Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] O Father of Glory, we call upon your name.
[00:00:09] We turn our hearts toward you in hope.
[00:00:14] I pray this morning that by the power of the Holy Spirit, the eyes of our heart would be enlightened and we could know the hope of your calling.
[00:00:31] And we could know the riches of the glory of your inheritance in the saints.
[00:00:38] And that knowing these things, we would draw near to youo and our lives would be more.
[00:00:48] More close to what yout created us to be.
[00:00:53] In Christ's name. Amen.
[00:00:58] In the book of Acts, the Apostle Peter was arrested by King Herod.
[00:01:06] And it was during the Passover.
[00:01:10] And so Herod actually put Peter in prison.
[00:01:14] And he had two soldiers chained to Peter.
[00:01:22] And it was his intention to publicly execute Peter after the Passover was over.
[00:01:32] But the night before Peter was going to be executed, the church in Jerusalem called a night of prayer.
[00:01:46] And all the people gathered together and they prayed that God would rescue Peter.
[00:01:54] Well, sure enough, that night, by his divine power, God rescued Peter from prison. And Peter went to the house where they were having the all night prayer meeting.
[00:02:09] And he knocked on the door and a young lady named Rhoda came to the door and she recognized Peter's voice.
[00:02:21] She got all excited and instead of unlocking the door and letting Peter in, she ran back into where everybody was praying and said, peter's here now. These people are praying to God for a miracle. And when she says, Peter's here, they said to her, you're nuts.
[00:02:44] Peter is not here, he's in jail.
[00:02:49] And she insisted and they said, maybe it's Peter's ghost you're seeing, but we're sure it can't be Peter. These are the people who are spending all night in prayer for Peter to be released. Does anybody see the irony of this? We're going to spend all night in prayer, but if God answers our prayer, we're going to say, no, it can't be true.
[00:03:18] Prayer is at the core of the Christian life. It's supposed to be at the core of Christian life. But I didn't tell you that story so we could laugh at their incompetence. I told you that story because it represents all of us.
[00:03:38] That represents all of us.
[00:03:41] We all need a.
[00:03:46] We all need a transformation of our prayer life.
[00:03:53] Prayer needs to become a normal conversation between our souls and the living God.
[00:04:03] But sadly, prayer fades in our life so quickly that we end up living a perilous life unconsciously.
[00:04:16] I don't think it's that we, we purposely, we purposely don't pray. And I don't Think it's that we don't believe in prayer. It's just that we organize our lives in the kind of way that prayer isn't even necessary.
[00:04:34] We're studying the first chapter of Ephesians, and Paul first of all told us that the blessed God blesses us with spiritual blessings.
[00:04:44] And then he said, because the blessed God blesses us with spiritual blessings, this is how we should pray.
[00:04:52] And this week we're going to look at verse 18, Ephesians 1:18. And this is what Paul wrote. He said, I'm praying that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened so that you will know what is the hope of his calling and what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints.
[00:05:20] Because the blessed God blesses, we pray for enlightenment.
[00:05:26] And Paul asks for us to be enlightened in three ways. He asked for us to be enlightened as to the hope of our calling. He asked for us to be enlightened as to the riches of our inheritance. And then in verse 19, that we'll look at next week, he asked us to be enlightened about divine power.
[00:05:46] So before we start this, I'd like to know, when you close your eyes and you see with your inner self, what do you see?
[00:06:04] When it's not your external eyes that are looking, when it's your internal eyes that are looking, what do you see?
[00:06:13] See? Paul said, it's really, really, really important what we see with the eyes of our soul.
[00:06:22] And he said, I'm praying that God would enlighten the eyes of your soul so that they can see the things that are really important. And the first thing that he wants us to see is the hope that God calling us gives us.
[00:06:40] In physical sight, we see because there's all these photons flying around out there, and they hit our optic nerve.
[00:06:52] Your eye focuses all this light on your optic nerve, and that optic nerve takes that light and turns it into impulses. And that's how we see.
[00:07:04] All right, how do we see with our inner eyes?
