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Turn with me to Ephesians 3:14 as we
finally get into Paul’s prayer. Oh, how he has dignified our salvation! Now he wants
to pray for the people he has been writing to. He wants them to know, not just about
their salvation, but how to start living in the richness of it. We are going to call this study,
"A Prayer for Fullness." Let’s read verses 14-21 and see what we have in store for us:
14
For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father,
15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name,
16 that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be
strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man;
17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being
rooted and grounded in love,
18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length
and height and depth,
19 and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be
filled up to all the fulness of God.
20 Now to Him who is able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all that we ask or
think, according to the power that works within us,
21 to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations
forever and ever. Amen.
What a prayer! It will take us a while to work our way through what Paul prays
for this Ephesian church. You know, you’ve got to stop and remember where Paul
is as he prays. Paul is in prison. Remember this. The agenda that he has on his
heart is to pray for those who have been entrusted to him. Not only does he
instruct them, he also prays for them. Back in 2:18 we see an interesting verse.
Look back for just a second. Paul says, speaking of Christ,
"for
through Him we both have our access in one Spirit to the Father."
Oh, folks, the doors have been opened up. Do you realize that back in the Old
Testament only the High Priest could go into that Holy of Holies? The book of
Hebrews says that veil has been rent, and we can come in with confidence and
with boldness because of the shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. Think about
that! We get to talk to the Father! We get to go right into His presence. I
don’t have to find an earthly priest and get him to pray for me. I go through my
High Priest. Listen, as a believer I am a priest. I am a part of His Holy
Temple, and I can go right into His presence.
Look at 3:12:
"in whom we have boldness and confident
access through faith in Him."
We have access to the Father. One of the
riches of our salvation is this marvelous thing we call prayer. We can go in and
hear. We can go in and be heard. That is part of the riches of our salvation.
Verse 14 says very clearly,
"For this reason, I bow my knees before the
Father."
What reason? Remember, he started this prayer
in verse 1. You have got to jump all the way back to verse 1. He starts the
prayer in verse 1, stops and puts a parenthetical pause for 12 or 13 verses.
Then he picks it back up in verse 14. He says in verse 1, "For this reason I,
Paul." You can figure out what the reason is. Go back to chapter 2. There are
some things he has told them in chapter 2 that he wants them to understand. He
wants them to not just mentally know them, but he wants them to live in the
reality of those things. Look at 2:5. He says,
"even when we were dead in our
transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been
saved)."
Oh, we have been made alive in Jesus Christ.
Go down to verse 10:
"For we are His workmanship, created in
Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk
in them."
Drop down to verse 19:
"So then you are no longer strangers and
aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s
household."
That’s God’s family. Then he sort of wraps it
up in verse 22 before he comes into verse 1 of chapter 3. He says,
"in whom you also are being built together
into a dwelling of God in the Spirit."
Now, go back to verse 1 of chapter 3 and see
if you can figure it out "this reason." For what reason? He could easily be
saying,
"Since you are God’s dwelling on this earth,
made alive in Jesus Christ, His workmanship, a part of His family, I bow my
knees before the Father."
Paul has spent three chapters telling the
people at Ephesus what they have in the Lord Jesus Christ. He talked about the
riches of their salvation, the reasons of their salvation and the revelation of
their salvation. Now he says, since you are God’s dwelling on this earth, for
this reason, I bow my knees before the Father. He is trying to tell them,
"I am just praying that all I taught you can
start becoming reality as you walk and live the Christian life."
Do you realize what you have in Jesus
Christ? Have you been listening or maybe you haven’t allowed God to teach you in
your spirit. You don’t realize that He is everything you could ever look for. Maybe you don’t
realize what you have, or maybe you do, but you are not living in the reality of what
that means on a day by day basis. Paul says, "For this reason, I don’t want you to just know it. I
want you to live in it, in the reality of what I have just taught you."
There are three things we are going to bring
out about this prayer. Every time you find a prayer of the Apostle Paul, take a
lot of time to study it. His prayer in Colossians 1:9-12 is just wonderful.
9 For this reason also, since the day we
heard of it, we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may be
filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding,
10 so that you may walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all
respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of
God;
11 strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for the
attaining of all steadfastness and patience; joyously
12 giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance
of the saints in light.
The whole Christian life lays itself out in
front of you. If you want to know what the normal Christian life is study that.
Well, it is the same way with this prayer right here in the third chapter of
Ephesians. Talk about the Spirit praying in and through us, this is definitely a
Spirit-led prayer for the Ephesian believers.
First of all, we see the posture of Paul’s
prayer. Let’s start looking at it. He says,
"For this reason, I bow my knees before the
Father."
What is significant about bowing your knees?
Well, there are some things significant to it, but let me share something with
you. You don’t have to kneel down every time you pray. It does not mean that you
are any more or any less spiritual than somebody else if you are standing and
they are kneeling. In looking into this study, I found several places in
Scripture where they stood with their hands raised to heaven, just as humble in
their hearts as anyone is who kneels or bows down before the Father. But when
they bowed down, it signified something. As long as these things are in your
life, the posture doesn’t matter as much. It is the attitude of your heart as
you approach the Father.
What two things does bowing signify? Bowing
our knees before the Father signifies, first of all, a submission to a higher
authority. Paul has already called himself a prisoner. He has called himself a
bondservant. It shows that the one who bows down and prays is in the presence of
the ultimate authority. Turn to Psalm 95:1-6. This shows you the attitude of
someone who comes before the Father. This is what you realize about Him. In
verse 1 it says,
"O come, let us sing for joy to the Lord; let
us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation. Let us come before His presence
with thanksgiving; let us shout joyfully to Him with psalms. For the Lord is a
great God, and a great King above all gods, in whose hand are the depths of the
earth; the peaks of the mountains are His also. The sea is His, for it was He
who made it; and His hands formed the dry land."
