In 1899, two wealthy bicycle manufactures from Dayton, Ohio began to make plans to build the first ever successful flying machine. The world would eventually come to know these men as the Wright Brothers, Wilbur and Orville, creators of the world’s first airplane. The brothers first began by testing gliders in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina in the early 1900’s, mastering how to control objects in flight. Once they understood air movement and its affects on flying objects, all that remained was to add power. By the end of 1903, the Wrights had created the world’s first powered airplane and headed back to Kitty Hawk to test their creation. On December 17, 1903, Wilbur and Orville Wright made the first sustained, gasoline powered, controlled flight in aviation history. Man had learned how to fly; soon trips that had required days would be made in a few hours. Ecstatic with their new invention, the Wright brothers immediately telegraphed this message to their sister Katherine back in Dayton: “We have actually flown 120 feet. Will be home for Christmas.” Their sister Katherine, understanding the importance of this incredible event, ran to the editor of the local newspaper and showed him the message. The editor, one of the first people to be made aware of this world-changing event, glanced at the message and ecstatically exclaimed “How nice. The boys will be home for Christmas!”
It’s hard to imagine how such an important world-changing event like the first person to fly could fail to make an impact on a professional newspaper editor. And yet, there are times we are all that clueless. I myself have been known to be oblivious at one time or another. I once commented to my wife that a friend of ours seemed to be putting on a little weight, at which point my wife reminded me that our friend was six months pregnant. I had the information I needed, but I still remained oblivious as to what that information meant.
We often live our Christian lives in a similar way. We remain oblivious, our lives unimpacted by what we know of the gospel. We live as though we do not fully grasp what it is we that we have in Christ. We respond like the newspaper editor “How nice, we are going to heaven.” We have an eternal hope, riches unimaginable, and a power at work in us that is beyond comprehension, but it fails to make a difference in our daily lives. We live as though we have no hope, wondering why we should even get out of bed in the morning. We go about defeated, as though to be a Christian is to be on the losing side. We question what benefit there is in the here and now in following Christ when all we hear about is what we will receive “some day?” What good is it to keep trying to live for Christ when our efforts are weak and we constantly fail? We act as weak, hopeless, and defeated people, acting completely oblivious to what we say we have in Christ. We have more than we could possibly imagine right now, but we remain clueless.
Paul found a similar situation in the church in Ephesus. They too were often oblivious to what was theirs in Christ. They had the information, they had the theology, but they did not always believe it in their hearts. They remained clueless. And so Paul prays here in Ephesians 1:15-23 on behalf of the Ephesians that God would remove their spiritual obliviousness by giving them a spirit of revelation so that they see with their hearts what is theirs in Christ. Because of our oblivion, God himself must remove our spiritual cluelessness. We cannot remove it ourselves, so Paul prays that God would remove the Ephesians spiritual cluelessness. In so doing, Paul prays for how God removes it, where he removes it, and the result of its removal. Paul prays for the “how”, the “where,” and the “result” of God’s removing of our spiritual cluelessness.
Paul begins his requests with how God removes our spiritual obliviousness. In verse 17 he prays that “the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him.”
Many of our contemporary English versions are divided on how to translate the phrase in verse 17 “a spirit of wisdom.” Is it “a spirit of wisdom” or “the spirit of wisdom?” The ESV, which is printed in your bulletin, and the NASB translate it literally from the Greek as “a spirit.” The NIV and KJV prefer “The spirit of wisdom,” seeking to bring out the idea that God is giving the Ephesians the Holy Spirit. These last two translations are certainly correct that this is through the inner working of the Holy Spirit that we have our spiritual oblivion removed, but Paul seems be focusing on the results of the Holy Spirit’s work rather than on the Holy Spirit itself. Because of the Holy Spirit’s working, we will have “a” spirit, a mind for, an understanding of the wisdom and revelation of God. So Paul prays that God, through His Holy Spirit, would work in the Ephesians and give them such a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him.