[00:07:11] If we can explain how we see with our external eyes, our physical eyes, how do we see with our spiritual eyes?
[00:07:19] Well, really, in a way that's very similar.
[00:07:23] It's not photons, but it is the reality of God.
[00:07:29] The reality of God strikes the human soul, and the human soul sees spiritually because of the effect that the presence of God has on the human soul.
[00:07:44] Your soul was created by God to see, sense, and understand the reality of God.
[00:07:53] Do you understand that when he created you in the very same way he created your eyes to respond to light, and he created your ears to respond to sound waves. He created your soul to experience the reality of God.
[00:08:16] And so Paul says, I'm praying for the church in Ephesus, and I'm praying that this inner self would be enlightened and get better and better at sensing the reality of God.
[00:08:36] As you get better at interpreting what you see, you think differently.
[00:08:43] We were all children once, sitting in little elementary school desks with little reading books. When I was a boy, it was Tom and Jane. Anyone see Tom run?
[00:09:07] Well, the first time I looked at the book, I recognized the picture, but I couldn't understand what I was seeing when I saw the words.
[00:09:19] Right?
[00:09:21] I could. I could visibly see the words, but I couldn't understand what they meant.
[00:09:27] So God bless elementary teachers.
[00:09:32] In spite of me refusing to sit at my desk, I learned how to understand what I was seeing.
[00:09:44] Now that's exactly what Paul is praying, that we would learn to understand what we are experiencing when we experience the reality of God.
[00:09:57] The enlightened soul experiences the reality of the living God and then sees and understands life differently.
[00:10:08] The better my soul understands God, the more I understand what life is really all about and what its meaning is and how it really works, the less I understand God, the more I wander around not really understanding what it is that I'm supposed to be doing with my life.
[00:10:37] So I want you to add to your prayer list that you would grow in your ability to use and understand your spiritual sight. All right?
[00:10:53] I have a theory that we pray too much for the wrong things.
[00:10:58] We pray for things that are only temporarily significant, and we do it at the expense of things that are eternally significant.
[00:11:12] I got the influenza A in January.
[00:11:17] One of you gave it to me.
[00:11:23] Ah, all right.
[00:11:26] I felt terrible.
[00:11:29] I'm laying there and I prayed and I said, hey, I've read a dozen stories about you healing people in the Gospels. I'd like to have a little help here.
[00:11:44] All right, Well, I lived, so he must have heard my prayer.
[00:11:51] Okay, that prayer was a meaningful prayer.
[00:11:59] But the benefits of that prayer will only last till next year when the flu system comes around again.
[00:12:06] Church, on the other hand, if I were to pray, dear God, enlighten my understanding so that I recognize spiritual reality better than I have. That prayer has an eternal answer to it. Can you hear me? I'm not saying don't pray for the sick. Yes, do. But when you're praying for the sick, don't forget to pray for your eternal well being.
[00:12:40] That the reality of God might strike your soul in a new and more profound way and you become more of the person that he created you to be.
[00:12:54] Pray for enlightenment to understand through your soul. The senses are wonderful, but they do not take the place of a soul that senses reality and makes life decisions based on the inner quality of the self and not just the external circumstances.
[00:13:17] Pray for a heightened sensitivity to the whispers of the Holy Spirit to your soul. I believe every day the Holy Spirit wants to whisper to us. I believe that as we go through our day, the Holy Spirit causes us to think thoughts that he wants us to think.
[00:13:36] The problem is we're often not listening.
[00:13:39] He's whispering and we're not listening.
[00:13:43] And so this pray for the enlightened understanding. I believe it goes right to the core of pray that God would make you more sensitive, that when the Holy Spirit is whispering to you, you recognize the thought and act on it.
[00:14:03] So then Paul says, we pray to understand the hope of your calling.
[00:14:11] We pray to understand because Christianity is a thinking religion. Here we are again, Church.
[00:14:19] Why do I have to pray for understanding? Because Christianity is a thinking religion.
[00:14:26] Christianity is not just a good feeling that you get on Easter morning.