Since He is all of these things and since He
is absolutely sovereign and absolute authority, it says in verse 6,
"Come let us worship and bow down; let us
kneel before the Lord our Maker."
It is an attitude of a person in his heart.
When a person bows his knees, he realizes he
is bowing his knees to the Father. Oh, but folks, He is our Heavenly Father. Far
removed from anything you understand down here, when you walk into His presence,
submitted to His divine and Holy will, you are in awe of Him. The bowing of the
knee is a sense of submission to a higher authority. You are saying,
"God, whatever you want is what I want."
That is what bowing the knee means. You can
do that standing up. You can do that in whatever position you are in as long as
your heart is overwhelmed with who it is you are talking to.
Secondly, it signifies an intense passion, an
intense emotion in prayer. Every time Paul prays he is very specific. His
prayers are not general. In being specific and in being detailed, he is very
passionately, very emotionally involved in this prayer. When a person will fall
down on their knees, it is always a picture of that intensity, of that passion
and of that emotion. In Ezra 9:5-6, Ezra was appalled and heart-broken over
hearing of the intermarriage of the Israelites with the pagan neighbors.
5 But at the evening offering I arose from my
humiliation, even with my garment and my robe torn, and I fell on my knees and
stretched out my hands to the LORD my God;
6 and I said, "O my God, I am ashamed and embarrassed to lift up my face to
Thee, my God, for our iniquities have risen above our heads, and our guilt has
grown even to the heavens.
It says in Ezra that he fell down on his
knees and stretched out his hands in confession to the Lord on their behalf. He
was very intense, very emotional, very involved with what he was doing.
In Daniel 6:10 we see Daniel praying. You
know, King Darius wasn’t too bad a guy. He kind of liked Daniel, but he made a
mistake. He listened to his commissioners and his satraps when they said,
"Make a decree that says no man can worship
anybody but the King."
He forgot all about Daniel. As a result,
Daniel went to the lions’ den. When Daniel heard that the King had made the
decree it says in Daniel 6:10,
"He continued kneeling on his knees three
times a day, praying and giving thanks before his God."
You see, there was an intensity here. He
realized the severity of the situation, the seriousness of it, and it drove him
to his knees.
In Acts 20:36 we find one of the most
emotional, intense and passionate times of Paul. He had called the elders of
Ephesus, the very church that he is writing to in the book of Ephesians, the one
he warned about watching out for the savage wolves and this false doctrine. We
find him on the island of Miletus. He gets them together, and it says,
"He knelt down."
They cried and wept over him. It was a very
serious moment. It says that he knelt down and prayed with them all. So the
whole posture of prayer sometimes is not in what your body is doing. It is in
what your heart is doing before God. You may not be kneeling. You may be in a
crowded subway or someplace. You may be in another city. You may be on a plane.
Wherever you are, if your attitude is filled with awe and submission and you are
intensely concerned and God has burdened your heart, that is what it means to
bow your knees before the Father.
This is not some trite prayer he
prays in prison. This is something that is deeply, intensely burned into his heart. He wants these
people at Ephesus to be able to live it out in front of the people. So there is
passion. There is submission. There is awe, and there is emotion. Paul’s prayer posture then
is very clear. It is an attitude of his heart.
Secondly, I want you to see the person to
whom Paul was praying. He says,
"I bow my knees before the Father."
When I say "person," we know that this is God
in three persons. He had a definite personality. We know Him as Father. Paul’s
Heavenly Father cares about us. We are of His household. We are of His family.
I want to go beyond that and talk
about the Father Paul is praying to. It does not teach here the universal Fatherhood of God.
Look at what he said:
"I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in
heaven and on earth derives its name."
There are a lot of liberal teachers out there who say
that this verse teaches that God is everybody’s Father in a spiritual sense and therefore,
everybody, universally, has been saved already. It does not teach the spiritual Fatherhood of
God. It does not teach the Brotherhood of man in a spiritual sense at all. The Bible is
very clear. When it comes to the spiritual family, there are two fathers. There is God, and there
is Satan, the devil himself. If you will look with me in 1John 3, I will show
you that. I John 3:10 talks about the children of God:
"By this the children of God and the children
of the devil are obvious; anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of
God, nor the one who does not love his brother."
There is a distinction here from being the
offspring of Satan and the spiritual offspring of Christ.
Look in John 8:39. We find it again.
Here Jesus is talking to the Pharisees and some of the religious Jews:
"They answered and
said to Him, ‘Abraham is our father.’ Jesus said to them, ‘If you are Abraham’s children, do the
deeds of Abraham. But as it is, you are seeking to kill Me, a man who has told you the truth, which
I heard from God; this Abraham did not do.’"
Verse 41 continues,
‘You are doing the deeds
of your father.’ They said to Him, ‘We were not born of fornication; we have one Father even God.’ Jesus said to them, ‘If God were your Father,
you would love Me; for I proceeded forth
and have come from God, for I have not even come on my own initiative, but He sent Me.’"
Look at verse 44.
"‘You are of your
father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your
father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is
no truth in him.’"
In Ephesians Paul is saying that the
Father, from whom every family gets its name in heaven and earth, is the spiritual
family. There is a sense that God is Father of all creation. How can we say that? In the sense that
nothing was created except that He created it. But when it comes to a spiritual family, you have
to be born again and be birthed into that family. Then every believing family, whether it is
in heaven or on earth, can claim God as their Father. They have free access to Him through the
Lord Jesus Christ. We are all of His household. So he prays to the Father. But who is this
person? It is the one who is the Father of all believers. We have access to Him, but He is not the
Father spiritually of every person. If you do not know the Lord Jesus, you are a child of the
devil, an offspring of the devil.
