always go big. And so I decided to build a 10-foot shower. It s gonna be way cool. It s like a walk-in kind of a shower. But it turns out you can t buy a shower pan that s 10 feet long and 4 feet wide. It doesn t exist. So you have to do a custom shower pan. Now I ve never done a custom shower pan but I ve like, I ve got You- Tube. How hard can this thing be? And I m doing according to code, which means that you had to lay down a concrete. It s called a pre slope area. And then you put in this liner. And then you do the next layer. Well, Friday I was putting in the second layer. And as I was working on putting in the second layer of concrete I kinda looked behind me and I saw all the used bags of mortar that I d already used. And several other bags of mortar that I thought I was about to use. And I suddenly had this thought which was, This is a lot of concrete. I really hope my floor was built to code because if it s not my shower floor is going through my basement floor. And I just realized I don t know. All I could do at that point was a hope that they had built this thing in such a way that it could handle the weight that was being put onto it. Now, just so you know it s still on top of the floor. So far so good but I went in yesterday and then I looked out and I thought, Well, I m gonna step on it. And then I had this moment where I was like, Do I really want to do that? If there s a lot of weight sitting on this thing, can it really handle anymore? And so I did like a Karate Kid move. I was, Do I really? And I touched it. Well nothing s creaking, Do I really? And I just really slowly transferred my weight to it and nothing happened. So this is like a five-minute process. And so far so good. It s all hanging out just fine although there s still a part of that goes, Okay, but what about when they turn the water on? What if my weight is like right there at the limit, but as soon as we had water this thing is definitely going through? It s a nerve racking thing to realize that I don t know if it s been built in such a way that it can handle all this additional weight. And the reason I tell you that this morning is because really this entire passage that we re looking at this morning is really this larger section of Ephesians. It s kind of revolving around that same idea, is the church built together in such a way that it can handle the weight of something that God wants to put in us?
If you have your bible, I would love to have you turn with me to Ephesians chapter 3. We re picking up our study of Ephesians this morning in chapter 3 verse 14. And Paul begins verse 14 in Ephesians with these words. He says, For this reason I kneel before the Father. And if you were here last week, you might remember me saying that Paul really began to say something last week. And then he kinda went off on a tangent. It was really important but he sort of interrupted himself and now he s coming back to his original thought. So he begins verse 14 exactly the same way he began verse 1. He says, For this reason. And what he means by that is what I said back in chapter 2, which was that God is bringing us together so that He can show up through us in power. And so he says, For this reason I kneel before my father. And of course kneel before my father is a euphemism for prayer. He says, For this reason, because God is bringing us together so He can show up through some power. I pray. Why? Because he understands that our natural trajectory, our natural tendency is not to come together. That apart from Christ, our identity is to fragment and to separate. And even in Christ we can have that identity stolen so easily that we find ourselves dividing rather than coming together. And so he says, I know. I need to ask God to do what we would not do on our own. But it s kind of interesting. He says, I kneel, which is his way of saying pray. But literally what he says is, I bow my knees. Or literally, I bend my knee. And if you were here last week you remember me saying that part of the reason that we don t come together is because we re not willing to bend. But when we bend, we come together in a powerful way. And so it s interesting to me that Paul now says, For God to work in us so that we come together, I start by bending. Because I bend my knee. I submit myself. I come before the Father and I ask him to do what I know we can t do on our own. And then everything that follows after this is his prayer. And he provides for us what I think is a very powerful model for prayer. It s not the only model for prayer in the scripture. There are a lot of different models for how to pray in the scripture. But this one I think is worth knowing and having sort of in your prayer toolbox. It s one I use a lot. Paul follows a model that I would describe this way. He begins by remembering, then he moves to requesting, and then he moves to rejoicing. Remember, request and rejoice. He begins by remembering who God is and what God is like. And that gives him confidence that his prayer is in line with the God that he s praying to. And then because he knows that his prayers is in line with what God is like, he can move on to rejoicing knowing that God is going to answer the prayer. He might answer a little bit differently than he expected. God might choose to do it in different ways and by different means at different times. But he can go ahead and begin rejoicing because he knows that his request is tied to the character of God. That s where he begins with this remembering, and so he begins this way. He says, For this reason I bend my knee before my father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. What he s doing is he s remembering who God is and what He s like. And there s a little bit of a play on words going on here. And it doesn t come across in English very well. In the Greek he s making a play on words between the word father and family. Because in Greek the word for father is patera and the Greek word for family is pateria. They re very, very close. And in fact you can t spell the word family in Greek without having the word father already in it. And it doesn t come across in English. The closest I could come in English would be to say something like you can t spell unity without you and I. You understand what I m saying? Like the letters that you need to make this word are already part of what you re trying to say. And in the same way he goes, You can t spell family in Greek without spelling father. And his point is just this, that God is the ultimate and the most important source of our identity. Because there would be no families without God.
