Sunday
Morning Bible Study
April 2, 2006
Introduction
Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians contained five requests: strengthened
(:16); dwell (:17); comprehend (:18); know (:19); filled (:19).
:17 that you, being rooted and
grounded in love …
in love – agape –
brotherly love, affection, good will, love, benevolence
rooted – rhizoo – to cause
to strike root, to strengthen with roots, to render firm, to fix, establish,
cause a person or a thing to be thoroughly grounded; perfect participle
Roots are where the tree draws it’s nourishment from.
Roots are where the tree gets it’s stability from.
grounded – themelioo – to
lay the foundation, to found; to make stable, establish; perfect participle
This is what you build a house upon, the foundation.
Love is foundational:
(John 13:34-35 NKJV) "A
new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you,
that you also love one another. {35} "By this all will know that you are
My disciples, if you have love for one another."
(1 Cor 13:1-3 NKJV) Though I
speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become
sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. {2} And though I have the gift of
prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all
faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. {3}
And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to
be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.
(1 John 3:18 NKJV)
My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed
and in truth.
What’s at the foundation of your life?
Jesus said,
(Mat 7:24-27 NKJV)
"Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I
will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock: {25} "and
the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house;
and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock. {26} "But everyone
who hears these sayings of Mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish
man who built his house on the sand: {27} "and the rain descended, the
floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it fell. And great
was its fall."
It’s the storms of life that show you what you’ve been
built upon.
What’s sad is that though this is what Paul prays that they be built upon,
they don’t stay there.
About thirty years later, Jesus writes a letter to the Ephesians:
(Rev 2:1-4 NKJV) "To
the angel of the church of Ephesus write, 'These things says He who holds the
seven stars in His right hand, who walks in the midst of the seven golden
lampstands: {2} "I know your works, your labor, your patience, and that
you cannot bear those who are evil. And you have tested those who say they are
apostles and are not, and have found them liars; {3} "and you have
persevered and have patience, and have labored for My name's sake and have not
become weary. {4} "Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love.
Warren Wiersbe writes,
In the first two churches I pastored, we were privileged to construct new
buildings, and in both projects it seemed we would never get out of the ground.
In my second building program, we had to spend several thousand dollars taking
soil tests because we were building over an old lake bed. For weeks, the men
were laying out and pouring the footings. One day I complained to the
architect, and he replied, “Pastor, the most important part of this building is
the foundation. If you don’t go deep, you can’t go high.” That sentence has been
a sermon to me ever since. [1]
Roots and foundations both need to be deep.
(Mat 13:20-21 NKJV)
"But he who received the seed on stony places, this is he who hears
the word and immediately receives it with joy; {21} "yet he has no root in
himself, but endures only for a while. For when tribulation or persecution
arises because of the word, immediately he stumbles.
How deep are your roots in His love?
:18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and
length and depth and height;
may be able – exischuo –
to be eminently able, able, to have full strength – a very “strong” word
to comprehend – katalambano (“alongside”
+ “to take”) – to lay hold of; to apprehend; to lay hold of so as to make one’s
own, to lay hold of effectively; to make one’s own, to take into one’s self; to
seize upon, take possession of; to lay hold of with the mind; comprehend
It almost paints a picture of a ball player getting ready to catch a
difficult ball. Will he be “strong”
enough to catch it?
What is it that needs to be comprehended?
In the context, it’s the love of God.
(Rom 5:8 NKJV) But God
demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners,
Christ died for us.
demonstrates – sunistao –
to place together, to set one with another; to comprehend; to put together by
way of composition or combination
God has given us a lesson for us at the cross. Do we get it?
with all the saints – you can’t understand the full dimensions of
God’s love by yourself. You have to “get
it” with the saints. You can’t disconnect the love of God from the love of the
brethren.
Illustration
A monk once came to Basil and said, “Speak a word, Father,” and Basil
replied, “Thou shalt love the lord thy God with all thy heart”; and the monk
went away at once. Twenty years later he came back and said, “Father, I have
struggled to keep your word; now speak another word to me”; and Basil said,
“Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,” and the monk returned in obedience
to his cell to keep that also.
