“Becoming a Powerful Believer” Ephesians 3:14-21
- Senior Pastor, Robert Dennison, preached this sermon on February 19, 2023
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Audio Transcript
That’s half of everybody leaving right now. That’s awesome. We love kids. We are in Ephesians today, in chapter three, Becoming a powerful believer. There it is.
I couldn’t remember my own title. As we continue in the Book of Ephesians, you got to keep in perspective that this was one whole letter that Paul was writing to the church at Ephesus. It isn’t meant like a cafeteria for us to walk along and decide, oh, I like this. It tastes good. I want some of that.
But that doesn’t mean as much to me. We have to take the whole thing into perspective. It’s like a puzzle that needs all of the pieces for it to really fit together. Has anybody ever pulled a joke on you where they gave you a puzzle and they took out all the edge pieces? Has that ever happened to anybody?
I was given a puzzle that had no edge pieces. It was highly frustrating. So I gave it to my secretary and she put it together this week. And it was highly frustrating for her, too, but she said it was enjoyable. But when we think about Ephesians, if we don’t put.
Put all of the pieces together, we’re not going to get the full picture. It’s like buying a car with an engine in it that’s missing several parts. If you don’t get everything out of it and keep it together, it doesn’t work. So we talked about doctrine, about our calling in Christ and the purpose of faith and receiving the gift of salvation. We’ve talked about the blessings in Christ.
We’ve talked about the sufficiency of Christ. We’ve talked about being alive in Christ, about being one in Christ. And in that first section, Paul even had a prayer, because we’re looking at a second prayer today. But in that first prayer, he prayed that they would have very deep knowledge of Christ, not just in their head, but they would really understand him and know him in their hearts. So today, when we come to this second prayer, Paul is saying, in addition to all this knowledge that I’ve given you this, there are some other things that you need to have in your life so that you can be a powerful believer.
And I’m telling you today that if you don’t accept everything that Paul has already presented, next week, when we start to look at how we’re supposed to live the Christian life, if you don’t accept all of this, you’re going to say, well, now I don’t understand this. Well, if you don’t accept this part, you won’t understand this. Or you might say, you know, I don’t agree with how Jesus is telling me I’m supposed to live in this half of the book. Well, that’s going to be a response that you might have if you don’t accept all the pieces in the first half. And lastly, if you don’t put all of this together and understand you need all of these things that we’re going to be talking about today, you’re not going to be able in your own strength to live the way that Paul tells us that that we are supposed to.
Let’s begin reading Ephesians 3:14. For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named. I pray that he may grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with power in your inner being through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. I pray that you, being rooted and firmly established in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the length and width, height and depth of God’s love, and to know Christ’s love that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do above all and beyond all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever.
Amen. May we pray. Heavenly Father, as we look at your word today, help us to accept that we need these things in our life. And Father, as Paul is praying for the believers in Ephesus, let us come before you in prayer asking that you would grant the same things to us and also that we would pray for one another, that we might be truly powerful in our Christian life, so that we adequately are salt and light in the world as we display the riches of your glory in our lives, in Jesus name we pray. Amen.
Ephesians 3, verse 14.
Paul’s second prayer tells us here that he is kneeling before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named. I pray that he may grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with power in your inner being through his spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. I’d like you to turn back to chapter one and let’s read Paul’s first prayer because we want to kind of compare the two prayers that he has here for the believers at Ephesus. So in Ephesians 1:17, we read, I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, would give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened so that you may know what is the hope of his calling, what is the wealth of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe according to the mighty working of his strength.
One of the first things that we see here is in both prayers, he’s mentioning the Trinity, that the Father, the Son and the Spirit are all involved in this whole process of salvation and making us more like Jesus Christ. In particular, in that first prayer, Paul says that he wants the believers to have a greater knowledge of Jesus Christ. And he doesn’t want it just to be a head knowledge. He says, I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened so that you may know. So it’s not just a head knowledge that Paul wants us to have of Jesus.
He wants us to know him personally. He wants us to know him with our heart in the special way that we understand in relationships with those that are closest to us. And that word there, to know means to really know in depth and to have understanding. There were four things he mentioned. He wants us to understand his calling, that he’s called us to be part of his family.
He wants us to understand his glorious inheritance, that he is powerful and able to accomplish all these things in our life, and that because of his strength, he has full authority. But once again, this is all about knowledge that we’re supposed to have in Jesus Christ. And we obtain that by studying God’s word, by going to Bible study, by coming on Sunday morning. But when we come to the second prayer now, we’re going to see that this knowledge of Jesus Christ and of salvation is not sufficient to give us the power that we need to live out the life that God has for us. So we come now back to our passage today, and the first thing I want you to see is the seriousness of Paul’s prayer.