God is the great capital of Father. Every other family that people look to exists only because He created us in the first place. And his point is just this. He says, Basically, what happens as we look to a lot of different families for our identity. We have a lot of different groups that we call ourselves a part of. And we go, That s my people. That s who I am. And what Paul says is, No, no, no. God is the ultimate and most important source of your identity. Don t look to those little f families look to the capital F Father. We have a lot of families that we point to. We, I m a Republican. I m a Democrat. I m an independent. I m Baptist. I m Catholic. I m Methodist. I m black. I m white. I m Hispanic. I m American. I m Germany. Is what I m saying. We have all these little families and we point to make, That s who I am. That s my people. That s my source of identity. And Paul says, No, no. Remember that none of those families was exist without the Father. God is your most important source of identity. Don t look to the little f families when you can look directly to the capital F Father. Your most important identity is as sons and daughters of God. That s where you ve got to start. And so he remembers that this is true. That this was something that God wants us to know. And from there he begins to move on to his request because he knows it s in line with who God is. He says, verse 16, I pray that out of his glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being. So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you being rooted and established and loved may have power, together with all 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 that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. There s a lot going on there. Let s just break it down into its basic building blocks. There s really just one request. There s one thing that he is asking from Him. What he s asking for is that God would strengthen the church. That s the core prayer. Paul is asking that God would strengthen the church. And then he goes on to explain how he hopes for God to strengthen the church and where. How and where. He says, How is by the Holy Spirit. And where he says, On the inside. It s a structural thing. He s not asking God to strengthen the church by giving us more financial clout. He s not asking God to strengthen His church by giving us more political power. No, no, no he says this is an inside thing. He wants God to strengthen the church on the inside, to shore up the foundations. We re rooted in God s love, he says a little bit later. But he says, Now I want you to strengthen us on the inside. And then there s a reason for that. He wants God to strengthen us on the inside so that we can bear weight of something heavy that s coming. And specifically what he wants us to be able to bear is the presence of Jesus. He says in verse 17, So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. Christ may dwell in your heart. He wants us to be strengthened so that Christ can dwell in our hearts. And really I would say it this way, what Paul is asking is, he s asking for God to strengthen the church so that we will become a place where Jesus can be at home. The word dwell doesn t mean show up occasionally. He s not asking for God to make the church a place where Jesus can show up every now and then. He s not asking God to strengthen the church so that the church become a place where Jesus can have a FaceTime every now and then. No, no. Dwell means settle in. Dwell means be at home, that s why I say it the way that I did. Paul is asking God to strengthen the church so that Christ can be at home here. That Christ could kick off His shoes and go, This is my place. These are my people. This is my family. Which raises the question, what does it take for Christ to feel at home in the church? Ask yourself the question, what does it take for me to feel at home someplace? And we know the difference between when we feel at home in a place and when we don t, right? What makes us feel comfortable, feel at home in a place? I think there are several things, one of which is you
kinda have to be welcomed, don t you? Hard to feel at home in a place where you re not welcomed. Which is one of the reasons that we always begin our times as together as a body here on Saturdays and Sundays with worship. Because what we re doing in worship is we re saying to Jesus, You re welcome here. We love you and we want you to be here in power. We re told that God inhabits the praises of his people. So we give him praise as a way of saying, Please, come be here. We welcome them. And again another thing that s required for somebody to feel at home is they need to be known. It s hard to feel at home in a place when you re not known. If I went into somebody s house and they welcomed me, that s a good start. And if they welcomed me and then they just said, We want you to be at home here so we baked you a banana cream pie. Problem, I hate bananas. I hate bananas. Goes back to an incident in my childhood, one ended up at nose. And is there for a long...it s a whole different story. We don t need to go there. But I have a strong visceral reaction against bananas and if you know me you ll know that. But if you don t know me you might go, Here s a banana cream pie to feel at home. And I ll be, I have to leave. So you ve got to be known in order to feel at home. And that s one of the reasons that what we do here so commonly, is we teach from God s word. It s not common. It s bedrock for what we do. We teach God s word so that we know who Jesus is. Because