Biblical hope is not something you're unsure about at all. Biblical hope is something that you are very sure about that just hadn't happened yet, but something that you look forward to with great anticipation and that literally reshapes your entire outlook on life. And what is Paul saying that we are certain is going to happen? What is our hope that God is going to finish what He started in us? Welcome back to the Summit Life podcast with Pastor J.D.
Greer. Before we begin today's teaching, I want to offer you a free five-day devotional drawn from Pastor JD's book titled Not God Enough. It's designed to help you begin expanding your vision of who God truly is through scripture, reflection, and guided prayer. Over five short readings, you'll explore how a small view of God can weaken faith and how rediscovering his greatness changes everything. If you're looking for something practical and scripture-centered to carry with you this week, we hope this free download will strengthen your faith today with a powerful introduction to a bigger vision of God.
Just visit jdgreer.com to receive it today. Today, Pastor JD shows us why it's not enough just to know the facts. God has to grant us spiritual sight if we want to know him more and see his true glory.
So let's get started in the book of Ephesians.
So, if you've got your Bible, begin to turn into Ephesians chapter 1. As you're turning there, let me just ask a question here. How many of you have had LASIC surgery? Why don't you raise your hands? You had LASIK surgery.
I had it several years ago, so I can see a few of you out there. I probably need to have it again. But I had it about 14 years ago, and if I remember correctly, it was pretty new on the market. I actually heard an advertisement for it on the radio, and I was wearing contacts at the time. They said, Hey, if you pay for one eye, we'll throw in the other eye for free.
And I thought, well, who takes the one eye only option? I wasn't sure about that, but I got two eyes, so that sounds perfect.
So I went in and I got my little exam done and made my appointment. I went in on the day for the appointment, and I'm thinking, surely, you know, I sit in this little waiting room for like. You know, seven or eight minutes, and the doctor calls me back in. And I'm thinking, surely there's got to be some kind of prep, you know, process or some kind of long whatever. I got to wear a robe or something.
But nope, she talks to me for two or three minutes, sits me down, and straps my head back in a chair. Then she hands me a couple of valium pills and she straps me down. And immediately, as my head is strapped to the chair, I start having second thoughts. Like, do good eye doctors advertise on the radio? I mean, I'm not sure that that's really, you know, did I just really sell my eye out to the lowest bidder?
Is what I kind of feel like I just did. But at that point, you know, when you get strapped down, the little machine has already taken over. And so this little, like, best way I can describe it as like a little vacuum cleaner comes out and just kind of locks onto your eye and kind of pulls it up just a tad. I will skip most of the details. I will tell you that they have gotten a lot better in the last 14 years.
And so my experience is not necessarily what everybody's is, but the little, essentially, they have to take this little, I hate to say this, but this little like knife cuts off the top of your cornea, and they, the doctor. Doctor takes these little rubber tweezers and she pulled the cornea back, and then the laser starts to go to work on your eye. And it kind of looks like a little kaleidoscope that's taking place in your eye. And I mean, you have to watch because where else are you going to look? It's like right there in your eye.
And so I'm watching this thing. And then I start having these just like crazy thoughts: like, what if there's an earthquake? Yeah, I know Raleigh Durham is not known for its earthquakes, but there's a first time for everything.
So maybe, like, did somebody check the weather channel? Is there an earthquake schedule? How do they schedule things like that? And I'm kind of, I mean, because you know, my wife is pregnant with our first child. And at that point, I'm thinking, what if I lose my sight and I never see my child?
Well, just about as soon as we started, the thing was over. She switched over to the other eye and then the kaleidoscope on that one. And she sat me up, said, You're all done. I think the whole thing took 11 minutes. I sat up and I could see 20-20, except for one thing.
That the very last process, she takes those little rubber tweezers and she puts your cornea back on, and then she put what I guess was like some kind of super glue to, you know, get it all fixed. But you can't see for like 30 seconds. And that is a scary 30 seconds because I'm like, something just went wrong and I can't see anymore. The reason I tell you that is not to dissuade you from LASIK. It's been a great experience for me, I'll say that.
But it's that sight is something that is very precious to you and something that you would never want to be without. Because so much of your life would be different if you didn't have sight. Me sitting there thinking about my. Daughter that was going to be born, and never having a chance to look into her face, life would be so much incredibly different if you couldn't see. I share that because right here at the beginning of the book of Ephesians, Paul pauses in his theological instructions and he writes out a prayer for the Ephesians, and the focus of the prayer is for spiritual sight.
