WEEKLY SERMON

 Stewardship - Christ’s Love, Our Calling
Ephesians 3:14-21 – Love Takes Time-to Seek God
January 23-25, 2010 by: Pastor Wessel

Introduction:
There is an element that draws people into the game of hide-and-seek.  You might remember those days –the excitement and energy put into discovering where someone is and the thrill of finding them.  The adult version might be geocaching.  Geocaching is a high-tech version of hide-and-seek played throughout the world by adventure seekers equipped with GPS devices. Once found, a cache may offer small rewards for you. For some, the biggest reward is the thrill of the search and the discovery of a place that they have never been – sometimes in your own neighborhood.  In some ways that is how is with our relationship with God.  It is not a game – it is the core of life.  Remember that he first sought us and now desires that we continue to seek him to find the excitement of discovering him in his fullness.

LOVE TAKES TIME – to SEEK GOD
 Sometimes God seems so hidden and distant and hidden; that isn’t what it was like in the beginning. When God created the first two humans, it described them as walking together in the Garden of Eden in the cool of the day. Sin really ripped us apart from that intimate relationship.  We struggle to see God and to know what he is thinking.  That doesn’t mean it we have to remain in the dark.  Moses told the people,   But if from there you seek the LORD your God, you will find him if you look for him with all your heart and with all your soul. (Deuteronomy 4:29)   

 Paul TOOK TIME to seek out God in prayer – an important element to this relationship
After his great conversion event, the Apostle Paul was in constant pursuit of God to know him and to understand his will.  In this letter he reveals how often he talks to God.  Look what he says in our text:

 ¹⁴For this reason I kneel before the Father, ¹⁵from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name.

• Paul “kneels before” God.  Here is Paul seeking the Lord in prayer.  He openly brings to God whatever is on his heart. He knows that what he asks is impossible for humans to accomplish and depends on God to provide the way to make things happen.  
  • When we come before God we rightfully come in humility knowing his supreme glory and majesty.  We know his holiness and our sinfulness.  We know his justice and our guilt.  All of those emotions made Isaiah cry out, “Woe is me” as he felt shamed by his own unworthiness appearing before “Lord God, Almighty.”
  • Our kneeling before God recognizes that he deserves and demands first place in our lives.  He should be the first we turn to and the first we depend on.  In his explanation of the first commandment Luther said, “We should fear, love, and trust in God above all things.”  It ought to make us tremble, when we see where we really put him in our lives.
  • If God isn’t first in our hearts, lives, our thoughts, and decisions, everything else crowds in to take that place and become our master or our treasure – a position that belongs to God alone. It ought to make us tremble, when we see where we really put him in our lives.
  • This is the God who came to Adam and Eve to seek them and has continued his seeking to draw us to him since we fell away from him.  Like the lady looking for the lost coin, or the shepherd looking for a lost sheep he comes out to bring us back.
  • This prayer isn’t merely a nervous humbleness before His greatness, but the confident face-to-face approach of an intimate relationship Paul has come to appreciate as core to his life.
• Paul calls him the Father.  Isn’t that what we say in Lord’s Prayer– Our Father in heaven? 
  • He is your father – you are his beloved child.  He longs for the closeness of a relationship with him where you can approach him with boldness and confidence.  He wants you to seek him…  to seek his mercy… to seek his advice… to seek his power.  In the middle of all the distractions of the world he tells us to seek him with our whole being in order to intimately know him and know the full life he gives. 
• What about your time before God in prayer?  Does it reflect your relationship with God?  Does it show how much you honor him or how much he is marginalized?  Does it reveal how much you depend on him or on yourself?
•    Look at the prayer time of the Old Testament models of faith – their repentant hearts and their expectant trust in his good will.  Look at how Jesus took time in his busy schedule with all its distractions to talk to his Father and receive strength from him.  Look at the early Christian church and the pattern they set for us.  There is something special here, my friends, that we have too often neglected.
  Paul recognizes the fact that the Father makes us family
• We sure don’t act like family at times.  The bridging of the gap between Jew and Gentile has not gotten any easier in our day. Cultures collide. Classes clash. And people generally hate each other when their perspectives and approaches don’t match.