It says there differently now. He says, I’m kneeling before the Father. This is unusual because when the Jews prayed, they stood, they bowed their heads. But to come before the Father in kneeling is a posture of extreme seriousness. It’s of earnestness.
It’s not that Paul is afraid of God, because he’s told us just before this that we can come boldly and confidently before the Father in faith. But it shows us that he’s earnestly praying for the believers in Ephesus, that they will have four things that we’re going to talk about today that are necessary to live a full Christian life. I want to stop and talk about the necessity of prayer just a little bit. In our life we talked about the knowledge that we have of Jesus Christ about salvation. And we get that knowledge by reading God’s word, by studying God’s word, by listening to it, by memorizing.
It’s like food. And throughout the day we all have one or more meals. So raise your finger. How many meals do you like to eat a day? Is it 10?
3? 2? If you’re a Hobbit, you have three breakfasts and then all the rest of your meals. Okay? But the thing about eating food, it’s like God’s word.
We don’t eat continually, all day long. Now if you do, don’t raise your hand. But generally we take in food and we take a break from it. That’s what reading God’s word is like. It gives us nourishment and it strengthens us in periodic intervals.
But prayer, on the other hand, isn’t like eating food. Prayer is like breathing. And I would just say that I think I got this idea from Dane Ortland. I will give him credit that prayer is like breathing food you need several times a day. But if you only breathed at breakfast and lunch and dinner, what would happen?
You would die, you would expire. Prayer is supposed to be this continual intake and outtake of air. In other words, we listen to God and we speak back to God. Now we do have special times. We have prayer together in here on Sunday mornings.
You may have a prayer time at home, but what we’re told in God’s Word is this prayer is supposed to be something that’s moment by moment, hour by hour, day by day. That’s why we read in 1st Thessalonians 5, 16, 18. Rejoice always and pray constantly. Give thanks in everything, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. What I want to say today is prayer is supposed to be an ongoing conversation with God all day, every day.
Because when is God with you? Is he with you when you’re lying in bed? Yes. Is he with you when you’re brushing your teeth in the morning? Hopefully you do that.
He is. Is he with you when you’re driving your car? Yes. Is he with you when you are at work all day long? He’s supposed to be like a partner in your job.
That requires this constant back and forth conversation. Now there may be moments of silence, but throughout the day you should be able to pray and think God I’m about to call somebody on the phone. What do I need to say to them today that would bless them? Or I’m heading out the door. Lord, give me safety as I drive.
Help me not to have road rage. And then God, we sense his spirit speaking back to us. Yes, you need to give that person a word of encouragement or remember they have an aunt in the hospital. Whatever God is asking you to do, it’s. It’s this conversation back and forth throughout the day.
Paul has been telling Ephesians what they need to know, but they need more than knowledge. And he’s offering up these intense prayers for them so that they can be successful in their Christian life. And just to give a plug for prayer, we do have a class coming up in March and there’s this little book. It’s only 96 pages and that includes the index, I think, so it doesn’t take long to read. And on that Saturday class, it’s going to be a workshop where we’re going to practice together what this book is teaching us to do.
And this has really helped me in my prayer life. It’s given me a refreshing look at it and how to understand and praying God’s word, the Bible. Let’s go away from the advertisement. Now back to the message. What is it that Paul is praying for the believers?
The first thing is that he’s praying that they will have inner power. He’s praying that they will have inner power. Verse 16 says, I pray that he may grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with power, your inner being through his spirit. Now we all understand what it means to have external power. If you want big muscles, you have to lift weights.
If you want to be able to run long distances, you have to practice running. But Paul isn’t talking about this external strength. He’s saying there’s a strength that we need inside of us that only comes from the Spirit of God. The weakest person, the person that’s closest to death, the person who is completely out of control of their life situation, can still have this inner power that comes from the Holy Spirit as He lives in us. What is the role of the Holy Spirit?
Why is it that I need Him? How is it that he does this for us? Scripture teaches that when we come to faith in Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit baptizes us. At that moment, he comes to reside inside of us and live in us. But after that, he continues to work in our life according to what we call he fills us.
But that filling doesn’t Just happen once. It’s not sufficient. It has to happen every single day that we allow the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts and lives. I’ll turn your attention to Romans, chapter 8, verses 8 through 10. You, however, are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you.
If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to him. Now, if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit gives life because of righteousness. The life that we have in Jesus Christ comes to fruition in our hearts and inside of us by the Holy Spirit giving us life day by day throughout our entire life. I’d like to go over to Corinthians chapter four, and I can’t remember if this is Second Corinthians. It’s Second Corinthians.