Jesus can t feel at home if we don t know him. And we re not gonna know him if we don t know His Word. I think another thing that s helpful when we think about being at home in a place is it s important to not have things that make you uncomfortable, right? If you go into a place and there s stuff going that makes you uncomfortable, it s impossible to be at home there. How many of you have ever been in a home where the family was fighting? It s uncomfortable, right? It s like all kinds of tense and just like, I gonna get out of here. When there s hostility and division and coldness and anger and suspicion, all those kinds of things, it s impossible to feel at home. And I believe the same is absolutely true in the church. If there are divisions among God s people Jesus doesn t feel at home here. Now, I m gonna get real practical for a second and I m gonna tell you one of the reasons that I think there are so many divisions in it. I think it s true in our marriages. I think it s true in our families. I really absolutely believe that it s true in our church. And the reason is that we re not very good at minding the gap. And if that doesn t mean anything to you that means you haven t spent any time in England. Okay, I spent some time in England working on my last degree. And every time in England that you re on a train station, you spend a lot of time in train stations and you re on the platform. And there s a train coming and there are signs all over. And what the sign say is, Mind the gap. And what they mean is that train is gonna pull in, the doors are gonna open, and there s a new place you re gonna step onto. But between the platform and the train there s usually a bit of a gap. And so they say, Mind the Gap. Be careful about that gap because if you re not careful about it you re gonna put the wrong thing in it, like your foot. And that s bad. And I realize at some point while I was over there that that s a pretty powerful image. Because we all have gaps in our lives. We all have gaps in our relationships but we re not very good at paying attention to those gaps. And here s what I mean by gaps. We have expectations, right? We expect things in our marriage. We expect things of our husbands and our wives. We expect things of our kids. We expect things of our bosses or our employees. We expect things, right? We have expectations, some of them are good some of them are bad. Some of them are fair. Some of them unfair but they re there. We have expectations and then we have experiences, what actually happens. And the reality is that there is very often a gap between what we expect and what we experience. What we experience didn t quite turn out how we
expected it to. There s nothing you can do about that. No matter what you do, there s always going to be at least the occasional gap between your expectation and your experience. The question is, what are you gonna put in the gap? What you gonna fill it with? Because you have two options. When you experience a gap between your expectations and your experience, you can put into that hostility. You can put into it suspicion. You can put into it the belief that they were out to get you. That they re just a bad kind of person. That they have a terrible agenda. You can put that in. In fact, we do that a lot, don t we? I heard somebody say several months ago that we always judge other people on the basis of their character. But we judge ourselves on the basis of our circumstances. For instance, if you re late getting somewhere, whose fault is it? It was the traffic, that the lights were bad. I had idiot drivers in front of me. Somebody stopped me before I got out the door. It s out of my control. It was always my circumstances. Somebody else is late they just don t care. That s just who they are. They just don t have any respect for me or your team, have any respect. I mean husbands, if we end up having to spend more than we planned in a month, we don t really have a choice, right? We had to have that thing whatever it was. But if our wives spend more than we are thinking, she s just frivolous. You see what I m saying? We judge ourselves based on circumstances. We judge others on the basis... But you see what we re doing is in that gap between our expectation or experience, we re putting suspicion. We re putting hostility and the problem is that when we put hostility and suspicion in that gap, what we do is we widen the gap. On the other hand Jesus calls us to fill those gaps between expectation and experience. To fill them with trust. To fill them with good will. To fill them with peace. And what happens is when we choose to fill those gaps with those God honoring things, what happens is the gaps close. The floorboards come together. They can bear more and more weight. Jesus doesn t wanna show up among us occasionally. He wants to be at home here. And I genuinely believe that what happens every single week, every single time that we gather as God s people, is that Jesus is going, Can you really handle my weight among you? Let s see. And Jesus tests the weight. And what Jesus wants to do is to put His fullness in there. He wants to step into our midst and be present with us entirely. Are we working to cooperate with the strengthening work that God s doing so that He can do that? Or are we resisting it? There s an advantage that comes, not only do we come together in such a way that Christ can be at home, that He can dwell in our hearts with faith, but he says that we get a benefit as God s people too. He says, And I pray that you being rooted in establishing