Let's begin with a word of prayer. Father, again, as we have the privilege of opening your Word, having your Holy Spirit teach us from the things that are there, we ask that you would teach us, Father, that we would be ready listeners. And Father, those who don't deceive themselves, but become doers of the Word, not merely hearers. So to that end, we commit this time in Jesus' name. Amen. We're at the end of the third chapter of Ephesians. And in that passage, we're going to be introduced to one of the deeper but wonderful subjects in the whole Word of God. And it starts in verse 14, so we'll review that a little bit. But it starts in verse 14 with this prayer of Paul. And he says, For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. God's the Creator of all of us. But as he is addressing this subject, he's talking about believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, and he says that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, the vast riches of the character of who He is, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man. Of course, that's what we desperately need. So that Christ may dwell in your heart through faith, that you would know He's there, in other words, and be constantly aware of that. And that you, now get this, being rooted and grounded in love. Okay? Rooted is the picture of a plant or a tree. Grounded is the picture of a building that's being put up. So what is this love about? And a lot of times what we do is we immediately Assume since most of scripture talks about our responsibility to love each other and love the brethren that that's what it's talking about but this is the foundation for that love that goes out from us and the foundation is a true understanding a grappling with the reality of God's love Christ's love for us Okay, I think that's one of the hardest things that for a believer who knows the Word to understand because we all know our own sinfulness and our own hearts and so forth. And this is about the love that God chose in eternity past to place on you and me as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. An infinite, eternal, unchanging love. So he says, that we may be able, verse 18, to comprehend, understand, With all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth? The breadth we looked at last time, we talked about the breadth of that Christ died. God so loved the world. The length is eternal. It begins in eternity past and it goes to eternity future forever. The height that it takes us all the way to the heavenly places and seated at the right hand of the Father. And the depth that Christ came to this earth and suffered that death. Philippians chapter 2. At the hands of sinful men. And was separated from God because of our sin. And then it says this in verse 19. And here's the key. And to know the love of Christ. You know what I love about that? That the Holy Spirit chose those words, the love of Christ. He didn't say the love of Jesus. He didn't say the love of God even, even though that's true. He said the love of Christ. And Christ takes us back to the Old Testament and the Messiah. And I think that the Holy Spirit chose the word Christ here because it's emphasizing the mystery that we've been talking about, that God was going to bring into the family this body of Christ, Gentile and Jew together and have a whole new thing where He would be the head and we would be the body, where He would be the vine and we would be the branches, where He would be the bridegroom and we would be the bride, and on and on. He would be the shepherd and we would be the sheep and all of those magnificent truths links us with Christ. Christ is the one promise all throughout the Old Testament. I say this all the time. Promise after promise. One is coming. One is coming. He's going to bear the sins of the world. He's going to come and finally He's known in the Old Testament often as, or is pictured by that lamb, that Passover lamb and so forth. And finally, John the Baptist says, behold, look at the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. He's finally arrived. And he does that. And the fact that Paul is addressing Gentiles that make up the Ephesian church mostly, and he says, Christ's love. That you've been brought into that whole concept that was revealed in the whole Old Testament. You've been made part of Christ. Alright. I'd like you to go to 1 John 4. And verse 19 says this. We love the brethren. Other believers. We love because He first loved us. So the foundation for our loving others is His love of us. You can't bypass that. And you see, that's what the world would like to do. We should just all love each other. Wait a minute. Are you leaving Christ out of this? Christ is the One through Whom we receive this magnificent love. And so that takes us back to verses 9 and 10. By this the love of God was manifested in us. that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we love God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our own sins. Now come to verse 16. This is the key verse here to me. where John says this, and we have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. And