Seeking to Comprehend
A Sermon on Ephesians 3:19
Originally preached March 17, 1957
Scripture
19And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.
Sermon Description
This sermon is for those who long to have a close relationship with God and perhaps have noticed that the pursuit of worldly things fails to provide any lasting peace or joy. In this sermon on Ephesians 3:19 titled “Seeking to Comprehend,” Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones preaches this sermon from Paul’s letter and shows how one can get to this point of intimacy they desire so strongly. First, they must pray without ceasing for themselves that God would strengthen their inner self according to His glorious might and power. This is especially important because as one actively seeks to know God more, they will become targets of Satan. It is essential that one prays for strength to persevere through the attacks that Jesus promised will come their way as they follow Him. Second, in order to know Him intimately, one must seek the Lord Himself, not just ideas about Him. Even for Christians, it is easy today to reduce a relationship with God to an abstract, intellectual concept. This, however, will not lead to intimacy. Third, one must seek His love. However, Dr. Lloyd-Jones also has a warning — the Christian must never think of their relationship with God as something where they will always get the desired results as long as they push the right buttons. This is not true in the spiritual life because the Christian is dealing with a relationship, not a mechanical robot. Listen as Dr. Lloyd-Jones explains how one can avoid this pitfall and how they can know God on a deep level.
Sermon Breakdown
- Get rid of the mechanical notion that doing certain things will automatically lead to knowing Christ's love. It is about a personal relationship, not following a formula.
- We must pray continually for God to strengthen us by his Spirit in our inner being so we can know Christ's love. We will face spiritual attack and need strength.
- We must seek the Lord himself, not just ideas about him or general spiritual experiences. We can live on meetings, books, and others' experiences instead of truly knowing Christ.
- We must remember that Christ dwells within us by faith. Realizing this is key to sanctification and overcoming sin.
- Having done the previous steps, we must actively and positively seek to know Christ's love in its fullness. We must go to him and seek him like the psalmists and Paul did.
- We should ask Christ to assure us of his love for us, like the hymn "Tell Me Thou Art Mine, O Savior". We naturally desire assurance of love from those we care about.
- There are more principles to come on how exactly to seek Christ's love. But we have covered preliminary but vital points.
- We must reject a mechanical view of the Christian life and instead focus on personally knowing the Christ who dwells in and with us.
The Book of Ephesians
Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones
Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899-1981) was a Welsh evangelical minister who preached and taught in the Reformed tradition. His principal ministry was at Westminster Chapel, in central London, from 1939-1968, where he delivered multi-year expositions on books of the bible such as Romans, Ephesians and the Gospel of John. In addition to the MLJ Trust’s collection of 1,600 of these sermons in audio format, most of these great sermon series are available in book form (including a 14 volume collection of the Romans sermons), as are other series such as "Spiritual Depression", "Studies in the Sermon on the Mount" and "Great Biblical Doctrines". He is considered by many evangelical leaders today to be an authority on biblical truth and the sufficiency of Scripture.