Comprehending the Measureless Love of Christ (Part 2 of 2)

There are many avenues of spirituality today.

Many people saying, this is the way to a new enlightenment. So what is it about God that gives Christians confidence that we should trust and follow and praise Him, even in times of despair? Hear the answer today on Truth for Life Weekend as we look at who God is and what He's done.

Alistair Begg is teaching from Ephesians chapter 3. We're focusing today on verse 14. And we're invited to stand and sing, and we're sad in our spirits. The last thing in the world that you want on that morning is somebody to stand up and say, Now, let's tell God how we're feeling.

So what is the antidote? Not to give expression to how we're feeling, but to give expression to who God is and what God has done. You see, this is one of the reasons when people come into our congregations, if we don't do this, if we are not honest about this, then we come across as the gathering of the smug, of the people who've got it all buttoned down. So people come in, they feel broken, disjointed, helpless.

If they get the sense that everybody in the place has got it all together, then there's no place for them to go. There's no opportunity for them to say, I'm a physical wreck. I am emotionally broken.

I'm out to lunch. But they're not going to sit and tell you that if you'd like to say it. No, but what do we say? We say, Jesus is the one who restores our broken lives.

You see, there has to be the Corinthians dimension, doesn't there? Search where some of you. You need to know who we are. You need to know. Sexually perverse before Jesus redeemed us.

Morally a mess. Lost without God and without hope in the world. It's Jesus.

We want to tell you about him. That's why, you see, Paul eventually gets to this doxology in light of all the things that he's prayed. You go back through these early chapters of Ephesians. He prays for them that the eyes of their hearts may be enlightened, that you might know this power, that you might be strengthened, that you might comprehend, that Christ may dwell in your hearts, that you might be filled with all the fullness of God, so that for all and any, then and now, we're asking, How is it ever going to happen? How will it ever become a reality? The answer is, you are coming to a king.

Large petitions with you bring. For his strength and power are such, none can ever ask too much. I think that's Newton. But notice that the focus is on him.

Okay? His person. Now to him.

Now to him. That was how Paul approached the men in Athens. Isn't he what you worship as unknown? I proclaim to you, the God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands. An amazing, amazing summary that Luke provides us there of what must have been an immense oration on the part of Paul on that hill there in Athens. I need to tell you, he says, about the God you don't know. He does the exact same thing when he's caught up in the wonder of it, in his concern for his own people, for the Jew. And at the end of Romans chapter 11, after he's gone through this whole piece about the Gentiles being grafted in, and then the Jew will come back, and so on, and he just gets carried away with the whole thing.

And what does he do? Then he just bursts into… He starts singing again. He answers it with a… I say to people all the time, they say, Well, I feel a little depressed. I say, Buy a hymnbook. Buy a hymnbook. Take the hymnbook, go park your car somewhere, and sing.

Open the sunroof if you have one, but whatever. Sing yourself back into position. Sing yourself back in. There's a sense in which that's what Paul does too. He sings himself into it, all the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable are his judgments! And he says, I'm even writing things here that I can't fully comprehend myself.

And then he has these questions, these wonderful questions. Who has known the mind of the LORD, or who has been his counselor? Whoever gave God lessons? Where did God go to learn stuff?

Nowhere. He didn't need to. He hasn't had to advertise for management consultants to make it possible for him to rule and rescue the world.

He didn't need to find Accenture on the web and have these people come in so that he would know what to do with the universe. There is nobody who counsels God. God is the fount of all wisdom. Who has ever given to God? Who has ever given to God that he might be repaid? Who could ever come to God and say, You owe me? God is able to finance his own projects. He has it all. That's what he's saying here.

And why is this? Well, look how he finishes. For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever and ever. In other words, this is radically different from contemporary views of God and spirituality in the Western culture in which we are now living. God is not in any way dependent on the created universe. God is not contained within the created universe. God is not to be confused in any way with that.

