For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of the Jesus Christ, for the sake of you Gentiles..." And notice what happens here, right? He just stops. This is one thought. I want you to understand while we're reading all this together. This is one thought. He kind of goes, for this reason I... Wait! Do you all know who I am? And so he's about to go into this little excursus explaining who he is. An excursus is kind of like a long parenthesis. Surely you have heard about the administration of God's grace that was given to me for you. That is the mystery made known to me by revelation, as I have already written briefly. In reading this, then, you will be able to understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to men in other generations, as it has now been revealed by the Spirit of God to God's holy apostles and prophets. This mystery is that through the gospel, the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body and shares together in the promise of Jesus Christ. I became a servant of this gospel by the gift of God's grace given me through the power of the working of his power. Although I am less than least of all God's people, this grace was given me to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ. and to make plain to everyone the administration of this mystery, which for ages past was kept hidden in God, who created all things. His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, according to His eternal purpose, which He accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord. In Him, and through faith in Him, we may approach God with freedom and confidence. I ask you, therefore, not to be discouraged because of my sufferings for you, which are your glory. For this reason..." Now he goes back to his original thought. "...For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom this whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. And I pray that out of His glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power... Stop for a second. He's building you up. Are you ready? Do you get that sense? He's building you up. I mean, if you're going to pray, if this is an apostle praying for you, somebody who's seen the resurrected Lord, he's saying, out of God's glorious riches, this is the thing I want you to have. That you'll be rooted and established in love. And that... What, Paul? He'll give you the power to do what, Paul? We're all ready to go join the power team. The power to do what? To smash boards? To do what? Understand this. Alright. That you may have the power together with all the saints to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ. And to know this love that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever. Amen. Were you a little let down? I mean, he's asking God out of the very depth of your being, this is what I want for my people. They would know how much you love them. You were kind of hoping for more than that, weren't you? Isn't that interesting? Why would that be so important? Why would that be so important? When you are a parent one day, as I hope you will be, so that you can know how bad of a child you were, you will be forced to spend hours in the car with your children. And as you have that glorious experience, you will, too, go looking for CDs or tapes that your children will listen to that you can tolerate. Because some of them are just horrible, you know? It's like salty dog type stuff. Your parents are going to give you the worst ones because they want you to be tormented because you tormented them. And you're going to spend hours listening to these terrible ones. So you're going to go looking for better ones. When you go looking for better ones, do not get the Jungle Jams radio show. A friend of ours sent them to us, all six volumes, in some kind of twisted joke. And the title of one of them, it's all about these animals that are learning these moralistic kind of things that somehow they really stretch some Bible verse and kind of tag on there. And one of them, I can't say my least favorite because I hate them all equally, but one of them was called, If any of your parents are responsible for riding the Jungle Jam, just tell them I love them. Thank you very much. You never know. Somebody's got to write that stuff. One of them is called Hermie the Love Bug. Hermie, as you might have guessed, is a bug. And he so desperately wants to be loved. He so desperately wants to be friends. He's constantly flying up to people, right? He's constantly doing what bugs do. Bugging people. And this constant seeking after affection and attention. And he's so sure that you don't like him. He's so sure that you don't want him to be there, that he drives you absolutely crazy to the point that you really wish he wasn't there. That's Hermey the love bug for you, wrapped up. You don't have to listen to the story. That's the way it goes. On the other hand of the literature, children's literature spectrum, there is other great stuff out there. Is this a beer cap? Who brought this? Sorry. On the other end of the spectrum, it's not, by the way. It's a Stewart. I don't know what that is. Maybe it is a beer cap. You