From Information to Sensation
Rev Dr Mark Porizky
7/23/06
Ephesians 3:14-21
Several years ago a theater manager
in
In much the same way, we often excise the music, the joy, the sensation from our Christian life by learning the truth of the Gospel without ever letting the music settle into our lives. We have all the right information, but none of the sensation. Paul, in Ephesians 3:14-21 prays for his readers that they move from information to sensation.
For this reason I bow my knees before the
Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. I pray
that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be
strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ
may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in
love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints,
what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and
to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled
with all the fullness of God.
Now to him who by the power at work within us
is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to
him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and
ever. Amen.
Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 3:14-21
is the pivotal point in Ephesians. Here Paul makes the transition from the
foundation of doctrine to the structure of ethics; he moves from what we are to
believe to how we are to live. The first half of the letter tells us who we are
in Christ. Without that information we are hopelessly adrift. But from that information we must go the next
step to answer the question: in light of my standing in Jesus, how am I now
to live?"
Thus, this morning’s Scripture is a
prayer for you and me to move from information to sensation, from the
theoretical to the tangible. To those who are content to live with the truth we
have mastered without ever allowing the truth to master us, this prayer calls
us to accountability, to live what we know to be true.
From information to sensation. What
keeps information from becoming sensation?
When we split emotion
and thinking we keep information from becoming sensation.
Let’s face it; Presbyterians are
never the sorts of folks to be accused of being carried away by their emotions.
There is good reason we are sometimes termed the "frozen chosen." In
an effort to stem the tide of sentiment from ruling the day, we tend to hold
back on experience. We tend to split doctrine from experience.
But such a dichotomy is unheard of
in Scripture. According to Scripture, we are to neither set aside our thinking
in order to experience God better, nor are we to stifle our feelings in favor
of memorizing cold facts about God. As Christianity is a relationship with the
living God, we must both know truth about our heavenly Father and also respond
to Him with God-given emotions.
And Paul expresses incredible
emotion in this passage. The emotional
charge is seen from the beginning where he describes his posture - he kneels.
To us kneeling in prayer is not
unheard of; though rarely done in this church.
Yet, in some churches the congregation kneels as part of the corporate
worship.
Visitors—back pew follies. Wrong church.
Paul writes about kneeling, but for
a Jew in the first century kneeling was not the typical form of worship. Jesus
speaks of people standing on the street corners to pray, of the Pharisee and
tax collector standing in the temple to pray. Standing, as a sign of respect,
was the more common form of worship. Today in
Yet kneeling was not unheard of.
Jesus in the garden knelt in prayer. Falling on the knees was the response of
one in absolute dependence. It was the sign of incredible emotion. In light of
all the Father has done for us to make us His own, in joining the Jew and
Gentile so that the Church is a new entity in the universe, Paul’s only
response is one of being overcome so that he falls to his knees.
Paul’s joining of emotion and
intellect is seen in verse 19. He prays that we would know love that surpasses
knowledge.
Notice he doesn’t say that we should
feel what can’t be understood, as though the intellect is limited but emotions
are infinite and our hearts are more powerful than our minds. No. Paul keeps
the two together as they ought to be. By God’s grace, Paul prays that, because
of love, we might know the unknowable.
This joining and maintaining of
emotions and intellect is well illustrated by one of the greatest thinkers in
history, who was also a fervent believer in Jesus.
His name is Blaize Pascal. He was a
mathematician, laying the groundwork for probability and statistics. When he
died they found a diary which he wrote after he had an experience with God and
had sewn inside his coat, so it would always be with him. Here is what it said:
In the year of grace, 1654, Monday, 23rd
November, Day of St. Clement. From about half past ten in the evening to half
past an hour after midnight…Fire! God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob,
not the god of the philosophers and of the learned. Certainty joy, certainty
emotion, sight joy. Forgetfulness of the world and all outside of God. The
world has not known thee, but now I have known thee, Joy Joy Joy. Tears of joy.
My God do not leave, let me not ever be separate from you.
What happened? The reality of Jesus Christ
dwelling in his heart is what happened. He could not separate what he knew and
what he felt.
According to the Bible religion is
not a form of feeling to the exclusion of the intellect, nor a form of
knowledge to the exclusion of the feelings. Christ dwells in the heart, in the
comprehensive sense of the word. He is the source of spiritual life to the
whole soul; of spiritual knowledge as well as of spiritual affections. (Pause)
So how do we join the two? How will information become sensation?
The first component is Spiritual preparation – (verses
16-17)
Notice what Paul prays for first of
all: Paul prays that God would do something within us. In order for Christ to
dwell within, the Holy Spirit must first prepare our hearts. Before you can
begin to grasp all that God has done, God must first get hold of our minds and
hearts. At the very core of who you are there must be a change. Paul’s prayer
is that we move beyond toying with the divine, and instead that our lives would
be radically changed.
The trouble is, this is not
something you or I can do on our own. We
do not radically change without God’s grace.