If you were here last weekend, you remember that Paul in the first part of this chapter, the first 14 verses, has dropped a series of theological bombs. And he is about to drop some more in chapter two. But Paul knows that simply explaining these things to the Ephesians is not going to be sufficient. Unless God grants spiritual sight to them, it's all useless.
So in verse 17, he kind of stops his theological instruction and he says this, I pray, I pray that God may give you the spirit of wisdom and of revelation and the knowledge of him. Having the eyes of your hearts enlightened. You see what he's praying for? He's praying for God to help their eyes to see. You need the eyes of your heart to be enlightened.
God's got to give you through the spirit this spirit of wisdom and he's going to reveal to you the knowledge of me. It's gotta be something the Spirit of God opens your eyes to. Because even if you know all the facts, but the eyes of your heart haven't been opened, you'll never feel them, and they'll never transform you. There are two words, by the way, for knowledge in the Greek language. The word that's not used here is the word oida.
Oida, and OIDA refers to knowing kind of facts or data. I know that Raleigh is the capital of North Carolina. I know that the square root of 256 is 16. I know that the little plastic piece at the end of your shoelace is called an aglet. Those are cool facts that I know.
But that is not, that's OIDA. That's not the word that he uses here. The word that he uses there is the word GNOSCO. And gnosko in the Greek language refers to a different kind of knowledge. It's personal, it's a felt knowledge that is gained through experience.
I might know, I might OIDA that Krispy Kremes donuts are made of sugar and baby angel nectar, but that is different from that experience of putting one in your mouth and having it just melt into, you know, taste bliss or whatever. That's GNOSCO when you put it in your mouth. You might know, you might OIDA how parachuting works, but that's different from the moment that you step out of the plane. At that point, your oida becomes gnosco. I knew my wife, my oida, my wife, was about to give birth, but that was different than holding my first daughter in my arms.
That was GNOSCO. The Hebrew version of the word that Paul uses here often referred to sexual intimacy. When a man or a woman would unite their souls in sexual intimacy, the Bible says, if you've read the Old Testament, that they knew one another. That didn't mean that they got together and introduced themselves and exchanged some relevant facts about each other. It means that they experienced each other.
That's the kind of knowledge that Paul is praying for us to have. It is a felt knowledge of the love of God, a felt knowledge that you experience deep within your soul. When God grants spiritual sight to us, He takes the doctrines of the gospel that we understand with our mind, oida, and he makes them, gnosco, burst alive with sweetness in our hearts. We come to know them as real, as personal, and as felt. You see, it is very possible to be around Jesus for a long period of time, maybe a lifetime.
and to hear the very best preaching and never really know him. Just consider Judas. Judas hung around Jesus for three years without ever developing personal love and trust in Jesus. I mean, Judas didn't start out as an outright hypocrite. He was interested in Jesus.
He didn't come in as like a double agent or, you know, an emissary of Satan. He wanted to be around Jesus like everybody else. He believed that Jesus was telling the truth. He was pulling for Jesus. He wanted Jesus to be a part of his life.
But the eyes of his heart were never enlightened to see the true glory of Jesus. And so his knowledge of Jesus never turned into personal trust or love. And so when the hour of trial came, he departed instead of staying with Jesus. Let me make a really big statement here as we get started this morning. Almost all of your spiritual problems come from a lack of sight.
Almost all of your spiritual problems come from a lack of sight because what you know with your mind, what you oidel with your mind, has never become gnosco, known, or felt with your heart. For example, do you feel dry spiritually? Do you just feel cold spiritually? Like something is missing in your life? You feel like Christianity ought to be about something more?
This is what you're looking for. What you know here has got to become alive here. Many of you have been Christians since you were very little. And that means that you're very well versed in the facts, but you don't feel them anymore, if you ever did feel them. You don't feel them in your heart.
They no longer wow you or captivate you. It's not some new fact about Jesus that you need to learn. I'm not going to explain to you some new angle on doctrine, and you're going to be like, oh, I get it now. That's the missing piece. And suddenly I'm alive in Jesus.
No, basically, you're like the Grinch and the Grinch that stole Christmas. Your heart is shrunk so badly that you can't feel the things you ought to feel. You need the Spirit of God to make your heart grow three sizes in one day.
Some of you are bored with Jesus. You come to church, you go through the motions, but there's no passion in your life. I mean, you go through the motions, but you don't really read the Bible or pray on your own. You don't really feel anything in worship. Obedience feels like drudgery.
