The Power of God’s Riches
Ephesians 3:13-21
September 19, 2021 anno Domini
The bad news today is I’m preaching about riches again. The good news is they are not your riches, but God’s riches for you and in you. That is what Saint Paul preaches to the Ephesians in today’s Epistle reading – God’s riches. Paul is in prison. The Ephesians are losing heart. If their pastor is locked up for preaching Christ, how long until they are locked up? How long before the Gospel is silenced, and the world wins, and all hope is lost?
Last week Jesus said, “Do not be anxious.” This week Paul says, “Do not lose heart.” I would probably say, “Knock it off. Quit having a pity party of despair.” All of us would give you the same reason. Jesus says you are of more value than the birds Paul says that you have the riches of God’s glory and I’m going to spend the next 34 ½ minutes counting out those riches for you.
Treasure #1 – God is your Father. He is your Father in two ways. First, He created you in His image. The Triune God is three persons in one God and only of humans is it said that two are one. In marriage one man and one woman are joined together in one flesh and a third results. Only a man and a woman can have a fruitful marriage. This is another indication that homosexuality and transgenderism are sinful. They are fruitless. No child is produced to love and give to. Sexual perversion never produces the fruit of children, love, and sacrifice. Because humans are made in God’s image Paul says every family is named from the Father. In Greek father is Pater and family is Patria. God is your Father by creation.
Christians have this treasure of God as Father in a double way. God is your Father by faith in Christ. You ran away from home. With your sin you’ve told God to get lost, but it was you who lost – sinners lose the ability to love, to serve, and to live. God loved you so much He didn’t want to lose you, so He loved you when you weren’t lovely. He sought you out, climbed down into your mess, and redeemed you with the price of His Son. He is your Father through His Son Jesus Christ.
Treasure #2 – Now Christ dwells in your hearts through faith. How rich is this? The Son of God, Jesus Christ, lives in you. You remember the temple in the Old Testament where God chose to sit to be with His people. That temple is destroyed. It never needs to be rebuilt. You don’t need to go to Jerusalem to be in God’s presence because God is present in you.
This happens by faith. In the rite of baptism there is an exorcism in which the Devil is cast out of you. By the promise of God’s Word, the Spirit dwells in you and where the Spirit of Christ is Christ is. The Devil always wants you to evict Christ through temptation, shame, and vice, but as long as you believe, as long as you don’t shut the door on Jesus, He dwells in you. Like a living tree you are rooted in Christ, and you will not be separated from life. Like a building you are grounded on the solid foundation of Jesus. Nothing can tear you down or destroy you. Remember this – your body is not your own. It was purchased with a price. Christ and the Spirit of Christ dwell there – so don’t pollute your body by being a glutton or drunk or addict. Don’t defile your body by having sex outside of marriage. Don’t live for yourself because you are God’s temple. Christ dwells in you by faith.
Treasure #3 – You have been strengthened to comprehend what is the breadth and length and height and depth of God’s love.
This summer Val and I travelled to Cincinnati to see the replica of Noah’s Ark at The Ark Encounter. Perhaps the most breathtaking moment is when you drive through this little valley and come up and there is the Ark, perched on a hillside and you behold the breadth and length and height and depth of the Ark. At first you think – how could Noah build that thing without Menards and Home Depot and a really big table saw? But after you tour the Ark and learn from all the displays you learn that it was completely reasonable that Noah with his sons and a few sub-contractors could construct the ark as God’s Word says.
God’s love, on the other hand, is not reasonable. No matter how much you hear and study the love of God in Christ Jesus it will still be incomprehensible. That God would come down from the height of heaven to dwell in human flesh. That the Son of God would go to the depths of hell to save us. That the cross separates us from our sins as far as the east is from the west. That this love isn’t just for me, but for my enemies, for the person who hurt me most, for the most despicable tyrant or pervert history has ever known. The simple sentence that God loves you in Christ ought to overwhelm you with thanksgiving, praise, and a desire to sacrifice all you have for Him.
God has given us to grasp (barely) the breadth and length and height and depth of God’s love. You know this treasure and at the same time it remains unknowable. Paul says it surpasses knowledge. The Greek word surpasses is hyper-ballow. Ballow is where we get our English word ball and in Greek it means to throw. Hyper – you know what that is. That’s your child after drinking two cans of Mountain Dew and a pack of Starbursts. Put the two words together and you get what happens when the Twins are playing the Yankees. The Twins are up by 1 in the bottom of the ninth. The Yankees are batting. Then our ace reliever throws the ball five feet over the catcher’s head – hyper ballow way over the head, and the Yankees score two on the wild pitch and win again. That’s what Paul means – God’s love is over your head. It surpasses your comprehension. No one loves you like God loves you in Jesus His Son.
Because of these riches, and there’s even more in this text, but I don’t want to preach 34 ½ minutes, Paul writes (read vs. 20). God is able to do far more than all that we ask or think. But don’t forget the conclusion of the verse. This doesn’t mean God is a Genie in a bottle or our heavenly Butler who answers when we ring his bell. He does all this according to the power at work within us. When you think you have no power against your sins – wrong. You are able to beat that sin because Christ dwells in you, because you are a new man in Christ, because you now have power against sin. When you lay awake at night in fear or worry or despair about the millions of things wrong in the world or the dozens of problems within your own family and the Devil is whispering, “there’s no hope.” WRONG. The pagan world of Jesus day was as evil as our world today and Christians changed it, by loving the unlovable, by sacrificing not only their riches and livelihood, but even their lives. When the Government demanded their worship, the Christians confessed Christ and died. And the Church grew and good overcame evil, and the world was made a better place, especially for women and girls and the poor and the oppressed. Who put an end to slavery? It wasn’t Black Lives Matter. It was Christians.
As I studied this Epistle reading, I wondered why this reading was chosen to be paired with two resurrection stories. I think it is because of that twentieth verse where Paul says (read vs. 20). “Do you think being raised from the dead changed the widow’s son?” If you were all the way dead and in the hearse on your way to Trinity cemetery, and Jesus awaked you to life, would it change you? Would you live differently? God has raised you from the dead because He has forgiven your sins. You won’t die but live forever. That power to live is in you because God is your Father, because Christ is in you, because God has loved you with a “way over your head” love. Christians ought not say, “I can’t do anything about that.” God is able to do far more than you think for you and in you and through you. In the name of Jesus. Amen.