love having started there, you now may have power together with all the Lord s holy people to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ. So we get this added benefit. That when we truly come together, when we allow God to bring us together, what happens is not only does Christ show up in power but when we begin to experience God s presence among us we begin to understand how profound God s love is. When Christ is at home in His church we begin to understand how profound God s love is for us, in a way that we couldn t otherwise. I mean, if I ask the question how many of you know that God loves you? How many of you know that God really, really loves you? I mean that God really, really, really, really, really, really loves you, right? Yet but at some point you start adding too many really and like, Yeah, I don t know what that means. We know it in our heads. We know that God s love is big, that it s vast. But in practice it s difficult to get a hold of that. And Paul actually isn t saying that he wants us to understand with our heads, what Paul is saying is that he wants us to feel it. He wants us to experience it, not just know about it intellectually, but to feel it experientially. And
he says that that s one of the added benefits of Christ being able to be truly at home, is that we begin to understand exactly how profound God s love is for us. And it s interesting to me that that he says that you may be able to understand with all the Lord s holy people. He says this isn t going to happen as an individual. It s only gonna happen together with God s people. And the reality is this, as an individual you can never fully grasp how much God loves you. It s not possible. You can understand that God loves you as an individual that s true. You can understand that God loves you greatly as an individual. But to really begin to feel the height and the width and the breadth and the depth of God s love, you cannot do that as an individual. You can only do it in community as God s people come together. It s not possible alone. And I think the reason is that when we come together we begin to treat each other in the way that God treats us. We begin to love one another in the way that God loves us. And it begins to move out of our heads into our hearts. We begin to sense, Oh, this is what it s like. Another way is what Paul is saying is that we will all gain a far deeper understanding of God s love for us as we love one another. That s why he says, Together with all God s holy people. When you are part of the church that truly loves one another, you begin to go, Oh, this is what God s talking about. It s not just in my head, I ve experienced it. I felt it. And we begin to go, Huh, this is that love they re talking about. So it has to be done together and in the midst of all of that and all these working that God is doing, we come to the final conclusion, the final result which is that you may be a little filled to the measure of all of the fullness of God. The end result is the church will be filled up with all of the fullness of God. That s kind of an exciting possibility, isn t it? I mean here s the thing like my family and I, we go home every single week and we just rejoice. We were like, It s awesome. Mission Hills is a place where God is moving. And we go home every single week talking about how God showed up. And clearly God is present here. But I also know that we re just barely scratching the surface, that Christ is not here filling this place with all of his fullness. It s great as it is, there is so much more that we had. This could be a place where God dwells so fully that his power just absolutely transforms not only our relations with one another but it spills out of this place. And it begins to transform the community around us, the world around us. It s a compelling vision, this idea that we could be a place where God shows up in fullness. And the best experience you ve ever had with God is only a fraction of what could be possible if God was here in His fullness. It s a compelling vision, isn t it? And you can actually see Paul kinda gets caught up in the vision and he kinda goes off as he begins to rejoice. Now, he says, Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine. God I know I m asking for a lot. I know that our natural tendency is to divide but I believe because you re the Great Father you re going to bring us all together. And we re gonna get together and you re gonna show up in power. And you re gonna be here in your fullness. That s gonna be awesome. And I can kind of imagine but I know you got even more than that. You re gonna do more than I can ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us. To Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus, through all generations forever and ever, Amen. He kinda get carried away, doesn t he? You know he get carried away because he said Amen in the middle of the book. Amen is supposed to mean I m done, right? But he s like, Its gonna be...i know I can t...it s gonna be... yay, yay, Amen. Whoa! All right. Where was I? We got another whole half of this thing to do still. But Paul gets