- Benedicta Ward, The Sayings of the
Desert Fathers, cited by Kathleen Norris, Books & Culture, Vol. 4, no. 2.
Bogus!!! You can’t love your brother from a “cell”.
Speaking of monks…
Illustration
Fish and Chips
Lost on a rainy night, a nun stumbled across a monastery and requests
shelter there. Fortunately, she’s just in time for dinner and was treated to
the best fish and chips she had ever tasted. After dinner, she went into the
kitchen to thank the chefs. She was met by two of the Brothers. The first one
says, “Hello, I am brother Michael, and this is Brother Charles.” “I’m very
pleased to meet you,” replies the nun. “I just wanted to thank you for a
wonderful dinner. The fish and chips were the best I’ve ever had. Out of
curiosity, who cooked what?” Brother Charles replied, “Well, I’m the fish
friar.” She turned to the other Brother and says “then you must be....?” “Yes,
I’m afraid I’m the chip monk.”
(1 John 4:7-11
NKJV) Beloved, let us love one another,
for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. {8} He
who does not love does not know God, for God is love. {9} In this the love of
God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the
world, that we might live through Him. {10} In this is love, not that we loved
God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
{11} Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
(1 John 4:20-21
NKJV) If someone says, "I love
God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother
whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? {21} And this
commandment we have from Him: that he who loves God must love his brother also.
Loving God and being loved by God is how we learn to love others.
The difficulties of loving others refines how we love God.
You can’t “get it” unless you love others.
You can’t live alone and grasp the love of God.
Width and length = horizontal.
Depth and height = vertical.
In a sense, Paul almost seems to be describing the cross.
At the cross, God joined us to each other – the width and length. At the cross, God joined us to Him, the depth
and height.
:19 to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge;
to know – ginosko – to
know, understand; a knowledge grounded on personal experience
(1 John 3:16 NKJV)
By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also
ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.
to know – ginosko – to
know … same word.
which passes – huperballo (“over”
+ “throw”) – to surpass in throwing, to throw over or beyond any thing; to
transcend, surpass, exceed, excel
knowledge – gnosis –
knowledge; understanding; applies chiefly to the apprehension or understanding of
facts or truths
How can you “know” something that is
beyond knowing?
1. Could it be that Paul is talking
about knowing something beyond what you already know?
That seems to be a question that would puzzle an atheist. An agnostic
simply claims that he doesn’t know whether or not there is a God. An atheist
claims that he absolutely knows that there is no God.
For the atheist, I’d like to ask a couple of questions, “Do you claim to
know everything?” “Is it possible that God could exist outside
of scope of your present knowledge?”
Did you ever hear about the dyslexic atheist? He says, “There is no dog”.
Illustration
In a company of literary gentlemen, Daniel Webster was asked if he could
comprehend how Jesus Christ could be both God and man. “No Sir,” he replied, and added, “I should be
ashamed to acknowledge Him as my Savior if I could comprehend Him. If I could comprehend Him, He could be no
greater than myself. Such is my sense of
sin, and consciousness of my inability to save myself, that I feel I need a
superhuman Savior, one so great and glorious that I cannot comprehend Him.”
He’s bigger than we can comprehend.
2. Could it be that Paul is saying
that what he wants the Ephesians to know is something that you’ll never reach
the end of knowing. You don’t get to the
point that you can say, “I get it, I have all there is to get”.
There was an old Christian who wrote the following poem on the walls of his
prison cell regarding the love of God:
Could we with ink
the ocean fill, and were the skies of parchment made;
Were every stalk
on earth a quill, and every man a scribe by trade;
To write the love
of God above, would drain the ocean dry;
Nor could the
scroll contain the whole, though stretched from sky to sky.
There is always more. You can never
get to the end of God’s love.
I wonder if some of us wonder if anyone could ever love us?