to me, that's the whole issue. Have you? I mean, that's the question. I'll be honest with you. I'm coming to know this love, but I've not arrived there yet. I don't have any problem with that he loves you. But when I think of him loving Linton Whittles, since I know Linton Whittles better than I know anybody, I have a problem with how he could love me. I know that he does, and I'm coming to grips with that, and I'm recognizing it, and it forms in me. I'm not saying I don't know that God loves me. What I'm saying is this, that I don't know it to the fullness that I should. And the more fully that I know that, the more fully I love the brethren and the people around me. It's the foundation. You can't bypass this foundation. You can't just go off and love people until you understand that God has poured out on you. If you are a believer in Jesus Christ, that He has a perfect, magnificent, personal unending love for you. Every day, every moment of every day, it never changes. Even though your little mind and my little mind are going, we've been all around and well, he doesn't love me now and he does love me and I just messed up and how could he, you know, that's not, it doesn't play into what God's doing. He set his love on us in eternity past. when He already knew everything about you that you would be and do. There's nothing that's a surprise to Him. We have surprises every day. But there's nothing that's a surprise to Him about you or that you're going to do. Nothing. And He has this absolute unending love for those who are in Christ. And I love this verse. And we have come to know, John says. And I'd like to say to John, how long did it take, John, for you to really grasp that? And we have come to know and have believed, you know, that the difference between what is often described as a head knowledge and your heart. In other words, you know, there's things we know. And if we were taking a test, we could write down all the right answers. But do you know them personally? I have a friend who says, do you own that? I love that. Is it yours? Or is it just something that you say, well, it's out there and it's available. Do you own it? Do you own God's love for you as a believer in Jesus Christ? You know it. You live with it as your reality. Because if you do, you can't imagine the difference it makes in how you live your days. You understand that, don't you? If you think, you know, as so many people in the past have thought and do think today, God is a God. He's just waiting. I remember I was witnessing to a kid way, way back in college, and he said, I was talking to him and his wife, and they had this agreement that God was just waiting to smash them. That he was just looking for an opportunity to swat him like with a fly swatter. And they had done some things that were sinful and so forth. They never said what, but they just had that picture. And sometimes Christians have that picture. You know what I mean? God's love flows for me when I'm everything I should be. What? Were you ever everything you should be? You know, I think of it this way. Whittles, have you ever, even for 15 seconds? Do you know what I mean? And if God's love is based on that, my behavior, my proper thinking, my whatever you want to put there, if it's that. But you know, you go back, I love to go back to the Old Testament where God says that he set his love on Israel. That to me is this incredible concept that he just said, out of my own perfect character, I am going to love them permanently. End of discussion. You know what I mean? I'm going to love them. And that's where this love comes from. If it is dependent on our actions, then we don't have a percent of it. It's that God said, I'm going to set my love on you. I chose you. He said, I chose you from eternity past to do this. And then he says, I want you to know it. I don't want you to believe it. Faith comes by hearing, hearing by the Word of God. This is what God says. It's real. I have to tell you, it doesn't make sense to me all the time. It just doesn't. Because I've been raised, and that's not the right thing to say, but we've all been trained to love people who love us. And to love people who treat us right. And to love people... And the Lord said about that, He said, even the Pharisees loved the people that loved them. No, that's no big deal. But God's love, it goes so infinitely beyond those bounds where He just took the body of Christ and said, I set my love on them. Forever. It's His purpose. It will never change. Okay. And we have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love. And the one who abides in love abides in God. In other words, what does that mean to abide in His love? To keep it as the reality of your thinking. That this will never change. That no matter what's going on in my life, His love for me is perfect. And so many times you have people saying, oh, he must not be loving me today because this is really hard or this is whatever. And yet the reality is that he loves us with the same love all the time, every day. And if that's your foundation, what a comfort that is. Just