For the Sunday evening services at St. Helen’s Bishopsgate, in London, they are studying Ephesians. You’ll notice in my post, Finding Good Sermons, that St. Helen’s is one of my favorite sources for solid expositional preaching.
Here at Covenant, we have been making our way through Romans and last week’s passage (Romans 13.8-14) challenged us with the surprising relationship between love for others, and the knowledge of and obedience to God’s moral law for us in the Ten Commandments. Love for others and obedience do not seem to belong together. Love for others and knowledge do not seem to belong together. Love seems to need nothing at all. Love is … love.
How strange it may seem to us that love for others, according to the will of God and commanded by Him, would require knowledge, not to mention, obedience. As we saw last week, this is part of what Paul is teaching in Romans 13.8 and 10 when he attaches love for others to law.
Last week, Tim Sheppard, who leads the student ministry at St. Helen’s, delivered a compelling message from Ephesians 1.15-19 that relates to this topic. He asks a provocative question: since we have received from God “every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places" (Ephesians 1.3), what should we be asking Him for in our prayers? Tim argues that our most urgent need and, therefore, what we should be praying for, is knowledge of God. This is our greatest need.
Take a listen to his sermon as he contends that, as biblically understood, a Christian person’s knowledge of God is far more comprehensive and impactful for life than we might think. (As an aside, in this sermon Tim also quotes Scott Kahneman’s remarkable book, Thinking, Fast and Slow.)