Illustration
Behind the scenes of an Arizona
circus, Bobb Biehl started chatting with a man who trains animals for Hollywood
movies: “ ‘How is it that you can stake
down a ten-ton elephant with the same size stake that you use for this little
fellow?’ I asked, pointing to a baby elephant who weighed three hundred
pounds. “ ‘It’s easy ... ‘ the trainer
said. ‘When they are babies, we stake them down. They try to tug away from the
stake maybe ten thousand times before they realize that they can’t possibly get
away. At that point, their ‘elephant memory’ takes over and they remember for
the rest of their lives that they can’t get away from the stake.’
“Humans are sometimes like elephants. When we are teenagers, some
unthinking, insensitive, unwise person says, ‘He’s not very good at planning,’
or ‘She’s not a leader,’ or ‘Their team will never make it,’ or, “No one could ever love you” and
zap, we drive a mental stake into our minds.
- Bobb Biehl in
Masterplanning. Leadership, Vol. 19, no. 1.
Could someone ever love you?
Yes. God does.
:19 that you may be filled with all
the fullness of God.
may be filled – pleroo –
to make full, to fill up, i.e. to fill to the full
the fullness – pleroma –
that which is (has been) filled; fulness, abundance
When Solomon dedicated the Temple,
he prayed,
(1 Ki 8:27
NKJV) "But will God indeed dwell on
the earth? Behold, heaven and the heaven
of heavens cannot contain You. How much less this temple which I have
built!
If heaven can’t contain God, how can I be filled with all the fullness of
God? Wow.
Paul tells the Colossians:
(Col
2:9-10 NKJV) For in Him dwells all the
fullness of the Godhead bodily; {10} and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power.
complete – pleroo – to
make full, to fill up, i.e. to fill to the full
You can have all that God has for you in Jesus.
Illustration
“Dr. A. B. Simpson used an illustration which was about as good as any I
ever heard. He said, ‘Being filled with the fullness of God is like a bottle in
the ocean. You take the cork out of the bottle and sink it in the ocean, and
you have the bottle completely full of ocean, but the bottle contains only a
little bit of the ocean. So it is with the Christian.’ We are filled unto the
fullness of God, but of course, we cannot contain all of God because God
contains us; but we can have all of God that we can contain. If we only knew
it, we could enlarge our vessel. The vessel gets bigger as we go on with God.”—A.
W. Tozer (The Counselor)
But is there room?
Illustration
Fitting more in
A while back I was reading about an expert on the subject of time
management. One day this expert was speaking to a group of business students
and, to drive home a point, used an illustration those students will never
forget. As this man stood in front of the group of high-powered overachievers,
he said, “Okay, time for a quiz.” Then he pulled out a one-gallon, wide-mouthed
mason jar and set it on a table in front of him. Then he produced about a dozen
fist-sized rocks and carefully placed them, one at a time, into the jar. When
the jar was filled to the top and no more rocks would fit inside, he asked, “Is
this jar full?” Everyone in the class said, “Yes.” Then he said, “Really?” He
reached under the table and pulled out a bucket of gravel. Then he dumped some
gravel in and shook the jar causing pieces of gravel to work themselves down
into the spaces between the big rocks. Then he asked the group once more, “Is
the jar full?” By this time the class was onto him. “Probably not,” one of them
answered. “Good!” he replied. He reached under the table and brought out a
bucket of sand. He started dumping the sand in and it went into all the spaces
left between the rocks and the gravel. Once more he asked the question, “Is
this jar full?” “No!” the class shouted. Once again he said, “Good!” Then he
grabbed a pitcher of water and began to pour it in until the jar was filled to
the brim. Then he looked up at the class and asked, “What is the point of this
illustration?” One eager beaver raised his hand and said, “The point is, no
matter how full your schedule is, if you try really hard, you can always fit
some more things into it!” “No,” the speaker replied, “that’s not the point.
The truth this illustration teaches us is: If you don’t put the big rocks in
first, you’ll never get them in at all.”