Understanding Salvation  Pt.1	 Eph.1:15-19	    “Knowing God”

I told you in the introduction to Ephesians that there is a huge amount of similarity between Eph. and Col.  The parallel passage to this one is Col.1:3,4,9.  Those three verses have 20 words in common with Eph.1:15-17.
    When you read a passage in Eph. and then the parallel passage in Col., it’s pretty obvious that Paul sat down and wrote both books very close to the same time. 
    And yet it’s not just that he copied one to the other.  The prayer in Colossians is really making a significantly different point.

    How to Pray for People

For this reason, having heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, 16 I have not stopped giving thanks for you
    Paul is bursting with gratitude for these people, because he heard that they were exhibiting the two undeniable proofs of genuine salvation: faith and love.
    If their lives are marked by faith and love, that means they are saved, which means they have received all the blessings of salvation that he just described in vv.3-14.
    That’s why he starts out v.15 saying, For this reason
 
Because of your having receiving the five blessings of salvation.
 
There some important things we can learn from Paul’s example here.  

1.  Be grateful for what God has done in people.

   First, there ought to be a profound gratitude toward God when we see people exhibiting spiritual fruit.
    When we have a proper perspective, things like faith and love will stand out as being such incredibly wonderful things that you will find your heart full of gratitude when you see them, or, in this case, just hear about them.
    Notice Paul says he heard about their faith and love.  These may be people he has never met, which may be another argument against the idea that this letter was written to the church in Ephesus (where Paul spent 3 years and new the people).
    But if it is a circular letter, designed to be passed around to several churches, that’s not to say it was an open letter with no specific recipients. 
    There was a specific group of people this letter was written to – these people that Paul had heard about.
    Sometimes people disparage the value of general prayers.  I don’t know why.  Paul routinely prayed for entire churches.
    And then he writes and lets them know.  And that’s another thing we can learn form this.

2. Tell the person what you prayed.

   The first thing we learn is that your gratitude level for godly people is a good barometer of your spiritual condition.
    But another thing we can learn from this is that we should not only pray for people, but we should report to each other what we are praying.
    When you pray for people, tell them about it.  
    Tell them exactly what it is about them that makes gratitude well up in your heart for them.
    
remembering (lit: mentioning) you in my prayers. 
    A major part of your responsibility as a member of the body of Christ is to pray for us.
    You really don’t have any option.  It’s not a ministry you can decide to volunteer for or not volunteer for.  God requires it of you.
    If you don’t want to pray for us you are going to have to just go somewhere else and pray for them.
    (And when you do that, for all you know the Holy Spirit will lay it on your heart to pray for us anyway, so you might as well stay).
    Later in this book, in the section on spiritual warfare, in the part about the armor Paul tells them to pray for the saints 6 times in three verses.
    Eph.6:18
And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.
    We should be praying for each other constantly.  Almost every letter Paul ever wrote that we know of, he reports his prayers for those people – and very often with words like “constantly” “never ceasing” “continuously” etc.
    And the content of those prayers should be primarily spiritual things.