Why have you gotten bored with Jesus? Is it because you know everything? How do you fix your boredom with Jesus? It's not new facts about Jesus that are going to make him interesting. Stars like Lady Gaga have to reinvent themselves constantly in order to remain interesting.
Jesus didn't like that. He didn't like that. He's ever fascinating, ever satisfying. You simply need to have the eyes of your heart enlightened to the truth you already know. I've heard Jesus described like a well.
You don't get better water from a well by widening the circumference of the well, you get the best water from the well by going down deep into the hole you already have. Are you discouraged? Do you feel sad or overwhelmed? You need God to open your eyes to who Jesus is and who He is for you. I've always loved the words of Christian counselor Larry Crabb, who admitted in a time of his personal discouragement something that I know has been true of me throughout my life.
He says, God, I know, I know that you're all I have. But I don't, I don't GNOSCO. He was speaking in English, not in Greek, but that's the word he's thinking of. But I don't know you well enough to know that you're all that I need. I know in my head, I know you're all that I have, but I don't know you in my heart well enough.
to really know that you are all that I need. For the vast majority of us in this room, this is our primary spiritual need to know him. And to know him, we need the eyes of our hearts enlightened. And the only thing that can yield that in your life is prayer. And so we turn to this prayer.
I memorized Paul's prayer last year, and this is what I most often pray for myself. It is what I most often pray for my wife. It is what I most often pray for my kids. It is what I most often pray for you, my church. This is given to us as a model prayer for how you should pray for people in your lives.
You parents, it's how you ought to pray for your kids. Specifically, Paul prays for us to see four different things. Help them to see four different things. Number one, the certainty of our hope. The certainty of our hope.
He says, I pray that you may know the hope to which he has called you. The word hope in English doesn't really communicate what the Greek word means here either. The word hope in English, the Greek word for hope is really poorly served by our English translation. Because in English, the word hope usually refers to something that you want to happen. But you're not quite sure will happen.
So Carolina fans really hope. That they can avenge their tragic loss to the blue devils come March. That's what they hope. Man, there's a really good possibility of that happening, but nobody's sure. You know, Patriot fans really hope that...
Tom Brady would pull out a miracle and come back in the second half, and it just seemed like a falsehood, but it happened.
So, a hope is something that you really want to happen, but you're not sure if it's going to happen. Biblical hope, by contrast, listen. Biblical hope is not something you're unsure about at all. Biblical hope is something that you are very sure about that just hadn't happened yet. But something that you look forward to with great anticipation, and that literally reshapes your entire outlook on life.
And what is Paul saying that we are certain is going to happen? What is our hope? That God is going to finish what He started in us. That we're going to be holy and blameless before Him in love. That we are going to be reconciled to Him, filled with Him.
We're going to be with Him eternally. And we are certain that is going to happen because He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world. And his choice of us was not conditioned on our good works, which means that his keeping of us is not conditioned on our good behavior. And because he is above all things, we know that no ruler, authority, dominion, or power can thwart his purposes. And the certainty of that hope is going to reshape how we see everything in life.
See, Paul knows when you actually see this, all you gotta do is see this hope. When you see this hope, it's going to change. I don't have to tell you how to behave in certain areas. He's just going to reshape everything. It'll change how you look at your pain.
Change how you look at your pain. I went to visit the most precious girl this week. She joins us each week via the web from her hospital room at Duke Hospital. Her name is Shawna. She is very young.
She's in her. Late 20s, early 30s. She has cystic fibrosis. And she had a lung transplant, but then shortly after that, she got cancer. And the doctor said they can't give her the other lung transplant she needs for a couple of years, and that she's not going to make it for those two years.
And here she is, a girl that is facing what feels like certain death. The doctors say it's just a matter of time. She can't speak. She has a tube, a breathing tube in, and so she had to write out things for me. She says, I join the Summit Church every single weekend.
She said, you know, people are just, they constantly come in here and they say to me, man, your whole life, you're losing it. You're likely going to pass away when you're 30 years old. She says, you know, the way I'm beginning to see it is whether you die when you're 30 or whether you die when you're 80, she said, compared to what God has for me in eternity, it's like a drop, like a thimble cup in the ocean. She said eternity is the ocean and our lives are like this little tiny cup. Right, and so it doesn't matter how long, how big this is, because what matters is what God has for me in eternity.
That's hope. That's biblical hope. That's biblical hope that looks into the face of cystic fibrosis. It looks into the face of cancer. It looks into the face of death.
