After introducing himself, praising God, teaching them about God the Father, and Messiah Yeshua the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and all that they have and are when they are joined to the Messiah, the great Rabbi from Tarsus prays for them.
For this reason I too, having heard of the faith in the Lord Yeshua which exists among you and your love for all the saints: in regard to God, they had faith and confidence in the reality of Yeshua, the Lord; and they were faithful to Him. In regard to man, they had love for their fellow believers, the ones the Lord set apart to accomplish special and wonderful purposes).
Inspired by their faith in Yeshua, who is Lord – who shares the nature of Adonai; Yeshua, who is the King of Heaven and Earth, the Master of the Universe, the Lord of the Cosmos, the Sovereign over time and eternity, Lord of all powers and forces that exist, or ever will exist, the Ruler over nature, men and angels; and inspired by the way these set apart ones treated their fellow believers – doing good for them, blessing them, helping them, serving them, the one that God sent to reach and teach the nations continually thanked the Lord for these human beings.
I do not cease giving thanks for you. Those special humans beings who have come to know the Lord are something very special, something exceedingly precious and important. Nations come and go. Civilizations rise and fall. Fortunes are made and lost. Even this world, and everything in it, won’t last. One day it will be destroyed. But God’s holy ones, recipients of God’s grace and peace, blessed with every heavenly spiritual blessing, chosen by God before the universe began, predestined to become the sons and daughters of God, who are redeemed and forgiven with a great and mighty atonement, for whom the Messiah died, who will be blameless, indwelt and sealed forever with the promised Holy Spirit, eternally enriched, loved and forever enjoyed by God and Messiah, they are exceedingly valuable to God, and precious to Paul, and so this great bringer of the Good News gives God thanks for them.
That tells me that the saints should be very important to us as well. In spite of their problems, and the way they do and say stupid things, and the way they irritate us at times, and the times they have offended us, we should be giving God thanks for all of our Christian and Messianic Jewish brothers and sisters – that they exist, and that they have come to know the Lord, and are serving Him, and they are precious to God – and to us.
They are our family. They are our friends. They are our brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, son and daughters. Is that they way you think about your fellow believers? Or are your fellow Messianic Jews and Christians just some people that you see for a few hours once a week, aren’t very interested in, don’t care much about, don’t thank God for or pray for them?
Won’t you make spending time with them, encouraging them, helping them, serving them, praying for them, loving them, thanking God for them, one of your very highest priorities?
Here is what I would like to see happen. I would like everyone to:
Understand that what we are is not just a meeting you attend, not just a service when you serve God, but also an extended family, with God as your Father, Messiah Yeshua as your elder brother, the Holy Spirit your Guide and Teacher, and the rest of us your brothers and sisters.
Make our family a priority. Come to the meetings of the family regularly. Come on time. Better yet, come early! Don’t come late. Get up when you need to, to arrive on time, ready to worship our great God. And while you are here, do something to help out, to serve, to strengthen, to encourage the rest of us. And, then gives thanks for us and pray for us during the rest of the week.
The congregation in Ephesus was a good community of people. They were doing well. But, there is always more to know, more to learn, areas to improve in and ways to grow, truths that need to be deepened in us, so the Rabbi from Tarsus not only thanks God for them, but he prays for them, asking God to bless them even more. While making mention of you in my prayers; that the God of our Lord Yeshua the Messiah, the Father of glory…
Even though Yeshua is our loving Lord, our marvelous Master and our Supreme Authority, Paul’s prayer, like most of the prayers in the Bible, is directed to God the Father, the Father of glory.
God the Father, the God of our Lord Yeshua the Messiah, is also the Father of glory. He is a glorious Father – not just a good father, or a great father, but a magnificent and glorious Father. Your earthly father deserves honor for helping to bring you into being. He deserves credit if he helped to raise you, and if he taught you. But God the Father is even more worthy of honor in His fatherliness. He truly is the One who created us, cared for us, helped us to grow up and be more and more like Him, disciplined us when we needed it, corrected when we went in a bad direction, watched over us, protected us, provided for us. He is the One who will cause us to reach our full potential as His beloved sons and daughters, and enrich us forever.
And, He is the Father of glory – full of glory, worthy of honor, magnificent, beautiful in His person and in His work. Everything He does is done with an incomparable excellence, with amazing intelligence, with beauty and elegance. His magnificent creation, all His mighty works, His wonderful Word, all reflect this.