3. Pray for things that really matter.

   We get so caught up in this physical world we live in, we find ourselves praying mostly about physical things.
    We are forever asking for healing, money, help in our temporal troubles, etc.
    But when you read the prayers in the NT, they are almost completely devoted to spiritual things.
    For the Christians in Rome, he thanked God for their faith, and prayed to be able to minister to them in person (Ro.1:8-10)
    For the believers in Corinth he thanked God because of His grace given to them in their spiritual gifts (1 Co.1:4-7)
    For the recipients of the book of Ephesians, he prays here for wisdom and revelation and the prays again in ch.3 that they would understand God’s vast love. (3:14-19) 
    The thanked God for he dear friends in Philippi because of their partnership with him in his minsitry, and he prayed for wisdom and insight for them, as well as purity, blamelessness and righteousness (Php.1:3-11).
    For the Colossians he thanks God for their faith, love and hope, and he prayed that God would give them wisdom and understanding so they might live worthy lives that please God, being strengthened so they would have patience and endurance in joyful thanksgiving (Col.1:3-14).
    He thanked God for the work, labor and endurance of the Thessalonians that came from their faith, love and hope (1 Thes.1:2,3), and by the second letter he was thanking God for their perseverance in suffering (2 Thes.1:3,4).
    He thanked God for the faith and love of Philemon, and prayed that he would be active in sharing his faith so he would understand every good thing he has in Christ (Phlm.4-7). 
    None of those prayers have anything to do with money or physical health, or their jobs, or any temporal circumstances.
    This kind of praying requires a lot of thought.  It’s not easy.
    We ask each other for prayer requests all the time.  That keeps us from having to do much work – we just rattle off what the person has asked for.
    But to pray for these kinds of things takes a lot more effort and thought.  (Although it helps to have these prayers memorized or printed out in front of you as you pray).
    It takes even more thought to be thankful for spiritual qualities in people.  
    I can pick out just about anything in the Bible to ask for for you – love, faith, hope, peace, patience, kindness…
    But to thank God for the particular spiritual virtues that stand out in you requires that I be alert to those things and give thought to them.
    But it’s worth the effort.  We should pray for spiritual things for one another, because those are the things that are of real value. 
    If you want to give a friend a gift, and you have a choice between a stock that will increase 100-fold, or a stock that you know will be worthless in a few years, you would want to give the first one.
    There is nothing wrong with praying for healing, but keep in mind that healed body will be dead before too long.
    There’s nothing wrong with praying for a better job, but that’s not something that will still benefit the person a million years from now.
    Love, however, or faithfulness, or integrity, or courage, or compassion, or hope, or wisdom…
    Those are things that will pay dividends a million years from now.
    So be thankful for what God has done in people, report your prayers to those people, and pray for spiritual things.
    And there’s a fourth lesson we can learn from this particular prayer: when you tell the person what you have prayed – remind him of the nature of the God to whom you prayed the prayer.

4. Remind them of the one to whom you are praying. 

17 I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father,
    In the OT, when they wanted to refer to the true God, they would say, “The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” or “The God of our fathers” or “The God of Israel.”
    But a much greater and more fitting description now is “the God of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
    Paul uses that phrase here instead of just saying “God” because he just got done making such a point of the fact that all the incredible blessings of salvation are in Christ.
    It’s only through Christ that they come.  
    And so when he wants to pray for blessing for them, he prays to the God of Christ.
    Then he throws in the phrase the glorious Father (lit. the Father of glory) to recall to your mind all that he has just said about God’s glory in the blessing in vv.3-14.
    Remember when we studied v.5 about adoption, and learned about the wonderful intimacy involved in the fact that we can call God “My Father”?  
    That term brings God very close.
    The concept of glory emphasizes His remoteness.  He is like the sun – bright, brilliant, distant, unapproachable, and deadly. 
    The OT manifestations of God’s glory terrified people, and the only reason they survived is because God veiled it.
    The term Father brings Him right up close to you, and lifts you up into His lap.
    The term glory takes Him far away – above the whole cosmos in unapproachable light.
    Paul: “I’m praying for you and asking for these things, and the God I’m asking…
    - loves tenderly and is as close to you as a Father, and yet sits enthroned above the Universe in awesome, brilliant, transcendent glory.”
    That’s the kind of God I’m talking to about you.
    When you tell each other about your prayers for each other, instead of just saying, “I’ve been praying for God to bless you” you can say…
    - “I’ve been asking for blessing on your behalf, and the one I’ve been asking is someone
•	who created all things
•	who owns all things
•	who has infinite, unlimited power to do everything He pleases, and
•	who has said that since you are His child His is pleased to bless you.”
    “I’ve been praying for restoration and refreshment and healing for you, and the one I’ve been praying to is one who loves you more than you love your own children.”
    “I’ve been praying for God to grant you stronger faith, and I asked for that from the only One who is the source of true faith, and who is greatly pleased by faith and wants you to have it.”
    “I’m praying to a God who wants you to have these things, and who is capable of giving them.”
    So there’s one sermon – we need to learn from Paul’s example in our prayers for each other.
    That went fast enough, we have time for another one.   So let’s look at specifically what Paul prayed for.
The Request: That You May Receive the Spirit of Wisdom & Revelation 
 17 I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation
    The Spirit if wisdom and revelation is the Holy Spirit.  It has to be.  It can’t refer to the human spirit, because by definition revelation is something God does.
    Revelation is the unveiling of something that can’t otherwise be known by man.
    But he already made it very clear that these people have the Holy Spirit.  He just got done saying they were sealed by the Spirit and received the Spirit as a deposit for the future inheritance.  
    So what does it mean to have all that, and then have Paul pray that you receive the Spirit of wisdom and revelation?
    The Holy Spirit is a person.  Your don’t get Him in pieces or portions.
    However, there are degrees of receptiveness to His work in your heart.
    When Paul prays that they will receive the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, the request is that they will be more receptive to the Holy Spirit’s work of giving wisdom and revelation.
    And as we will see in a moment, that’s really the only request Paul makes in this prayer report.  He’s asking for just one thing: for them to be receptive to the Spirit’s revealing ministry.
    And he gives the reason at the end of v.17: 