In other words, the Bible rules out pantheism—the pantheism that is increasingly part and parcel of our United States. You can find it in the Main Streets, you can find it in the yoga classes, you can find it just about every coffee shop to which you choose to go. It will be there in one form or another. And our friends and our neighbors and our loved ones have all kinds of notions concerning God, and they are encouraged to find the God within them. Well, what were they going to find when they looked within them?

Well, they're not going to find anything very nice. And those who are on the receiving end of that council know that it is a council of despair. I go to somebody, and I explain all these things, and they say, Well, you know, we can help you with this, because your problem is outside of yourself, and the answer is within yourself.

The person gets back in the car and said, That cost me seventy-five dollars for somebody to tell me a flat-out lie. If the answer is within myself, why did I ever go in the first place? Why did I ever go and ask the question? The answer is clearly not within myself. You're going to find the God within? That's Hinduism. There are thousands and thousands of gods in Hinduism. That's why they say to one another, Namaste.

I worship the God within you, whoever that God is, whatever that God is. The Christianity is so far removed from that. Because Christianity, when we turn to the Bible, says, We're actually alienated from the God who created us. We were created for his purpose and for his glory. We have turned our backs on him. We have rebelled.

We have gone our own way. There is an invisible boundary between ourselves and God as Creator. We possess no intuitive radar whereby we can contact God on our own terms or in our own time.

It is impossible to do. The only way that God may be known is by way of revelation. And that revelation has come finally and savingly in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, so that when we go to people and we tell them and we say, Now unto him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly beyond all you can estimate, say, Who are you talking about? Well, I'm talking about the God who created the heavens and the earth. I'm talking about the God that I'm teaching my grandchildren about, so that they might know. We will tell them, Listen, honey, before there was time, before there was anything, there was God. Really, papa?

Really! Let's sing about it. All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small, all things wise and wonderful, the Lord God made them all. He gave us eyes to see them and lips that we might tell. How great is God Almighty, who has done all things well! This is God, you see. Now to him—to him, not a cosmic principle, not a creation of our imagination. A God that you can imagine is no God.

And once you've imagined him, you can go and imagine another one and another one after that. No, no, he says. Paul says, I know this God. I met this God. I thought I had him completely encapsulated in my Judaism until, on that Damascus road, I realized, looking up into that light that was brighter than the noonday sun, and I said, Who are you? Lord?

Incidentally, that punctuation there I would like to change. I think it should be, Who are you? Question mark, Lord—which is curios, which is the Septuagint translation of Yahweh.

Who are you? Lord. Lord?

Yah! Now unto him, for you know, he says, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for our sakes he became poor, so that we through his poverty might become rich. Our view of God, as we said this morning, will determine our approach to God. We used to sing a song in the sixties, like, In the stars his hand he work I see, on the wind he speaks with majesty, though he ruleth over land and sea, what is that to me? I always thought it was a strange song.

It sounds even stranger now that I'm saying it. What is that to me? I will celebrate nativity. Whatever that… For it has a place in history. So he came to set his people free.

What is that to me? Then one day I met him face to face, and I found the wonder of his grace. Now I know that he is not a God who doesn't care, who lives away up there. But now he walks beside me day by day.

Now he keeps me in the narrow way. You see, that is conversion, isn't it? That's how we know when a man or woman has been converted. It's not that they decide to exchange one external set of circumstances for another, but they've got an entirely new view of Jesus. Who are you, Lord? A completely new view of Jesus.

You've got an entirely new view of yourself. I'm Saul of Tarsus. I graduated very nicely.

I'm a student of Gamaliel, and my background is, frankly, impeccable. People who know me are just impressed with my righteousness. But mercy was shown to me. Me, the chief of sinners. What's happened? He's been converted. He has a new view of Jesus. He has a new view of God's mercy. He has an entirely new view of himself.

