Rooted and Grounded

This week I move a chapter up to Ephesians 3 and to verses 14-21.

There are two words in this text: Rooted and Grounded that are the ‘foundational words’ of a few weeks of subjects for my Sunday AM messages.

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• For a brief time at the end of his second missionary journey, and then for more than two years on his third missionary journey, Paul ministered to the church at Ephesus (Acts 18:18–21; 19:1–41). During his time in this city that housed the famous temple to the Greek goddess Artemis, Paul saw many converted to faith in Jesus Christ and many others who opposed his preaching in the synagogues and homes.

• Paul wrote the letter to the Ephesians sometime in AD 60–61, around the same time he wrote Colossians and Philemon, as he sent all three letters by the hand of Tychicus, accompanied by Onesimus (Ephesians 6:21; Colossians 4:7–9; Philemon 1:10–12). It was during this time that Paul sat in Rome undergoing his first Roman imprisonment (Ephesians 3:1; 4:1), making Ephesians one of the four epistles commonly known as the Prison Epistles. The others are Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon.

• Paul divided his letter to the Ephesians into two clear segments; applying the truths of the first makes possible the actions and lifestyle of the second. Paul spent the first three chapters of the letter discussing God’s creation of a holy community by His gift of grace in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The members of this community have been chosen by God through the work of Christ, adopted as sons and daughters of God, and brought near to the Father through faith in His Son. All people with this faith—Jews and Gentiles alike—were dead in their transgressions and sins but have been made alive because of the person and work of Jesus Christ.

• While Paul was not responding to a particular theological or moral problem, he wanted to protect against future problems by encouraging the Ephesians to mature in their faith.

https://www.insight.org/resources/bible/the-pauline-epistles/ephesians

: Paul begins by employee his role in the matter besides the writing. He says, ‘I bow my knee.’

I.

3:14, Paul says, ‘I bow my knee’ = I pray that you might not faint, but persevere.

‘For this cause,’ = the cause/sake of the Gospel.

II. Source – God

a. Head of the whole Family

b. Heavenly = greatness, superiority, power

c. Rich in His glory = rich (abundance) in grace

Greek doxa – splender & brightness; magnificent, excellent, majestic – opinion, judgement, view.

III.

a. Being Strenthed – powerfully strengthened

b. Inner man – In the heart, the mind, and the soul.

2 Cor. 4:16, ‘Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day.’ (NKJ)

1.

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2.

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4.

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IV.

a. ‘That Christ may dwell in your hearts’

b. That you being rooted and grounded

Words:

a. Rooted =

{hrid-zo’-o} 

Meaning: 1) to cause to strike root, to strengthen with roots, to render firm, to fix, establish, cause a person or a thing to be thoroughly grounded

b. Grounded =

{them-el-ee-o’-o} 

Meaning: 1) to lay the foundation, to found 2) to make stable, establish

– Matthew 13

Next week, ‘That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith rooted and grounded in Love.