Open My Eyes — Ephesians 1:15–23 | Season 2, Episode 3

What if your greatest spiritual problem isn't that you don't know enough — it's that you can't see what you already know?

That's the prayer Paul prays for the church in Ephesus. Not that they would learn more, study harder, or achieve greater things. He prays that God would open their eyes. That they would have spiritual wisdom and insight. That their hearts would be flooded with light so they could walk in the confident hope that's already theirs in Christ.

In this episode of the Set Free Stay Free Bible study podcast, host Matt Dawson finishes out Ephesians chapter 1 with verses 15–23. Paul's closing prayer for the Ephesian church is one of the richest in all of scripture — and it cuts straight to something most believers quietly wrestle with. It's not a lack of knowledge. For most people who have grown up in church, the knowledge is already there. The question is whether we can actually see it, connect the dots, and walk in the freedom and inheritance we already have.

Using the SOAP method (Scripture, Observation, Application, Prayer), Matt unpacks Paul's two-part prayer — open their eyes to who God is, and help them understand where true authority really lies. In a culture full of competing voices, rulers, and pressures, Paul's answer to the Ephesians is the same answer we need today: the power that raised Christ from the dead lives in you, and Christ is head over everything.

This Ephesians Bible study is for anyone who already knows the right things but needs God to make them real.

In this episode:

• Why Paul prays for wisdom and insight rather than more knowledge
• The difference between knowing truth and being able to see it
• What "confident hope" looks like as a daily way of living
• Why Paul emphasizes Christ's authority over all rulers and powers
• The laminin illustration — from the cosmos to our DNA, he fills all things
• A closing prayer for open eyes and a deeper sight of God's power and grace

📖 Passage: Ephesians 1:15–23 (New Living Translation)

🔍 Keywords: Ephesians Bible study, Bible study podcast, SOAP method Bible study, Christian Bible study, Scripture-first Bible study, Set Free Stay Free, Matt Dawson, walking through the Bible, Christian discipleship podcast