have Winnie the Pooh, the best of children's literature. And Winnie the Pooh, Not the Disney stuff, the real stuff. Go read the original stories. If you don't have anything to do one weekend, that'd be a hilarious thing to do. Go get the original in the poster and read it. You'll laugh, it's so good. It really is. But you have Eeyore. Now, Eeyore is as far away from Hermione the love bug as he can possibly be, right? He knows you don't love him. And so what does he do? He gives you hundreds of excuses to not love him. Or her. I never get to figure out what he or her was. So he constantly or she is constantly assuming that you don't like her, and she's constantly giving you reasons. We'll go with the her because she has a little pink ribbon on her tail. We'll go with the her. And I want you to understand something. Most of you fit into one of those two categories. If not with each other, because some of you have at least learned kind of the social grace thing. So if not with each other, then with God. You're either so insecure and desperate to be loved that you're just flying all over the place. Do you love me? Do you love me now? Do you love me now? Do you love me now? Do you love me now? Do you love me now? Or you just know nobody likes you. And if somebody starts trying to pursue you, you begin to throw up roadblocks. You're going to give people reasons to not like you. And you're going to get all prickly. Because you're not going to get your hopes built up on anything. And you know if you get your hopes built up on one person's opinions, they're just going to let you down. So maybe you'll do what I did and become just a real smart aleck and be sarcastic to protect yourself. Maybe you'll just be gloomy. Maybe you'll just kind of be, what do we like to call it, I'm just an honest person. If you ever watch Blind Date, the person always says, well, I'm just real honest. That means mean, jerk. Why? Because I'm going to be the one to tell you all first. Most of us are in one of those two categories, and because of that, we never really develop. We never become. We never live. We're so worried about, does God like me? That we're never able to just be. And what Paul wants you to know more than anything else, what Paul wants you to know is how much Jesus has loved you. He shows us, first of all, the dimensions of Christ's love, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power together with all the saints to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. What is this love thing? It's as if all mankind, shrink all mankind into one person. It's not that hard to do. Six million into one. Six billion. Is in the bottom of a trench, of a miry pit. And everybody's trying to figure out how to get them out of the pit. You know, you have kind of the The secular humanist has basically said, you know, it's always been a pit. It's never been anything better than a pit. That's just the way it is. You need to just get over this whole idea of this being a pit. This is the way it is. It's just pitness. You have others who want to elevate man by saying, well, we just need to study. What we need to do is know the pit better. You have the kind of politicians who want to just throw tons of cash into the pit with us. And you have the religious moralists. And we're trying to construct ladders for us to climb out of the pit. But the problem is that the bottom of it is so miry that all we do is we keep pushing the ladder down into it. And we can't find the bottom. And that's where a lot of us grew up, with the religious moralists, right? We're constructing that ladder. You know, Sunday school, church, and Bible reading, and prayer, and evangelism, and bracelet wearing, and book reading, and small group Bible study attendance, and large group Bible study attendance, and theological learning, and what else? Sunday school STARS. We've done that already. What? Vacation Bible school, volunteering, youth group. Man, we've got all those wrongs. It's just more, and it's more because we're trying to get things better. Camp. Big one. It's not working. It's not working. We're still down here. You know, that's that gross feeling, right? It hit a lot of you when you got back this summer from camp. And the world was still here. It's still here. And you have other religions trying to tell you, you know, that it's about obedience. And it's about just quiet submission. You just need to learn to take it. You need to learn to not want out. You need to learn peace and patience within it. And Christianity stands up and says, no, God Himself has come into this pit not to understand you, but to pull you out of it. He has come and experienced what you have experienced. He has come and lived what you have lived. He has come and taken the punishment that you deserve to get you out of it. To carry you out. That's what Jesus has done. He has left heaven. He has left glory. And rather than just completely wipe out a world full of suffering, He has experienced a world full of suffering so that He can have fellowship with you. It makes no sense. It's simply what you do when you love somebody. And that is the height and the depth and