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Sunday 11/09/25
Title: Living with our face pressed against the Glass
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Living with our face pressed against the Glass
This morning I did not preach from notes, but simply started off by offering an explanation of what we were covering and why. Then I read and provided teaching and commentary on the text – drawing out that which I felt was immediately relevant to us by the Spirit’s leading.
I knew I could go several places this morning and still be on topic, but honestly most of those places would have certainly been more correctional than encouraging. While that is okay, I’ve been doing a lot of teaching lately which has been aimed at correcting or augmenting the way the gospel is lived out by this church. To facilitate our being more consistent with scripture, which is always our aim. But a regular diet of correction can get discouraging, so I truly wanted to do some encouraging.
As I was seeking the Lord, what eventually came to me were the encouragements of Paul to a few, select churches in his letters. Go ahead and turn if you will to Ephesians the first chapter and we will begin there after a while.
So with what did Paul encourage these believers?
Well, when you take a panorama of the churches in the first century they ran the gamut in terms of devotion to Christ, all in less than a 70 years.
You start off with a body of Christ in Jerusalem made entirely, so far as we know, of Jewish believers – and they were on fire!
They were penetratingly aware of their forgiveness, of their freedom from the shackles of their former Judaistic rituals which only covered sin without removing it or its incurring guilt. They were alive to God and in love with their Messiah and responsive to the Spirit He gave.
Of course for the first several years, the gospel was only preached to the Jewish people, and that was by God’s design. The disciples had been clearly instructed by Jesus to go first to Jerusalem, then Judea, then Samaria and THEN to the rest of the world.
This was, at least in part, to honor Abraham and the other patriarchs.
Additionally, this was another last ditch effort by God, to offer the Jewish people a final chance to rise to their purpose and destiny. God knew they wouldn’t do it, but even though God knows how people are going to respond, that doesn’t change the fact that He responds like He should. So it is that God first gave the Jews the privilege, opportunity and responsibility to become the evangelists of the world! The Jewish nation, had they accepted their Messiah, would have taken this world by storm as the evangelists who recognized the fulfillment of the Old Covenant in the making of the New through the blood of the Messiah. But we know that it didn’t turn out that way. Nevertheless, God being just, gave them a chance.
By and large, the gospel was not received by the Jewish people. To be sure, there were note worthy exceptions to this, a good number of them in fact. Nevertheless there were still even more that did not!
Now, more to our topic…
You remember the very beginning of the church age. These new believers weren’t even a month into the church age before the Jewish people, because of their upbringing and the impact the new birth had upon them, began to do things intuitively that I don’t think ever happened in the Gentile churches.
Among the most noteworthy was that the Jews began to sell their possessions that were beyond what they needed and brought them and laid them at the Apostles feet. They did this because they considered all of it as extra and excess which was not necessary for life and therefore would be better employed in the service and support of those in Christ who had little.
The reasoning was that they could justify living in affluence while their siblings in Christ possessed so little!
This was later posed as a question, much, much later by John in the 1 John 3:17,
“whoever has as a constant possession the necessities of life, and deliberately keeps on contemplating his brother constantly having need, and snaps shut his heart from him, how is it possible that the love of God is abiding in him?”
Good question… and one the early church of Jewish converts were convicted of from the heart!
If anything approaching this level of brotherly devotion happened later on among the Gentile churches I have no record of it. Of course these Gentile believers were coming from an entirely different perspective than their Jewish brethren.
The Jewish people had such concepts ingrained into them from their youth from the Law. The need to see to it that your brother was taken care of, that you did not exploit your brother, that the widow, the orphan was watched out for and even the resident stranger.
Those kinds of things were really not part of Gentile culture. So some of the things that were nothing more than automatic with Jewish converts didn’t really quite make the transfer to the Gentile believers – at least not at first.
But even taken all together – both Jewish and Gentile believers and churches – they possessed an ardor for the brethren. They continued steadfastly, Luke tells us, in the apostles doctrine. Breaking bread from house to house and fellowshipping over the Word of God!
No one had to tell them that it was valuable and necessary to be around other believers.
No one had to tell them the value of seeking out and sitting before the teaching of the word, or to share their faith with the world around them.
No one had to tell them! It was simply an automatic outflow of being in Christ.
You search for that in the early Jewish church and you won’t find the apostles telling the very early church…
“Now you need to be here and you need to hear the word. You must not let much time pass between times of genuine Christian fellowship with other believers. You need to make sure that your witnesses to the world around you shine like a light in their darkness.”
I’m telling you, you can look through the early chapters of Acts which covers this time period and all you see is a church which did these things instinctively!
However, regardless of whether you were a Jewish or a Gentile convert, it didn’t take so very long into their journey into Christ, for them to get pretty far off the path.
The Ephesians church is a great example of this.
A body of believers was established there only 20 years after Christ – around 53A.D..
Paul himself spent a LOT of time there…
- Initially he spent three full years there.
- He later wrote this letter of Ephesians.