[00:14:33] Christianity is not just a good feeling you get when you listen to your favorite worship tune.
[00:14:40] Christianity is not a set of rituals that we go through. Christianity is an understanding, and it is an understanding primarily of who God is and what he wants to do for us.
[00:14:57] When I pray for understanding, I'm asking that I could come to know God better and I could come to know how he relates to me better so that I can relate to him better.
[00:15:10] We have to pray for this understanding because the knowledge of God is a gift of grace.
[00:15:17] Do you get this? You're never going to figure God out by yourself.
[00:15:23] You can try as hard as you want.
[00:15:26] You can strain with every drop of intellectual energy you have. And you can't figure God out yourself because he is transcendent.
[00:15:37] That means he transcends our capacity to understand Him.
[00:15:44] And if I can't figure him out, how do I get to know Him? The Holy Spirit, as a gift of grace, reveals him to us. God reveals Himself to us. God tells us and shows us who he is. We don't figure him out. He shares Himself with us. That's why we have to pray to understand, because I'm not going to figure this out myself, although God does hear and answer our prayer, and he says, this is who I am.
[00:16:19] We pray for understanding before we read the Bible, because the Bible reveals God to us. I hope that you're developing the discipline of reading the Bible every day.
[00:16:36] All right.
[00:16:38] Week.
[00:16:43] I hope you're developing a discipline that you read the Bible every day. Okay, Before I read my Bible every day, before I do this is a prayer. I say, dear God, please send the Holy Spirit to help me understand what you want me to learn today.
[00:17:03] Right?
[00:17:05] Please send the Holy Spirit to help me understand the things you want me to learn today.
[00:17:13] And then I pray as I understand these things, please give me the self discipline to do them.
[00:17:21] And then I start reading my Bible.
[00:17:23] I'm reading with the expectation that God is my partner and that he's going to affect my understanding that he's going to, every day when I read my Bible, give me a takeaway idea that I can think about for the rest of the day.
[00:17:42] We pray for understanding before we meditate.
[00:17:47] Do you have quiet times of meditation?
[00:17:50] I'm not saying you have to do this for hours at a time, but I'm saying something really healthy happens in the human soul when you turn things off and you reach out from your inner self to sense the reality of God and you remind yourself of who you think God is.
[00:18:13] I can tell you an easy way to do this. Learn some stories from the Gospels and then tell yourself a story from the Gospel and say, what does this tell me about who God is?
[00:18:25] Church.
[00:18:27] So you read.
[00:18:31] You read that Jesus went to this town, and outside the town there were 10 lepers. And they cried out to him, jesus, son of David, have mercy on us.
[00:18:43] And Jesus says, I will have mercy on you. And he healed their leprosy. And only one of the 10 came back to say thank you.
[00:18:56] And he was a Samaritan. And Jesus said, didn't I heal 10 people?
[00:19:02] Where are the other nine? Is it only a Samaritan who returns to give thanks to God? So I tell myself that story. And then I say to myself, what does this tell me about what kind of person God is?
[00:19:17] Well, first of all, it tells me he's compassionate to people who are a mess. Leprosy was an uncurable thing in Christ's day. And the only way you could get help was by Christ. And he cared enough that day to help 10 people. He didn't even know if God will help 10 people. He doesn't know. Surely he'll help you who he does know. That's what I tell myself.
[00:19:41] I say, God is a God who appreciates thanksgiving. He was expecting people to say thank you.
[00:19:49] Then I say to myself, I need to be more diligent about Telling God, thank you. He deserves it. All right. Do you see? If I think about God, if I meditate about God in this way, it changes how I'm thinking in my inner self. Church because it's easy to be ungrateful.
[00:20:13] It's easy to look around and say, look what they have. Look what they have. Look at that. I should have this. It's easy to get ungrateful.
[00:20:23] But when I think about God as He really is, gratitude displaces ingratitude. And thinking about God changes the quality of my personhood. Because now I'm expressing gratitude instead of being ungrateful. Are you thinking with me? Church and then Paul says, we pray to understand the hope of his calling.