the breadth and the width of God's love. that He was not content to just let you suffer there. He wasn't content to just give you stuff to do to get out of the pit. He came and experienced it with us. He picked us up and removed us from it. How wide is it? It's wide enough, as Paul started out saying, to love both Jews and Gentiles. Who are the Jews? They're the washed, the circumcised, the clean. Those people who grew up with the commandments and the rules. Who are the Gentiles? They're the worldlings. Those who grew up without the rules, the unwashed, the unbaptized. It's wide enough for both of us. Wide enough for all of us. There was a physician. Isn't it weird that the 20th century is now the last century? It's kind of a weird thing to say. There was a physician in the last century. That could have been six years ago. But in the 1930s, named Martin Lloyd-Jones, and he was on his way to becoming... he was studying to be a surgeon. He was studying under the Royal Surgeon, actually. He was at the finest hospital in London. And what he began to realize as he studied his case file after case file after case file, was that the reason why people were coming to the hospital was not physical ailments, but it was spiritual ailments. And he wasn't even a Christian yet, but he was figuring this out. The people were destroying themselves. And he realized, as a doctor, you know, I could fix somebody's liver because they've been drinking too much, and then they're just going to come back in five years with lungs because they've been smoking too much. There's something wrong that's got to be dealt with at a deeper level. And he was converted, and he went into the ministry, and he started preaching the gospel at a time when nobody was preaching it. And he went to a place called Sandfields. And under his preaching, there was this revival. Hundreds of people were converted. You know who the first person converted was? His wife. Funny would that be? She kind of came in the room and said, you know, listening to you preach, I'm not sure I've ever been converted. And he said, well, you better go deal with Jesus. The second person converted under his revival was his boss. The guy who had spent his entire life working for this mission realized that he wasn't a Christian. that he was doing the religious stuff to keep from having to deal with Jesus. Isn't that funny? It would be like a preacher getting converted in the middle of his own sermon. This happened before too. Maybe it happened to me tonight, let's hope. At the other end of the spectrum, just weeks later, there was a guy named Brushy Bill. Brushy Bill was a town drunk. He was a fish salesman and luckily he had a smart horse. His horse would often just bring him home in the middle of the night and he'd just be drunk laying among the fish. He was so foul that the other drunks wouldn't drink with him. He would just go to bars and sit by himself. And while he was in the bar one night, he overheard some guys talking about how they weren't going to drink that night because they were going to go back and hear this young creature. And they heard the words uttered, that guy said that no one is beyond hope. And so he went to church, and as he got there, his legs just froze on him, and he felt like he couldn't go in. As he waited for the next Sunday, and he got to the gates and doors, and he saw that he was late, and church had already started. And he spent the entire afternoon just in absolute depression. He wanted to hear this message, but he was scared to hear it. And he went back to the church again that night, and he couldn't go in the gates. And finally, he heard somebody say, Bill, are you coming in or not? You can come sit with me. And he went in, and his life was changed. Isn't that amazing? God's Word is enough for the preacher's wife, and it's enough for the town's drunk. It's broad. It's wide. God's love is high. It doesn't fall short. It raises us all the way to heaven. It's all that we need. My kids are watching Apollo 13 this week to learn about space travel. Y'all seen it, right? The rocket movie. Funny scene where they're getting ready and the whole rocket starts to shake. And one guy looks over and says, actually, it's not Apollo 13. This is in Armageddon, when the rocket starts to shake. And the little smart aleck looks over and says, you know what? We're sitting on about over 1 million movable parts, all built by the lowest bidder. Isn't that scary? Can you just imagine that rush and these unbelievable powered boosters coming behind you going, I hope it's enough. I hope it's enough. And we don't believe that. Ultimately, as we begin to experience grace and live our lives, we don't think that the gospel is enough. We don't ultimately believe it's enough to fix us sometimes. We need something else, we think. A man named Jack Miller preached this very topic that the gospel is enough to heal anybody. And the pastor of the church where he was preaching stood up in the middle of the sermon and said, that's not true. Some people are just too far gone to be healed by the gospel. And Jack Miller talked to him about it and discussed it and explained his