Part 1 of 5

Introduction:

Welcome to Ephesians--Your Map to Treasure...

“The greatest week in my life,” said Charles Spurgeon, “was the week I read Paul’s letter to the Ephesians fifty-six times.”

Strange statement. In the light of it, one of two things is true. Either Spurgeon’s mind was shallow, or the book of Ephesians is deeper than most of us have imagined.

To my knowledge, no one has dared to suggest that Charles Haddon Spurgeon was a slow learner. While still in his twenties, he pastored the largest congregation in London, England. It grew from five thousand to ten thousand people and became the center of religious activity for scores of other groups. Spurgeon himself was without question the most eloquent voice of his generation—maybe of all generations.

So we are left with the fact that Ephesians may have treasures great enough to tempt even the most casual reader to spend serious time with the book.

Of course the Bible itself is more profound than most of us realize. Ancient scholars have said, “the Bible is an ocean of truth so deep that elephants must swim, but so simple that little lambs may wade in it.”

Having said that, I still must say that Paul’s letter to the Ephesians is unique. Many, if not all, of Paul’s other letters were written to correct some error either of behavior or belief. Ephesians is different. It is a positive statement of the most exhilarating truths that had come to the Apostle’s life.

It is both the most otherworldly and the most earthly of Paul’s letters. It sees castles in the sky and then builds foundations under them.

In a day when many Christians have neither castles nor foundations, Ephesians promises to be a rewarding study. Does the word “study” seem too threatening? It shouldn’t. The Bible itself encourages a person to “study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 Tim. 2:15). It may be that we lack the brilliance of Charles Spurgeon, who could find exciting secrets in each of his fifty-six readings of this letter, but it is certain that any of us can be challenged to give this amazing letter the opportunity to speak to us. Treasures await those who will.

Ah, treasure. Who does not dream of it? Hapless millions gamble their last dollar in hope of becoming a happy winner.

Acres of Diamonds, the story told by Russet Conwell, is too old to be read by today’s youth and so old that it is forgotten by the aged. It tells simply of a man in Africa who sold his farm to start on a search for diamonds. He failed to find any. After a lifetime of searching, he threw himself into the ocean to end his frustrated life. The man to whom he sold his farm picked up a strange-looking rock that glistened in the sunlight. Taking it to a jeweler, he discovered that it was a diamond. His farm was full of them. In fact, the largest diamond mine in the world was on his land. This story keeps repeating itself in today’s world.

Frank Garmon and Charlie Farmer, two friends of mine from Florida, like to go diving for lobsters on the southern coast. A year or so ago, they found a spot where the lobsters were plentiful. They marked the place by sighting some buildings on the shore and planned to return the next year.

When they came to the spot (dreaming, of course, of the succulent lobster they would enjoy that evening), they found the area roped off and festooned with signs that said, “Keep Out.”

Naturally the men were curious. They asked some sailors on the shore. “Last year we were free to dive and look for lobster here. What happened to change things?”

“Haven’t you heard? This area—right where you men were looking for lobster—is the place where a number of Spanish ships were sunk. Millions of dollars worth of gold coins are being taken from these waters.”

“Just think,” Frank told me, “we were swimming all around that fortune in gold and all we saw were lobsters.”

Makes you think, doesn’t it?

When I began a serious and intense study of Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus—and, of course, to all of us as well—I felt like apologizing to God. I had looked at a few choice verses and had missed the “secrets” to which Paul kept promising to uncover. The Apostle hinted broadly enough. Words like mystery, hidden, and secret ought to have stirred my intellectual curiosity if not my spiritual hunger. But I simply let my mind slip into the ruts made by other sleepy intellects. I missed the treasure.

So now I ask you to join me. Let us see what lit the fire that warmed Paul’s soul while his body shivered in the damp Roman prison. Let us go back into the waters from which we have taken only a few theological crawdads and find treasures that outshine gold.

Chapter 1

Great Is What’s-Her-Name...

Actually her name was Diana, but who cares? She was also called Artemus, Demeter, and probably a few other names. But great she was. According to legend, a sliver image had come directly from heaven to a city on the Mediterranean coast. Whether she was real or not, the image conjured up in their pagan minds, was real enough to get them to part with their money, their morals, and their sanity.

“Great is Diana of the Ephesians” became the cry, as the whole world seemed headed for this city on the banks of the beautiful blue sea that washed Asia Minor. A temple—in fact, many temples—was built to house the orgies and celebrations that posed as spiritual worship.