- Later still he sent Timothy for a protracted period, during which time he had to encourage Timothy with TWO letters in dealing with the believers there.
- Finally Paul stopped by not far from them to specifically address the pastors of the church.
They had more infusions of spiritual IV’s plugged into them than probably any church in the New Testament.
Now to be fair they had a lot of opposition.
Ephesus was a very pagan city and a very famous city in which was the very prominent temple to Artemis, the Greek goddess. It was a major pilgrimage site for the ancient world and now is one of the world’s 7 wonders!
So in a huge epicenter of pagan worship, the comparatively little church in Ephesus was confronted day in and day out with ungodliness and idolatry. They were drowning in it!
Long after Paul’s investments in this church, around 97A.D., when all but the Apostle John had died, Jesus gave John letters to write to seven churches in Asia. In them He addresses what they were doing right and all they were doing wrong and to be honest – many of them were pretty messed up! Among these churches were the believes in Ephesus!
Listen to me – this was only a little more than 60 years after Jesus rose from the dead and only 40 years after Timothy’s tour of duty among them!
It’s really is a pretty grim picture!
Now I say all of this by way of explaining our reading of Paul’s encouragement to this church of Ephesus and those we will likely read which he wrote to Philippians and Colossae.
In around 23 years from its beginning, the early church went from selling all the extra they had in order to support those believers who had little – to examples of the complete opposite in the church or Corinth. Paul had to address the church in Corinth to stop cutting in line and taking more than their share of the sacraments during communion!
The entire body of Christ was only 23 years old and the Corinthian church was only about 7 years old!
Add another 50 years and you have Jesus warning churches that He will remove them if they don’t repent!
So the question this morning is .. how does that “introduce” what remains of our time together this morning? What does reading the introduction of the letter to the Ephesians have to do with all of this?
Well, as I told you, there were only two paths I could see in moving forward in our teaching series. One would sound a lot like Paul’s & Jesus’ reprimands to the churches and the other like the encouragements Paul offered to some of the churches in their youth – including Ephesus. I was all ready to dive into further correction when I know God directed me towards encouragement.
THAT is why you have your Bible’s parked open to the introduction to Paul’s letter to the Ephesians!
The first thing I want to acknowledge to you is that the letters to the churches in the New Testament BEGIN with Corinthians and then to Galatians and I’m not starting with them. The reason why is because those letters don’t start like this letter. Those letters were letters of correction.
Ephesians, Philippians and Colossians however, all start with encouragement so let’s look at that!
Are you ready to dive in?
Ephesians 1:1-23,
“(1) Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, To the saints who are in Ephesus, and faithful in Christ Jesus:
(2) Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
(3) Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, (4) just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, (5) having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, (6) to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved.
(7) In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace (8) which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, (9) having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself, (10) that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth—in Him.
(11) In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will, (12) that we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of His glory.
(13) In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in Whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, (14) Who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory.
(15) THEREFORE I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, (16) do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers:”
Since Paul was the one who established this church, the words “heard of your faith” really means, the CONTINUANCE of your faith which pointed to a certain amount of faithfulness in them, if not stability. Paul also heard of their ongoing and obvious love for their Christian brethren. THIS was huge! It was proof positive that they loved God. For John tells us that NO ONE can rightly claim to love God, unless they are also loving the brethren!
Paul was no doubt, excited – and rightly so!
Paul mentions these two things – continuing faith in the LORD Jesus and love for the brethren in all three letters I mentioned – Ephesians, Colossians and Philippians! In each case he mentioned this RIGHT BEFORE saying that it was due to these things that he was constantly praying something very specific for them!
That is what we are about to read!
Now let me remind you that we are told in 1 Corinthians 13:12 that all of us, on our best and most spiritually clear days, are looking through a glass dimly. That has a large bearing upon what Paul is about to tell them he was praying for them!
A little on what “glass dimly” means.
Technically, the “glass” was a mirror. Corinth was, at the time, world renown for the quality of their mirrors. So it is that Paul, like Jesus, drew from what they were familiar with, in order to illustrate spiritual truths. At any rate, Corinth was famous for the color and quality of their bronze mirrors. They had an unusually high tin content (14%) that gave it an unusual color. Yet for all their beauty and superiority, the image they reflected was still “in part”. The word translated “dimly” was from Paul’s word choice of ainigmati. More literally translated as “a riddle” or “an enigma” as you will see in many modern translations and commentaries.
This word captures the idea of a puzzle, a blurred image, or something difficult to understand. This was intended to explain that even on our best day, our vision and grasp of God is fragmentary and obscured. That our human understanding of the divine and truths associated with God are still very limited in this life.
That is NOT to suggest that WHAT we understand is suspect or wrong, but only that there is far more to the picture than what we understand at present.
Like many metaphors, this one has taken on a life of its own and further illustrates, though accurate to the original. Paul’s example was a mirror, though many have taken the word “glass” to mean a literal glass window. These WERE in fact already in use, in some wealthy homes and public buildings and would have served as another good example because they too were very cloudy offering little more than diffused light through.