[00:20:53] In every one of our lives.
[00:20:56] God calls us from time to time.
[00:21:01] It's not an audible voice.
[00:21:03] It's not lights. It's not all these things. It's an inner sense that God is present and he wants to commune with me.
[00:21:19] Have you ever had that? Have you ever had that inner sense that God is calling you and saying, I want you to spend some time with me?
[00:21:29] Church this means yes. This means no.
[00:21:33] All right.
[00:21:36] God calls us, but he just didn't say his calling. He says this calling of God gives us hope.
[00:21:49] What does hope mean? The firm belief that God is good and desires to bless us.
[00:21:54] Sometime this week, if you'll pay attention, you'll have an inner sense of the Holy Spirit calling you.
[00:22:02] And with that calling will come the thought God is good and wants to bless me.
[00:22:10] Church if you're not hearing from time to time the call of the Holy Spirit, if you're not sensing God is good and wants to bless you, you've drifted.
[00:22:25] You need to return to the Lord.
[00:22:29] You need to seek the Lord with all your heart. You need to humble yourself before him and let the Holy Spirit begin to call you again. Let the Holy Spirit begin to give you this sense that God knows you, he cares about you, and he desires to bless you and do good things in your life.
[00:22:51] What is hope? It is the expectation that the blessed God will bless us.
[00:22:58] It's not enough to believe that he blesses. Generally, hope is the expectation that that the blessed God wants to bless me.
[00:23:10] Church Paul says In Romans, chapter 15, May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.
[00:23:30] Did you hear that? I want to point out a couple of things. First of all, who is God? He is a God of hope.
[00:23:39] God lives in hope.
[00:23:42] And hope is A quality of his character that he shares with us. Because God is a God of hope. When we spend time with him, his hope runs off on us. We are filled with all hope. He says, now look, what does this hope feels like, feel like? It feels like joy and peace.
[00:24:04] May the God of hope rub off on you so that you abound in hope. And when you abound in hope, you will have an inner sense of well being and peace.
[00:24:17] Paul is praying your life will be better if you touch the reality of God in the kind of way that affects what you hope for. And you start to sense, because of your hope in God, a greater joy and a greater peace in your life, a richer sense of well being and a more calm sense of peace. Because the hope of his calling is having a good effect on you.
[00:24:52] Ah, what is this calling?
[00:24:57] Peter said in 1st Peter 2, 9, you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Did you hear that? What is the calling? It is a calling to be a chosen race.
[00:25:26] God is calling you to be his special people.
[00:25:31] God is not calling you just to live a good life. He's not calling you just to be a nice person. He's calling you and saying, I want you to be my chosen race and I want people to sense my goodness through you.
[00:25:50] We're not just his chosen race, we are a royal priesthood. What do priests do? They serve God. God is calling all of us to serve him in some way.
[00:26:03] What is this calling? It is an invitation to see ourselves primarily as God's own people.
[00:26:13] How do you identify yourself?
[00:26:16] Well, I'm from the Midwest. I'm a middle class person.
[00:26:22] I'm older than I want to be.
[00:26:27] We all classify ourselves. How do you classify yourself?
[00:26:33] Peter said, because of God's calling we can classify ourselves primarily as as God's own people.
[00:26:42] Who am I? I am a child of God.
[00:26:46] Who am I primarily? I am primarily a child of God.
[00:26:52] What is this calling? It is the privilege of proclaiming the excellencies of God.
[00:27:00] What is this calling? It is the beckoning of God which leads us out of darkness into his marvelous light. Do you hear this? The blessed God blesses and he shows up and calls us and said, you don't have to live the way you have been living. There's something much better.
[00:27:21] You don't have to live in the dark, you can live in the light. I'm calling you personally out of Darkness and into light.
[00:27:31] So let's put it all together that we can understand the hope of your calling.
[00:27:39] Since the blessed God blesses us by inviting us into the divine life, we expect better things.
[00:27:47] When I hear God's call and he raises my hope, he raises my expectation that the blessed God blesses and he wants to bless me.