As Ephesians 2 tells us,
believers, whether Jews or Gentiles, are a part of God’s household. So we see his
posture, and we see the person he is talking to. He is not talking to the father of people who
aren’t believers. This is family talk. Paul is interested in the family. Paul is intensely,
emotionally submitted to whatever God wants. He knows His will is that the family there at
Ephesus, the believers at Ephesus, the faithful saints, as chapter 1 tells us, not only know
their riches in Christ, but they live in those riches and experience the riches of their
salvation every single day.
Let’s begin to look at the petitions
of Paul’s prayer. That is going to take us a while. These verses are just filled with meaning. We come to the list of requests that Paul makes for the family of God at Ephesus,
those of God’s household. He goes to His Father, free access through the Lord
Jesus, the Son. Verse 16 says,
"that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be
strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man,."
Paul did not say "out of," but "according to."
Let me give you the difference in that. If you are going to grant someone
something "out of" your riches, that is different than
granting somebody something "according to"
your riches. If a millionaire gives $100 to the church, he has given "out of" his
riches. But friend, if a millionaire is going to give "according to" his
riches, then he is going to have to give a gift that speaks of his wealth.
Folks, this is beautiful what he is
praying here. He says,
"that He would grant you, according to the riches of His
glory."
That little phrase, "of His glory," means they are all His. They are all His because of who
He is. Where are they resident? They are resident in His Son, Jesus Christ. Let’s think
through this. He is going to grant you according to all of His riches in Christ Jesus. Do you
think riches means money? If you do, you are sadly, sadly mistaken. It is far better than
money. What he is talking about is the riches of our salvation. Now folks, we have already
looked into the vault of God’s wealth. We’ve already looked at it, and we know what these
riches are. Look in chapter 1. Let’s just go through it. Verse 3 of chapter 1 says,
"Blessed
be the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual
blessing in the heavenly places
in Christ."
Friend, that is in savings box number one. We have got,
in Him, every single spiritual blessing you could ever hope for or want. It is yours. It is
mine, and it is already in the vault, Jesus Christ.
Look at verse 4: "just as He chose us
in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless
before Him." Listen, holy living and living blameless before Him is our birthright in the
Lord Jesus Christ. We need to be living that way. It is already resident there. It is already
in Christ.
Look at verse
5:
"He predestined
us to adoption as sons."
In other words,
we can live daily with the security of knowing He will never disown us. The
Roman law said you could never disown your children if you adopt them. You could
never disown an adopted son. We are birthed into the family, but Paul chooses
this word to let you know not only are we birthed into the family, we can never
be kicked out of the family. You are eternally secure in Jesus Christ. That is
part of the riches of our salvation.
Verse 7 says,
"In Him we have
redemption through His blood."
We have been purchased off the slave block. The Lord Jesus
has come. In Colossians Paul says
"having canceled
out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us and which was
hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the
cross."
He has taken our sins and has nailed them to
the cross. I love that. Back in those days when somebody had a debt, they put a big
sign on the door. Everybody could ride by and know the debt. If a man wanted to show
kindness, he would go over, walk up to that and write across it tetelestai,
the word that means it is finished, paid in full. That is exactly
what was said of Jesus when He was on the cross in John 19:30...
When Jesus
therefore had received the sour wine, He said, "It
is finished!" And He bowed His head, and gave up
His spirit.
He paid it in
full. He has been to the cross for you and me. Therefore, we have been redeemed
off the slave block of sin. We have been forgiven. It is an act of grace. God
lifted that sin off of us, like the scapegoat in the wilder-ness when they put
their hands on that goat’s head and sent it off into the wilderness. Those sins
will never come back to haunt us again.
In verse 9 of
chapter 1,
"He made known to
us the mystery of His will."
Now you know
what that mystery is. You are beginning to understand it. We are all made one
new man in the Lord Jesus Christ. We are put into one body.
In verse 11, He
gave us an inheritance with His Son.
In verse 13, He
sealed us with the Holy Spirit of God.
Now, here in
3:16 he is saying,
"that He would
grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power
through His Spirit in the inner man."
Now understand
something. He is not praying that they will get these riches. They
already have them. He is praying that they be strengthened according to
these riches. He is saying,
"You’ve got them.
Now be strengthened by that which you have. Live in it. Live out of it."
Folks, we have
a reservoir of riches of wealth, spiritually, which God has given us in the Lord
Jesus Christ. Paul intensely says, "Oh, God, don’t let them walk out with heads
filled with information. God, let them walk out understanding they have these
riches. Let them be strengthened in the inner man with power. Let these riches
be a part of the source of their strength in their walk."
You may find
out this week that you have lost your job. You may find out this week that
someone has done you wrong. Where are you going to be strengthened? Friend, Paul
is saying you know something about your salvation. When you run back to the Lord
Jesus Christ, in Him is the reservoir of what you are looking for. Let the
Spirit of God with power strengthen you in the inner man. Let these truths so
get down inside of your life that you become different. All of a sudden what you
have inside of you begins to work inside of you. All of a sudden people see a
difference in your life. You are doing things and you are living in a way that
is on a higher plane than what you lived before. In other words, don’t just sit
and soak. Grab hold of the fact that you have got all the wealth that ever could
be, spiritually, in the Lord Jesus Christ. Learn how to tap into it. Learn how
to draw it out. It is in your account. It is in your name. The Lord Jesus lives
in you. When you have your problems, run to Him.
Learn to be
strengthened according to the riches that He has given you in Christ Jesus.
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Turn to Ephesians chapter 3. We have
been studying the doctrine of Ephesians and now it is time to see how it applies
in our life. Paul is praying in the last part of chapter 3. There are a lot of people who don’t
even know what is theirs in Christ, much less have tapped into it. Paul prays for these
Ephesian believers. He prays that they would experience the fullness of God in their lives.