Diana’s temple was one of the seven, wonders of the world. It was four hundred twenty feet long and one hundred feet high. The roof was supported by one hundred columns. Each of these columns was given by a king, prince, or ruler who tried to outdo all the other royalty in the magnificence of his gift.

Behind the main altar where the silver statue of Diana was kept was the world’s largest repository of onyx, gold, and art. Paintings and sculptures crowded the huge area. Again, because people wanted to ingratiate themselves with the goddess, each person tried to outdo the other. In its day, this was the Louvre, the Metropolitan Museum, the British Museum, and Fort Knox all in one.

If we try to understand why people would travel from the ends of the earth to go to Ephesus, we have only to remember that they hoped for some of the wealth to rub off on them. The frenzy of the New York stock market gives us some picture of the intensity of their worship. Shifty-eyed businessmen may have doubted the reality of the stories that were circulated about this voluptuous goddess, but they loved the silver and gold with which her worshipers filled their pockets. Silversmiths outdid each other in their clever icons or idols.

It was hard for me to imagine this splendor as I visited what is left of Ephesus. Fragments of marble columns jutted out from pools of stagnant water. The only music was the croaking of frogs as they resented the presence of an infrequent tourist. I practiced my high school Latin as I look at inscriptions on fallen stones. No one shouted, “Great is Diana of the Ephesians.”

It was hard to imagine the sensuality, the nudity, the drunken dances, and the sexual orgies that had made the brazen citizens of Ephesus the wistful, dreamy possessors of depraved minds.

Ephesus is gone. Its only glory is a letter written by a prisoner shivering in his salt-stained robe. Tentmaker, street preacher, poet, and prophet—Paul. He is remembered. He saw past the glitz and glamour to the glory. Amid the stones that were bound to crumble, he saw the church rise triumphant.

The vision never left him. Even when his physical eyes had to look out from rusting prison bars, his inward vision of God’s glorious church never dimmed. More importantly, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit he was able to pull back the curtains of human ignorance to show us the vision.

Sometimes the vision is painful. In fact, often it is painful because it shows us how much our human perversity has made us blind.

True, we grow church organizations like mushrooms. And, like mushrooms, they disappear. When carnality carves the fellowship, we moan that the church is dying. The pagan world snickers and says, “Why shouldn’t the church die? It was getting old, anyway.”

In his letter, Paul assures us that the church has roots that go deep—deeper even than history itself. He knew from his miraculous vision that moral and spiritual drought might make a desert of men’s minds.

Pasture in the Flint Hills

My childhood was spent in Kansas, which, for the most part, is as flat as the bottom of a box. In our newspaper, The Topeka Capital, was a weekly column called “Peggy of the Flint Hills.” I had no idea where the flint hills were, but I imagined they must have been somewhere in Colorado. It was not until I was grown that I had a chance to drive by the flint hills. They are between Topeka and Wichita, Kansas, along highway 35. As I drove by them, I discovered that they have a gigantic corral there. The flint hills are ranch country.

Ranching in drought-stricken Kansas? I couldn’t believe it. And on hills of flint? Impossible. But there it was. Not until I read the book The Natural Wonders of America did I discover the reason for this unusual place.

A particular kind of grass flourishes on these flint hills. The roots go down through the tiny crevasses and cracks in the rock to seek moisture. Roots may be as long as fifty-nine feet. Even though the earth may be as dry as last year’s bird nest, there is water under the surface. The sun may be blistering, but the grass is nourished from the depths.

This is a parable of the church. Paul, (though in prison), was nourished by his roots in the historic faith. We will see this as a theme throughout the book.

If we break our linkage with God’s eternal plan, we die. If we maintain connections, we live. Even in the flinty hills of trouble, the Church has flourished. And it will.

Chapter 2

Your Path to Personal Power...

The theme of the letter is adequacy through relationship. Put plainly, Paul is talking about power. The word explodes like early-morning firecrackers on the Fourth of July. Power—power—power. Here the verses crackle as Paul's pen strikes the parchment in the dreary prison cell. All around are the sounds of earthly power, the clanking of armor, the sound of hobnailed boots hitting the cobblestone streets, the ear-piercing blast of trumpets, the shouting, and the tumult. But Paul is not mentioning these. He never does. He is in tune with a heavenly power that outlasts, out-performs, outdoes, and outranges all earthly power. Hear his words to the church at Ephesus.

“Making mention of you in my prayers … that the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come: And hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all” (1:18–23).

Now this power is localized.

For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God. Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen (3:14–21).