It could look into the face of poverty and say, that's not that big of a deal. That's not that big of a deal because of what I have in Jesus. I think I've described it before. Like, imagine if you heard that you had an uncle. That you didn't even know that you had, who was filthy rich.
And when he died, he left you a billion dollars. And was gonna, they transferred it to your bank and said, We're transferring you a billion. All you gotta do is come sign for it. One signature in a billion dollars is yours.
So as you're driving over to the bank, you know, you get about a half mile from the bank and your car breaks down. What do you do in that moment? Do you get out of the car? Do you start kicking the car, swearing at it, cursing God? Why are you doing this to me?
No, if you just got a billion, you're gonna skip and sing the rest of the way to the bank and leave that piece of junk on the side of the road. Who cares about that when you got a billion dollars? Paul says, when you see the certainty of the hope to which you've been called, it doesn't mean that pain's not painful. What it does mean is it's reshaped in the view of what God has for you. When you understand your biblical hope, it reshapes what you do with your blessings.
What do you do with your blessings? I read something this week that really just kind of convicted me and gripped me. The unspoken goal of most Americans. is to get enough money so that you don't have to show up to work anymore. That's like success, right?
If I could just, if I could, especially if I could do it for 65. and then just not have to show up to work and then just rest and play all day? I'm just going to go ahead and tell you, that is not God's purpose for making you wealthy. That just means you have forgotten your hope. You are enriched on earth not to give you 70 years of creature comforts and pleasures.
You are increased on earth to better pursue God's hopes for the world. And if God frees you up, that means you ought to focus on the mission. And if He's blessed you with abundant resources, it means you ought to leverage them for the mission of God because that's what hope does to your life. That hope, by the way, is what enables you to overcome temptation. You're never going to be able to say no to the enticements of sin until you're more excited about what you have in Jesus than you are in the temporary thrills that's offered to you in sin.
The way I've described this one before is when my wife and I, when we got engaged, she was a student at the University of Virginia, and I was a student down here in North Carolina. And so a lot of times we would spend time together on the weekends, and the hardest thing for us to do every weekend, the hardest thing for me to do, was to leave her and come back to North Carolina. Because I knew I was gonna leave her up there, and you know, and one, I couldn't see her. The other thing is, I knew that there were, you know, because she was really, really, really, really pretty. that guys at the University of Virginia constantly hit on her.
So I made sure that she knew. Every week when I let, I'm committed to you and I'm coming back for you next weekend. That was the hope that I gave to her, see? That was her hope. And eventually, I bought this big fat diamond and put it on her hand to prove that I was coming back.
That was like my earnest money. Right? Because if I wasn't coming back, she was keeping it. That's partially what gave her the ability to resist the flirtations of other guys. Right, God would flirt with her, and she'd look down on her hand and see the certain hope that I had given her.
Right, that and I'd put out flyers on her campus that said, if you flirt with her, I will come and punch you in the throat. That also helped. Paul wants us to see and he wants us to feel the certainty of that hope. Because that hope simply seeing it, what you already have. Seeing it will transform your life.
Second thing, he prays. Number two, I want you to be able to see your great worth to God, our worth to God. I pray that you may know what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints.
Now, honestly, y'all. People read right over that because it just sounds like religious mumbo-jumbo, doesn't it? The riches of his glorious inheritance of the saints. What does that even mean? But let's take a closer look because it is an awesome thought.
First of all, whose inheritance is it? You want to think it's ours, don't you? Our inheritance? No, no, look. What are the riches of whose?
His glorious inheritance in the same God? Has an inheritance coming to him? Yes, he does.
Well, what does God not already possess that he is going to get in an inheritance? You ever had the dilemma of having to buy a gift for a really, really, really rich person? and not knowing like what do you get for a really rich person that they don't already have. Or if they wanted it but don't have it, they would just go out and buy it.
So how am I supposed to give them something that they need or want?
Well, what do you get for a God who can literally speak anything into existence? The answer, Paul says, the one thing that God doesn't have that He really wants is you. The one thing that God didn't have that he was willing to be tortured for on the bloody cross of Calvary to obtain was you. And that is a thought that is almost too glorious to comprehend. The God who literally had everything.
who could have just wiped the creation board clean and started over. Set his love on you and was willing to submit to the pain and humiliation of the cross just so you could be with him eternally. For God to create everything there is cost him nothing. He could have done it again with no cost to himself, but in order to redeem you, to save you, it cost you his very life. And Hebrews 12, 2 tells us that he went to that cross with joy.