·         Relationships are gifts from God, and none is greater or more important than the relationship with our heavenly Father.  God created us for that kind of relationship in the beginning and re-established it with us through Jesus’ love.  Here is the great reconciliation – bringing two parties together – that Jesus lived the perfect relationship with the Father and became the Father’s loving sacrifice for the sins of the whole world.  NOTHING is more important than knowing our God and his Son.

Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.  (John 17:3)

• In Ephesians1-2 Paul stresses God’s “mysterious” work through Christ.  Through his lavish love he chose us before the creation of the earth to be adopted as his children. 
  • Through the powerful means of grace the Holy Spirit seek to re-establish the connection with us and then opens our hearts to faith. Then he bonds us together by building a multi-cultural Church on earth – a Church where outward distinctions are done away with; where Jew and Gentile stand shoulder to shoulder as members of the one body of believers. We share the same name – children of God, Christian.  It is purely God’s gift that we have such adoption and sonship into the family of God.
• What does he pray for on behalf of this family of believers?  Does he pray for physical health?  Does he pray for worldly success?  Does he pray that they would be more active in helping around church?  Does he pray they would give more?  Does he pray for global peace…global warming…elimination of poverty?  As important as those may be, there is something even more important.

¹⁶I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, ¹⁷so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.

• Paul really cares – as does any spiritual leader – for what is core for God’s people.  It’s not essentially about what you “do” but what you “become” in Christ.  It is not about the outward things but the inner self.  That is foundational for every situation and relationship.  That is essential for every work. We want this for you, too.
• Unfortunately we spend so much TIME on outward, earthly things – what we achieve, the busy work we get involved with.  There seems to be very little time for anything else.  As important as all these things are, they are secondary. 
• Paul is praying for strength in their inner being
  • The world can push outward beauty and success, but in 1 Peter 3 he says the beauty should come from the inner self, an unfading beauty.
  • When we feel weak -  challenges of life,  temptations – that is what will count
  • People can take everything else away, but it is that inner strength that remains safe.

Where can you get such inner strength? 

• It is something God alone can give.  It isn’t coming from our own strength of purpose or effort.  It comes out of the rich storehouses of God’s wealth.  This grace is not a finite quantity.  It is an endless storehouse, a vast wealth, abundance resources.  This is what we draw from. It is where we are given “every spiritual blessing in Christ.”

• Paul often calls this inner strength  “the new man” or “the new creation.”  It is not something natural to us. 
•  It is the strength that the Holy Spirit gives. It is his dynamis – his power and potential to do something.  It is power for your inner being – power that comes from the one who created the earth, who split the Red Sea in half, who raised Jesus from the dead and now works a miracle of faith trust into our hearts.
• It has so many dangers lurking against it – the devil who would love to snatch it up, the disappointments of life that will cause it to wither if its roots aren’t deep enough, the cares and distractions of this world that would love to choke it.  We will always need strengthening – even though the “new man”  is perfect, created in the image of God – it is still like a child needing maturity… needs to be daily renewed (2 Cor 4:16, Col 3:10, Psalm 51). 
• This is strength because – it is Christ dwelling in our hearts.
  • It is the picture of actually take up residence, moving in, making his home in your hearts – your inner being.  Colossians 1:27  To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
  • Is Christ dwelling in your hearts through faith?
  • Was given through the means of grace: the gospel – as it comes to us in the Word and sacraments.  The Bible isn’t merely a book written by mortals who have their own cultural hang-ups.  This is God speaking to you through them, clearly. He speaks it, and it is powerful – even when it is on a written page translated into different languages.  It is there that God defines love, not the culture around us. 
  • My friends, our Bible study/ devotional life is an important building block for the God who wants us to seek him and find the joy of discovery. – Not just a ritual, not just to prove others wrong and you right, but to let God speak to you…even more to dwell in you – in your inner being – in the seconds, minutes, and hours of the day. 
  • It builds faith – trust in him for forgiveness, trust in him for details of life, trust in him for direction, trust in him for eternal life.  It builds through us love from him to family, love from him to neighbors, love from him to the family of believers, love from him that loves God more than all.   It brings confidence in his care, confidence in stepping boldly forward.  And so much more…

