Rooted and Grounded in the Love of God


Sermon by David Felker on April 10, 2022 Ephesians 3:14-21

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Please turn with me in your Bible to Ephesians chapter 3. Ephesians chapter 3 – as we finish our mini-series, our Sunday night mini-series in the New Testament letters of Paul. Ephesians chapter 3 verses 14 to 21. I’ve always wanted to preach on this passage but never have. This is one of the great passages, great prayers in the Bible, rooted and grounded in the love of Christ, for me.

And before I jump in and read, something to help orient us to our text – Every car has a story to tell, and my first car was kind of a faded red, 1987 Bronco II. And pretty much every one of my classmates – this was in 2001 – so pretty much every one of my classmates had a car far superior to mine, but at least initially it was perfect for me. It was what my parents believed a first car should be, something from the scrap yard that’s decently reliable that gets you behind the wheel and on the road. There are a lot of trials and tribulations with that first car, like I think a lot of us could tell our stories, but the greatest trial and tribulation of that old Bronco was the gas gauge. And anytime you would fill up and you would fill up the tank three-quarters to a quarter full, it would go back down to empty. And so even when you had a full tank, you wouldn’t know how much gas you really had. And I had to learn this the hard way a few times. I was living in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and so in the hills of Fayetteville as a sixteen-year-old, the days before owning a cell phone – you can imagine this was very troubling! But looking at that gauge and wondering how much gas I really had left in the tank, it left me with no confidence. I always had some level of anxiety and unrest. No matter how much gas I had in the tank, there was always an internal anxiety because of the gap, the gap between the reality that I had this full tank on the one hand, and on the other hand what I could see and feel and experience. There was this gap. Even though I was full of resources, I was living as though I was on empty.

And so Paul is saying something similar here in this prayer. And maybe you, like me, can experience a lack of confidence. You can be full of anxiety and full of unrest in who and whose you are in Christ. Your tank is full of resources, Paul is saying, but maybe that’s you. In Christ, you’re full of resources, you are very rich, but you are living as though you are in poverty. You’re living on empty. You’re living as though you are very poor. Or we could say it like this. It’s one thing to be told, “Jesus loves you,” but it’s another thing to experience Jesus’ love. It’s another thing to draw down on that. It’s another thing for that to change your life. We could say it’s one thing to be a beloved, adopted child of God, but it’s another thing not to live like an orphan. It’s another thing not to fall back into fear. Or we could say it’s one thing to know the truth of the beauty of Christ and the glory of Christ and the character of Christ and the grip of Christ and the smile of Christ, but it is another thing altogether to experience it, for those truths to plant in your heart.

So maybe that’s you – from time to time, you actually wake up, you wake up and you think, “How did I get here? How did I drift? How did this gap get so wide in my life? How did it get so wide and how did I get so far away?” And you have wondered, perhaps, “Well then, how do I grab hold of these riches? How do I draw down on the wealth that I have, on the fullness that is mine? How does this become real and fresh to my heart?” And that’s what I want to talk about tonight – being rooted and grounded in the love of Jesus for me. And before we read, let’s pray and ask God to help us as we consider this text. Let’s pray.

Our great God and heavenly Father, we do confess that our warmest thought it cold, and so I pray that the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts would be pleasing and acceptable to You, O Lord our Strength and our Redeemer. Come and help us, we pray. And we pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.

Ephesians chapter 3, beginning in verse 14. This is God’s Word:

“For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”

This is God’s Word.

John Stott called this prayer “a step ladder prayer.” James Montgomery Boice speaks of “rungs of a ladder as it ascends.” Martyn Lloyd-Jones speaks of “a mountain that we are scaling as we read it.” Regardless of the metaphor that we employ, each request in this prayer leads to the next and to the next and it continues to build until you arrive. And this is what Paul prays for. This is available to you – being rooted and grounded in Jesus’ love for you; to be rooted and grounded in love. That He is at work in me. That I am His. That He is mine. That I am safe in His hands. And so we will look tonight at what Paul prays for. He prays for you to experience first communion with Christ. And second, he prays for you to experience the love of Christ. And then third, he prays for you to experience the power of Christ. And then we’ll close with some application as we do ask, “How do you draw down on this? How do you experience it? How do you live into and live out of what Paul is praying for?” So the presence, or communion, and love, second, and then the power of Christ.