For joy he endured the cross and despised the shame. Isaiah 53 says that when he hung on the cross, Isaiah 53 says that Jesus from the cross looked into the future and he saw the offspring. That his sacrifice was going to produce. He saw you and me. And that made him satisfied in that moment and willing to undergo the pain.
In the hour of greatest trial, you were the Son of God's living hope. You were the inheritance that he labored for, and you get to share in that hope and enjoy the intensity of that love forever. Paul says, when you see how precious you are to God, that will totally transform your life. Later in Ephesians 3. Paul does it again.
He stops after another few chapters of instruction and he prays again. It does basically the same thing. Here's what Paul prays: he stops again at the end of chapter 3. I pray that you may have the strength to comprehend. With all the saints, what is the breadth and the length and the height and the depth?
And to know the love of Christ that surpasses all knowledge that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. This spring, when you give to Summit Life, we want to say thank you with a powerful resource from Pastor JD. With your gift of $45 or more, we'll send you a copy of Not God Enough, a book that invites you to rediscover the greatness of God.
So often, without even realizing it, we shrink God down to something manageable, something familiar. But in this book, Pastor JD reminds us that God is far bigger than our fears, our doubts, and our expectations, and that encountering Him changes everything. Not God enough points you to a God who is worthy of worship. strong enough to handle your hardest questions, and powerful enough to transform not just your faith, but your life. Your generous gift helps Summit Life continue sharing clear, gospel-centered teaching with listeners across the country and around the world.
And this is our way of saying thanks for being a part of that mission. To give today and receive your copy of Not Got Enough, call 866-335-5220. That's 866-335-5220 or visit jdgreer.com. Um You know, Paul does something here that I think is a little touching because it's so rare for him. He actually kind of loses his words, if you read that the right way.
He kind of stopped Paul's normal way of speaking is. I'm an apostle. I speak the words of God. You shut up. That's kind of Paul's, the way he talks.
Paul here sort of starts stumbling, and he says, I don't really have the ability to express this. I've got to tell you about a knowledge that really surpasses knowledge. You see the contradiction, by the way? I want you to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. How do you know something that surpasses knowledge?
I'm praying that you would know what surpasses. How do you do that? Because he's not talking about a love that can be explained to your mind. He's talking about a love that can only be experienced and felt in your heart. And so he says, I want you to know, I want you to know, look, I want you to know the length of God's love.
How long is God's love?
Well, Paul's already explained that it's from all eternity and for all eternity. Remember, God chose us in Him from before the foundation of the world, which means that there's never been a time when God did not know about you and love you, and there will never be a time in eternity future where He will stop loving you. That's how long His love is. How high is God's love? I want you to know the height of God's love.
Psalm 103 tells us it's as high as the heavens are above the earth. That's the measure of the intensity of God's love for you. If you want to understand the intensity of God's love for you, get out a telescope and look, because that's what gives you the picture of it. You know, the Hubble Telescope is now sending back infrared images to us of faint galaxies 12 billion life years away. And about light years about 6 trillion miles.
So 12 billion times 6 trillion. That is the measure of the intensity of God's love for you. That feeling that you get when you look out under the stars, and suddenly you just imagine how small you are in this gigantic universe. It's not just to make you feel small, it's to make you feel overwhelmed with the intensity of the love that God has set on you. How wide is God's love?
How wide is God's love? It literally extends to control every molecule of the universe. marshalling everything in pursuit of his good purpose in our lives. According to Paul, there literally is not one stray atom, not one stray electron, not one stray quark or subatomic particle in all the galaxies. The control of his love is that wide and broad.
How deep is God's love? How deep, I want you to know the depth of God. How deep is God's love? So deep that he would reach all the way down into the filth of sin and the grave of death to make a wretch's treasure. Literally becoming sin and death for us.
You'll see that in chapter two. Dying in our place so that we didn't have to. That's how deep his love is for us. Paul says, That love surpasses my ability. Even as an inspired apostle, it surpasses my ability to describe it.
This is a love that you have to feel. And when you experience that love, and only when you experience it, is God going to become real to you. That's the only way that God's going to become real to you. You see, right there, look at the end of the verse. Because when this happens, then you'll be filled with all the fullness of God, literally, the presence of God.