The Purpose

so that you may know him better. 
    There are a lot of good reasons to be more receptive to the Holy Spirit – so you can be more obedient, more holy, more thankful, so that you can receive guidance, etc.
    But by far the most important reason is so you can know God better.  That’s the most important goal in life.
God Himself said that knowledge of Him is the greatest claim to fame anyone could ever have: 
Jer.9:23-24
This is what the LORD says: "Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, 24 but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me
    That’s what God wants from you more than anything else.
    Hos 6:6
God said, For I desire…the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings. 
    And Jesus summed up the entire meaning of eternal life by saying basically what it amounts to is knowing God.
    John 17:3 Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.
    You can do a lot of wonderful things for people.  You can give someone a million dollars, you could help someone get a great job, you could provide someone with an education…
    - you could love someone unconditionally all his life, you could help someone out of a terrible jam…
    There are countless good things you can give to people.  But the greatest thing you could ever do for someone is pray that he would have a greater knowledge of God.
    What does it mean to know God?
    We use that language all the time – a personal relationship with God, but what does that mean?
    What does it mean to know someone whose face you’ve never seen, whose voice you’ve never heard, and whom you have never even physically met?
    Some people turn this into nothing more than a dry awareness of theology.  They figure if they can ace a theology test, they know God.
    But lots of unbelievers can ace theology tests.
    Other people err on the opposite end of the spectrum and turn knowledge of God into mysticism.  They pray, and then they “listen,” and whatever thoughts pop into their head while they listen they assume to be God speaking to them (a very ill advised practice).
    In those people the knowledge of God is reduced to subjective feelings.
    But what can we see in this passage that will clue us in to what it means to know God?
    Knowing someone involves at least three things.
1.	Being known by the person.
    If I say to you, “I know Chuck Swindol personally,” so we go visit his church and you can see that he doesn’t know me from Adam, you would say that I misled you.
    Even if I know lots of information about him, and have lots of favorable feelings toward him, if he doesn’t know me, I can’t say I know him.
    The beginning point of knowing God is being known by God.
    Now obviously God knows all about everyone, but there is a special sense in which the Bible says He knows His children – believers who have been adopted into His family.
    God knows you with that kind of knowing, and that’s what we studied all through vv.3-14.  
    God chose you before the creation, he predestined you to be adopted as His son/daughter, He gave His Son for you, redeemed you, called you, gave you an inheritance…
    All those aspects of God’s knowing you are the beginning point of knowing God.
    The major thrust of Paul’s praying for these people is that they would be able to grasp some of the wonder of that truth. 
    He just got done explaining it, but now he has to stop and pray and beg God to enable them to comprehend the significance of what he just said.
2.	    Understanding what he is like.
    Knowing someone personally is not just being aware of information about the person, but it definitely requires that.
    Suppose I ask you, “Do you know Terry Gilbert?” and you say, “Yes.” 
    And I say, “How well do you know him?” – and you say, “Extremely well.”  What would that mean?
    It would mean that you know all about him.  You know what he’s like.  You know what he enjoys, you know what dislikes, you know how he reacts to various things, you know what he’s interested in…
    You know the things he’s done in his life.  You’re familiar with his family.
    You know his mannerisms, his tastes – what he would really, really like for Christmas.
    When Paul prays that these people will be more receptive to the Holy Spirit so they will know God better, he is praying for them to delve deeply into theology.  
    Theology is knowing 
•	what God is like
•	what He enjoys
•	what He dislikes
•	how He reacts to various things
•	what He is most interested in
•	what He has done in the past
•	knowing His children, and His Son, Jesus Christ
•	knowing what He would most desire for an inheritance 
    How much do you know about what God is like?  
    This is why He gave us the Bible.
    When you think of Bible knowledge, I hope you don’t think in terms of statistics – knowing how many chapters are in the book of Numbers, or which prophets are pre-exilic or post-exilic, or how quickly you could find the book of Nahum.
    The point of the Bible is to teach us exactly what God is like.
    If someone asked you what your dad is like, how long could you talk?
    If someone asked you what God is like, how long could you talk?  
    If someone asked what your spouse is like, you could tell them a hundred things.  If you were describing what God is like, could you tell them a hundred things?  Or even ten?
    You gain your information about what your wife is like through experience, which can be misleading.  
    God didn’t want that to be a factor in our knowledge of Him, so we gain our information about what He is like though His own revelation of Himself written down in plain language.
    That’s why we study the Bible.