awesome. OK, go back to Ephesians chapter 3. I'm in verse 19. And to know, very similar to 1 John, and to know the love of Christ. Again, do you know it? Have you trusted Jesus Christ as your Savior so that you know that you've been forgiven and born again? And if you have, and if you have done that, then you belong to Him. And that love is a reality with Him. Do you see what I'm saying? Whether you know it or not, It still is his reality. It's like a little kid saying to his dad, well, I thought you didn't love me. And the dad, what? Well, yesterday when I didn't do as well as I thought, I thought you didn't love me. And the dad says, what? I always love you. I love you when I'm disciplining you. I love you when I'm blessing you. I always love you. Don't link it to your little minds going around. Understand that I always love you. And I think that's a somewhat dim picture of this love of God. It's always there, and God wants us to know it. It's a huge thing. I really don't think you can grow in grace the way you're supposed to grow in grace until you understand this. Because you're haltingly moving ahead and falling back and you're in this thing of, well, now He loves me, now He doesn't. Verses. He's the unchanging God who chose Himself to do this. And when he chose to do it, he couldn't see anything at all good in you or me. He saw sinners condemned in Adam, and he said, I'm going to save them, I'm going to love them, I'm going to do everything they need, and I'm going to do it forever. So wonderful. So it says, and to know the love of Christ, verse 19, which surpasses, goes beyond, knowledge. You can know everything there is to know. And if you don't know the love of God for you, then you're behind. You can know, you know, I think about what Paul says, where is it? First Corinthians 13, I think it is. If I have the That I know all things. I know all mysteries. And I get really excited. I'm a pastor. I'm supposed to have some answers. And so, I think about how wonderful. And this passage says, listen, what's better than knowing that? What goes beyond knowing all of Scripture, knowing it, but if you can know things in Scripture, and we do, but if you don't know this love of God for you, then it doesn't matter if you know everything else. This is a foundational truth. Okay. And to know the love of Christ, which surpasses knowledge. And now we come to this. I really get excited about this phrase just because it was such a enigma to me, this whole concept of this filling stuff. But realize, and to know the love of Christ, which surpasses knowledge. This is what Paul's praying for the saints at Ephesus, that they know the love of Christ, which surpasses knowledge. And then he says that which is in order that. In other words, that knowing of that love. OK, leads to something else. And it leads to this. that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God." Just one of those mind-boggling statements. What? Let me back up here a minute and just say this. Scripture talks about filling us up. And that brings me back to the realization and understanding that every human being Lost human beings who don't know Christ. Those who do know Christ. Everybody's trying to be filled up. That's what life is about for everybody. And people are doing crazy things trying to be filled up. Because it's got this hole, and everybody's trying to fill it. And some people are so frustrated with their lack of feeling that they just zone out. They go on drugs. They become alcoholics and they're constantly just kind of brain dead. And others pursue it through sex. And others pursue it through power and money. There's so many ways people are doing this. They're just trying to fill up the hole. And everybody's got the hole. And the other thing that's interesting to me is most people think that they've got some inside angle on, I don't know how to fill it. Or at least I know how to fill it for me. Even though they keep filling it, filling it, filling it, and it never gets filled up. It's still there. You know what God says? My job. And more importantly than that, if I can talk about this, more importantly than that, It's what I do. And it's what I'm going to do. It's my purpose for the believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. I want you to know my love. Know it. Not academically. Know it. It's yours. So that I can fill you up. And God's the only one that can fill this thing up. That can fill up your life. He's the only one. And that's the promise he makes. And really, as I think about this, the thing I love about... How could you describe what it's going to be like in eternity? Being filled up. Just simple. Just being filled up forever. With all filled up to... It's talking about a level of filling. Now, we all understand we've got this hole. I was thinking about it in terms of, you know, you pull up to the gas pump. What do you say? Fill her up. What can that mean? Well, it can mean a lot of things. It can mean two gallons. It can mean 20. It can mean 34 or going broke. It could be... And that's what that Greek word means. Filling up the word play row means filling