The Abundant Life |10.27.24| The Good Life pt.3
The Abundant Life
Ephesians 3:14-21
Pastor Erik Anderson
I wanna invite you to grab the seatback Bible in front of you, underneath your seat there’s like a little compartment that has a black Bible. You can grab that black Bible, or if you have your own, you can open it up. We’re gonna be in Ephesians chapter three. If you are using the seatback Bible, it is page 149 in the New Testament. So toward the end, the letter to the Ephesians is a letter that Paul the Apostle wrote, and he wrote it to the churches in and around Ephesus. And so this was a letter meant to be circulated to the churches. It’s a great conversation distillation of the gospel. One of my favorite books of the Bible. We’re gonna be in chapter three beginning in verse 14, and this is what we read this morning. For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes his name. I pray that according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Holy Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love.(…) I pray that you may have the power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.(…) Now to him, who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine to him, be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever, amen. This is the word of the Lord, thanks be to God.
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Well, as mentioned a couple times, today is my final Sunday with you all. I’ve been your pastor for six years. It’s been a fantastic six years, probably the best six years of my life, and as I’ve been able to pastor you,
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and being able to learn and grow with you and follow Jesus together, oftentimes what comes up in conversations are challenges that you’re having, and challenges that I’m having, and we get to share and figure out how to follow Jesus together, how to grow in those things, but there’s several things that I’ve noticed over the years that keep coming up, and I’m guessing that you probably experience these too, especially for those of you who are still in your career.(…) I, oftentimes the conversations that we have, busyness comes up as a stress that is going on. You just feel so busy, so spread out, like you can’t keep all the plates spinning. You have to do your job and then get your kids from this activity to that activity, pick them up from daycare, take them to soccer, go here, do that, take care of your parents, go visit family, whatever it might be. You just feel so busy that you can’t actually really feel like you’re living life.
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Or if you have kids, you experience a lot of parent guilt, which is very real. You feel like you’re a failure as a parent. You’re not able to take care of your kids the way that you would like. You feel like you yell too much. You feel like you see other people’s kids and they’re more well behaved than yours, and you feel a lot of guilt. That’s something that has come up quite a bit. Or even sometimes just like the fear, generalized fear around like money in the economy and that kind of stuff. Sometimes those conversations come up where it’s just like hard to make ends meet, maybe like an overextension based on your house or your car or whatever, and sometimes those are the challenges that people are facing.(…) Not to mention when sickness comes around. Or if you have a chronic disease. Or if you have children or parents that are estranged and you’re not quite connected, and even just a more general fear of cultural change, of societal change, that things are different now than they were 20 years ago when we were growing up. There’s a lot of challenge and even a lot of stress. And something that I’ve noticed that people want to do, maybe you’ve experienced this yourself, is that try to minimize or even remove the bad things from your life. And your life is spent trying to manage and trying to understand how do I get rid of the bad things? How do I get rid of this guilt or get rid of this anxiety? Or how do I make sure I just get exactly the right job or that right promotion or make sure that I get that right house? Or maybe if my spouse and I could just get on the same page on this, then everything would be okay. We try to remove,(…) minimize the bad things in life. But I wanna make an argument today.(…) And I think that it’s from scripture. My argument today is this, that a life overflowing with good is better than a life without bad.
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A life overflowing with good is better than a life without bad. And these things are not mutually exclusive.(…) You can have hard things, challenges in your life, but also you can have a life that overflows with good. That’s my argument today. And I’m not going to bury the lead. I wanna give you the answer now. I believe that the answer is Jesus, surprise, surprise. I’m a big Jesus guy in case you didn’t know that. There was a scholar named Carl Barth in the 20th century. And there was a joke about his theology as he wrote his theological writings. The joke was that the answer was always Jesus. And what is the question? It’s always Jesus. And that’s true. The answer is always Jesus. And Jesus today is gonna show us that we can have a life overflowing with good,(…) even when the bad is still in our life, even when the challenge and the struggle is in our life. This passage that we’re looking at today from Ephesians chapter three is a continuation of a conversation that Paul is having with the Ephesians about his own suffering. He’s talking about how he has been beaten and bruised, that he’s been stoned, that he has been not martyred for the faith, but he has been persecuted for the faith. And everywhere that he goes, he suffers from poverty and from beatings. And even we read in Paul that he has some sort of, probably some sort of ailment. He calls it a thorn in his flesh. We don’t know exactly what it is. Most likely with some sort of sickness or something like that, that he asked the Lord several times for the Lord to take it from him. And so in response to all of this conversation about his suffering, this is what he says beginning in verse 16. He says, “I pray that,” and so he’s praying for the Ephesians, “I pray that according to the riches of his glory,” that is God, “he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his spirit,