What wistfulness these verses bring! We dream but cannot do. When all is said and done, there is more “said”, than done. We plan, but our plans are neatly Xeroxed for our committee reports. We study, but we do not perceive. We polish the gun, but we do not pull the trigger.

One poetic interpretation of this says that we have all the knowledge we can use; what we lack is the will to use it. We intend to do things, but never get to do them. God needs to bless us with action.

The parable of power is a common one. When we lived in Anderson, Indiana, we had as neighbors a delightful family. The father was a doctor and was able to provide all kinds of toys for his three sons. At Christmas time, my wife Berny asked Twila what she could get for her boys that they didn't already have. “Give them batteries.”

“Batteries?”

“Yes, batteries. All the toys they got last Christmas aren't running—they need batteries.

Ah, there's the need. Our minds are full of plans and aspirations, both for ourselves and our churches. But they need power.

The native hue or resolution is “sicklied o'er by the yellow cast of thought.” Mired in meditation. Fatigued by failure. Stressed out by the tension between our divine imperatives and our human imperfections, tired of trying and trying not to be tired, we become pitiful mourners at our own funerals. Like morticians putting pink light bulbs above the casket to give a lifelike glow to the corpse, we juggle church statistics to prove that we are doing as well as can be expected.

To our weariness comes God's promise of power: power that can not only raise dead plans but dead people; power that can make the world's strongest governments look like a childish fantasy; power that can melt down the glaciers of icy doubt and tumble the towers of Babel.

Where is the power? How do we get it? If there is still power in the blood, how do we get a transfusion?

Paul knew. He based his ministry on it. “My speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration and in power” (1 Cor. 2:4). A friend of mine who has struggled to pastor with apparently meager results asked: “How could God have called me to preach without telling me how to do it?”

Have you asked that question?

Paul has the answer. He says that God is able to do “exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us” (3:20). Ah, there it is. We cannot do it with the power we read about, nor the power we envy in someone else's pulpit or practice. It must be the power within us.

Who knows how great that is? A recent book about the human mind tells us that the brain is so complex that if we could build a computer to do what it can do, it would have to be housed in a building one hundred stories high and as big as the state of Texas. That's huge. It's incomprehensible. But, then, Paul said the love of God was like that. There are no limits to how far it can go, but there is a limit as to where it must start—it must start within us.

When Ted Bundy, the confessed murderer of at least twenty people, was executed recently, we saw his picture in all the papers and the television screens. He didn't look so bad. He was, in fact, handsome. You wondered how the possibility for so much evil could lurk in the heart of such an ordinary person.

But it was there. “There is a side of me you do not know,” he said. And there is a side of you that you do not know … a hidden potential for amazing good. The power is within.

In Anderson, Indiana, my friend Eldon Williams drove me past a large, brick school building. For many years it housed a public school, then Liberty Christian School. Finally, it was bought by a couple as a food service factory. Treva (Gressman) May and her husband had expanded their family catering service and it needed more room. But just as they moved in, the Indiana winter struck. Icy blasts and blizzard. Fuel bills skyrocketed. The cost of gas for heat ranged between twelve-and eighteen hundred dollars a month—an agonizing amount for a small business. Painfully they paid the bills that first winter and hoped that spring would come.

Finally someone suggested that there had been rumors of natural gas in that part of town. A well was drilled—not deep, but deep enough to strike a vein of natural gas. And now they have heat in the winter, cooling in the summer, and cooking fuel all year. It's theirs, absolutely free. They were sitting on top of the answer to their problems. No wonder Paul cries out that the eyes of our understanding need to be opened so that we can see what is the extent of the inheritance.

We linger too long on our lament. Whatever has been true of the past, it is possible to move into our future with a sense of adequacy—no, more than this—with adequacy itself. Even more—abundant, exceedingly abundant—above all that we ask or think. The answer is at once simple and complex. It is simple because it is pointed, but it is complex because it involves all of us.

There is no way we can find the power we need without all of us being involved in the process.

Did not Paul say we “may be able to comprehend with all the saints?” There is much more to be said about God's power: how it can come, what it will do, and how it may be used. But if we are not willing to take the first step to get it, then everything else is simply useless conversation.

Paul---The Extra-Terrestrial View

At this point I must suggest that you start reading this amazing letter to the Ephesians. Do not, dear friend, say, “I have read it.”

