Beth Moore - Raise The Roof - Part 3
Turn to the book of Ephesians. I'm gonna try to stay attentive to what we're doing because we don't wanna miss anything of these Scriptures. So what we're going to do is bring back up our four-part confessional. Now, we're saying again, this is just part of being human, that we have finite minds and our whole thing, you remember the first three words of our title, what is it? "Raise the Roof". That's what we're doing because we have a natural roof, a natural ceiling, over our estimations of God because we have finite minds. And so what we are trying to do is raise the roof. Could anybody testify today that they can think back on a time when, at one point, their roof was higher and that it even got lowered. It doesn't always go up. Has it gone down for anybody? Anybody know what I'm talking about?
Oh, I need to see more hands than that. I know better than that. Yeah, because it's part of it. We just get out of our faith loop, we get out of the Word, we just go through a time of real doubt, so often part of the journey, and that ceiling that was a little higher comes on down, but we're raising the roof this weekend. And so, these statements are all part of it, but we get to number four and that's when the change really comes. So number one is what? "We have underestimated God". We have underestimated our value to him and our future with him. We have underestimated the power he's willing to exert on our behalf and say the last one with me: "We have come now to a new end of our old estimations".
Raise the roof of my estimation of who you are, what you can do, and who I am to you. Because that changes everything. It changes everything. What we believe of God does not change him one iota. He is everything and every part of what he says he is, but it changes everything how we see him. We're going to respond out of that, we're going to act out of that. Our walk of faith is completely dependent on that.
So go with me now to Ephesians 1 and we're gonna go straight to our text and it says this in verse 15 through 23: "For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your heart enlightened," in other words, in order for this to take place for us, there is nothing of the natural man we can do except make ourselves willing, because it's a supernatural work.
"Having the eyes of your heart enlightened, so that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all".
Go with me there again. "Which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all". One scholar in a commentary brought something out that was just so thrilling to me. Because of the verses toward the very end of chapter 2 in Ephesians, there's probably a connection going on with what Paul is saying about he fills all in all in the body of Christ. There's probably a connection with something that happened in the tabernacle and in the temple with the glory of God. Let me show it to you: Ephesians 2:20 through 22: "Built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit".
So, a holy temple to the Lord, a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. That in all likelihood when he says, "Which is the head of the body, the church, the one who fills all and all," that he is probably making a connection with the glory of God filling up the tabernacle and filling up the temple until there was nothing that was not filled within it. And I love that picture of it because the body of Christ, literally, is found all over the world. All over the globe, we have brothers and sisters in the faith that believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and that he is Lord and Savior to them. And I just want you to think of it. He's saying, "My glory fills every appendage, all the way down to the tip end of the little finger, tip end of the little toe, of the body of Christ. I am the one who fills my body and I fill all in all". It's such a magnificent concept.
Now, I want you to see with me, again, that we are zeroing in on the third of the three divine elements Paul prayed for hearers to know. He's already said that you may know, that your eyes may be enlightened to know, the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe. And so what we're hoping for today is that, as we study the Word of God, that the Holy Spirit is just gonna enlighten the eyes of our hearts so that we can grasp much more than we knew when we came about the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us. It's such an important verb tense that we have in the text when it says, "To us who believe," because that particular verb tense is a present active participle.
So it means those who keep believing. It means that it's not just do we believe in God? This is the question: Do we actually believe God? Not just believe in him to our salvation which we did at our initial moment when he called us and we responded. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the ongoing, everyday, are we actively and presently believing God? This will be the difference between a powerful and a powerless life right here. This will be the difference as to whether or not you and I are capable of doing what we cannot do. What we cannot do. There's wording that I think about often and I've tried to explain this before. I don't think I explain it well, 'cause I don't ever see it land. But I'm gonna give it another shot here.
You know when Jesus said in John chapter 15: "Without me you can do nothing"? When he's telling the branches, "You are to abide in the vine because without me you can do nothing," well, he didn't mean we can do nothing at all. We got people out there doing all sorts of things that do not think a thing about him, that think...or mock him, scorn him, think we're idiots, gullible. People that have inventions, people that are brilliant, are Harvard grads, are all over the world doing scientific or, I mean, rocket scientists for crying out loud. I mean, we've got people that are doing all sorts of things, building all sorts of buildings, so what does he mean, "Without me you can do nothing"? Here's what I think he means: "Without me you can do nothing you couldn't already do".