Such radical change is the gift of God’s grace. So in this prayer, Paul
goes after the source of the gift; he goes to the God who loves to give.
Paul says that we can’t get
Christian experience by going after the experience; we can only get it by going
after God. Friends, If you want the experience God gives and not God, you’ll
never get experience. God is the source.
The experience comes from the relationship.
Consider dating. When you date someone and that person likes
to kiss you, you don’t want to believe that all they want are kisses and not
you. You want them to want you. You may find that person only really wants is a
kiss… from anybody… you just happen to be there. Then the kiss loses
everything. If you go after the kiss and not the person, the kiss is nothing.
Unfortunately there are those who
want the excitement of being a Christian, the joy, the peace, but they want
nothing to do with the God who gives such excitement, joy and peace. You need
to ask yourself this question: Am I here because this does something for me, I
enjoy the excitement, the charge… or am I here because of the One who gives the
sensation?
Paul’s prayer is that this spiritual
preparation will result in a permanent dwelling that Christ may dwell in your
hearts.
The second component
that moves us from information to sensation is Gospel comprehension (verses 18-19)
Paul prays that God would not only prepare our
hearts, but enable us to comprehend how the Gospel affects our lives so
completely.
Many of you know that Barbara and I
met in seminary back in 1986. During the
first month of our relationship, I knew Barbara casually, often sitting at the
same dinner table with her. I came to
know certain facts about her. She was from the high desert of California. She
was an older woman (never mind how old!).
There wasn’t more to our relationship than the facts. I knew who she was
and that was that. But there was a point where I moved from knowing about Barbara,
to knowing Barbara. And my attentions changed significantly on during the
summer of 1987 when I realized that she was pretty nice to be around and I
wanted to spend more time with her. My
other friends shifted to second place. She preoccupied my thoughts; she was the
first person I thought of when I awoke and the last person on my mind when I
went to sleep. But that knowing deepened when, on February 12, 1988, I pledged
to her my love. That love has not stagnated; it goes deeper and deeper. I am
still just beginning to get a grasp on that love.
It is this grasping which forms the
heart of Paul’s prayer. This is what Paul is praying for, that we grasp
Christ’s love. This is where the information of Christ’s death for us becomes a
sensation.
Now you come to the Scripture and you read
that God says that He will never leave your or forsake you, that when the
Father in heaven looks upon us He sees His own Son; He has loved us from
eternity past. God sees us as a complete beauty. Do you know that? I hope you
do. But next question comes… Do you have a sense of that? Or is that just
information?
Every other religion will say
"Here are the principles, the rules; here is how you find God. Meditate on
the rules and you’ll grow closer to God."
But Paul does not tell us to
meditate on the attributes of God, not on the wisdom of God, not the glory of
God. Christian faith is not driven by principles. What is the focus here is the
love of Jesus Christ.
To move from information to
sensation we have to spend time at the Cross. The dimensions of redeeming love
are admirable: The breadth, and length, and depth, and height. By enumerating
these dimensions, Paul reminds us of the surpassing greatness of Christ’s love
for us.
This love is higher than heaven,
deeper than hell, longer than the earth, and broader than the sea. Our minds
will spend all eternity considering this truth and we will never exhaust its
topic. Your old age will never wear out Christ’s love for you; your continued
struggles with faith will never exhaust it; your successive temptations will
never drain it dry.
The Whisper Test by Mary Ann Bird
“I grew up knowing I was different, and I hated it. I was
born with a cleft palate, and when I started school, my classmates made it
clear to me how I looked to others: a little girl with a misshapen lip, crooked
nose, lopsided teeth, and garbled speech.
“When schoolmates asked, ‘What happened to your lip?’ I’d
tell them I’d fallen and cut it on a piece of glass. Somehow it seemed more
acceptable to have suffered an accident than to have been born different. I was
convinced that no one outside my family could love me.
There was, however, a teacher in the 2nd grade
whom we all adored – Mrs. Leonard by name. She was short, round, happy – a
sparkling lady.
Annually we had a hearing test… Mrs. Leonard gave test to
everyone in the class, and finally it was my turn. I knew from past years that
as we stood against the door and covered one ear, the teacher sitting at her
desk would whisper something, and we would have to repeat it back – things like
"the sky is blue" or "do you have new shoes?" I waited
there for those words that god must have put into her mouth, those seven words
that changed my life. Mrs. Leonard said, in her whisper, ‘I wish you were my
little girl.’
Mary Ann Bird says that God says to
every person deformed by sin, "I wish you were my son" or I wish you
were my daughter." (Pause)
For those who have never experienced Christ's love,
no words will suffice. For those who have experienced it, no words will do. This
is Paul’s prayer. Do you know only God’s
love as information or is it a sensation as well?
Will you pray with me now?
St.
Andrew Presbyterian Church,
Web Site: SAPC-CT.HOME.ATT.NET
Office Email: SAPC-CT@ATT.NET
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