How does God become real to you? Feeling this love is literally the experience of the presence of God. My favorite illustration of this, and I've given it to you before. It's like me walking along with my seven-year-old son. And you know, we're walking along, and I'm holding his hand, and then all of a sudden, I look down at him, and I'm just getting filled with this kind of fatherly pride.
And so I pick him up, he's getting a lot heavier now, I can't do this much. And I kind of pick him up, and I throw him in the air, and because he's getting heavy, it's about two inches now. I was like, you know, and I catch him and I spin him around, and I say, I say, who's my boy? And he's like, I am. And I blow a raspberry in his neck, and I just kind of have this moment with him.
Right, in that moment, in that moment, let me ask him, in that moment, has he become Has he become any more my son than he was the moment before? Is he any more my son in that moment than when I'm away on a business trip? No, what happened in that moment is his sense of his sonship became a lot more real to him. The feet that it's not legally he didn't change positions, but the sense of that presence became real. What Paul is talking about is this sense where suddenly God and your sonship through the presence of the Holy Spirit become so real to you that you no longer just understand it with your mind.
You feel it in the depths of your soul. If God is not real to you, this is what you got to pray for.
Some of you want God to be real in your life, right? How's that going to happen? It seems like Christians have all different ways of trying to figure out how God becomes real to them. For some Christians, it's in this weird, kind of random confluence of circumstances. That's when God becomes real.
I was unsure about asking her out. But then on our first date, we found out that she was born on May 3rd and I was born on May 11th. And our waiter told us he was born on May 7th. And if you add together 3, 11, and 7, it comes up with 21, which is the perfect number, 7, multiplied times the number of the Trinity. And May was the month I was baptized in.
Jehovah Jireh, I just knew there was a God and that she was the one for me. And you're like, you're weird, man. Don't talk like that. You're just weird. Christians are weird.
He doesn't become real through a dream or a vision or a voice in your heart. That's not the primary way he becomes real.
Some people in seminary will talk about how God became real to them when they first sensed God using them in somebody else's life. That's great, but that's not the primary way God becomes real to you. He becomes real to you, according to Paul, when he enlightens your eyes to see and feel how wide and how long and how deep the love of God is for you. Number three, third thing Paul prays that we see. He says, I want you to see God's power at work in you.
I want you to be able to see God's power working in you. I pray that you may know what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe. According to the working of his great might, that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead. God wants us to know the power with which he is working in and around us and through us in the world. The nature and magnitude of that power is measured, Paul says.
This is awesome. By the resurrection. Honestly, if I were trying to tell somebody about God's power and I wanted to pick the one thing that most demonstrated his power, I probably would have picked creation. I mean think about creating everything out of nothing. That seems like you couldn't get more powerful than that.
In one word, just one word. God spun 3,000 billion trillion stars into existence, each one on average putting out the same amount of energy as a trillion megaton atom bombs every single second. And some of these stars now we're learning are so big they defy description. Right here in our own Milky Way. There are stars like Ada Karinai.
which is five million times brighter than our sun. One star five million times brighter than our sun. And God just blew that into existence as an afterthought. That's power. But Paul says there's an even greater power than that at work in us.
The power of resurrection. Creation may bring life out of nothing, but resurrection brings back life from the dead. You see, by invoking the power of resurrection, Paul is saying that God not only has the ability to make us into something out of nothing. to take nobodies and make them into somebodies. He also has the power to redeem bad lives and transform them into good lives.
And that's really good news for some of you because for many of you, your problem is not that you just need a little extra boost of talent. You don't just need a little more energy or a few more good ideas. Your problem is that you've destroyed your life through terrible choices, addictions, broken relationships, and all manner of things. And Paul says, good news. Not only can God speak new things into existence, if he brought life out of death through Jesus, then he can bring life and healing back into the mess that you've made out of your heart and your life.
He can repair and restore what you have destroyed through sin. And Paul says to these embattled Ephesians believers. He says, in the midst of all this you're going through, you need to see the power at work in you and through you, working in every situation for you to protect you and to accomplish God's purposes in you and through you. There is no power on earth that can resist it. It has overcome the power of death.
No wonder Isaiah said, no weapon formed against you will prosper. All those who rise against you shall fall. Even if their ultimate power is death, you've got the power of resurrection. One of my favorite Old Testament stories that I think just captures what Paul is praying for here. That story in 2 Kings 6, where Elisha, the prophet, Is there in Israel and he's got a servant with him.