And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love,

• Christ’s love – this whole world fights against this knowledge. Everything leads us to doubt and question this love most of all. Untimely death and illness…”Why does God do this to me?” Kids who are loose cannons, meddlesome and troubling…”  Is God teaching me a lesson? Is he angry?” Fractured relationships, sudden guilt over a past and grievous sin…”I’m not good enough for God to love.”
• Paul prays we become not just surface Christians and be withered by the frantic pace, the anguished struggles, the unending distractions of this world.  He prays that we would really know Christ’s love – understanding it, believing it, depending on it, running to it, observing it in our lives.  Paul prays that love will be …
  • Sunk deep – like roots of a tree sunk deeply into love in order to stay green in drought and strong through storms (Ps 1), /Col 2:7, Mt 7:15-20
  • like a firm foundation below the frostline which can’t be moved and on which you can build your life  Col 1:23, 1 Pe 5:10; Mt 7:24-27
• It is in the sphere of love that God gave his Son to forgive sin. It is within the sphere of love that God calls sinners to faith and names them his saints. It is within the sphere of love that God brings believers together in as the family of God. That is why Paul prays our time in God’s Word will lead us to see God in our world so we…

¹⁸may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, ¹⁹and to know this love that surpasses knowledge

• We are in desperate need to be assured at every turn that God loves us. We need to understand how He loves the sinners of every make, model, year and color. We are in need to hear him whisper in his still small voice, to lift our eyes to Calvary and behold his Son, his only Son, whom he has sacrificed for you, for me, for each and every one who was, is, or is to be. There is no greater love that can be seen or perceived anywhere in this world. It is truly a love to re-live each day and relieve us each day. 
  • It is a love too large to be confined and beyond anything we can see – it fills everything in every way. As high as heaven is about earth – as far as east is from the west (Ps 103)
  • Connects us to heaven and brings us up to the throne of God.  It encompasses people from all nations and reaches the whole world, deep enough to raise people up from the depths of sin and despair …it covers all things.
  • This is what defines “all the saints”: they grasp and believe.  1 Peter 1:8 Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy,

• This relationship is a gift to be “stewarded.”  Seek to set aside a daily time with God.  Time with God raises your sights.  It transforms you – your heart, your mind, your soul, your strength.  It changes how you view the world he created and the people he places in your life.  It leads you to know more intimately Christ’s love– “so you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”
• God doesn’t want just a routine life.  He doesn’t want us swallowed by the world.  He wants my heart – all of it – so that I can have all of him. He wants you to see all the spiritual blessings you have – to see who has named you, to grasp how his love works in your life and is brought through you to family, the body of Christ, and your neighbors around the world

Let’s make this a year when we determine to have Bible/devotional reading and prayer a priority for our relationship with God.  If we don’t pick a specific time, it probably won’t happen.  If you are driven by lists and calendars, make it a daily appointment.  If it is new to your routine, start with small steps (5 minutes a day?).  Starting the day with God gives him first place in our schedules and can set the direction and attitude of the rest of the day.  Ending it with him renews the spirit.  Let it start as a discipline and let it grow into a desire.   In this world today there is no time for disinterest, boredom, apathy, or spiritual stagnation.  Now is the Time for commitment to building the relationship with God.  What a discovery it is when we seek him and find him in the place we wants to be found – his Word to us, his work in us. What a thrill of the search and the discovery of a place you may not have been in before, in your understanding of God and his ways, in being filled with his fullness.

²⁰Now 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, ²¹to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever! Amen.

• Wow!  What does that mean?  What does he promise when we understand his love and are drawn to him by that love? 
• He can give us an inner power to accomplish what seems impossible in a sinful and fallen world. God has every capability to fill Paul’s request…and then has plenty left over. Paul may have even “under-asked!” Maybe he couldn’t dream big enough to ask the right things and what they really needed. No worry, God can accomplish that as well. In fact, he already has begun to.  WOW – Let’s get serious this year about being filled – having our own personal devotion time with GOD
   “…to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus through all generations forever. Amen.”