Another example of a spin off of this “glass dimly” metaphor is the one I used in this teaching which was of the veil of the flesh. NOT the veil of the temple which was torn. THAT veil was a barrier between God and mankind. That was eradicated at the cross! Now God is no longer behind a veil, but actually resident IN OUR VERY bodies and hearts!
No the veil I am referring to is our flesh. The thing which most obscures our vision and understanding of God. I go into some detail about this in the message, but suffice it to say that it is from this that I decided to go with the message title, “Living with our face against the Glass” with the image of a young woman doing just that against a window obscured with rain. I chose this to avoid any backlash against those who would have thought I was saying that God’s presence was still behind the temple veil.
So with all of that in our minds, let’s see how Paul prayed for these saints ONCE HE HEARD of their ongoing faithfulness to Christ and their ongoing love for their siblings in Christ.
“(17) that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of GLORY, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, (18) the eyes of your understanding being enlightened;”
So Paul’s prayer was that they might see through the “glass” with increasingly greater clarity!
“THAT YOU MAY KNOW what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance IN THE SAINTS, (19) and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power (20) which He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, (21) far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come.”
“(22) And He put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church, (23) which is His body, the fullness of Him Who fills all in all.”
We read the chapter, but poured most of our attention on verses 15-19. These correspond to similar things Paul wrote, as I said earlier, to the churches of Philippi and Colossae.
To summarize what was covered…
Paul in his own life came to the point where he said that he recognized that every degree, every diploma, every doctorate or master’s, every advancement in the Jewish faith, among the Pharisees and even before Roman magistrates was truly worthless!
Sure God used it, but really Paul came to the place where he had to divorce himself from all that intellectual learning, all of my degrees, accomplishments and status so that he could uncloud the air enough to actually see Jesus! To not be all caught up in facts about the Messiah, but to come to KNOW Him! And THAT is what he prayed would happen within these Ephesians believers!
This had become Paul’s life ambition and goal! So it totally makes sense that it would also be his goal for young believers who so desperately needed to grow in their faith.
He told them that his sincere prayer was that the eyes of their understanding would be enlightened. That they might truly know what is the hope of God having saved them. To know what are the riches of the glory of God’s inheritance in THEM!
In other words what they were meant to be. THEY (and we) are GOD’s inheritance!
So Paul said,
“I want you to know what God intends for you.
What is the ultimate goal of your faith and life in Christ? What’s your final state?
Well our final state is to be like Him.
We are predestined to be the image bearers of the firstborn Son of God!”
Paul says,
“I want you to know that that’s what I’m praying that you will know! The eyes of your understanding being opened so that you may know what is this hope of your calling. What are the riches of the glory of God’s inheritance IN YOU His saints and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power!”
So what we’re hearing here is…
Paul wanted them to come to know God in true intimacy!
He wanted them to come to the point where their eyes were opened… the scales being pulled away so that they can truly see who they were intended to be. What was in the mind of God when He created and re-created them!
Not the work in progress which we witness in the mirror, but the final product!
That they would know what is the exceeding greatness of God’s power. Because if you don’t know, comprehend and believe God’s power towards you which is accomplishing this work, you’ll never be what he designed you to be!
Faith did not end at the cross, it STARTED there! We were born into a life of faith. The Justified LIVE BY FAITH! As such Paul wanted these Ephesian believers to have their eyes opened and to be deeply convicted of God’s power which He exercises towards them to accomplish His purpose of forming Christ in them!
This requires us to come to the end of ourselves enough that we’re not looking to be own savior anymore. I know we get that in regard to eternity, but we all but totally lack it in our everyday walk for Christ to be formed in us. We’re just strapped into this mindset of trying harder, which – if that didn’t work to initially save you, what makes you think it will complete the salvation of your soul?
- So Paul wanted them to get a revelation of who God is.
- He wanted them to get a revelation of who they were in Christ.
And,
- He wanted them to get a revelation of god’s power that can make the two meet in the middle!
That was the nature and focus of Paul’s continual prayers for these and other saints, and it is what God wants for you and I as well!
Now out of the three letters I’ve mentioned, Ephesians probably is the least verbose. Paul has MUCH more to say to the Colossians and the Philippians, but they are all very similar and run along the same lines!
I mentioned towards the beginning of our time together this morning that Jesus Himself, wrote the final letter to this church and it was one of encouragement as well as a call to repentance over sin. Having recently read both of these letters, I will tell you that IF the Ephesian believers had followed after Paul’s words, the rebuke in Jesus’ letter all those years later would never have had to have been written!
In fact, if all 7 churches had applied these truths to their lives, most if not all that Jesus had to rebuke in these churches would have been unnecessary!
As we were closing out, Teri (my wife) offered a saying which she had come across many years ago which really connected with what we studied today.
She said,
“It is the five finger statements.
- That God is Who He says He is.
- God can do what He says He can do.
- I am who God says I am.
- I can do all things through Christ.
- God’s word is working in me!”
Amen!
Blessings!
Tri