[00:28:00] There is a.
[00:28:02] There is a transformation in me. And I find myself thinking and living in a better way.
[00:28:11] God calls me, fills me with hope. I sense joy and peace. And I have a sense that my life is better now than it was before I knew God well.
[00:28:25] Do you sense that? Church? Are you aware that your life is a lot better now than it was when you didn't have God?
[00:28:35] Some of you, some of you, you can tell stories about how impossible your life was and how things were falling apart.
[00:28:48] And then God showed up in your life. He called you and he gave you hope. And instead of misery, you sense joy. And instead of antagonism, you sense peace. And there is. And you're living a better life than you did when you lived in the darkness.
[00:29:11] As we pray for the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of God, so we pray for an understanding of what is the hope of God's calling us.
[00:29:25] He doesn't just call you once, he calls you again and again and again. Church Some of you need to know that it is the goodness of God that calls you to repentance. If you want to repent, it's because the goodness of God is calling you to repentance.
[00:29:44] And then Paul prayed that we would understand the riches of the glory of our inheritance.
[00:29:52] The blessed God is rich, and out of his infinite riches, he blesses us.
[00:30:00] Ah, I like to bless the kids in this church.
[00:30:07] And so from time to time, I look for opportunities to give kids ice cream money.
[00:30:15] Church it doesn't really cost me hardly anything to give kids ice cream money.
[00:30:24] I'm rich enough that I can give kids ice cream money, all right?
[00:30:30] But if you give it to the right kids, it makes all the difference in the world.
[00:30:35] Church I can't give my grandkids anything. They're all rich.
[00:30:43] Listen, I've seen children dance in delight because they're going to get ice cream, okay?
[00:30:53] God is rich, and his blessings to us are like ice cream money.
[00:31:01] We never bankrupt God in the riches of his blessings. He's always infinitely rich, and he has blessings beyond what we can imagine. And Paul said, you need to pray to understand that because it'll affect your life.
[00:31:24] Our teacher, Thomas Goodwin said, you know God is said to be rich.
[00:31:32] Rich in mercy, rich in grace, rich in love, rich in power.
[00:31:37] All his attributes are called riches. In the Scripture God is rich in everything he is and everything he does.
[00:31:47] I can't, I shouldn't ever think that I've over requested on his riches. If anything, I've under requested. Now Paul says I, I want you to have this great confidence in the riches of God. And then I want you to ask God to understand the riches of the glory of the inheritance that he has for you.
[00:32:13] Would you hear what Paul wrote to the Corinthians?
[00:32:16] For this light, momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond comparison. Did you hear that phrase? An eternal weight of glory beyond comparison? The struggles you have today, the difficulties you will have this week, the troubles, the disappointments, they are light, momentary afflictions and they can't in any way compare to the eternal weight of the glory that God has prepared for us.
[00:33:02] And so we look not to things that are seen, but to things that are unseen. Remember this internal vision. We have this ability to see eternal reality. We look at things not that are seen, but are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.
[00:33:28] This is the second time in Ephesians 1 that Paul talked to us about in inheritance. Ephesians 1:11. We studied this several weeks ago. In him we have obtained an inheritance being predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will.
[00:33:49] I thought about that. I just want to remind you a couple of things. Number one, this inheritance is an inheritance that is designed by God ahead of time.
[00:34:05] It's predestined. Remember I told you when God created you, when he imagined you, along with imagining who you are and what kind of person you would be, he created an inheritance for you, an eternal inheritance for you. It's specifically designed for you.
[00:34:25] It's part of his creative work when he created you a predestined an eternity for you. And it's perfect for the person you are. Church there's not. Heaven is not one size fits all. You know that, right? Because one size fits all never turns out to be true, does it?
[00:34:47] Heaven, our inheritance, is specifically designed by God for us.
[00:34:58] I want to remind you that there are four characteristics of this inheritance.
[00:35:04] First, Peter 1:3, the blessed God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Peter obviously learned from Paul. That's a Pauline phrase, isn't it? The blessed God, according to his great mercy, he's caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Now, listen. Listen to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, unfading, kept in heaven for you.