Let’s read the prayer in verses 14-21
and get a glimpse of where we are headed:
Paul is
praying, in Ephesians 3:16 particularly, that the Ephesian believers might start
living in the light of what they now know about their salvation. He has spent
some time telling them about their salvation. Now he is saying,
"Live in the
light of what you have in the Lord Jesus Christ."
He spent three
chapters talking about the riches of their salvation, the reasons of their
salvation, and the revelation of their salvation. He wants them to have a high
view of salvation.
THE KEY TO THE CHRISTIAN LIFE
Folks, the key
to the whole Christian life is having a high view of your salvation. The
greatest miracle that can ever happen to an individual is to be saved by the
grace of God. Folks, until we see that as the very ultimate of our life, we are
not going to understand the prayer that Paul is praying in Ephesians 3. Paul
prays for these Ephesian believers that they would live lives that correspond to
the wealth that they have in the Lord Jesus Christ. Verse 16 is our focus, so
let’s read it one more time:
"that He would
grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power
through His Spirit in the inner man."
Paul is saying,
"You be
strengthened according to the riches that you already have."
He is not
praying that you get the riches; we already have them in the Lord Jesus Christ.
We are being strengthened according to those riches.
If I were a millionaire and I was
going to give out of my riches, I’d give you a token gift of $100 or $1,000 or $10. That is
just out of what I have. But if I am a millionaire and I am going to give to you according to
what I have, I am going to give you a $500,000 check or an $800,000 check.
If you give "according to," that immediately increases the proportion. Paul is
saying,
"I want you to be
strengthened according to, not out of, the riches that you have in Christ
Jesus."
You say,
"Well, what are those
riches?"
REVIEW OF YOUR RICHES IN CHRIST
EPHESIANS 2
Ephesians 1:3
sums them all up:
"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has
blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly
places in Christ."
Jesus is the storehouse of all the spiritual
blessings that we
could ever ask for, hope for or experience. He has already been given to us. We have received Him
into our heart. He is the heavenly vault. How many of us are spiritual millionaires and are
living like paupers? So many Christians don’t seem to understand that. They have not
learned to tap into what is theirs in the Lord Jesus Christ. That is the reason behind the writing
of Ephesians, to know who you are, to know whose you are, to know what you have
in the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul wants the Ephesians to see these riches. He wants to make
sure that we don’t mistake riches for something that is tangible or material. These are
not all of the riches, but let’s just go through them quickly.
In Ephesians 1:4, we are chosen
before the foundation of the world. We are divinely significant to the Lord.
In Ephesians 1:5,
we are adopted into the family of God. We are eternally secure. You see, in their culture,
you could not disown a child that you had adopted. Therefore, once we have been adopted into the
family, nobody can ever kick us out! We are eternally secure in the Lord Jesus
Christ.
In Ephesians
1:7 it says we have been redeemed and forgiven of our sins. The word "redeemed"
means we have been purchased off the slave block of sin. If you are still living
in sin, a slave to sin, you must not know the Lord Jesus Christ. That is why 1
John 3:6 says that he that is born out of God cannot habitually sin and claim to
be a Christian.
"No one who
abides in Him sins; no one who sins has seen Him or knows Him."
Do we still
deal with it? Yes. Before Christ we chased after sin. After Christ, it chases
after us. We are no longer it’s slave. That is part of the riches we have in
Christ Jesus who lives in us.
In Ephesians
1:9 it says we have had revealed to us the mystery. Now what is the mystery?
Paul has clearly told us that it is when the Jew and the Greek can be made one
in the body of Christ. It is the mystery of His church that we are a part of His
body here on this earth.
Ephesians 1:11
says we have obtained an inheritance. We have got something to look for-ward to.
Ephesians 1:13
says we have been sealed with His Spirit until the day of redemption. Ephesians
4 adds "until the day of redemption."
All of these I
just mentioned are just a part of our riches that we have in Jesus Christ. Paul
is saying,
"I have told you
what they are. Now I want you to live in accordance to that. I want you to be
strengthened according to what you already have in the Lord Jesus Christ."
REVIEW OF YOUR RICHES IN CHRIST
EPHESIANS 2
Let’s go to
Ephesians 2.
In Ephesians 24
we have new life in Jesus Christ. 1 John 5:12 says,
"He who has the
Son has the life."
You don’t have
eternal life until you receive Jesus. When you receive Jesus it means you have
His eternal life.
In Ephesians
2:6 we are seated in the heavenlies with Christ. What does it mean to be seated
in the heavenlies with Christ? It simply means that now we don’t need to be
standing up. We can continue to sit down. Often I sense the Lord speaking to me
and saying,
"I am far above
principalities and powers. Let Me rule and reign in your life. Stop trying to
help me out. Sit down. You are seated in the heavenlies with Christ."
In Ephesians
2:10 we are His workmanship created for good works.
In Ephesians
2:19-22 we are a part of His family, part of His kingdom and part of His temple.
The whole of
Ephesians 2 sums it up and says we are His dwelling on this earth. We are the
temples of God that the Holy Spirit lives in. All of these spiritual riches are
ours in Jesus Christ. If you are saved you don’t have to get any of those, you
already have them, and you have a blank check with His name and signature. You
just need to learn how to tap into them and live in the reality of what is
already yours in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Well, let’s look at his prayer in
Ephesians 3:16 and note the three aspects of living the Christian life in the victory
that is in Jesus.
POWER
First in
Ephesians 3:16 Paul writes...
"that He would
grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power."
The first thing
he prays for is that the believers at Ephesus be shown or established as being
spiritually able.