Communion with Christ

So let’s look first at communion with Christ. Paul prays for you to experience communion with Christ. This is in verses 16 and 17 – “that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.” Now there is an irony to Paul’s prayer here. Paul is addressing this prayer to Christians, and it’s ironic because, verse 17, he asks for Christ to “dwell” in their hearts, which is what makes someone a Christian. That’s the irony. A Christian, you are in Christ, and so Christ lived the life that you should have lived, He died the death that you should have died; you are in Him. But Christ is in you, “the hope of glory,” Colossians 1 tells us. Christ is in you by His Spirit. And so Paul is writing to these Christians and they have Christ, “Christ in you, the hope of glory,” they are His and He is theirs. The Spirit of Christ. The love of Christ. And so Paul isn’t praying here in this text for something new. He’s not praying for something new. Christ already dwells in their hearts through faith, but rather he is praying for their experience of communion. He is praying for their experience of communion with Christ through a greater grasp of their union with Christ.

Every person in this room knows why we need this prayer prayed over us. And we just considered that you can be full of resources on the one hand and you can live on empty. That you can be an adopted, beloved child and you can live like an orphan. That you can be rich, but you can live in poverty if you don’t draw down on the riches that you have. A metaphor from Jonathan Edwards that’s often used is this. It’s one thing to have a rational judgment that honey is sweet. You can be a student of honey. You can read books about honey. You can hear stories of people who have tasted honey, who talk about the sweetness of it. You can listen to story after story after story but it’s one thing to know that honey is sweet; it’s another type of knowledge all together to put honey on your tongue, to taste the sweetness of it, to experience it. And it’s only the experience of the sweetness of honey that goes deep down into your being. Paul talks here about your inner being, the real self, that dreaming, thinking, visioning self. That’s you. And so that’s the beginning of the prayer – for you to experience the presence of Christ; for you to have communion with Christ. So you already have union with Christ, believer, and he’s praying for you to experience communion with Christ.

The Love of Christ

But he doesn’t just pray for your communion with Christ. He also prays second – and this is where we will spend most of our time – he prays for us to experience the love of Christ. This is in verses 17 and 18. “I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power together with all the saints to grasp how high and long and deep is the love of Christ.” And so what is this love of Christ? Dane Ortlund writes, “The love of Christ is His settled, unflappable heart of affection for sinners and sufferers. When Jesus loves, Jesus is Jesus. He is being true to His own innermost depths. He doesn’t have to work Himself up to love, but He is a gorged river of love, pent up, ready to gush forth upon the most timid request for it. His love is never calculating or cautious, but His affection for His own never wanes, never sours, never cools.” And so Paul is praying not for you to love Christ more, as important as that is, but he is praying that you would experience and that you would hold onto the love of Christ for you. That wonderful children’s song, “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” That you would hold onto that.

And he gives, in verse 18, these dimensions. Paul invites us first to ask, “How broad is Christ’s love? How wide is the love of Christ?” Try to measure it, if you can. It is as far as the east is from the west. That is how far Christ loves you. Points that will never meet. It’s wide enough for people from every corner of the earth, every people and nation and language and tongue. Wide enough for the worst rebel, the worst prodigal, the worst sinner, whatever you have done, as far as you have run, as much of a mess that you have made of your life, whatever road you have traveled. To the uttermost parts of the earth, you can’t get away from His love. You can’t get outside of it. You can’t outrun it. It’s wider than you. Whatever mess you bring, it’s wider than all of your ability to run. The wideness of Christ’s love.

How long is Christ’s love for you? How long? When did it begin? It began before the world began. And when does it end? It doesn’t end with your constant failure, but it’s long enough to seek you and save you and seize you and hold you and keep you. That is the length of His love. One of my favorite verses in the gospels is Matthew chapter 16 verse 7. It’s when the angel appears to Mary Magdalene to announce Jesus’ resurrection. And the angel says to Mary Magdalene, “Go, tell the disciples and Peter that Jesus wants to see them.” Those two words, “and Peter.” Can you imagine how that made Peter, the failure, feel. “And Peter.” “Go tell them that I want to see them.” That Jesus had Peter on His heart. “Will you tell him I want to see him?” Christ’s commitment to you is long. It is His love that never ends. It is His love that will never let you go.