[00:35:41] Paul says, I'm praying that you can understand the riches of the glory of the inheritance that God created for you when he imagined you before creation.
[00:35:53] And then he said, Peter says, let me give you four glimpses of what this inheritance is like. First of all, it's incorruptible, imperishable. You can inherit things that don't last long, Church.
[00:36:11] You can inherit things that wear out.
[00:36:16] In fact, most of what we have is in some state of wearing out.
[00:36:23] I've looked at pictures that Shay's dad took, and I'm sure when those pictures were fresh, they look different than they do now, but they have the look of having been taken in 1945.
[00:36:40] They don't look like a modern photograph. Church, much of what we inherit is perishable. But listen, your eternal inheritance, it never perishes.
[00:36:57] It never grows old. It doesn't corrupt. It doesn't fade away.
[00:37:03] The second thing about this inheritance is it's undefiled. It's pure. God wants you to know and understand that your inheritance is not in any way tainted.
[00:37:18] A lot of inheritances come with a history.
[00:37:23] How did this family come by having these things? And sometimes there is a history that people like to keep covered up.
[00:37:35] This inheritance that we have, it's pure, it's undefiled. Nothing has to be covered up. It's. There's nothing shameful in it. There's no. There's no history with it. It is a pure gift from the rich heart of God.
[00:37:53] This inheritance has a third quality. It's unfading. It retains its wonderful character. How odd is this? I was just talking to a brother this morning before church. How quickly stuff loses its. Its original, wonderful character. What you think is wonderful today, two years from now, you. You won't think is so wonderful, Church. Don't you know that? Or maybe two years, ten years from now. What you think is wonderful now, you'll be putting in the trash ten years from now, especially if you move.
[00:38:31] Oh, this is so wonderful. We have to hold on forever, right? All right.
[00:38:37] This inheritance that. That Paul wants you to understand, it never loses its wonder.
[00:38:47] You're going to enjoy your divine inheritance as much a million years in the future as you do the very first day. Can you hear me, Church? This inheritance is not an inheritance that loses its wonder. It stays fresh and beautiful and exciting.
[00:39:07] It speaks to the nature of who you are as a person.
[00:39:13] And then finally, this inheritance is being kept in heaven for you. It's safe. There's not a chance that you can lose your inheritance.
[00:39:23] Pretty rough week on the stock market. Maybe somebody lost a little inheritance.
[00:39:30] Church. This inheritance is kept in the safety box of heaven. God himself keeps this for you. It can't be lost.
[00:39:43] It's certain. It sure.
[00:39:45] All right. Paul says, I'm asking you to change the way you pray.
[00:39:51] I'm asking you to start praying more from what you see in your. With the eyes of your soul than what you see with your eyes, you. Your physical eyes.
[00:40:02] I'm asking you to pray for things that aren't temporal but are eternal.
[00:40:09] I'm asking you to start saying to God in a fresh and meaningful way, help me understand what is the hope that comes from you calling me.
[00:40:21] Paul says, I'm asking you to start praying that God would help you to understand what. What is the riches of the glory of your inheritance. Paul is saying, I'm asking you to start praying in the kind of way that the spiritual values of your life increase and you come to know God in a progressive way. And the things that you come to know about God change the way you think and the way you act change your values because then you're living in a healthy relationship to the blessed God who blesses our dear Heavenly Father.
[00:41:01] I pray that we would practice an enlightened Christian life.
[00:41:06] I pray that our prayer life would change.
[00:41:10] I pray that in.
[00:41:12] In your spirit's work in us, our inner sight could become more comprehensive.
[00:41:22] Our inner sight we could understand in new and rich ways. And then we would see you differently.
[00:41:31] And seeing you differently, our values would change and we would come to value the call that you have on our life. We would come to value the hope that you give us. We would come to value the. The riches of the glory of our inheritance.
[00:41:48] And we would. We would live the enlightened Christian life that you created us to live. And I ask this in Jesus name, Amen.