up all the Deficiency all the space all the all the whatever hole there is God says I Fill it up. That's my job That's my purpose he wants you and me to be filled up, and the starting place for that filling up is what? I know is love for me. And once you grasp that, and get a hold of it and own it, what can shake you? What greater truth is there? Let me put it this way. What would you most like to hear from God? So you're standing in His presence, What do you want to hear? I want to hear, I love you. Always have loved you with a love that you can't begin to imagine where it's going to take you forever. Look at some of these filling up passages with me for a minute. Ephesians chapter 1 verse 23. And I've got to drop back to verse 22. It says, "...and He," referring to God the Father, "...put all things in subjection under His feet..." Under the feet of Jesus Christ. "...and gave Him as head over all things to the church." And it says this about the church, all those who put their faith in Jesus Christ. "...which is His body, Now here's where we're going, this last phrase. What is the church? The fullness of Him who fills all in all. That just used to drive me crazy. I thought, I don't have a clue what that means. And I'm not saying that I thoroughly understand it, but I get this from it. First of all, there's the church which is His body. Those are believers. And it says about Christ, what's His purpose? The fullness of Him. What's the church? To be filled up. Alright? The fullness of Him who fills all in all. He comes and He indwells the person. He's in all. But His whole purpose is He's the one who fills people up. You can't do it. I can't do it. No part of the creation can do it. You can't fill it up. And it's what makes us so sad when we see somebody on this course of destruction. And I can look and I can say, they're trying to be filled up. What they're doing. I'm not excusing it. I mean it's wrong to pursue a sinful thing. It's wrong to pursue anything to fill it up when God is and Christ is the one who fills it up. All the filling starts with Christ. You can't get filled up by God outside of Christ. He's the one who fills all in all. Now let's go to Ephesians chapter 4 verse 10. talking about Jesus Christ. It says this, He who descended, Jesus Christ, is Himself also He who ascended. He who went down into the earth is the One who came up into the heavenly places. Far above all the heavens that He might fill all things. Is that a great understanding? I'm always trying to express Who is this Jesus Christ? What does He do? How big is He? Do you know what I mean? How important is He? Well, here we have it. He's the one who fills all things. Nobody else. Him. He fills all. In the plan of the Father, He's the one that does it. You can't have the fullness of God apart from Jesus Christ. Who fills all in all. Who fills all things. He's going to fill heaven. He's going to fill the ages. He's going to fill everything. Alright. Then go to 1 John 1 verse 4. 1 John 1 verse 4 says, And these things we write, so that our joy may be made complete. Now that's the word fulfilled. play rho-oh word, fill up all the deficiency. God says, I want to fill you with what? In this context, joy. I want you to have joy. And joy, you know, people say, well, I want to be happy. That's kind of a strange distinction, but when we're talking about joy, we're talking about the abiding living in the reality of God's love for us, God's filling us, God's purpose in our life, and a great confidence and peace and joy that comes from that. Happiness to me is more of a worldly word. I don't really find it much in Scripture, if at all. Joy is His peace, confidence in it, and being lifted up by who He is in any situation. Where do you go when things go sour? You go to Him. There's nobody else. I mean, you have to go to Him. Link that verse up with Romans 15, verse 13. And this verse says, Now may the God of hope fill you, there it is again, fill you all the way up with all joy and peace in believing. And again, believing what? Believing that we have come to know and have believed God's love for us. Believing this wonderful truth that God has given us through Jesus Christ. Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing. How valuable is joy and peace as you live in a broken world and viewing day by day the suffering not only in the body of Christ but out of the body of Christ and people we love and so forth. Alright. Go to Romans 15.14. Very close here. Here's more fillings. And concerning you, my brethren, I myself also am convinced that you yourselves are full of goodness. Now, remember, this is in the book of Romans, where in Romans 3, there is none who does good. No, not one. So this filling up of goodness has to be a filling of God, okay? After you are born again, that you are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge. What's another thing God wants to fill us with? And boy, do we have a deficit of this. Knowledge of who He is, knowledge of His Word, okay? And then He says, filled with all knowledge and able to admonish one another, okay? Then go to Philippians chapter 