So that his worship is, if you like, self-abnegation and God's exaltation. Well, our time is virtually gone, but you'll notice that not only is he focused in this dobsology on God's person but also on his power. This God is able. Able. Able to do what? Well, he's able to do what we ask. Well, he's actually able to do what we ask or think. Well, he's actually able to do all that we ask or think. Well, he's actually able to do far more than all we ask or think. Well, he's able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think. In other words, there can be no degrees of difficulty for an omnipotent God. There are no degrees of difficulty for an omnipotent God. In other words, they say to God, Well, how hard was that?

It wasn't hard. Why? Because I'm able. So the encouragement in this, I think, is to bring our great request to God, isn't it? I think it's an encouragement that's inherent in the text to say, you know, you are coming to a king, large petitions to him bring. God may choose to answer in his time. He may not choose to answer in our time. He will answer in his time, not necessarily in our time. Some of us are gonna have to have posthumous joys. In other words, the answers to our prayers will not be revealed to us until we're in eternity. And then we will see that those for whom we have actually prayed and died praying for them have actually been the beneficiaries of God's grace and goodness. May it be so. I remember when I was, you know, nineteen or eighteen, I found the verse, Psalm 37, 4, Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart. Oh, I said, This is a beauty.

I can't wait. This is fantastic, because I had a number of desires, and they were really clear. I had them written down. I'm not gonna tell you what they all were.

But one of them was about five-foot-seven inches tall and female. And so I figured out, I gotta get the Psalm 37, 4 thing working, because that's one of the reasons I was here in 1972, to track this girl down. And mercifully, God in his kindness included this in his program for me.

But I was so foolish, I thought, you know, press button A and it comes out the other end. But then I thought, maybe I should read the rest of the psalm. What does it mean to delight yourself in the Lord? Well, Psalm 37 goes on, The law of the Lord is in his heart.

His steps don't slip. Wait for the Lord and keep his way, and he will exalt you. So again, it's a sort of Psalm 1 experience that the man who doesn't walk in the counsel of the ungodly or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of the scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law he meditates day and night. That's what it means to delight yourself also in the Lord. And you will discover, then, that he who knows what is best for his children will answer according to his purposes.

And we will have occasion to be thankful. You see, the reality of the power of God is not academic here. It's not theoretical. You notice he's talking about according to the power at work within us. He includes himself in it.

You know Paul well enough in Romans 8. He says, He didn't spare his own son. He gave him up for us all. How will he not also with him graciously give us all things?

And it is on account of that that he then ends in this way. To him the personhood of God, the power of God, and the praise of God. To him be glory. Where? Well, in the church. In the church.

In other words, in the bride. The church is where we have a charcoal sketch of what one day will be displayed in glorious technicolor. And so he's praying for these Ephesian believers, amongst whom the unimaginable has happened, because the barrier between them as Jew and Gentile has been broken down, has been removed in Jesus. And so he says, May the glory of God, may the majesty of his purposes and his power be displayed in the church right here in Ephesus as you gather in your congregations. May it be that when the Ephesian world comes in and looks at you, they say, How in the world did this happen? How come you people who hated one another are sitting together at this communion service?

What has happened here? The answer is, this is what God has done. We can apply it to ourselves, can't we? In the church, God is, if you like, remending his broken world—a world that is broken that will finally one day be fixed in all of its entirety. And in the meantime, the gathering of God's people is an opportunity to show the world a microcosm of what God will ultimately complete. So the issues of race, of culture, of class, of education, and of status are not eradicated in the church, but they are transformed by the gospel. So that the very things that separate us from one another, clever enough to get into the school, dumb enough to not get in any school, fast enough to be able to win the thing, so slow that a cart horse could beat you—all of the things by which we're separated from one another, to which we bring to this amazing family as we build with bananas—all of this, then, finds its answer in the work of the gospel, in the church, and in Christ Jesus, who is the head of the church.

We have seen his glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. And how long will this go on? How long will this take place? Throughout all generations. Throughout all generations.

Some generations, all generations. Forever and ever. It's a Randy Travis song, isn't it?