belief that the gospel was enough. And to prove it, he went out and took two girls into his home that the medical establishment said were bitter, unto depression and beyond hope. The medical establishment had given up on them. And he took these girls into his home, and one of them named Tina, through his constant ministry was converted, and he said this. She said, I had made dozens of decisions for Christ, and none had helped. I had no idea of the inward evil ruling my life. And had I not realized that faith is a simple resting and trusting in Christ, my pastor's questions woke me up to my rebellion and dislike of God." I want you to think about that for a second. Because there are some of you that I love dearly. There are some of you that I don't love. There are some of you that I love dearly. that the gospel does not seem to be helping. And I don't think it's the gospel's fault. And it might be that you're making decisions for Christ, but ultimately your interpretation of the world is so self-centered. You're constantly asking, what's in it for me? Why are you treating me like this?" But you have no idea of the bitterness within you, the anger you have at God. And you're unable to lay your own concerns aside enough to even acknowledge that there is an inward evil within you that's keeping you from truly, simply resting in Jesus. Now, I'm not even sure how to explain that. We'll get back to it in a second, but just think about that until I'm done. The gospel is high enough to get us to heaven. It's deep enough to cleanse us down to our deepest sins. You know, the problem with me is me. I believe that. You know, I've been told before. One guy told me. Every preacher I've ever had has told me they were a sinner. You're the only one I've ever believed. I think he meant that as a compliment. I don't know. But I am my problem. I am a bad problem. And when you begin to realize that, it's a big deal. Because right now, some of you are still optimistic enough about yourself to think, yeah, I've got annoying habits and whatnot, but I can stop doing those at any time. And the day is going to come when you're going to realize that your problem is you, and it goes down to the very core of your being. I was publicly called out last year as being arrogant, and my arrogance had ruined this entire Presbytery thing. That's always a good day, you know. I think I ended this meeting, it was a huge meeting. I think I ended the meeting by saying, well, really the problem with this whole thing has been Ricky Jones. Glad I could help. Peace out, dawgs. You know, and I walked over to him, and every cell in my being is saying, defend yourself. Every cell in my being is saying, no, he's the problem. And I walked over to him and I said, I wish I had an excuse. I said, I wish I could say, I'm sorry I appear to be arrogant. It's just who I am. Will you forgive me? If you realize that, when you realize that the problem is you to the very deepest core, then you're going to want to know that the gospel is deep enough to wash you even all the way down to that. When you were a child, the gospel was a stream that you could play in. Now that you are a grown-up, I want you to realize the gospel is a river you can swim in. And it's deep enough for you. And it's deep enough for you. And it is long enough for you. It is long enough for you. I know that he's talking about length. We're going to just play with this. You ain't going to outrun it. And God's not going to get tired of you. Have you ever been, I don't know, You ever been on a trip with a bunch of people and just had that icky feeling about six days into it that nobody on this trip can stand you anymore? I get it, man. I get it. You know, you begin to kind of... You're in the car, you can't get away from them, and you want to be away from them not because you're tired of them, but because you're just confident that they're tired of you. And you start moving around, you feel like your cold clothes aren't comfortable anymore. And it's not really your clothes that are the problem, it's your skin that's the problem. You want to be out of it. You want to be somebody else. I feel that way a lot. That's why I usually go home from spring break trips early. I feel that way a lot. Jesus is telling us, I'm not getting tired of you. I'm not getting tired of you. It's a beautiful story. My favorite verses in the Bible are weird ones, which seems to suit me. One of my favorites is in Mark, when the angel is announcing Jesus' resurrection, and the angel says to Mary Magdalene, go tell the disciples, and Peter to meet Him in Galilee. You know what I love about that? Can you imagine how that made Peter feel? Yeah, he betrayed me. He did exactly what I thought he was going to do. He absolutely failed me at the key hour. He failed me. He let me down. You tell him I want to see it. You tell him. Jesus wants to see him. He is not getting tired of you. It is high, and it is wide, and it is deep, and it is long. Why does Paul want us to know these things? The first benefit that comes from it It's a benefit of humility. How does Paul describe himself? He says in verse 8, I am less than the