caught up in the vision because it s so compelling. The idea of a people of God that are so knitted together. So woven together that Jesus doesn t have to gingerly step. He goes, Now, this is my place and I m here. And in a fullness in a way that transforms. See Paul rejoices knowing that God will do even more than we can imagine, even more than they can imagine. It s who God is and it s what He s in process of and He s going to do it. Make no mistake about it, this is going to happen. The people of God are going to be a people in which God dwells in all of His fullness, where He s at home with all of His weight and He s comfortable. He s not just going, Yeah, this thing can hold me. He s going, Yeah, now we re going to get some stuff done. That s gonna happen but it s not where we are right now. Right now, we re heading towards that. Right now, we re moving in that direction. You may have heard this but do you understand that the church is the hope of the world? The church, the people that is the hope of the world, not because the church is anything special, not because the church as an organization has any real ability. The church is the hope of the world, because the church is God s chosen instrument for transformation because it s the place where he wants to dwell. The church is God s chosen dwelling and therefore instrument of transformation. God wants to be at home among us. I don t think God can put His full weight in our presence yet but that s where He s moving us to. That s what He s working us towards. Do you understand that really? What Paul is saying here boils down to just this. He s saying God is at work. God is renovating us. God is strengthening us. God is drawing us towards Him. God is renovating us so that He can reside in us and He can transform through us. He can transform not just this place. He can transform the community outside of us. He can transform our marriages. He can transform our relations with our neighbors. He can transform the world. Now, I believe I might just be upfront, I believe that we re not gonna see everything be the way it s supposed to be until Jesus comes back. The Church isn t going to fix the world. It s Jesus return, it s his presence that will ultimately transform all things. But you understand, Jesus isn t gone. He will come back physically someday but Jesus is present here through his people. He is dwelling in His people right now with greater and greater weight. And that means Jesus is at work transforming right here, right now. God is renovating us so that He can reside in us and transform through us. So we just have to wrestle with a couple questions. If that s true as God clearly says it is, the first question we have to wrestle with is, Am I assisting or resisting his renovations? Am I assisting? Am I cooperating with His work of bringing together and breaking down barriers? Or am I resisting it? Closely related question is, Have I created division? Have I contributed division, hostility, suspicion to God s church? When I look at fellow believers, do I fill the gaps between my expectations? Do I fill them with trust and goodwill or do I fill them with suspicion and hostility? And if as you ask yourself that question God reveal some way that you ve contributed division, hostility. That you filled the gaps with something in. And what you ve been filling the gaps with has actually turned into a barrier. The good news is you can just be forgiven of it. All you need to do right now is to say to God, God, I m sorry. I have not been assisting you. I ve been resisting you. I know exactly what I ve done. Please would you forgive me? And you re forgiven. God might also call you to go to somebody that you know you created that division with and beg for their forgiveness. Own it so you can disown it. But understand the moment you say to God, I m sorry for that. You re forgiven and He begins to work to knock those barriers down. And if we re gonna get really practical, I may give
you a piece of homework for this next week. What is one area in my life where I m experiencing a gap between my expectations and my experience? Maybe it s here in the church? Maybe it s your marriage? Maybe it s with a family member you re gonna see this week that you don t normally get to see? Maybe it s for somebody you have to see this week. And the reason you say you have to see is because there s been a gap. There s been a lot of gaps between expectation and experience. Whatever it is, where is an area of your life that there is a gap between what you expected and what you ve experienced? How is God calling you to deal with it.? How am I going to fill that gap this week with something that honors God? And let s go to Him. Would you pray with me? Jesus, the vision is compelling. That we could be a people so woven together, so knit together, so strengthened that we can bear the full weight of your full presence. We know we re not there yet and so we ask you along with your apostle Paul, would you come and would you strengthen us? Would you renovate us so that you can reside in us? So that you can transform through us. Lord, we confess to you that we have not always assisted in your renovations and we ask for your forgiveness as you speak to each of us right now. And you reveal to us ways that we have contributed to division, ways that we ve filled gaps with hostility and suspicion. We ask for your forgiveness and we rejoice knowing that we are forgiven. Give us the courage to make it right with one another as you lead us. Lord, we all have these gaps between what we expected and we experience. And you know if our expectation is wrong, would you move on us and show us that? But Lord regardless of what the reason is, we have these gaps between what we expected and what we experience. So Lord, would you speak to us about where we re struggling with one of those gaps? And would you speak to us clearly right now about what you re calling us to do to put something that honors you into that gap? In Jesus name. Amen.