Oh, I'm just gonna wait on it a second, because I think this is so profound, I think this is so profound, because he's saying is, "Listen, I called you to what you're incapable of. Utterly incapable of. My calling on you will take supernatural unction, and what I want you to know is without me, without you abiding in me, there is no way you can do what I have called you to do. There's no way you can bear up to what I've called you to bear up to. There is no way you're gonna be able to persevere. There is no way you're gonna be able to endure in might and in the strength and witness of the gospel without you being fully connected to me".
I want you to understand, there was never meant to be anything vaguely average about you, not vaguely average. You are extraordinary people in Christ, extraordinary. And we have extraordinary power that is meant to be practically lived out, like, I mean, like, real. We're not talking theories up here, like this is a mindset. While it is a mindset, it is a body-set, it is a life-set, it is a stepping step. This is real-live living here. Now, in this particular verse where it says in 19, I'm reading out of the ESV: "In what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe according to the working of his great might".
What's happening here is that, remember when we talked about when we introduced the topic that you can feel it building constantly: rulers, authorities, powers and dominion. You can feel it constantly building, far above all of other powers and authorities. All of it, building, building, building. Here in this one verse, he uses four different Greek words for power. It's harder to see in most of our translations so I brought you another translation so that you can see it. This is F.F. Bruce's own translation: "The surpassing greatness of the POWER of God in the lives of believers, according to the OPERATION of the STRENGTH of His MIGHT". Power, operation, strength, might, all in one verse. And what we wanna do, if we had time to do, is take them all apart and see how the words may even be distinct. But what you need to know is pile-up upon pile-up, you are lacking nothing you need to live victoriously in this real-live, chaotic, cold world that is wrapped around us right now.
How many of us feel in all the world events, in all the weather disasters, and in everything that is going on, how we feel an increasing powerlessness. People who feel powerless ordinarily either, if they're gonna go to either extreme, they ordinarily either shut down or they completely lash out. Don't you think so? And exert power in negative ways with anger and all forms of psychological or sexual domination. What can I control? Because I just, I've got to do something about how powerless I feel. And this is what we wanna get our minds back on today, is to understand that you and I, as surely as the earliest New Testament church, are called to bold faith and bold love. Over and over, Paul uses the word "bold, bold, bold". "Pray that I may proclaim the message of the gospel boldly," they asked over and over in Acts.
I just recommend to everyone that you read Acts from the very first word to the very last word, once a year, every single year. And remind ourselves, this is our heritage. These are our forefathers and foremothers in the church. This is what we were entrusted with, this kind of boldness. I wanna say something to every one of you who are in Christ: You are called to be fierce. I mean, fierce. Bold in your faith, bold in your love, and so am I. So can you see how much the enemy has at stake at keeping us scaredy cats? And I mean, we are rampant with the spirit of fear, rampant. And God's Word says to us clearly, in 2 Timothy chapter 1, "You did not get that spirit of fear from me. I gave you a spirit of power, love, and self-control. You did not get that from me". It's time for us to grab hold of what is the truth. You know, I wanna tell you, today we're gonna be talking about the grave-robbing power of God to us.
Here's the thing: he says: "The power that I exert on behalf of those who are actively believing me, I mean, actively believing me. Not just they believed in me 20 years ago and now they're maintaining their belief. No, no. They're actively taking me at my word, in an active relationship where it is like the power that I used when I raised Jesus from the dead". So here's the thing: If you need anything more than the power that can raise the dead, you may be out of luck. But if it is anything within that, he said you have everything you need. In this world of uncertainty, our divine calling is utterly certain. And I mean, we know where we're headed. We know that we bear the name of Christ on us. We know we are dear to him. We are inexpressibly loved by God. To know that we know.
In this day of speaking truth to power, we need to get the power back in our truth. "Speak truth to power" was a phrase that is believed to have originated right around the 1940s for the first time that it was ever documented. And it was in the context and very appropriately, yes and amen so, in the context of civil rights activism. And so, man, I strongly believe in speaking truth to power. So what I'm saying is: Yes, yes, yes, but what we need even more, that would aid us inconceivably in speaking truth to power is that the church needs to get the power back in the truth. Does anybody understand what I'm talking about? I mean, I'm gonna tell you that we have a colossal hemorrhage of power in the body of Christ. We are not living and expressing the power that is being described to us.
Listen, when I look at my life and I look around me, I get to do a lot of interaction with the body in a lot of places. So I get to go to a lot of groups, I get to see a lot of life happening out there, and I do a lot of reading and a lot of thinking about all this and here's what we've gotta do. When this is different than this, when this is what we were told we have in Christ, and we are walking with such a devastating crippling blow of the enemy, then I'm gonna start asking why. Because I'm not gonna decide. Here's what we keep doing with your faith: The Word of God says this but we're not experiencing that, so we dumb it down. We are believing our experience over the inspired Word of God and therefore we are powerless because our unbelief just keeps feeding more unbelief.