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and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love.” We know that in our lives, a challenge and struggle and guarantee or pain are guarantees. We know that there’s always gonna be the bad in our lives, that we are gonna get sick, our kids are gonna get sick, things are gonna happen in our lives that feel bad and that are bad, that are not fun, that hurt us in different ways. We know that the bad is always going to be there, and Paul knows this too, he experienced bad. Yet in the midst of him having bad in his life, he prays that the Ephesians may be strengthened in their inner being.(…) And what we’re gonna see is that God actually promises. He promises strength and transformation within us. The promise is not to give us a smooth, easy life. The promise is not to remove the bad, but the promise is to make us new, to make us transformed. And the way that this happens is through Jesus,(…) that Christ may dwell richly in us.(…) We have heard this several times, that Christ is at work, always at work. It’s kind of the beating drum that I repeat quite often, is that Jesus has a desired future for you, for me, for our world, and that is for new creation. He is recreating the world where heaven and earth overlap again, just like in the Garden of Eden, and God lives with man, and there is no more sickness, there is no more pain, there are no more tears. This is Jesus’ preferred future. This is what Jesus wants for you, it’s what Jesus wants for me, it’s what Jesus wants for our world. This is the work that Jesus is at doing. He’s at work recreating heaven and earth, and he actually starts now, he starts today. He starts in you, that though our outward body might get sick, our outward body might die, our inward person is being renewed, it’s being made new. Paul writes about that in the second letter to the Corinthians in chapter four, that our outward body is failing and dying, but our inward self is being made new, and that even in the darkest times in our life, even when the most painful things are happening, we can experience goodness. This is the promise of God, that even when things are challenging, even when things are struggling, even when our bodies are dying and we are at our death,(…) Jesus is giving us good things in our inward self, in our heart, and in the scriptures when they talk about heart, we think about it about emotions, kind of Valentine’s Day, lovey-dovey emotions. In scripture, the heart actually means literally like the gut. It’s the place that we make decisions, it’s the place that we really decide how we feel about something and how we want to move forward with a situation, that all gets decided in our gut, it’s where we make decisions. And that’s the heart that Paul is talking about here, that Christ may dwell in our hearts in the deepest part of us, where we make decisions, that that’s where the change happens. And my wife and I actually experienced this in our life. A few years ago, after the birth of our second child, we went through a pretty dark time.(…) There was some of the kind of normal postpartum issues, but then that expanded and it kind of became much, much more. It was a great struggle on our marriage. Then our marriage was in a really bad place, a really rocky place. I was even dealing with some suicidal ideation, these kinds of things. It was a dark, dark time in our lives and we got rescued out of that time by the gospel, by Jesus.(…) That time in our lives, we were rescued because we would proclaim the gospel to each other. And there were two things that had to happen as we were proclaiming the gospel to each other. The first is that we had to accept that we were sinners and that we fail.
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That’s one thing that we had to accept. And I know that maybe sounds a little bit depressing, but actually I wanna show you that it isn’t. It actually gives us freedom because when we understand that we fail, when we accept failure, it actually doesn’t create guilt in us, it creates freedom.(…) Because our own self-loathing comes from when we say, I should be here, but I’m actually here.(…) And when we can fully accept that I’m a sinner and that I fail, it brings our expectation down to reality.(…) And then we don’t have self-loathing anymore. We’re actually quite free. We’re like, you know what? I can’t do it. So there was something that Sarah and I would say to each other. It would sound something like this. Sarah would say, Eric, you are not a good enough husband, but Jesus is good enough for you.
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You are not a good enough husband, but Jesus is good enough for you. We would say that kind of thing to each other all the time. And again, it wasn’t, it actually didn’t create guilt. It created freedom. I would say, oh yeah, I don’t have to feel bad about failing because Jesus actually dwells in me and he can give me the power. He is good enough even when I am not. Because we do fail and because we are sinners, we can accept that, but we know that we are loved despite our failure. And we know that we are loved despite our sin. And we know that we are accepted and acceptable despite our failure. We know that we are accepted and acceptable despite our sin. We learned by saying that to each other that we are defined in God’s eyes, not by our failure, but by his love for us.
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The second thing we had to accept was that Jesus actually gives us his success when we fail.(…) That Jesus gives us his goodness when we don’t have the goodness in us. That he gives us what we need when we are weak. In fact, Paul writes about this when he was praying to the Lord to take away this ailment, this thorn in the flesh. We read about this in the second letter to Corinthians.(…) And the Lord said no to him three times. And the third time, then Jesus said to Paul, he said, Paul, my power is made perfect in weakness.
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And then Paul says, when we are weak, he is strong.
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That’s actually Jesus who has the strength. It’s Jesus who has the joy. It’s Jesus who has the power. And when we don’t have it, he gives it to us. When we don’t have it, when we feel confusion, when we feel fear, when we feel unease, the Lord gives us his peace and his goodness and his patience. Excuse me, I’m not doing karate up here, I promise. There’s a fly bothering me.
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(Audience Laughing) And so I don’t want you to be confused by this. I don’t want you to be confused about how your success or failure defines(…) how God feels about you or whether or not God is gonna give you a good life, a full life, an abundant life.(…) That is not the reality. It is not by your success or failure that God gives you good gifts. He gives you good gifts because he loves you.(…) And so my wife and I would say to each other, you’re not good enough, but Jesus is good enough for you.