Most of us have. Spurgeon had read it before he dedicated a week to reading these six chapters fifty-six times. I suggest that you read the six chapters at least three times—each time underlining key words that seem to leap out with astonishing regularity. To get you started, here are a few words to begin noticing: called, heaven and heavenly, mystery, hidden, together, “In Christ.” If you have colored pencils, use a different color for each of these and when you finish reading, flip through the pages. What a kaleidoscope of color will flash before your mind! What a veritable rainbow of promise! Criss-crossing through this letter glow these same threads, woven together. And it is together that they will make a garment of praise, a tent of blessing, and a blanket of security to warm your chilly soul.

Halford E. Luccock wrote a book titled Marching Off the Map. He wasn’t writing about Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, he was simply encouraging people to venture beyond their normal thoughts and behavior patterns. We know Paul did not read Mr. Luccock’s book, but we know he obeyed his advice. He was off the map.

Maps record the visions or journeys of those who make them. There are city maps, state maps, national maps, and even world maps. There are even maps of the heavens. Paul’s map is grander than any of these. He reaches not only around the world, but into “heavenly places.” He spans not only the dusty dates of all human history, but speaks glibly of what was “before the foundations of the world.”

Paul tantalizes us with the prospect of power so great that our own minds cannot map its course. Imagination fails. It is “beyond anything that we are able to ask or think.” Where did Paul get this knowledge? Obviously he got it by revelation. And that is how he urges us to get it.

Without question, Paul in his early years was schooled in history. As a boy, he was tutored personally by the highly esteemed Gamaliel. Whatever he had learned as facts of Jewish history was later kindled into a revolutionary flame by the ardor of his own inquisitive and perceptive mind. He became a human coat rack for those who sweatily hurled jagged rocks at Christian preachers. He became a one-man war against any who could not see that Judaism was God’s way of working with people. Any who stood in the way of that vision were promptly put in prison or simply put to death by stoning. Like a hound after a hare, he pursued the early Christians.

But something—in fact several “somethings”—happened to Paul. As the hooves stirred little clouds of dust on the well-traveled way to Damascus, he was hurled to earth by a hand he could not see. He heard a voice from a speaker he could not see. He was blinded to everything around him. He was led away like a prisoner of war. Paul, mighty Paul, who carried letters authorizing him to bring Christians back as slaves, was himself a slave.

In the days of his physical blindness, Paul’s mind began to march off all the maps of religious knowledge. Who knows what he thought? Whatever it was, it gave him a glimpse of God’s plan for humankind. Not merely the “chosen people,” but all who willed to be “chosen.”

Another experience in Paul’s life intrigues us: He was caught up to the third heaven. Read about it.

I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) such an one was caught up to the third heaven … . How that he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter (2 Cor. 12:2–4, KJV).

Whatever it was that Paul saw—and he never really tells us—it made him a different man. He could no longer be satisfied with the provincialism of his countrymen. He could not, in fact, be totally satisfied with the earth itself. “To be absent from the body,” he wrote, “and to be present with the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:8). In Philippians, he says he is “having a desire to depart, and be with Christ; which is far better” (1:23).

Even more important than any personal pleasure that might await Paul in paradise is the view of history he was granted. He was able to look at the plans of God “before the foundations of the world” (Eph. 1:4).

Not only did Paul glimpse the gleam in God’s eye as he planned creation, but Paul also glimpsed the end of all things—the last day.

Of course, neither Paul nor any person since Paul has any idea of when that last day will come: the Bible clearly tells us that. But Paul did see what would happen when all of God’s plans are complete. “That in the dispensation of the fullness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him” (Eph. 1:10, KJV).

It seems certain that Paul was in a Roman prison when he wrote to the church at Ephesus. If it is the same one that tourists are shown today, it was a large abandoned well. Water flowed under it, chilling and dampening the mossy walls. Meager rations were let down to the prisoners by a rope. When the prison became too crowded, some unfortunate prisoner was dropped through the well opening into the underground river. Gloomy as this was, it did not depress the apostle. He endured the present because he had seen the future.

What a balance this brought to his life. “I know both how to be abased,” (how well he had learned this) “and I know how to abound” (Phil. 4:12). Neither the grimness of the prison nor the grandeur of palaces impressed him. He had seen visions too spectacular to put into words. No small thing when we consider that Paul was a master of words—words in many languages.

Because of these visions, Paul writes to instruct the Ephesians. His message is clear: Friends, you have an inheritance greater than I can describe to you. But I will pray that God will open your eyes. He will even give you a little glimpse of its magnitude, but don’t think you can understand it. Your mind cannot take it in. And I can’t find any words that do it justice. It is a source of power—and I am going to tell you how to receive that power. God has great plans for you. Don’t miss them.