So we have unbelief, so we're unable to do what God has called us to do. When we're unable to do what God has called us to do, we have even less belief than we did before because we just reaffirmed our lack of faith and so we're even more faithless than we were. Is the Word of God right, or is our experience right? It's gonna be the Word of God. So somehow, Lord, the New Testament church is described in power here. That's supposed to be us, and I want it back. Somebody say, "I want it back".
The enemy has stolen something from us that is not his right to do. He knew he would drive out that sense of vivid spirit of power, love, and self-control if he could just make us a bunch of scaredy cats and that is exactly what he's done. We've got so much anxiety and fear, we can hardly go out of the house in the morning. We have the gospel to take to the ends of the earth and we don't wanna leave our houses? We'll sit with our phone. Something is wrong with us. And I say that in Jesus's name, and with the most love possible. Something's wrong with us. This is not our legacy. And so here's what I wanna do. You and I of the body of Christ has a woeful case of anemia, and it's time we get the iron back in our blood because we are people of the blood of Christ and let me tell you, it is supple.
Let me tell you, it has every nutrient we need in it, and that is what we've gotta start living in. We've gotta know what we've got in him and we've got to start acting on it. Power was so inherent to the people of God, it was, when he said, "You wait here. When my Holy Spirit comes, you will receive power". It was so much to be the calling card of the believer that 2 Timothy 3 says that we are supposed to be wary of anyone who talks religion but lacks its power. In other words, he's saying, like, "Okay, if this is how the mouth is going, and this is how the life is going, be wary, 'cause something is wrong there". There is rampant carnality and corruption in the church. I don't mind telling you that's what happens when we drop the word "repentance".
You wanna know the most uncool word in the entire church? It is the word "repentance". God forbid that we would tell people to turn from their sins when the whole New Testament, when God, over in the Old Testament, said, "You wanna know what's wrong there? You wanna know what is the problem and why you're falling apart there? You are so filled with sin, Beth Moore, repent". I'm trying to think what would have happened to me if I had not repented of my sins. If I hadn't repented of sins yesterday, repented of sins, you understand what I'm talking about? It's our right, it's our glorious right in Christ that we get to get up from our knees and repentance completely cleansed and forgiven. But we're not even preaching repentance from sin. And it was a major thrust of the gospel.
How can we get on with it? When we've never said, "I have changed my mind about that". Rampant carnality and corruption. Would you take the time to turn with me to Ezekiel chapter 8:6 through 13. Ezekiel chapter 8: "And he said to me, 'Son of man, do you see what they are doing, the great abominations that the house of Israel are committing here, to drive me far from my sanctuary? But you will see still greater abominations.' And he brought me to the entrance of the court, and when I looked, behold, there was a hole in the wall. And he said to me, 'Son of man, dig in the wall.' So I dug in the wall, and behold, there was an entrance. And he said to me, 'Go in, and see the vile abominations that they are committing there.' So I went in and saw. And there, engraved on the wall all around, was every form of creeping thing, loathsome beasts, all the idols of the house of Israel. Before them there stood seventy men of the elders of the house of Israel," and it goes to name several of them standing among.
"Each had censers in his hand, smoke of clouds of incense went up. And he said to me, 'Son of man, have you seen what the elders of the house of Israel are doing in the dark, each in his room of pictures? For they say, "The Lord has not seen us, the Lord has forsaken the land".' And he said, 'You will see even greater abominations than what they commit.'" Listen to that. "In the dark, each in his ream of pictures".
Now, I'm not suggesting that this is what it meant in that situation and I'm not suggesting this is all it means, but if that does not speak to me about pornography, sitting in a dark room with our pictures, it's so disturbing, I don't even know what to do with it. There are believers all over the place, I mean, who have trusted Christ for salvation, sitting in the dark with our pictures. And in the church all kind of corruption, turning our face away from knowing that terrible things have taken place. But let's protect the system, instead of guarding the sheep. Does anybody know what I'm talking about?
Abominations in the church of God. I'm gonna tell you, the mercy of God right now in this time in which we live, because this is a mercy that he has dug a hole in the wall and the entire world is getting to see in to the abominations in the living church of Christ. But what it's causing us to have to do is we're having to face it too. The thing of it is we have opportunity right now. Do you know that what repentance brings? It brings revival. All we would have to do is go, "We are out of control. We're so corrupt and carnal, God, we don't even know what to do," and go down on our faces and repent. Why wouldn't we? Why would we not repent?