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And it is because of his goodness and his love that then we can have love, that we can have peace. So our prayers during this time sounded a lot like this. Lord, you promised us peace and we don’t have peace, so we need that now.
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That’s what our prayers sounded like. And you know what?(…) The Lord gave us peace.(…) He did. Jesus actually tells us, he says, “Ask and it will be given.(…) “Knock and the door will be opened. “Seek and you will find.” When we ask the Lord for the things that he promises us, transformation, renewal in our inward being, he does give it to us. That things can change. So that is something I want you to know. That if you feel in your life you don’t have peace or joy or patience or goodness or things like that, you need to ask the Lord for it. Because he’s the one who gives it. You can’t muster it up on your own. You’re not strong enough. You’re not good enough to do that. But the Lord will abundantly give it to you. Way more than you could ever ask or imagine.(…) And so because of this, there’s something that I say to my boys almost every night when I tuck them in. I tell them, “You are good because Jesus makes you good.”
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I don’t want my boys to be confused either. I don’t want them to think that they’re my love for them or God’s love for them is based on their performance as a child, their failure or success.(…) They are good because Jesus makes them good.(…) And this is why we read in verse 18, that Paul prays that they may have the power to comprehend, the power to understand with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth(…) of God’s love. That is why Paul prays this. He wants the Ephesians to understand the gospel. We need to understand it. That it is the power of God to help us know that this is true. Because it’s beyond our knowledge. It’s beyond our comprehension. It’s beyond what we could even imagine. It requires the Holy Spirit to tell us that. There are lots of conversations that I’ve had with people where I’m telling them this. I’m telling them that God loves them, that it doesn’t matter what they do, that even in their sin, it doesn’t change the way God feels about them. And it’s like the glass just goes over their eyes.
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Can’t understand it. It doesn’t make sense to us naturally that God would love us despite what we do. And even some of you in this room probably aren’t understanding it. We need the Holy Spirit. We need to ask the Lord to help us know it to be true.
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Because this is how God works.(…) Despite what we do, He gives us good gifts.(…) And this is the gospel. That God loves you greater than you can know. And God can accomplish abundantly more than you can even imagine in your heart.(…) In your inner being. The way that you think, feel, the way that you make decisions, that can be thoroughly transformed more abundantly than you could ever even dream of.
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Which is how He closes it. Now to Him, who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we could ask or imagine. To Him be glory in the church, and in Christ Jesus and all generations.
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God can accomplish more than you could ever ask or even imagine.
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And if we run through the fruit of the Spirit, which is a promise of God that we have, if we have the Holy Spirit, we have the fruit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
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These gifts that He gives to us. If you imagine how much peace you want in your life, if you imagine how much, what your life would look like with peace, if you could imagine it, God wants more peace for you.(…) If you could imagine all the joy that you want in your life, all the joy that you could ever hope for in your life, God wants more joy for you. If you could imagine all the love in your life, what a life would look like full of love, God wants more for you. If you think about all the patience and the kindness and the goodness that you could ever hope to have in your life, God wants to give you more.(…) More abundantly than you could ever even think to ask Him for. That’s what He wants for you.
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That’s what He has done for you.
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When we are weak, He is strong.(…) He can do more than we could ever ask. And He’s offering us the gift.
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Ask and it will be given.
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Knock and the door will be open. Seek and you will find.
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So if there is anything that I want you to know, it is this, that God loves you infinitely more than you could imagine or understand.(…) He’s seeking you.(…) He’s hunting you down. He’s pursuing you.(…) And He wants to give you a good, full and abundant life.
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And this life is a life lived with Him in a steady, confident relationship with the one who made us.
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That Jesus is the only thing worth having in our life.
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He’s the only thing worth our worship and our love.(…) And to experience His joy and His delight in us is what makes life worth living.
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That’s what makes life good, full and abundant.
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So I wanna end by praying for you and praying for our congregation.
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To Lord,(…) thank you so much for your goodness to us.(…) Thank you for your good gifts that we don’t deserve.
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Thank you for your joy and your peace.
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And Lord, I pray for this congregation
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for the people in this church, in this community,
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that you would do more abundantly than they could ever hope for.
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Lord, I pray that you would give them more joy than they could have ever hoped for,(…) more peace than they ever could have hoped for, more love than they ever could have hoped for.
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Lord, I pray that they are surprised and delighted by how good you are.
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And Lord, even in the midst of the bad things,
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I ask you that you would give them joy,
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that you would give them peace,
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that you would give them gentleness and kindness,(…) self-control.
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Lord, even in the bad,(…) I pray that the bad would be a window to see your goodness.
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I would pray, Lord, that it would be the opportunity
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for you to show up in their life.
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And Lord, that your strength would be made perfect in their weakness.
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Help them accept their weakness and trust in you,
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because you are the only thing worth having.
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So Lord, I ask that you would bless them and keep them, that you would fill their lives with goodness, more goodness than they ever could have asked for, or ever could have imagined.
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Pray this in Jesus’ name,(…) amen.