One of the saddest things to me is
the spiritual condition of Christians in America. We are living in an anemic country when
it comes to spiritual living. You can go into a church and find people grumbling, critical
and living like they are defeated. This is the norm in most churches. Why are
believers living in defeat? Primarily because they are not looking into this
Book to find out what is theirs in the Lord Jesus Christ. They are not studying
the Word. They are not trying to glean,
"God, what did
You do for me at salvation? What is mine in the Lord Jesus Christ? What are my
responsibilities in all of that?"
A LOW VIEW...
OF SCRIPTURE...
OF SALVATION
Nine out of ten
Christians cannot tell you what God did for them when He died for them on the
cross. When you have that low view of salvation, it is automatically reflected
by a low view of scripture. They would rather read a book about the Bible
than study the Word. When a believer is not getting into the Word, he or she
will have a low view of Scripture that they would rather hear what some man says
about it rather than what God says about it. Then it follows that such
individuals have a low view of their salvation. If you add those two together
you have nothing but a lifestyle of total defeat.
Folks, when you realize what happened
to you when you got saved and what the Word of God means to you now that you
are saved, you begin to tap into what has been yours all along.
STRENGTHENED
However, you have not yet learned to
be established as mighty in the ability that God wants to give you. The term
"strengthened" there in verse 16 is the word that means "made mighty." It is the Greek word
krataioo. Some
Greek verbs end in an "o" but this verb ends in two o’s which conveys
the thought of something beyond just being "strengthened." It
means "to be shown to be strong, to be shown to be mighty." It is almost the same thing
that Paul prays in Philippians. The idea then is that you are to get what is on the inside of you
to the outside so that you might be shown to be strong.
Let me give you an example of that.
Look over in James 2:21. What we are going to find here is almost an apparent
contradiction. If you didn’t know about the verbs ending with those two o’s, you
would have a lot of confusion in your mind. Paul says,
"For by grace you
have been saved through faith; ... not as a result of works, that no one should
boast."
James 2:21
says,
"Was not Abraham
our father justified by works, when he offered up Isaac his son on the altar?"
If you read
that the wrong way it may appear that his offering Isaac was what gave him his
justification. You know better than that. In Genesis 15:6 it says he believed
and it was accounted unto him as salvation, as righteousness. Why then does it
appear James says he was justified by offering Isaac? The verb ends with little
double o. When it ends that way it simply means that Abraham was shown
to be what he had already become. It was demonstrated that Abraham was
justified. He was established as being justified. In other words, something had
already happened to him. Now this transaction is put on display for all to see.
So what Paul is praying in Ephesians is,
"Yes, be
strengthened, but more than that, be established as being strong people, as
being mighty."
But now wait a
minute. What is the illustration of somebody being mighty? How would you know
that a believer is being strengthened, being established as being strong in the
Lord Jesus Christ? Look at the verse. It will tell us. Ephesians 3:16 says,
"that He would
grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power."
Is there a difference between might
and power?" Oh, yes. The word "power" here is the word
dunamis. That word
means "to be able to do something, be capable." Basically Paul is saying,
"I
want that which is inside of you to get on the outside of you. I want people to look at you as you live your
Christian life and let them see that you have a divine ability that is operating inside of you. I
want it to be more than just what you say. I am praying that it will be in how that you live."
The verb
krataioo is in the aorist passive
infinitive. Aorist tense means that it takes place, it happens, it is a reality to you.
Passive voice means that you can’t strengthen yourself, God is going to do it. The infinitive
means what are we here for? It is a purpose tense. What are we here for? Every believer is not
here just to go to church and talk about it. We are here to go out into the community and
demonstrate having it real in our life.
"Are you are telling me that I am
supposed to be established in the midst of all my circumstances as somebody who has
divine ability to live victoriously in Jesus?"
Absolutely. If you are saying, "I am weak" that is the greatest place you have ever been in your whole Christian walk. Until you
come to that place of realizing what you can’t do, you can’t understand why Paul is praying
for that which God alone can do in your life. Christ has come into your life. You have the
riches of all spiritual blessing resident in Him. Be strengthened with power.
THE SPIRIT STRENGTHENS BELIEVERS
Well, Paul
prays that they might be strengthened. Who is it that is going to strengthen us?
I told you the verb was in the passive voice. Passive voice means you can’t
strengthen yourself, somebody is going to have to strengthen us. The text is so
clear:
"according to the
riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit."
Now, hold on.
"You mean there
is somebody that lives in us that is going to do the strengthening for us?"
That is exactly
right. God the Holy Spirit lives in you. When you received Jesus, you also got
His Spirit and His Father.
The assignment to do the
strengthening is not in God the Son, it is God the Spirit. The Spirit of God comes into a man the
moment he becomes a Christian. Now, you are not living life alone. You may be acting
like it, but you are not. If you are trying to fight your problems by yourself, if you are
trying to figure them out on your own, if you are not coming to the Word, letting the Holy Spirit
of God enable you and reveal to you the things of God, then no wonder you are confused. You
have a divine partner living in you, and He is in you to strengthen you with power so that
you have an ability that you didn’t have before. If you will learn to tap into Him, then you
will begin to learn to live in the reality of His presence.
Look in Philippians 2:12-13. I want
to show you God the Holy Spirit at work strengthening you...
"So then, my beloved,
just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my
absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you,
both to will and to work for His good pleasure."
It was God’s pleasure to put His
Spirit in you and in me. That is what makes us unique. That is what makes us brand new
creatures.
How do you know it is God, the Holy Spirit here? Look in John 14:15-18. Jesus
promises that He is going to come. He is talking to His disciples in that very private time
before the cross. It says in verse 15,
"If you love Me, you will keep My commandments. And I will
ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you
forever; that is
the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not behold
Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you, and will be in you."
John 14:18
says,
"I will not leave
you as orphans; I will come to you."
How does He
comes to us? In the person of His Spirit. Folks, the Spirit of God lives in us.