Actually, it's a Paul Overstreet song sung by Randy Travis. As long as old women sit and talk about the weather, as long as old… As long as old men sit and talk about the weather, as long as old women sit and talk about old men, honey, I'm gonna love you forever. Forever and ever. Amen. Okay? That's a nice thing. It's Valentine's Day coming up. Just priming your pump for you. You got a chance.

You didn't know what you were gonna write on the card. Here you go. All the other verses are there.

I don't care if all your hair falls out, because I'm not in love with your hair. Remember that part as well? You've got it all there. If on a human level we recognize that, if on a human level we see something of it, then here is the wonder of it. Paul says, To him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus, throughout all the generations. The older you get, you start to sound like your grandparents. You start to say the things your grandparents said. You know, like, This world has gone to hell. This thing is over. I mean, there's no way we're gonna be able to come back from this. This is unbelievable! Have you seen these pop groups? Look at this stuff!

If I'd dressed like that when I was a boy, they would have put me in an insane asylum. All the same stuff. Why? Because we've got this notion, somehow or another, that when we wrap it up, it's over. We're gonna close the door, and it'll be done.

No, it won't. Throughout all generations. All generations. So that the generations yet unborn will arise to praise him. God knows what he's doing. And he will take care of it forever and forever. I'm not concerned about global warming. Because he said that seedtime and harvest, summer and winter, day and night, will be under his jurisdiction.

He's got the security of nature and the cosmos under his control. That doesn't mean you should waste stuff, I get that. But I'm not gonna lie awake at night, wondering if I'm running out of oxygen. Why? Because through all the generations. Think about Daniel in the exile. You know, people are going, This is over. We're done. We, by the rivers of Babylon, we sat down, and we wept, and we took our harps, and we hung them on the willow trees, and we said, We're not gonna need these.

Because after all, how can you sing the Lord's song in a foreign land? It seems that the gods who are opposed to us are far stronger than this God, this Yahweh, this God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And Daniel steps forward and says, No, no, no, no. You gotta understand, his kingdom reigns forever and ever.

Trace it through the generations. Into the temple come Mary and Joseph. They meet the old boy, Simeon—I don't know if he was that old, but anyway—Simeon, who is waiting for the consolation of Israel. And he takes the child Jesus in his arms, and he says, I can die now, because I have seen my salvation in the person of Jesus.

That was 2,000 years ago. Here we are now. What's our confidence? Our confidence is in him, who is able to do exceedingly abundantly beyond all we can ask and ever imagine, so that his glory is displayed in the church and in Christ Jesus, through all the generations, forever and ever.

Amen. How big is your God? Is your view of God big enough?

You're listening to Truth for Life Weekend. That is Alistair Begg with the conclusion of a reassuring message titled, Comprehending the Measureless Love of Christ. There are times when we will find ourselves praying to God, trying to relate to him as if he were like us, but as we learned today, his attributes are not like ours. In fact, there are things we experience as humans that God is entirely incapable of. The book we're recommending to you today is a book titled, 12 Things God Can't Do, and it dives into some of these attributes. For example, God cannot bear to tolerate sin or evil, because he is entirely holy. Now, this is encouraging to us as believers because it assures us that God will ultimately administer justice in the end.

You can find out more about this and 11 other things God can't do in the book, 12 Things God Can't Do. You'll find information about the book on our website at truthforlife.org. Let me ask you, how do you listen to Truth for Life? On your radio, on the app. You know, you can ask Amazon Alexa or Google Home to play the daily program. You can simply say, Alexa, play Truth for Life, or, hey Google, listen to Truth for Life, and the daily program will instantly begin.

For more commands, you can search Amazon Alexa or Google Home at truthforlife.org. I'm Bob Lapine. We are so thankful that you have included us as a part of your weekend. For some people, attending church regularly can be extremely dangerous. We'll find out why next weekend as we begin preparing for Easter by considering Jesus' journey to the cross. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.