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome to the Set Free Stay Free Bible Study Podcast. I'm your host, Matt Dawson. We're so glad you guys are tuned in. Uh, we're actually just finishing out the first chapter here in our second season. We're looking at the book of Ephesians to the church in Ephesus. We're breaking this down and walking through the first chapter together. Today we're going to finish out chapter one. But here's the question I want us to start off with today. You ready? All right. What if the greatest problem in your spiritual life isn't your effort? It's not your effort. It's not you achieving anything. It's not you living it out and being a good Christian. What if the greatest problem in your spiritual life is sight? What if it's you believe the right things? You already sort of know the foundational things, but you can't see it. See, Paul's going to talk about a prayer that he gives them, and it can be summed up in one phrase. God, open their eyes. All right. We're going to be looking at, again, looking, hopefully you have your Bible with you. We're going to be looking at the scripture through the soap framework, scripture, observation, application, prayer. If you don't know how to soap through scripture, I have a free resource for you. I'll put it in the description below. You can email or text me and say, you can DM me or connect with us and say, hey, I'd like this free resource. We'll get it to you. It also gives you some additional scriptures to soap through. But let's go ahead and open up Ephesians. We're still in chapter one. We're kind of rounding out the second half of the chapter, starting in verse 15. But before we do that, let me pray for us as we get started. Heavenly Father, always we just pray that you would reveal to us by your Holy Spirit what you want us to see, what you want us to observe, how we can apply this to our life. And then God ultimately we're trusting in you. We'll pray again, trusting in you to help us live this out where we live, learn, work, and play. For your glory, in your name, Jesus, we pray. Amen. All right, we're gonna look into again the last part of chapter one, verse 15 is where we're gonna start off. Okay. Here we go. Ever since I first heard of your strong faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for God's people everywhere, I have not stopped thanking God for you. I pray for you constantly, asking God, the glorious Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, to give you spiritual wisdom and insight so that you may grow in your knowledge of God. I pray that your hearts will be flooded with light so that you can understand the confident hope he has given to us, he has called, his holy people, who are his rich and glorious inheritance. Let me just pause there because those couple words are so amazing. Spiritual wisdom and insight. This is Paul's prayer. Like he already attributes, guys, you are doing so great at understanding God, maybe loving God, loving his people well. But what I'm praying for, and he talks about not just knowledge, okay, just understand, he's not praying that they would know more, that they would do another Bible study, that they would increase their knowledge in terms of those things. He's asking for something really specific. He says, I'm praying for wisdom and insight, right? Why? Because with the knowledge that they have, they're still struggling to see. They're still struggling to understand, they're still struggling to see it in such a way that it changes the way that they live. And guys, I'll be honest, as a pastor of a church, this is a prayer I pray often because I'm not always certain that what people need is another Bible study, more knowledge. And I think I've said this before that honestly, if you were raised in the church, like if you were raised in a good Bible-believing church, I think I can't remember who said this first. I want to give them the credit, but I didn't come up with this. But basically, we already know far more than our willingness to surrender and obey. Right? Like it's not an issue of knowledge, right? For most people, hear me say that. For most people, it's not an issue of knowledge. It's an issue of what are you doing with that knowledge? Can you see? Can you open your eyes and see what God is doing at work? Again, I'll read just briefly this part where it's it it's it's maturity and wisdom that comes because you take the knowledge you have and continue to live it out. And that's part of what we're doing, even through the soap scripture. Like we're we're reading the scripture. Yes, we want to read it, but I don't think that even in the first season when we did Galatians, I don't think this was brand new information, like information you'd never heard before, right? If you, again, if you were raised in a good church, and if you go to churches, you know, go to hear the people teaching on Sunday, I'm assuming that you hear and have some pretty good knowledge. It's what are you doing with it? So Paul is like, my prayer, I pray for you constantly. What are you doing with the knowledge you already have? And if you could open your eyes, if you could have the insight, that's what that means. If you could open your eyes to God's work and God's power and his love for you and the understanding of the fact that you are adopted, that you belong to him, that you are, as we talked about in season one, you are free in Christ. If you could open your eyes, if you could really understand and comprehend some of this, you would walk, and I think the word he used, I love, in confident hope. We we use the word here in our church, absolute hope. Matter of fact, this is our Spanish uh absolute hope shirt that I'm currently wearing. We walk with this confident hope, this absolute hope that is in the person of Jesus Christ. And he gives that to the people he's called, right? He gives that to his people. That's part of our inheritance in Christ. I think it's maybe a prayer for you. Maybe this is the only application you need today, is that you need to start praying, okay, God, I want you to open my eyes to what I already maybe know, but I'm not doing anything with it. And I'm not living in that freedom, and I'm not really embracing this inheritance. I'm not walking in confident hope. And maybe again, it's not a knowledge thing, it's an understanding, it's wisdom. How do you connect the dots and the inside of how do I see it, God? Open my eyes. Now I'm gonna continue to read on again. That might be all you you may be tuned in for today, but I'm gonna keep going. Starting in verse 19. I also pray, because this is all part of his prayer. I also pray that you will understand the incredible greatness of God's power for us who believe him. This is the same mighty power that raised Christ from the dead and seated him in the place of honor at God's right hand in the heavenly realms. Now he is far above any rulers or authorities or power or leader or anything else, not only in this world, but also in the world