If you haven’t learned yet to "tap into" Him, no wonder you have not been
established with your friends, established at your work, as an individual who
possesses a divine ability as a believer, a new creation in the Lord Jesus
Christ.
You say,
"Now, wait a
minute, I am having trouble here. If I have the Lord living in me and if all
these riches are mine, then why do I live such a defeated life? Why doesn’t God
just kick me into gear. I should be growing. Why am I having such a struggle?"
Good question.
Look at Galatians 5. You know, we’ve got a problem here. The Spirit has a big
problem, and it is called the flesh. Do you know what the flesh is? That is that
part of us that does what it does without God. That is one way to say it. The
flesh is nothing more than what a man is without God. It is still resident in
our bodies that are decaying every day.
In Galatians
5:16-17 it says,
"But I say, walk
by the Spirit."
What do you mean
"walk by the Spirit"?
I mean in
accordance to the Spirit.
What is the
Spirit doing in my life?
He is there to
reveal the Word to you, to convict you of righteousness, of sin and of judgment.
Let Him rule and reign in your life. Paul is saying,
"Live letting the
Spirit of God rule and reign in your life. Live in accordance to it. Don’t
frustrate the Spirit of God. Don’t grieve Him. Don’t quench Him, as we will see
coming up in Ephesians."
Well, look at
Galatians 5:17. Paul says,
"For the flesh
sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these
are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you
please."
"Oh, I understand
now. He is praying for me to be strengthened, to be established as being mighty
in a domain of His kingdom on this earth with ability that is divine. Now I
realize the Spirit of God lives in me to do that strengthening through me."
Exactly right.
You can spot a person who is living in accordance to the Spirit. Do you know
how? The greatest sign of a person living in accordance to the Spirit is when he
messes up he is willing to deal with it and call it sin and let God cleanse him
and forgive him.
And so Paul
prays that we might be established.
Secondly he
prays that the Spirit of God will do the establishing, the strengthening.
"Where does this
strengthening take place? Where does it go on? If God is in me, I sure don’t
feel Him in there. Now if He is in there, where is He working inside of me?"
THE INNER MAN
The text tells
you. He says in Ephesians 3:16,
"to be
strengthened with power through [or by the means of] His Spirit in the inner
man."
What in the
world is the inner man?
Let me see if I
can explain it very simply.
The outer man
is where the body and soul reside. What is the soul? It is the mind, will and
emotions.
The inner man becomes whole when the
Spirit of God comes in, which is the process called salvation. In that inner
man, the new person that God has made you, the new creation you are in Christ...this
is where God does His work. That is His focus, not the outer man.
Look in 2
Corinthians 4:16:
"Therefore we do
not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being
renewed day by day."
What is the
inner man? Oh folks, that is where the nature of God dwells in each one of us.
We have the nature of God within us. Where? In the inner man. That is what we
need to be nourishing.
Look with me in
2 Peter 1:4, and we
will be through.
"For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent
promises, in order that by them you might become partakers of the
divine nature, having escaped
the corruption that is in the world by lust."
Even though our bodies are corrupting, we can escape the corruption that is in
this world when we nourish the inner man and let the inner man, the Spirit in
the inner man, give us a divine ability to live above and beyond what our
circumstances are all about.
What a prayer!
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We are in Ephesians 3:17. In verses
14-21, Paul is praying that the Ephesian believers might live in the fullness of all
that they have in the Lord Jesus Christ. What God expects of us and wants to see in us is not
weak, anemic lives, living discouraged and depressed. He wants us to walk in His fullness. He
gave us the Lord Jesus Christ in whom are all the spiritual blessings. He wants us to
walk in reality, in the fullness of all that He has given us in Jesus Christ.
The first
principle in doing that is found in verse 16, in Paul’s prayer. If you will
examine this prayer very carefully, you will see the whole Christian life laid
out before you. In verse 16 it says,
"that He would
grant you, according to [not out of] the riches of His glory to be strengthened
with power through His Spirit in the inner man."
The word
"strengthened" means "to be made mighty."
"Do you mean that
we as believers can be made mighty? How?"
Well, Paul
says, "with power." The word there means
"the ability to
do that which we could never have done before, the capacity, the divine ability
to live a life on a higher plane."
Paul is praying
for these believers to learn to tap into that which they already have in Jesus
Christ. You see, the area in which we are strengthened is the inner man. That is
the spiritual part of our life.
Let me make
this practical to you. As we yield to the Holy Spirit of God who resides in our
spirit, as we surrender to Him, as we allow Him to control us, we experience the
fullness of all that He has given us in Christ Jesus.
Ephesians 4:30
says,
"And do not
grieve the Holy Spirit of God."
The divine Holy
Spirit of God lives in believers, and we are not to grieve Him. We are to
cooperate with Him.
Ephesians
5:18 says,
"And do not get
drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit."
That word
"filled" means "to be controlled." It is in the present tense which means
"ongoing."
We are never to
grieve the Spirit. We are to continually be under the control of the Holy Spirit
of God. When you and I are willing to do that, we start tapping into that which
is ours in Christ Jesus. Then comes the fullness of God. The degree of my
surrender determines the degree of my realization of the fullness that He
offers.
We are going to see in the text that
being strengthened in the inner man, with a divine ability through the Holy Spirit, is
so that Christ may dwell in our hearts by faith. I wonder how many of us really understand
that. When Thursday morning comes around and there is no choir around you and nobody to
encourage you, do you, as a believer, have that high view of your salvation? Do you
understand the fullness and the riches of God, that are within you? Have we learned to tap
into that which God has given?
Well, let’s continue the prayer. I
think perhaps it will turn some lights on as to what the normal Christian life is all about.
This is the Christian life; this is why Jesus saved you and me, not for heaven
only. He
saved you and me to do a work in us and to us and through us. We must learn to
cooperate with Him fully, not to grieve the Spirit but to be controlled by His Spirit.