1. Verse 11. And let me drop back to verse 9. Another prayer of Paul. He says this, And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve the things that are excellent in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ. Now notice this, having been filled, that word again, Having been filled with the fruit of righteousness." Producing what? You think of what fruit? Fruit is something that grows on a tree that is a production of the tree. And we eat it, we love it, we enjoy it. God says, I want you to be like a tree producing fruit. And the fruit is to be what? Righteousness. Okay. You think of the things... Well, let me read the rest of that. the rest of that verse, verse 11, having been filled with the fruit of righteousness, notice what he says, which comes through Jesus Christ. You can't produce righteousness on your own. It has to be through Jesus Christ, through your salvation, through your relationship with Him. And then just go to Galatians chapter 5, Galatians 5.22 says, but the fruit of the Spirit. So now we get an idea of what this fruit of righteousness is. What are the things listed? We all know them. Love, joy, peace. How are those things fulfilled in the whole? You take the person that's just an unbeliever, and he's just driven by something, and you're trying to figure out what it is, and you realize that, well, it's just this hole. And he's trying to fill it up. And you say, how would love fill this person up? How would joy? They don't have joy. How would joy fill them up? How would peace fill them up? How would a God-given patience fill them up? Do you know how hard it is on us to be impatient? Who suffers when you can't be patient? You do. You know, you're just coming apart at the seams because you can't be patient. Kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. The opposite of these things are not only destructive to other people, but they're destructive to you. Those are the things, those are the fruit of righteousness, some of the fruit of righteousness, not all of it, that God wants to fill us up with. All right. And then finally, let's come to Colossians chapter one, verse nine. Another prayer, Paul, Paul is really praying often for this filling up. So, in Colossians 1, verse 9, he says, For this reason also, since the day we heard of it, your faith, your love, and the Spirit, and so forth, we have not ceased to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled, again, Here's another place where we have a deficiency. That you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding. Here's another place that God says, I want you to know what My will for you is. A lot of times we feel like we're in the dark about that. One of the things that God wants to fill us up with is this understanding, this is where God wants me. This is what He wants me doing. This is how He is leading me today by His Spirit. So we have the joy and the peace of knowing I'm where God wants me. That is a tremendous thing. Versus, I don't know what I should be doing. I think I'm just wasting my time. versus knowing, Paul says, I want you to know that you're doing what God's called on you to do, that you're in his will. But as we wrap this up, it all starts with Jesus Christ and recognizing that infinite love that he has for you as a believer in Jesus Christ that will never change and never end. It is indestructible. You yourself, what an amazing thing, you yourself cannot destroy it. And I don't mean that you should try, but you could not do anything that would soften, take away, destroy, hinder his love. Now, He'll discipline you in love, just like a loving father will correct a child and reprove them and discipline them and so forth. But that's just evidence of His love. Whom the Lord loves, He disciplines. But sometimes what happens is when the discipline comes, you'll say, what? Oh, God doesn't love me right now. When the whole Word of God says what? This is proof of my love. Have you ever done that? Have you ever had that? It just comes to your mind. I'm being disciplined. And my ex thought, that's great. God loves me. It's evidence of his love. Because he says, if there is no discipline, then you're illegitimate. You're not sons of mine. Huge things. And then, That understanding of God's love is to lead us to be what? Filled up. And and you think about this. I hope we none of us leave here without this understanding. Only God can fill you up. And it's only in Jesus Christ. And it's only in the things of his word and his provision and so forth. So let's stop looking other places, you know, because it's not there. Not going to happen. It's not going to work. How many times you need to fall in the same hole? It's useless. Father, I would thank you for the more we see of who you are, who your Son is, the more we see this plan revealed in your Word. We are certainly overwhelmed and in awe and how you could love us, how you've set your love on us in Jesus Christ. Father what magnificent things you've done and we realize even as we say that we don't grasp as We will someday Who you are and what you've done we thank you for it in Jesus name. Amen