to come. God has put all things under the authority of Christ and has made him head over all things for the benefit of the church. And the church is his body. It is made full and complete by Christ, who fills all things everywhere with himself. I think the root of this prayer, and again, this might go back into a little bit of the history of uh maybe going back to Acts 19 and a little bit of the history of the Ephesians. In a Greek culture, number one, they had a strong um pantheon of gods, and they focused on Artemis there, uh, the goddess of Artemis in um Ephesus. But there was also multiple rulers. There were governors of the cities, there were the Romans, who still, at the time that Paul was there, the Romans were still in charge and still, you know, again, persecuting Christians and having some issues there. Matter of fact, Diocletian, one of the most ruthless ones, when I went to visit the city, he has a whole thing devoted just to him because he wanted to wipe out the Bible, he wanted to wipe out all Christians in the third century. But anyway, long story short, this really is a really great part of his prayer to say, guys, I just want you to understand where the authority lies. Not just the power of the resurrection of Christ, because he talks about that, the same power that raised Christ from the dead. I know I mentioned this in episode two, same power of the raised Christmas that now lives in you, because that's that's the Holy Spirit that is now residing in every believer. But he wants us to understand that that power is connected to and is the same as the name of Jesus and the person of Jesus, as he says he is the ultimate authority. He is above all rulers, all authorities, all leaders, and anything else in this world, right? And in the world to come, which is his way of sort of saying, guys, I know there's a lot of cultural pressure about your current leaders, and there's a lot of cultural pressure about the the pantheon of gods and what they, the Greek gods, promise will happen in the world to come if you live and do what they want you to do. And Paul is just kind of re-emphasizing that, guys, the power of the raised Christ from the dead is in you. So the power exists in you, but not only that, this power comes from Christ, and Christ is the ultimate ruler of authority in this world. So beyond the Caesar, beyond the governor, it doesn't he tell us to pray and to obey the laws that we we have. The true authority in your life doesn't come from them, it comes from him alone. I love the fact that he says, in this world and in the world to come. Like the what we're gonna put our hope and trust and faith in terms of the world to come is not in Greek culture, not in the pantheon of gods, not in trusting yourself, as it is like a lot of people do in our culture. It's no, it resides in Christ. He says, All authority is in Christ, the head of the church, the church is his body, and it's made complete. Now he's bringing in this picture of you are the church in Ephesus, and now you remember that you are now the body. He's gonna say this a little bit later on, multiple times in this letter to the church in Ephesus, he says, You are the body, and Christ is the head. The way the church is visual, visualized is as a body, like a physical body, and Christ is now the head of this church, of this body. And I love that he says uh they're full, we are full and complete in Christ, and it says he fills all things everywhere with himself. Uh, there's a beautiful picture in uh I can't remember the name of the star, uh, but there's a beautiful picture that it has a picture of the cross, you know, in space, like it's uh the way in which it kind of leans out is is is like it's like okay, even in space we see him, even in space we we get this glimpse of him. Uh and then there's something really cool. Uh this I think this came out in the indescribable tour with Louis Giglio, but he talked about this internal cell called laminan, this internal cell, and that under the microscope, he says laminan really holds the body together. He's like it's this it's this cellular piece that holds all of your body, sort of gives it form and function, and it's called laminan. And if you look this up on your own, laminan looks like a cross. It's just fascinating. So it's it's one of those things where in like said in that indescribable book book and tour, he was just like, Look, from the furthest that we can see, we see God. And I mean, over all things. And when it comes to filling everything with himself, he's like, even at our DNA, even at that cellular level, we see God, we see his work, we see his craftsmanship. It's just, it's just amazing. So I want to end again. Maybe this is the prayer of Paul that says, Hey, open, open my eyes up, may I see all that you really are and all the things that I already know, give me spiritual wisdom. Or maybe, maybe you need the second part of the prayer, which is I need to know that the power and the authority of all things does rest in Christ. That I don't need to be worried and questioning, constantly questioning the authority of other things and know where the authority for my life really does lie. It's the authority of Christ in us, the hope of glory. And so uh that's a great prayer. I'm gonna phrase that in our prayer today as we close, that God would do those two things for us. Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, thank you so much for your word. Thank you for the way that it just this passage of Paul's letter tells us to submit to your authority, to understand uh that you really do rule all things and you fill all things with yourself. May that picture of laminan be just stuck in our minds. But I also, God, am praying. I'm also praying that you would help us just open our eyes. That maybe it's not more knowledge, maybe it's not so much, you know, we don't tune into this podcast and watch this video because of the need for more knowledge. It's the desire to connect the dots and just open our eyes, open our understanding, let your Holy Spirit do this work in us so that we would see your power, we would see your grace, we would see your authority, we would see you at work in our life. God, just open our eyes to you. And we pray that God, you can answer that because of the power and the work of the Holy Spirit that now resides in us, your followers. We pray this in your name, Jesus. Amen. All right, guys. Thank you again. I'll close out by saying the same things. Please engage, comment, like with this video on YouTube. Please rate and review this content on the podcast app that you're listening to. It definitely helps us out, definitely gets us into more people's in front of more people and the opportunity for them to walk through this amazing study we are in. Ephesians, season two of the Set Free Stay Free Bible Study Podcast. Season two, season one, if you've never heard of it. Season one takes you through the entire book of Galatians. And season two, we'll come back next week for episode four.