Ephesians 3:17
says,
"so that Christ
may dwell in your hearts through faith."
A lot of
people, when they see this, don’t know what to do with it.
"I have not lived
like that. I’ve been going to church. I am a good person. I try as hard as I
can. Isn’t that the Christian life?"
No! It is
learning to recognize self for what it is and learning to die to it by saying
yes to God day by day and moment by moment. Therefore, many Christians are
living anemic, weak and subnormal lives.
Look at what Paul says in verse 17.
That little phrase "in order that" or "so that" is the Greek word
hina, which always introduces a purpose clause. Paul is saying,
"I am
strengthened with ability, God’s ability, by the means of His Spirit being in me
in my inner man."
As that
happens, something else takes place in order that Christ may dwell in my heart.
Now that is a powerful phrase. What does this phrase mean?
"that Christ
would dwell in my heart"
First note that
Paul is not praying for these Ephesian believers to receive Christ. They have
already received Christ. In 1:13 it says,
"you were sealed
in Him (Christ) with the Holy Spirit of promise."
We know we have
not only received Him, but we have been baptized into His body. The seal of the
Holy Spirit is upon us until the day of redemption.
In Colossians
1:27 Paul goes a step further and makes sure we understand writing of believers
at Colossae
"to whom God
willed to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the
Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory."
You have to
have Christ before you can talk about His dwelling in your life. He says in
Colossians that Christ in us is the hope of glory. So Christ is in our lives.
What Paul is
praying for here is not that they receive Him, but that the Christ who is
already there might dwell in their hearts.
DWELL
What is the
term "dwell"? First of all it is aorist infinitive. Aorist means that it may
become a fact, a known reality, that people everywhere would look at the
Ephesian church and say,
"These believers
have understood what the Christian life is all about, that it happened to them,
that it was an established fact."
The Greek
infinitive (mood) indicates purpose. In other words, why did Christ come into
your life? He came in to do what we are talking about here, (His purpose was) to
dwell in your heart by faith.
Well, what is
the term "dwell" (katoikeo)? The verb katoikeo comes from two words, the word kata,
which means down, and
oikeo, which means to reside or dwell in
a house. In the context it is very clear Paul is not saying
that Christ should be in your house. He is already there if you are a believer.
What is saying by using this verb is that Christ
should be comfortable in your hearts. He should be at home and settled down in
your heart. This really begins to build.
"You mean Paul is
praying that the Lord Jesus might be comfortable while He is in my life?"
Absolutely! We
are to make sure we make Him comfortable in our life. That is why he says in
4:30,
"Don’t grieve the
Spirit."
It is the
Spirit of Christ in you. We are to make sure He is at home, that whatever He
needs is there, that He is not offended or grieved by anything we do, so that He
might dwell in our hearts by faith.
MY HEART
CHRIST'S HOME
The
heart
is the center of an
individual’s life. It is the seat of his desires, his feelings, his affections, his passions, his
impulses and in many situations could be interchangeable with the word "mind." That is where
Christ comes to dwell, in that inner man, in our hearts. We want to make sure that we make Him
feel at home in our hearts. Our hearts, here in verse 17, are pictured, in a vague
sense, as a house. He wants to be in the house of our hearts, and He wants to be at home
while He is there.
If you are not
being strengthened in the inner man with power by the Spirit of God, it is very
obvious that you are not making Christ at home in your hearts. Why? Because
Christ is His Spirit that lives there. If you are living a lifestyle that is not
pleasing to Him, if you are grieving Him, then no wonder you're discouraged,
defeated and generally a "mess" spiritually speaking. No wonder your life is
falling apart. There is a very basic truth in Scripture and when you come to
grips with it, it becomes very understandable what victory is all about.
Victory is not me doing for Him. It is me being strengthened.
That enables the Spirit of Christ to be welcomed in my heart.
ROOMS IN OUR HEART
I starting
thinking about what rooms would be in our hearts. There are five areas I want us
to look at.
THE ROOM OF THOUGHTS
First of all,
the room of our thoughts.
What is your
thought-life like? "Now, come on, you are meddling." That is exactly what
happens when you start talking about the heart. You start meddling real quickly.
By the way, I am not meddling just with you. This is also meddling with me. We
are all in the same boat. None of us have arrived, so nobody can point any
fingers. Let’s look in Luke 9:47. I want you to see something about the thoughts
of the heart. You say, "You could have translated that "mind." Yes, I could, but
it is the word "heart." Let’s stay with what the text says and try not to be
complicated with it. Let’s associate the fact that thoughts in the heart have
something to do with one another. The context in Luke 9:47 is after the
transfiguration. They have come down from the mountain. Jesus has just healed
the demon possessed boy, and then we have a test here. Verse 46 says,
"And an argument
arose among them as to which of them might be the greatest."
It appears here
that the disciples are the ones fighting over this. They were saying,
"I am better than
you are. I will be on His right hand. No, left hand. I guarantee you I will be
on one or the other."
Look at Luke
records in verse 47.
"But Jesus,
knowing what they were thinking in their heart, took a child and stood him by
His side, and said to them, ‘Whoever receives this child in My name receives Me;
and whoever receives Me receives Him who sent Me; for he who is least among you,
this is the one who is great.’"
I just want you to see that somehow
the thoughts are attached to the heart. How are your thoughts? In 2 Corinthians
10, Paul says we are take every thought into captivity in the obedience of
Christ.
"We are
destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of
God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ,"
You know,
thoughts do a lot of damage to a person, especially in the arena where Christ
dwells. You are not to allow thoughts to be entertained in your life. You
already know what they are, and you are letting your mind be eaten up with
things that are making Christ uncomfortable in your life. That is just simple
proof of the fact that you have not yet learned to tap into the resources you
have in Christ Jesus. When you are made strong with His divine ability, then
victory is not you overcoming your thoughts, victory is Jesus overcoming you.