The word “revelation” is actually a word we have brought directly over into English. It’s our word Apocalypse. Mel Gibson used the literal Greek word for his new movie ‘Apocalypto.’ Apo meaning away from, and Calypto meaning hidden: literally: Away from being hidden. What is “away from being hidden” was once hidden but no longer is; it has been revealed. Paul tells us several times in Ephesians that God has revealed His once hidden will to us. In verse 9 of chapter 1, which we have already studied, Paul says “God, in all wisdom and insight, made known to us the mystery of his will. Again in Chapter 3 verse 5 Paul tells us that this mystery of the gospel was previously hidden, but has now been revealed. God, in his wisdom, has now revealed the mystery, the truth of the gospel. But how are we, with our unspiritual minds, to possibly comprehend God’s wisdom and revelation? Paul himself asks that same question in 1 Corinthians 2 “Who has known the mind of the Lord?” How can we with our fallen foolish minds possibly understand God’s wisdom and revelation?
And yet, there in 1 Corinthians 2, Paul answers that exact question: We have the mind of Christ.” We have been given a new spiritual mind, the mind of Christ. He is working a spirit of wisdom and revelation in us to understand what God has revealed. We do not have to be spiritually clueless. Not only has God revealed Himself and revealed His will, he is giving us a spirit of wisdom and revelation so that we can understand that knowledge. Without such a spirit, we would remain oblivious to His revelation. We would remain clueless, but God gives us such a spirit to grasp what we otherwise would have missed.
There’s a fictitious story floating around the internet about a young man during the days of the telegraph that went to apply for a job as a Morse code telegraph operator. The office he applied in was quite noisy, full of all sorts of sounds with telegraphs constantly clicking away and many other applicants waiting to be called for interviews. As the young man entered the office, he was given an application and told to sit down and wait to be called, but after sitting for less than a minute he suddenly got up and barged right into the boss` office. A few minutes later the boss came out and said, "The rest of you can go home, I`ve just hired this man." The other applicants were furious. They said, "That`s not fair. We`ve been waiting all day, and he just barged into your office uninvited." The boss chuckled and said, "yeah, well the whole time you’ve been sitting here, the telegraph in the background has been clicking out in Morse code, ‘If you understand this message come into my office. The job is yours.’ This man is the only guy that heard it.” The message was there, but the rest of those applicants were oblivious to it. Only the man with the ear and mind for Morse code got the message.
The truth of the Gospel is always here in Scripture, and so many remain oblivious to it. But God has taken away our cluelessness. He is giving us a spirit of wisdom and revelation so that we can understand what has been revealed. God has revealed the grandeur, the splendor of what we can have in Christ and He gives us a spirit to understand that revelation.
The stereotype for Presbyterians is that we are theologically arrogant, that we are convinced that there we are on a higher theological level because of our deep understanding of God’s revelation. This passage warns us to be humble, realizing that it is only by God’s grace in giving us a spirit of wisdom and revelation that we can know Him. But my experience has more often been that many of us are actually intimidated by God’s Word. So many of us remain oblivious to what God has revealed because we do not feel qualified to study His revelation. It is often assumed that studying God’s revelation is for those who are academically advanced, that it is too complicated or too deep to be understood by common people, leaving many of us clueless as to what God has revealed until someone points in out on Sunday morning or in a Bible study. But the truth of this passage is that through the power of the Holy Spirit, God has given all of us in Christ a spirit of revelation and wisdom that we can know. You don’t have to be intimidated by God’s Word. The fact is that the same spirit of revelation that enabled me to study this passage this week is the same spirit that is at work in you right now. Don’t remain oblivious. Be confident that God has revealed the truth of the gospel in scripture, and that He will give you a spirit and revelation to understand it. Read the Bible, study the Bible, not relying on your own abilities, but the spirit which is at work in you, revealing and enabling you to grasp the truth of the gospel that God has revealed, what is yours in Christ.
Not only does Paul pray for how God would remove spiritual cluelessness, he prays for where. In verse 17 and 18 he prays that the Ephesians might have the eyes of their hearts enlightened.
Paul is not praying that the Ephesians would come to know more facts about God or become experts in theology. He has already spent the first part of chapter 1 explaining what God has done for us in Christ. Now, he is praying for that to be knowledge in the heart, praying in verse 18 that the eyes of their hearts might be enlightened.