least of all God's people. The grace was given me to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ. Once we're secure that Jesus loves us, we relax and we become real persons. Until then, we're afraid to admit our mistakes. Until then, our entire life is our covering up of our mistakes. I watched a movie last week that's due back tonight before midnight. I'm glad I remembered. And it's called The Big Kahuna, and we're going to watch it Sunday night, Sunday Night Fellowship. We're going to watch the last 45 minutes of it, okay? It's got profanity in it. If that offends you, don't come. If that's going to cause you to sin, then don't come. Seriously. And some of you may have a bad mouth like I do, and you just can't be around those kind of movies without sinning. But we're going to watch it, because I think it communicates exactly what the world thinks of Christianity in a great way. And in this movie, it's about this young Christian. And, oh yeah, and by the way, don't tell your family we're going to watch it, OK? Because I don't want you all going home saying, we watched this awesome movie called The Big Kahuna, and your parents go get it, and then I get fired. And so we're not going to do that, OK? So, you know, just kind of chill. But in this movie, it's about this young Christian who's out with two older businessmen at this convention. And the Christian is so afraid of doing anything wrong. They ask him what kind of girls get him excited, and he's like, oh, I wouldn't know that. Jesus says to look on a woman to lust after her is to commit adultery. And his entire life he's identified with that fear of being wrong, of doing anything wrong. And at the end of the movie, this older man tells him that he has no character. He says, you asked me earlier if you have any character. And the answer is, no, you do not. But one of these days, you will have regrets. And those regrets will give you character. And the Christian looks at him and says, you mean I can't have character until I do things wrong? And the man looks at him and goes, no, you've already done things wrong. You just can't regret them yet. Doesn't that describe you? Aren't you so afraid to identify the things that you've done wrong in your life? If I admit that I was wrong, that it was me, that it was my fault, then all my self-righteousness is going to come crashing to a halt. Then this ladder that I'm using to get out of this pit is going to come crashing to the ground. And Jesus is saying, yeah, exactly. I want you to come crashing down here so I can grab you and take you out of this pit. It is there that you begin to develop the truth. It is there that you begin to receive grace. When you begin to understand God's love, not only do you become humble, you become courageous. In Him, and through faith in Him, we approach God with freedom and confidence. I ask you, therefore, not to be discouraged because of my sufferings for you, which are your glory. Why does understanding God's love for us give us courage in the face of events? Because of this. You've got two different ways of viewing life. You can either view life and look at every circumstance in your life and through that try to figure out what God thinks about you. Or, you can know that God loves you and therefore use that knowledge to interpret your life. For instance, Let's put it on another level. Just like anybody else in your life, right? You can know them, and therefore understand why they do what they do, or you can try to pick apart everything they do to determine what they think about you that day. You know, I was sitting at lunch with one of you this week, and it was just funny. Five friends walked by. And the guy goes, can you believe that? Five people I knew just all walked by and didn't say a word to me. Well, you know, all five of them are right now saying, can you believe that we just walked by him and he didn't say a word to us? Who's the sinner here? Are you going to, you know, if Bianca doesn't speak to me, then I know, I don't immediately begin to think she doesn't love me anymore. It means something's going on in her life and I need to find out what it is. If God doesn't give me something I want, then I don't immediately begin to think, man, He must not love me. What did I do wrong? Why is He punishing me? I know that He loves me. I know that He gave His own Son for me and He's not going to withhold anything good from me. Therefore, if He's not giving me something, it must not be good for me. Can you believe that? I had a friend and his girl working for me. He's a youth minister. And his intern had run the cell phone bill up to $250, and it was only like the 12th of the month. And so he called her in, and he said to her, now listen, we don't need a big crying discussion right here. I like you. This is in no way a reflection of my concern for you. I need you to take a deep drink of Jesus right now, and I need you to turn the cell phone off. Is that the kind of way you live? Are people afraid to move around you for fear of hurting your feelings? Do we have to go through these long speeches with you every time we need to sit you down and ask you to turn