That is what victorious Christian living is all about.
You are going
to find in the book of Ephesians that the Word of God is involved in this
process. How many times have we said this? It is like a broken record.
Get in the Word.
Get in the Word.
Get in the Word.
Folks, you
can’t stop having lustful thoughts. You wake up in the morning, men, and you say
to yourself, "I will not have a lustful thought today." Friend, you won’t make
it 30 seconds out of your prayer time before one bombards you. You don’t live
life that way. When you come to God and say,
"God, I am aware
that my body causes these thoughts, and I am susceptible to all these things. I
know the devil is out there tempting me. God, I have trouble with my thought
life. This is making Christ uncomfortable. Strengthen me by the means of the
Spirit. As I get into the Word of God, overcome me by Your Word. Then let Christ
be comfortable so He can dwell in my life."
That is the way
it works. The victory is Christ overcoming you.
You see, folks, your thoughts could
be clogging up the whole process of what God is trying to do with your life. You are
entertaining thoughts that are not right and you know it. Young people, you are allowing
certain things to get into your mind and they are making Jesus very uncomfortable. Perhaps
people around you have become aware of that and have tried to confront you on that,
but you have not been willing to deal with it. You see, when Christ dwells in our heart, He
is at home. We have done everything to accommodate Him. He feels absolutely at home in
our hearts.
By the way, if you ever leave the
Word for a while and think that church is going to give it back to you, it will not. You are
just going to get more frustrated. When you finally come to the cross and let God’s Word get
into your life instead of you getting into it, then it changes. If you have strayed from the
Word and are not in it daily, I promise you are miserable, critical, and the most judgmental
person in your church. Christ is no longer dwelling in your heart. The Spirit has not
strengthened you with that which you could not have done yourself. You are left with what Adam
gave us.
THE ROOM OF ATTITUDES
Secondly, there
is the room of our attitudes.
Look in Matthew
19:8. We have an inference here to attitudes. This is the chapter where Jesus
talks about divorce. I have never yet talked to a divorce person who would not
agree that if he could go back and do it again, experiencing the fullness of God
and tapping into the fullness of God, his life would have been different. In
Matthew 19:8 notice what Jesus said.
"He said to them,
‘Because of your hardness of heart, Moses permitted you to divorce your wives;
but from the beginning it has not been this way.’"
Divorce was
never commanded, as somebody told me one day. It was never instructed. It was
only permitted. The only reason it was permitted was because of the hardness of
people’s hearts.
Folks, do you realize the attitudes
that are in your heart affect your relationships? You may be married and, nobody knows it,
but you are going through a difficult time in your home. You hardly speak to one another. You are
fighting with one another. Why? Listen, somebody has to drop anchor at some point.
When you allow the Holy Spirit of God to strengthen you with the divine ability to love when
you couldn’t have loved before, to forgive when you couldn’t have forgiven before, then
something unique and powerful begins to happen. Christ feels at home in your life and
you begin to see what victory is all about. Your marriage may still end up on the rocks but
you, for all eternity, will be changed by the power of the Holy Spirit of God in your life.
That is the key. I am not throwing a rock at anybody. If we would learn to tap into what God
has given us, make Him feel at home in our life, make Him feel at home in our attitudes,
then even our marriages, even our relationships would be different.
Turn to Matthew
18:35. All of this flows like a river together. Matthew 18 is about restoring a
brother, discipline. It moves on down into concerning divorce. It is amazing how
the thought pattern just flows there. In verse 35 look what Jesus says,
"‘So shall My
heavenly Father also do to you if each of you does not forgive his brother from
your heart.’"
Oh, folks, is
Christ at home in your attitude? If He is not, then you are a bitter person. You
haven’t yet learned how to tap into that which God has, which is His divine
ability to do in and through you far beyond what you could have ever done. You
can’t forgive, but God will forgive in and through you. When Jesus is
accommodated in your life, then you begin to experience His power to do what you
could never do.
THE ROOM OF ATTITUDES
Thirdly, there
is the room of our emotions.
Look in John
14:1:
"Let not your
heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me."
I want you to
see something here. Somehow the emotions are associated with the heart. I don’t
understand all of that, but somehow they are. Jesus said, "Don’t let your hearts
be troubled." The word "troubled" has the idea of being anxious, the idea of
being fearful, the idea of dreading something. Listen, when that attitude gets
into our emotions and our emotions get involved in our hearts, we are not
accommodating the Lord Jesus Christ at all. We are not trusting Him.
Luke 18:1 says
that...
"Now He was
telling them a parable to show that at all times they ought to pray and not to
lose heart,"
Listen, you’ve
got an option here. You either worry or you pray. Which are you going to do?
Paul says the
same thing in Philippians 4:6.
"Be not anxious
over anything, but by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving in your heart,
let your requests be made known to God."
What are you
anxious about? What is your heart troubled over?
Are you going
through something but you don’t realize that the very emotion that you are
allowing to pervade in your life is something that is not accommodating the Lord
Jesus who wants to be at home in your life?
We don’t ever
think about this. It is very obvious if I have been overtaken by an emotion that
I am not being strengthened in the inner man by the power of the Holy Spirit. It
is very obvious that somehow I have grieved Him. Somehow I have not surrendered
to Him. How clear can the scriptures be? Folks, when we don’t accommodate the
Lord Jesus in our emotions, all kinds of havoc can come from that.
What is bugging you? What emotion has
overwhelmed you? Folks, we are only to be overwhelmed by the Lord Jesus
Himself. No wonder Paul prays this prayer. He doesn’t want them to end up on a shelf for
the weak, anemic, depressed Christians. He wants them to be walking in the fullness of what
God offers.
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