Of course, it is a commonly known fact that hearts do not have eyes and they certainly do not know about anything other than pumping blood. In Scripture, though, the heart is considered to be the core of a person rather than merely an organ of the human body. In Deuteronomy and the Gospels we are told to love God with all our heart. Proverbs states that fools say in their heart there is no God. Jesus said that out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks. We even use the same idea of heart when we use the Christian euphemism of conversion “asking Jesus to come into your heart.”
The heart is the center of a person’s being, the ultimate source of a person’s thoughts, words, and actions. Thus Paul is praying for knowledge that impacts our very center, impacting the heart, the very core. He does not want more head knowledge; He does not just want us to see with our hearts. He prays for heart knowledge—that we would know with the very core of our being. He is praying for a knowledge that impacts the heart and therefore affects everything about a person. He does not simply want the Ephesians and us to know in our heads what we have in Christ. He wants us to know it in our hearts.
But Paul also says that this enlightening of our hearts comes from God. We do not open our own heart’s eyes; instead God opens the eyes of our heart. Paul says in verse 18 “having the eyes of your hearts enlightened.” The words Paul uses are all passive. We have our eyes enlightened. Verse 17 gives the context for this opening. Paul prays “that God may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened.” When God gives us such a spirit to understand his revelation, he opens, enlightens our eyes so that we can be impacted by what he has revealed.
Tim Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan tells the story of how his brother-in-law who refused to wear seatbelt, despite Pastor Keller constantly badgering him. On one occasion, his brother-in-law picked him at the airport and was surprisingly wearing a seatbelt. Pastor Keller immediately asked him "What happened? What changed you?" His brother-in-law responded "I went to visit a friend of mine in the hospital who was in a car accident and went through the windshield. He had two to three hundred stitches in his face. I said to myself, I better wear my seat belt. When I went to the hospital to see my friend, I got no new information, but the information I had became new.
God has enlightened the eyes of our hearts. He has enabled us to see, to be impacted by the truth of the gospel. So lets see with our hearts what God has enabled us to see. We need to stop approaching the gospel with only our heads and examine the truths of the gospel with our hearts. We know about the gospel. We know the theological doctrines of adoption and election. We can discuss the basics of the Reformed tradition for hours, but that knowledge fails to impact our life. We remain oblivious, even with a God given spirit of wisdom and knowledge, even when our eyes are opened because we fail to stop and consider what impact that knowledge should make in our lives, settling for head knowledge over heart knowledge. We lose hope when we continue to struggle with the same sin over and over again even though we fight a battle that Christ has already won. We forget about the power that is ours in Christ when disruption occurs in our homes or in our churches, acting as though the particular conflict we are dealing with cannot be overcome. We are like Pastor Keller’s Brother-in-law who knew about seatbelts, but never considered what difference that should make in his life. We need to ask ourselves what impact should our knowledge of Christ and the gospel really make it our lives? What impact does it make in our lives when we examine the reality of what is ours in Christ with the very core of our being? We need to open our eyes and see with our hearts what God has enabled us to see. And what is that we see?
Paul begins to answer that question in verses 18-23 of this passage. In verses 18-19 he says that the result of God removing our spiritual cluelessness, enlightening the eyes of our hearts is that we can know the “hope to which he has called us, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe.” If you look at verses 18-23 you will notice that Paul really does not take it much further than that. He simply says you will know hope, riches, and power. The rest of the chapter is in praise to God’s power. There are several reasons for Paul’s condensed answer.
First, this series of verses is brief because it sets the stage for the rest of the book, acting as a bridge to introduce topics that Paul will be covering in the next few chapters. Paul reminds us in verses 20-23 that Christ has been raised, has been exalted, and now rules as head over all and head of the church. He also mentions hope, riches, and power in verses 18-19. Paul will continue to discuss these throughout the rest of the book. He talks of hope and our having been raised with Christ again in chapter 2, riches and power in chapter 3. But Paul’s point here in verses 18-23 is that if we do not grasp the truths of hope, riches, power and Christ’s being exalted to head of the church with our hearts, we might as well stop reading because the rest of the book won’t mean a thing. The book of Ephesians divides into two halves: Chapters 1-3, and chapters 4-6. Chapters 4-6 are how we live out the knowledge of chapters 1-3. So as Paul introduces what he will cover in chapters 2 and 3, he is really saying that if we don’t really know the content of chapters 1-3 with our hearts, chapters 4-6 will not really mean all that much to us either. Chapters 4-6 tells us what a heart knowledge of chapters 1-3 look like. This prayer, then by the Apostle Paul, is crucial to his whole letter. He knows that if God does not remove the cluelessness of the Ephesians, they will not grasp any of what he tells them. The same is true for us. God has given us a spirit of wisdom and revelation to understand with our hearts, he has opened the eyes of our hearts. So as we examine chapters 2 and 3 in the coming weeks, let’s not be content to know it only in our heads, but know it in our hearts, allowing it to impact us and change the way we live.