But even greater than His glorious works is the Supreme Being Himself. To see Him is to see the greatest beauty. To know Him is to know the highest glory. To experience Him is to experience the most glorious thing possible! You want to experience that which is glorious beyond belief? Pray that one day you enter into the welcoming presence of the Father of glory, in His glorious Heaven, seated on His glorious throne, and from the throne emanating flashes of lightening and peals of thunder; with a gorgeous rainbow around the throne, surrounded by magnificent angels and cherubeem and serapheem and living beings worshiping Him, with the throne and the One on the throne radiating power and authority and honor and beauty and glory! That is the most wondrous sight! How happy are the pure in heart, for they will have the most blessed experience of seeing God of glory!
Notice how the inspired rabbi sees the various relationships here. God the Father is the God of our Lord Yeshua the Messiah. Yeshua is our Lord, but God the Father is the God of our Lord Yeshua. God the Father is rightfully called the God of the Lord Yeshua. Even though they share the same name and nature, deity and essence, the Father is in the position of God in relationship to the Son – superior in place, and in position and in authority.
Our Lord Yeshua is the Messiah. Yeshua is Lord – fully divine, sharing the nature of God, powerful, authoritative, the executor of the will and plans of God, the One who wields the full authority of God. And He is our Lord – our leader, the One who has the right to command and lead. He is the one that we must listen to, submit to and obey. Are you? Are you really? Or, is your desire for comfort your Lord? Your desire for wealth? Or, is own thoughts, your own will, your Lord? Are your passions your Lord? Is some relationship your Lord? Or, is Yeshua your Lord?
And He is the Messiah, the anointed man that God sent to combine and fulfill the three offices in Israel, of prophet – one who speaks for God, who perfectly tells us everything that God wants us to know; and our priest – the one who mediates between sinful humanity and the holy God. He is the perfect mediator between God and man, able to bring us closer to God, and able to bring a holy God closer to us, and bring the blessings of God to us. And our king – our true leader, our rightful ruler. So, Yeshua is Messiah, the anointed man, and Lord. He is fully man and fully God.
Notice that the spiritual titan from Tarsus prays directly to God the Father. It’s OK to pray to Messiah, and talk to Him, but there is a reason why most of the prayers in the Holy Scriptures, including the New Testament, are directed to God the Father. He is supreme in position and in authority. He sits in the central throne in Heaven, while the Son sits at His right hand, in the position of next highest honor. We pray directly to the Father, directed and inspired by the Spirit, with the mediation, intercession and help of the Son.
Paul’s great prayer continues: that God may give to you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him. Paul’s prayer reflects his desire that human beings come to know God Himself. It’s good to know about history, music, art, literature and law. The advances that have come from science and technology have in many ways been a great blessing to humanity, but the knowledge of God is the greatest knowledge of all. Why? Because the knowledge of God is of the utmost importance. If you don’t know God, you won’t know truth. You won’t be set free from the satanic slave market of sin and death which holds you captive. You won’t experience salvation. You won’t live right, think right, act right. If you don’t know God, your life will turn out to be meaningless. If you don’t know God, you will not live forever.
Human beings don’t naturally know God. We come into this world alienated from the One who is the Source of Life and Truth, far from Him and confused about Him. We need revelation of the truth about who He is, and wisdom – knowledge about Him that is properly applied. We need revelation to come to know who God really us, and then take that knowledge and apply that knowledge to every aspect of our lives.
How do we know God? It takes truth to know the Creator, and thank God, that truth has been supplied for us to some degree in nature, in a greater degree in the Word of God, and in the highest degree through Messiah, whose coming and whose teaching, and whose life and death and resurrection and ascension reveals the greatest truths about God.
It takes the Bible to know God the way we need to. It takes Messiah to know God the way we need to. It takes the Holy Spirit to know God the way we need to. It takes a spirit of wisdom and revelation, something happening deep within ourselves, some light going on, some truth being revealed to us, to know God the way we need to.
It takes prayer to know God the way we need to. We need to pray that we would come to know who He is – to really get to know Him – not what our tradition, our religion, our church, our synagogue, our priest, our rabbi, our pastor, our father, mother, sister, or brother, aunt or uncle says about Him – which may be wrong, or which may be a little truth combined with a lot of error, a little understanding mixed up with a lot of confusion. We need to know God as He truly is, because if we don’t know God as He really is, an army of problems will follow.
They already know the Lord, and many of the wonderful things He did, and was doing, and will do for them, but there is more to know about the things of God, and so Paul’s prayer continues: I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened.
There is a shallow kind of knowing, and there is a deeper kind of knowing that has its source at the very core of a human being. Paul prays that the eyes of their heart would be enlightened – that deep down, at the core of their being, in their hearts, their souls, God would enable them to see, to really know, to genuinely understand, to know the following truths:
what is the hope of His calling.
what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints
and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe.
These truths, which we need to profoundly understand, we will consider, Lord willing, next week!