How high is Christ’s love? You know, we tell your children it’s to the moon and back. That’s how much I love you. That’s how high I love you. Jesus didn’t just love you so much that He forgave you. He loved you so much that He raised you to the heavenlies. He loved you from the cross to heaven. Jesus said in John 17, He praying to His Father, He says, “Father, I desire that they” – He’s talking about you; He’s talking about the Church, His people – “I pray that they will be with me where I am.” Notice how high the love of Christ is – that right now you are united to Christ by faith, and so you are in the heavenlies with Him. You are with Him. He is with you. You have all the privileges of a child of the King. You are rich in Him. Nothing can be taken from you. That’s how high His love is.

How deep is His love for you? Jesus sees you all the way to the bottom. Jesus, His love will go far into the pit where you find yourself. As Jimmy prayed, as you struggle with depression, as you struggle with addiction, as you struggle with despair, as you struggle with death, as you struggle with your health failing, Jesus goes with you there. The weight of all of it keeps you low and in your darkest and deepest and most desperate moment and you wonder if the light will ever shine. Jesus’ love reaches you there. His love is deep enough for that. It goes even down to the depths of the grave for you. And so many things that we are prone to give our hearts to promise to take us to incredible heights – money and achievement and fame and praise. How low have those things gone for you? How low has work gone for you? We give our hearts to work. How low has it gone for you? How low has money gone for you? How low has praise gone for you? Because Jesus came from the heights of heaven but He sunk low. He sunk lower and lower until His life culminated on the cross and He experienced the very depths of hell for us. How deep His love is.

John Stott says about verse 18, he says, “The love of Christ is broad enough to encompass all humanity. It is long enough to last for eternity. It is deep enough to reach even the most degraded man or woman. And it is high enough to exalt him, even him to heaven.” And so what does this mean for us? Your need is broad and His love is broader. Your fickleness is long and His love is longer. Your sin is high and His love is higher. And your mess is deep and His love is deeper still.

James Montgomery Boice in his Ephesians commentary, he tells the story that in the 19th century, Napoleon’s forces, they were restoring an old prison and when they did they discovered that it was a prison that was used 200 years prior in the Spanish Inquisition. And in the basement of this prison they found a skeleton. They found the remains of a prisoner who had been killed for his faith. And on the wall of his small cell, this faithful soldier of Christ, he had drawn a cross on the wall. And around the cross were four words written in Spanish. And on the top of the cross it said, “Height.” And down below the cross it said, “Depth.” And to the left of the cross it said, “Width.” And to the right of the cross it said, “Length.”

Now here is what we discover. We discover that no matter what our circumstances, no matter what we are walking through, we discover that we are safe and secure, that we are kept by this multidimensional love of Jesus Christ, this multidimensional love – the height and the depth and the width and the length. You see, this is the good news of the Gospel. That Christian, you don’t look to your feelings, you don’t look to your faithfulness, you don’t look to your resolutions, you don’t look to your résumé, you don’t even look to your past. You don’t look to the ways that you have disappointed yourself, the ways you have disappointed others, the ways you have disappointed God. You trust what His Word says. You trust what His Word says about His love for you. You don’t trust in yourself. You don’t trust what your heart is telling you. You trust what His Word says. And this takes tremendous courage to believe that, “What His Word says is the truest thing about me. That I am this loved.” That’s the hardest thing. It’s receiving and resting in the love of Jesus for me.

You may be here tonight and you may be gifted. You may have accomplished a lot of things. You may be incredibly successful. But the defining question for you, the most important question for you is this – “Are you rooted and grounded in the love of Jesus for you? Do you receive and rest in Jesus’ love for you?”