the cell phone off? They can only be because you have no confidence in how much God loves you. I can't give that to you. You've got to rest in Jesus to get it. I wish I could do it for you. Finally, knowing how much God loves us brings us to fullness. To know this love that surpasses knowledge. That you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. That you may fill out the uniform. That you may be complete. That you may be what God has called you to be. That you may understand the love of Jesus and apply it to your life. Now you're free to not worry about how you look, to not worry obsessively with what people are thinking of you, but to grab the towel and clean their feet as Jesus did, to grab the wrench and clean their toilets, to do whatever you need to do. Because you know Jesus loves you. And it enables you to be what He was when He came to this earth. Let me give you three brief suggestions on how you get to know this love better. And these are for both believer and unbeliever. If you have been a Christian for, I don't know, how old are you all? Eighteen? Eighteen years. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. Or if you are walking in here for the first time and you think, well, oddly enough, this doesn't sound like junk. If you do think it sounds like junk, hang in there with me. We'll be done in five minutes. How do you know this love? First of all, you've got to get your eyes off yourself and on to Jesus. Guys, if you're just sitting there staring at anybody, wondering all the time, why do they do that to me? Why do you not wave at me? Why do you not speak to me? Eventually, you're going to start hating me. You've got to get your eyes off yourself and look at Jesus. What does Hebrews 12 says? It says, let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, sat down at the right hand of the throne of God." Focus on what He's done for you. Focus on the death He died for you. That should be enough to convince you. Then begin to interpret your life with that knowledge. Focus on Jesus. Secondly, you slay Satan with his own sword. What does Satan come at us and do? He comes at us and condemns us. You're not good enough. You're not righteous enough. You're not holy enough. You're a sinner. How dare you go to Bible study? How dare you stand up in front of that group? You're not worthy. When Satan does that, you slay him with his own sword. 1 Timothy 1.15 says, Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. of whom I am the worst." That text does not say Christ Jesus came into the world to save rickies, of whom I am the rickiest. If it said that, I would be good. I would be in good shape. But it doesn't. But because I know myself, I know that if it did say that, it couldn't mean me any more than it means me when it says sinners. That's me. If it said, Christ Jesus came into the world to save fairly good people, I'd kind of be out of luck. But it says sinners. I mean, that might as well be my name tag, of whom I am a chief. When Satan tempts me and tells me I'm too sinful, I say, you know what? You're right. I've got to deal with a God who delights to show mercy. And finally, we ride the back of our failures. We ride the backs of our failures. When we fail, it makes us need Jesus. And so we throw ourselves upon Him, and that's a safe place to be. You know, I don't remember if this thing is actually in the book, The Great Divorce, or I'm just making it up, but it should be. The Great Divorce is this parable of all these people who've gone on a bus ride from hell to heaven. And they get to heaven, and all these angels come out to greet them, to try to convince them to come into heaven, to not get back on the bus back to hell. And this one guy's got a lizard on his shoulder. Now, Les Newton says it's a head on his shoulder, and he doesn't remember this at all, so maybe this doesn't happen, but this could happen. And what this lizard is doing is it's constantly reminding the man of his failures, and it's tempting him into sin. And this angel is begging him, Let me kill it." And he can't do it. He can't give up. Because somehow, see what we do when we glorify our failures is what we're doing is we're constantly saying to ourselves, I could have done more. I should have done more. And Jesus said, no, you're a failure. That's what you are. Let me save you. And he throws it to the ground and it becomes a stallion. And he rides it into heaven. We acknowledge our weakness. You see, that's what repentance does. We acknowledge that we are the problem. That takes us to Jesus. When we're insisting on being the solution, then our righteousness keeps us away from it. Embrace your failures. Don't hide from them. They'll take you to Jesus. The only place where you can be healed. Please pray with me. Our Father in Heaven, I pray that You will make this practical in our hearts. We each know where we've failed. Father, we want to just run away from that. We want to close our eyes to it and plug our ears. I pray that rather than doing those things, we would embrace them. And embracing our failures, we would embrace our Savior. We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.