    When Paul prays that these people will be receptive to the Spirit of revelation, he asking God to make their hearts and minds more receptive to what has been revealed about God in Scripture.
    That’s why this prayer is so densely packed with terminology about knowledge.  He prays for the Spirit of 
•	Wisdom and 
•	Revelation
•	so you may know Him better
Then he talks about The eyes of your heart (a figure of speech that refers to your capacity to understand spiritual truth – that faculty of the inner man that is capable of perceiving spiritual truth.)
•	Having been enlightened 
•	that you may know the hope
    It’s all about knowing.
    And his prayer in ch.3 is the same way – he wants them to know all about the magnitude of God’s love.
    Learning information about God is unlike any other learning experience.  Learning other information fills the mind.
    Learning about God improves the soul.  It changes you.  It changes your very nature.
    Let me read you a quote from C.H. Spurgeon: 
“There is something exceedingly improving to the mind in a contemplation of the Divinity.  It is a subject so vast that all our thoughts are lost in its immensity; so deep, that our pride is drowned in its infinity. Other subjects we can compass and grapple with; in them we feel a kind of self-content, and go our way with the thought, ‘Behold I am wise’.   But when we come to this master-science, finding that our plumb-line cannot sound its depth, and that our eagle eye cannot see its height, we turn away with the thought that vain man would be wise…No subject of contemplation will tend more to humble the mind, than thoughts of God…”
    He goes on: 
“But while the subject humbles the mind, it also expands it.  He who often thinks of God will have a larger mind than the man who simply plods around this narrow globe…The most excellent study for expanding the soul, is the science of Christ, and Him crucified, and the knowledge of the Godhead in the glorious Trinity.  Nothing will so enlarge the intellect, nothing so magnify the whole soul of man, as a devout, earnest, continued investigation of the great subject of the Deity.”
    Then he goes on to talk about how not only does it humble the mind, and expand the mind, but it also edifies and soothes and heals the wounds of the soul.  It has a healing, restoring effect.
    There is no better use of this gray matter we have stuffed into our skulls than the contemplation of our Creator.  
    So knowing someone involves being known by that person, and knowing all about what that person is like.
    But that’s still not all there is too it.  If you study the biblical concept of knowing a person – and particularly the term used here (epignosis), you realize that knowing someone, in addition to being known by him and knowing what he is like, invovles…
3.	    Experiencing the person
    If you have ever studied the biblical terms for knowledge, you realize that it’s more than an intellectual awareness. 
    Adam knew Eve and she conceived – it doesn’t mean he knew who she was.
    God said to Israel, “You only have I known” (Amos 3:2)  It doesn’t mean they were the only people He was aware of.
    There is an experiential element to knowledge. 
    If you make the decision that you are really going to try to get to know Kurt & Valerie better, you wouldn’t do research on them.  You would spend time with them.
    You would not only want to have an awareness of what they are like, but you would want to experience it for yourself.
    Now, how do you experience a person?  
•	    You communicate with them
•	You place yourself in their presence, and experience the things they do, and respond to those things 
    You wouldn’t just find out information about their life – you would become a part of their life.
    You would be involved in the things they do.
    You might invite them into your home and serve food to them.  You might find yourself in their home, and experience them serving you.
    And the more of their lives you personally experience, the more you know them.
    So, what does it mean to experience God?
    When I came to this point in my study, I stopped, got up, and went and got a huge glass of iced tea.
    I thought, “This is going to be a huge project – to comb through the whole Bible and catalogue all the ways in which we experience God, and then summarize it all for a sermon.”
    Are you ready for the list?
    Let’s list all the ways we see in Scripture that someone can experience God.
    #1 We experience God by experiencing the blessings of salvation. 
    I actually thought of that one right away.  
    Literally within seconds of trying to think of ways in which we experience God, the first thing that came to mind was that we experience Him through the blessings of salvation.
    That was kind of obvious, because we have spent the last few months studying vv.1-14, which are all about blessing God because of the ways He has blessed us in salvation (election, adoption, revelation, redemption, salvation, inheritance, etc.).
    #2…
    Number two was a tricky one.  I thought and thought, and everything I came up with ended up being just another one of the blessings of salvation.
    So I took a break from thinking about it.  (Fortunately this was on Monday, so I had plenty of time).
    I revisited it the next day, and tried to think of #2.  In fact I thought about it all week, and I never did come up with anything.
    Perhaps there is something somewhere in the Bible that I’m not finding, but the best I can tell, there is no #2.  
    There is only one way in which we experience God, and that is by experiencing the blessings of salvation.
    So knowing God better is really very simple.  It involves three things:

1.	Being known by Him.  (That was taken care of before the creation of the world).
2.	Learning more about what He is like.  (That’s what we do here every Sunday, and it’s what you do every time you open up His Word)
3.	Experience Him more.  That is, experiencing the blessings of salvation in greater measure…and that’s it.
    There is no secret knowledge.  There is no higher plane of existence.  There is no special second blessing or second work of grace reserved only for the elite Christians.  
    There is a higher level of Christianity than what you are enjoying now, but all it is is more knowledge of Him and a greater appreciation of the blessings of your salvation.
    God has already given you every spiritual blessing in Christ.  If you want to live on a higher plane, all you can do is work at gaining a greater experience of those blessings.
    The summary of our involvement in our salvation is faith, hope and love.  And if you want to live at a higher level the only thing you need is greater faith, hope and love.
    So many people aren’t satisfied with having every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies, and so they seek something deeper.
    - and usually they seek it in mysticism.  
    They figure if they can have some kind of emotional, mystical, subjective experience, that’s what it means to experience God.
    No.  What it means to experience God is to be forgiven of your sins.
    What it means to experience God is to have faith, hope and love.
    Experiencing God means growing more Christlike in tiny increments every day through Scripture, prayer, fellowship and worship.
    Experiencing God and knowing Him in a deeper way is forgiving someone who doesn’t deserve to be forgiven.
    Experiencing God is being enabled by the Holy Spirit to endure suffering willingly and joyfully.
    Experiencing God means trudging through the monotony of cleaning the house every day or going to work every day without losing sight of the role you are playing in the Kingdom of God. 
    Knowing God intimately means facing desperate, confusing, perplexing circumstances and trusting Him to take care of you.
    Experiencing God means gaining a greater understanding of predestination, and election, and adoption, and sovereignty, and providence, and forgiveness, and inheritance, and reward…
    - sanctification, justification, glorification, enlightenment, preservation, prayer, obedience, gratitude…
 
If you want to understand this passage then it’s critical that you notice that Paul does not introduce any profound new idea here.  
    In fact, he doesn’t introduce anything at all.  He just prays and beseeches God to enable the readers to understand the blessings of salvation that he just got done describing, because that’s the key to knowing God. 
    Want to know God better?  Deepen your experience of the blessings of salvation.
    Make things like the use of your spiritual gifts, carrying out your calling – all the things you do and think about that are related to your salvation…
    - all the blessings of salvation – make those more of the central focus of your life.
    That’s what it means to know God.
 
The Specifics of the Knowledge

In v.18 he gets specific and give us some examples of the kind of thing he’s talking about.
    
Your Eyes Were Opened For a Reason  

    I’m belaboring that so you will get the point of the verse – Your enlightenment at your conversion had a purpose.
    When you became saved, God opened your eyes.  There is a reason He opened your eyes.
    When you were converted, God enabled you to understand, appreciate, accept, and integrate into your life, spiritual truth.  He did that for a reason.
    What is the reason? It’s spelled out in the rest of the verse.

    Benediction:
Php.1:9-11 And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, 10 so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, 11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ--to the glory and praise of God