The Power of Christ

So Paul doesn’t just pray for you to experience communion with Christ. He doesn’t just pray for you to experience the love of Christ. He also prays that you would experience the power of Christ – verses 20 and 21. There’s a great scene in the first Star Wars: A New Hope, where Luke Skywalker is trying to get Han Solo on board to risk his life to save the princess, to save Princess Leia. And, I don’t know if you remember, at the beginning of the story, Han is self-obsessed and he only looks out for himself, and Luke says to Han, he says, “Han, they’re going to kill her.” And Han says, “Well better her than us.” And then Luke gets this idea and he says, “Han, she’s rich.” You remember this? He says, “She’s rich. If you were to rescue her, your reward would be more than you can imagine.” And Han Solo, he says, he responds to Luke and he says, “I don’t know, kid. I can imagine quite a lot.”

And maybe that’s how you feel about your life. Look at what Paul prays in this doxology. He says, “Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” Notice that he doesn’t say that God is simply able to do all that we ask. He doesn’t even just say that God is able to do all that we ask or think or imagine. And he doesn’t even pray that God is able to do abundantly more than all that we ask or think or imagine. But he prays “that God is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think or imagine.” And so He is able to do “abundantly abundantly,” or “super abundantly all that we ask or think.”

What does this mean? I heard a story a few weeks ago, a pastor told it. When he was young in ministry, he was a ministry intern and he was at a church missions conference. And there was a missionary there who stood up and told his story. And this man stood up and the story goes that he was in his early to mid-60s and he was close to retirement. And he had saved money and he and his wife had dreams. And the plan was that he would retire, he would buy an RV, and they would travel and fly fish and rest. That was the plan. And his wife started serving in this orphanage and he said he was a few days from retirement and his wife said to him, “I’ve gotten close with this teenage girl and I think that we need to bring her into our home.” And he said, “But I want to retire.” And she said to him, “She’s fifteen years old. We’ll work for a few more years and then we’ll retire.” And so they brought this girl into their home. And sometime later the girl told them that her best friend at the orphanage was twelve, and that the twelve-year-old had a five-year-old little brother. And so his wife starts saying, “I think we need to bring them into our family.”

And so at this point, he’s 65 years old and he is about to adopt a five-year-old and all of his visions of retirement are gone. And he thought to himself, “What am I going to do as a 65 year old man with this new five-year-old in my home?” And so he uses his money and he buys land and he builds a Christian camp. And he’s at this missions conference and he’s talking about it and he’s got these three children with him. And so the pastor that was telling the story, afterwards he saw that little boy, that five-year-old boy and he said to that five-year-old boy, “Hey buddy, I’ll bet it’s fun to live at a camp, isn’t it?” And the boy replied to him, “Yes, it’s better than the orphanage.” And the pastor was laughing as he was telling this story in the sermon because he said that little boy had no idea, he had no idea the sacrifice that his father had made for him. It will take that boy 50 years to begin to plumb the depths of just what his dad gave up to have him.

Do you understand what Paul is saying? He is saying that in his life you will never plumb the depths of the One who does far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, of His power at work within you, of what He is doing in your life, what He is doing with your life, of doing whatever it takes for you to experience how much He loves you. You know, some of us come in here week after week after week and we are hanging by a thread. Maybe our health is hanging by a thread, our relationships are hanging by a thread, our family, our work is hanging by a thread. And this text confronts us. It confronts us and comforts us by saying God is at work. God is at work. That God is at work in your life and He is able to do far more abundantly – not just in spite of your weakness and your failure, but in it and through it. That what is unspeakable or unthinkable for you doesn’t mean it’s unconquerable for the power of God, that He is able to do far more abundantly. We serve the God of the universe. We don’t serve a stingy, weak God. He holds the stars in the sky. He raised Jesus with a word. I love VBS week when our children come home and they sing this song over and over and over again – “My God is” – what? “My God is so big, so strong and so mighty, there’s nothing my God cannot do.” Do you believe that tonight? Do you believe that? You see, this prayer should stir in us a hunger.

This brings us back to where we began. If you’re here tonight and your heart is busy, you have a busy soul and you’re running hard, you’re doing the right things but the presence of Christ and the love of Christ and the power of Christ is far from your experience, it’s far from your heart, you’re living in poverty as though you are on empty, as though you are very poor. It’s one thing, again, to be told, “Jesus loves me.” It is another thing altogether to experience it, to draw down on it, and for it to change your life. And so here’s the question. Two brief points of application. “How do I draw down on the wealth that is mine? How do I live into and live out of this? How can I hold onto this?”