Second, this list is brief because Paul is summarizing what he already covered in verses 3-14 which we have studied over the last few months. Paul just spent 11 verses expounding the incredible spiritual blessings of God, but he does not want those 11 verses to simply be head knowledge. Paul praised God in those verses for election and predestination and redemption, deep complex ideas that whet our theological appetites. But Paul here in verse 18 is praying that we will not view these verses with only our heads but with our hearts.
What impact does it make that I’ve been elected? Paul said in verse 4 that we were chosen to be holy and blameless before him. Consider the hope that it should give us in our daily lives as we constantly struggle with sin knowing that God himself is working in us to accomplish that to which he called us. God is making us holy and blameless, even when we fail, even when we don’t see it. Paul says here in verse 19 that we should know the incredible power, power which raised Christ from the dead, which seated him on the throne. That power is at work in us, making us holy and blameless. If we understand our election with our hearts and not just our heads we can know the hope to which he has called us and the power at work in us.
The same is true of our adoption. If we understand with our hearts that God has made us part of his family, his sons and daughters, we can know the riches, the privileges of the glorious inheritance in the saints. We have the right and privilege to go before God in prayer whenever and wherever we want. We can approach him boldly in worship. We have the hope of an eternal inheritance awaiting us in heaven and the power that guarantees that inheritance. We can hope in the assurance that God loves us as a Father love his children.
If we understand the verses 9-10 with our hearts that God is uniting all things in Christ, repairing the shattered nature of our world, we can have hope that God will accomplish it. Right now, at this very moment, our meeting here this morning demonstrates the reality of verses 22-23. We are the body of Christ, the church. Even here we see the hope that God is reuniting us. When our marriages struggle, when we see division and dissension in our church, we can have hope that God is repairing the brokenness. One day we will enjoy the riches of our inheritance with all the united saints in perfect harmony. Right now, the power which made Christ the head of the church and the ruler of all in this age and the age to come is at work in us bringing us together, reuniting us, undoing our brokenness.
Paul does not want the Ephesians or us to view what he has already covered with a spiritual cluelessness. He wants it impact us at the very core of our being. What difference does it make that I’m redeemed, free from the power of sin. What impact does it make that I have been sealed with the Holy Spirit. When we know the reality of these spiritual blessings with our hearts and not just our heads, we know the hope, the riches, and the power toward us who believe.
In 1996, Jon Krakauer wrote a book called Into Thin Air, about the disastrous expedition to Mount Everest during the spring of 1996.
One of the men who died was Andy Harris. Harris had stayed at the Mt. Everest’s peak too long, and on his descent, ran out of oxygen. Harris radioed his predicament to the base camp, telling them that he was out and that he had come upon a pile of oxygen canisters left by other climbers, all empty. However, those who had passed by the canisters on their own return from the summit knew that those canisters were not empty, but full. Even as they pleaded with him on the radio that the canisters were full and that he should use them, Harris continued to argue that the canisters were empty. His lack of oxygen had affected his thinking so much that even though he was standing in the midst of completely full canisters of oxygen, he was convinced he had nothing. The very thing he needed was in his hand, but he remained oblivious.
God has poured out on us unbelievable riches, filled us with His powerful spirit, and given us a hope beyond measure. We have, right now, the life changing, life transforming truths of the gospel. God has given us a spirit of wisdom and revelation so that we can read and understand those truths that he revealed to us in scripture. He has opened the eyes of our hearts so that these truths can impact not just our heads, but our hearts. We can see, we can know what we already have in Christ, so let’s not remain oblivious, let’s not remain clueless. Let’s see what have been enabled to see and know: the hope to which we have been called, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe.