And this gigantic army, I think it's Midianites, some enemy, is coming to destroy Israel. And so the servant sees this huge army in this valley, and he starts freaking out. He's like, this army's going to come. They're just going to mow right over us and kill us and all Israel and take us captive. And Elisha is just, you know, he's just kind of nonchalant, making toast or whatever, you know, and he's like, why are you not worried?
And you just kind of you read between the lines, Elisha kind of stops and he's sort of. He sighs. And he just says, God opened his eyes. Open his eyes and all of a sudden God opens the servant's eyes. And surrounding this gigantic Midianite army is An even larger, in fact, much larger, angelic army that is all in the hills around him.
That is, you know, ten times, a hundred times bigger than this Midianite army, so that those who are fighting for Elisha and the servant are greater than the ones who are arrayed against them.
Now here's the thing to notice about this story. Listen. When Elisha prayed. When Elisha prayed, God didn't send the power. He didn't send the angels and the armies.
When Elisha prayed, God simply opened their eyes to the fact that they were already there. You understand the distinction?
Some of you don't need to pray for God's power. You just need to pray that God would open your eyes to the fact that it's already there. What you need is not a fresh influx of power. What you need is fresh vision to see the power that God has already provided. That's what Paul is praying for.
I'm praying that you would see the resurrection power that God has at work, and I'm praying that that would change you because you would realize that the one that is at work in you and for you is greater than those who are arrayed against you. I'll give you one more thing about this story. You ever wonder why? I like to ask kind of strange questions about these two. Why did God.
Why were the angels in the mountains around and not in the valley in between them and the army? Because that would make me feel better if like you're coming after me to attack me and the angels are right there But no, no, they're up there in the hills. You know why I think that is? I think that's because a lot of times when we go through life, it's not that we don't end up doing battle with the army. It's that we're supposed to be assured that the army that is watching over it, making sure that it all goes according to plan, is greater than the army that's against us.
Sometimes we will battle with cancer.
Sometimes God doesn't stand between us and cancer.
Sometimes he doesn't let us stand between this and joblessness or a tough marriage. But what we can be assured of is that the resurrecting power of God's armies that are surrounding us are even greater than cancer or joblessness or anything. And there's not one thing that happens outside of his plan according to his power. And he's able to even take the bad things and turn them to good. And Paul says, What you need is not more power.
What you need is fresh vision, and that vision is going to come through seeing things through the resurrection.
So what does the resurrection show you about your life?
Well think about it. The cross and resurrection, was there ever a time in history where it looked like God was more out of control than the cross? Was there ever a time where it looked like evil was winning and good was dying? No, that was it. But now on this side of it, we see that even what looked like it was out of control in that moment, God was actually very much in control and He was using.
What seemed like evil, he was using it for good, right?
So now you look at your situation to the resurrection and say even when it looks like God's out of control in my life. And even when it looks like evil is winning. I can be assured that the same God that brought Jesus out of the grave and brought resurrection power to what was intended for evil is going to do that in my life. Because the resurrection changes how I see everything. And Paul says, What you need is a lens to see the power at work in you.
And that lens is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Number four, number four, he says, I want you to be able to see. I want you to be able to see the finality of Jesus' rule. Verse 22. Verse 22, Paul says, I pray that you would see that he has put all things under Jesus' feet.
And he's given him as head over all things to the church. I pray that you'll see that the battle is already won. I pray that you'll see that Jesus is already securely on the throne. You know, there's um I was watching One of these TV series shows, and my wife and I are watching it together, and the main character. In the show.
somewhere in the middle of the season, dies. And it's not 24. I mean, I've told you about that one before, but I think this is a new trend in TV drama. Like, this is like the ultimate drama twist. The main character dies.
And I looked at my wife, I'm like, did she just die? And yeah, she looked like she died.
So I went ahead and watched the next episode because I thought, well, surely she's not really dead.
Well, they bury her in the next episode. My watch dead. But I was like, she can't, because she was in the opening montage. of this episode. And if they were, and they keep talking about her the whole episode.
And I'm like, if she was really dead, like he broke her contract and they didn't want to renew her contract, so they're just going to kill her off. I was like, they wouldn't keep talking about her, and they wouldn't put her in the opening montage.
So then I'll watch the next episode, she's in the opening montage again and they keep referring to her. And I'm like, something right here. And so I keep, I watch like the first five minutes of the next five episodes, and she's in the opening montage every single time. And so I conclude, she's not really dead. She's coming back.
Something's not right here because she's in the opening montage. Sure enough, you get into season three, bam, there she is. There's been a mistake, she's actually alive.