And the first thing that we see in the text is you have to kneel to hold onto it. You have to kneel. You see this in verse 14. You have to humble yourself. Paul writes, ““For this reason I bow my knees before the Father.” You have to kneel. To bow is an act of submission. It’s an act of dependence. It’s an act of humility, of desperation. You are owning that you are weak and that you are under authority. So you have to come to the end of yourself and you can either get there or you can be brought there but you have to be there, the end of yourself. In other words, you have to go back to grace – that you are bankrupt before God. You have to kneel. You will draw down on His riches to the degree that you admit that you are bankrupt. You will draw down on His wealth to the decree that you admit your need.

Has it been a long time since you were a humble person? Has it been a long time since you laid your deadly doing down, down at Jesus’ feet? Has it been a long time since you went to the Lord with empty hands, the miracle of empty hands? You may feel tonight like it has been a long time for you, but don’t assume it’s too dark. Don’t assume that it’s too late or that it’s too much for your faithful God. “While he was still a long way off, the father saw him and had compassion and he ran and embraced and kissed him.” Don’t you want that tonight? Then you have to kneel and you have to cry out, “Help me, Lord. I surrender, Lord. I need You, Lord. Give me strength, Lord. You know best, Lord.” That’s the first thing. You have to kneel.

The second thing is that you have to give yourself a new and afresh to the people of God, to the Church. And you see this in the text in a few places. Look with me at the small phrase in verse 18. You see it? This love should be experienced and enjoyed. Verse 18, this prepositional phrase – “together with all the saints.” Together with all the saints. It’s very interesting, he’s not just praying that individuals would experience this. That Brian and, you know, Rebecca and Sarah and Susan would experience this. But he’s praying that we would do so together, together with all the saints. You see this? He says in verse 21 in this doxology, “To Him be glory” – where? As individuals? No, “To Him be glory in the Church.” And so Paul is saying that Christ has crowned you with His love but your participation in the Church affects your experience and makes real and makes tangible Christ’s love for you. He is saying that only God can change us and He intends to, but God won’t change us without other people. He won’t change us without the Church. He is saying that you cannot draw down on the wealth that’s yours by yourself. You can’t draw down on it by yourself.

We love old sports movies and one of our favorite old sports movies is Miracle, which is the movie, the true story of Herb Brooks, the college hockey coach who led the 1980 US Olympic team to victory, to gold, against the seemingly invincible Russian squad. And the US team, if you remember, they were made up of college players. And so some of them, as they joined this team, they’ve just come out of being rivals with some of the other players on the roster. And so practice after practice, Coach Herb Brooks, he’s trying to build a team out of a group of individuals. And so he asks this question over and over again. He asks a player, “Who do you play for?” And so practice after practice, a player will respond, “I’m Jack O’Callahan. I play for Boston University.” Or, “I’m Bill Baker. I play for the University of Minnesota.” And just player after player after player, they talk about themselves as individuals.

And then after one game, Coach Herb Brooks got so frustrated with them and in particular their lack of togetherness, their lack of a unity, that he puts them on the line and they’re running sprint after sprint after sprint. If you’ve seen the movie, you remember the scene, until finally one of the players, the captain, he says, “I’m Mike Eruzione and I play for the United States of America.” And in that scene, as you’re watching it, you have goosebumps because they finally get it – that they’re not individuals, they’re part of a family, they’re part of a team.

And that’s the whole point of the question. You see, the foundation of a community that experiences the love of Christ is the deep awareness that our common ground is our common need of grace. And so first, anew and afresh, you have to kneel and then second, anew and afresh, you have to give yourself to the people of God. You can’t draw down on the wealth that is yours by yourself. And so can you say tonight, “Jesus, I believe that You love me. I believe that You love me. Even as I am just learning to know what this means. Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”

Amen. Let’s pray.

Our God of all grace, we thank You for time together under Your Word. We pray that You would make us rooted and grounded in Your love for us, even us tonight. Help us to believe in the riches of it tonight. We pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.

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