Now, the reason I'm telling you that is this. You're reading here in the midst of the Ephesians, and it feels like they're being overrun. But why don't you just jump to the next episode called the book of Philippians? And Jesus is in the opening montage of that one, too. And then you get to the next one after that, Colossians.
And then you're going to go into 1 and 2. And he's in the opening montage for all of them. And then Hebrews and James and Jude. And you get to Revelation. And man, he's in the opening montage of that one.
And they're still talking about it. Go ahead and fast forward to episode Revelation 22, and you're going to find out that he's coming back. and that he is still on the throne and he's never been dead. All right. And Paul says, I want you to see that.
I want you to see that because when you understand that, it'll change how you see opposition against you, and it'll change what you give your life to.
Furthermore, notice in this verse that Paul wants them to see that the main thing that Jesus is doing in the world is building the church. Do you see this? He's put all things and gave him his head over all things to the church. He didn't picture Jesus standing on top of Rome or Washington, D.C. It's not that he's not on top of those things.
It's at the focal point of what God is doing in this world. Listen to this: the focal point of what God is doing in this world is in the church. He's not building Washington, D.C. He's not building it in the Democrats or the Republicans. He's building it in the church.
And what I've often told you, listen. Paul says, if that's the prominence that Jesus gives the church, then it also ought to be the centerpiece of your life. Paul didn't understand the idea that church would be an event you attended on the weekend. The church for him was a family that you belonged to that would have the deepest and most binding relationships you would experience anywhere on earth. The church was the place that Jesus purchased with his blood, and it's the place from which God's power flows.
If Jesus died for the church, you ought to be deeply devoted to it. You say, well, yeah, but people in the church, they had a lot of problems. Hell, nobody knows that more than Jesus. Those problems cost Jesus his blood. But he spilled it gladly, not just for other people's sins, he did it for yours.
And here's what I contend to you. If Jesus invested his blood into the church, you ought to invest the best of your time, your energy, and your resources. It also tells us that Jesus is ready to move heaven and earth, literally, to pour out the power of resurrection in order to complete the mission of the church and the world. There are 6,400 unreached people groups still in the world. which means people without a gospel witness.
And according to Paul, here is Jesus at the head of the church saying, I'll give you the ability to reach all of them. You just got to ask. The problem is not that he's short on power or short on compassion. The problem is that we're waiting on somebody. or some church, or some people within that church.
To say, I believe that Jesus will do what he says he'll do. And I'm gonna ask Jesus. to do in these people According to the measure I see of him standing at the end of history, and I believe he's got all the authority that he says he has.
So some of the church, I return to this statement. That we began with, all our spiritual problems are cured through vision, and vision is only given by the Spirit, and it's only given through prayer. That's what Paul prays for us. It's what we should be praying for others. It is the model prayer he gave to us.
It's what you should be praying for your family, and it's what you ought to be praying for that one or two that God has put in your life to reach for Christ. Prayer is what releases the power that opens the eyes. Which is why, if you can just let me real quick tell you why prayer is such a foundational part of what we do. You see, prayer is the only thing that opens people's eyes like this. It's not worship experiences that open people's eyes like this.
Paul didn't write the Ephesians with instructions on how to create a good worship experience on the weekend. We love worship experiences. We try to do them well and with excellence, but we understand that the only way that you're going to be transformed is to have the eyes of your heart open. And I can't do that through adding music to it, or I can't do it through alliterating my points or telling emotional stories or getting you riled up. And that's an emotional high for a moment.
Paul's talking about enlightenment that lasts for a lifetime. And that doesn't happen through emotional thrills, it happens through. Prayer.
So, yeah, we're going to focus on what we do on the weekends and we're going to try to do it as best we can. But understand that at the end of the day, you strip everything else away, it's got to be prayer. It's got to be prayer that opens our eyes. Our prayer is that's... that during our study in Ephesians, you would see the hope that God has given you in the gospel.
That you would see that he is in control and working in all things, that you would understand your great worth to God, that you would recognize the power that God has put inside you, that you would ask God to extend that power through you to people all over the world who have yet to hear about him. Amen. Isn't that what you want? Amen. Open our eyes, Lord.
We want to see you clearly. A challenging message today from Pastor JD here on the Summit Life podcast. If you're listening today, know this. That is at work. often in ways we can't see, through simple faithfulness and shared truth.
If you'd like to learn more about this mission or explore free resources, visit jdgreer.com. See you next time. Today's program was produced and sponsored by JD Greer Ministries.