I’ve got 12th Corinthians down here, and I know that that’s not right, but Second Corinthians 4, 16, 18 says, Therefore, do not give up. He’s telling us, don’t give up when we have the Spirit. Even though our outer person is being destroyed, our inner person is being renewed. And here’s the key. Day by day, just accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior guarantees salvation.
But for you to have this life and power that the Spirit offers, it has to happen day by Day. Verse 17 says, for our momentary light affliction is producing for us an absolutely incomparable, eternal weight of glory. So we don’t focus on what is seen, the external, but we’re really supposed to be focusing on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. The power that the Spirit offers us is going to last forever.
And that inner power comes from the Holy Spirit indwelling you day by day and you allowing him to fill you completely up. Now, how would you not allow the Holy Spirit to fill you up? Well, if you were a vase here with flowers in it, If I put a bunch of sand in that vase, I’m not going to be able to pour much water in there. And in order to have a full vase or a full pitcher, I have to make sure that everything is cleaned out. We have to make sure our lives are clean and ready to have the Holy Spirit fill us completely every day.
And Scripture tells us two things that fill us up with stuff that keeps the Holy Spirit from filling us. It talks about we should not quench the Holy Spirit, and we’re not supposed to grieve the Holy Spirit. That word, grieve. There we all know what that means. When someone dies, we have this great grief.
When we have some great loss in our life, it’s beyond sadness. We grieve the Holy Spirit and He feels that way whenever we have any sin in our life that is unconfessed. So you can grieve the Holy Spirit have sin in your life, and that keeps him from being able to fill you completely. But then the other word, quench, not quench, is when you throw water on a fire because you want to put it out. To quench the Holy Spirit means to stifle the things that he’s asking you to do.
It’s like when I was talking earlier. You’re praying all day long, you’re about to call someone and in prayer you say, God, do I need to say something special to this person today? And you just spill in your heart, I need to share the gospel with them. Well, if you decide I’m not going to share the gospel, that’s quenching the Spirit. You’re throwing water on the spark that he has put in your life.
We have inner power daily filling by the Holy Spirit when we do the things that he asks us to do. And we don’t commit sin of any type. Why do we need to be strengthened? Let’s go back to Ephesians 6:12. Now, the reason why we need to be strengthened is our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this darkness, against evil spiritual forces in the heavens, the things that we can’t see that are going on around us, the angels, the activity of Satan and his demons.
These are the things that we are really fighting against. How would we even know how to prepare our bodies to fight against these things? It isn’t our body strength that helps us to struggle against them. It has to be the inner power of the Holy Spirit. Whether you realize it or not, the spirit world is continually trying to make you think wrong thoughts.
They’re trying to make you think wrong thoughts about God, about who you are, yourself and others. They’re also trying to make you constantly think about evil, unholy, and things that are contrary to the truth of God’s word. And they’re fighting against you, offering temptations to commit sins, all these things so that you won’t be filled with the Holy Spirit. Max Anders describes this power that Paul is praying for. He says it’s not the type of power where you say, well, when the going gets tough, the tough get going.
It’s not power that you get from self discipline or just the power of positive thinking. It’s not power that you get from mental renewing or self talk or getting a grip on yourself or turning over a new leaf. It’s a power that is not external. It’s one insight. It is a fundamental work of God from His Spirit to our Spirit.
Paul was praying for the Ephesians and we know that if Paul was praying it for the Ephesians, we can pray it for ourselves and we can pray it for other people in the church that we need to be praying that the Spirit lives in us so that we have true inner power. But not only is it inner power that Paul says that we need, but he also says that we need an indwelling presence. Verse 17 says that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. What we’re talking about here is a true relationship with Jesus. That is a heart relationship.
It’s not just the head knowledge of him, but it’s really loving him and having a relationship with him in your heart. That true relationship begins when we place our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And true faith that leads to salvation isn’t just understanding the facts of the gospel, that Jesus died on the cross, that he was buried and he rose from the dead. It’s not just knowing that up here, but it’s resting in your heart that that’s complete, it’s sufficient. It’s everything that I need for salvation.
Heart acceptance is a full reliance on Christ alone and not one bit of reliance on ourselves, but this word that Christ may dwell in your hearts. The word dwell, it’s talking about a dwelling. It’s a permanent place where you live all the time. It’s not a retreat, it’s not a cabin on the lake, it’s not a hotel, it’s not an Airbnb. It’s the place where you are all the time.
That’s where Christ wants to live with you. In other words, Jesus doesn’t want to live and visit you just on sin Sundays and then leave you when you go away from church. Jesus doesn’t want to be a friend that we only call on the phone when we’re having problems. Jesus is not a friend that we enjoy sometimes, but then when other people come along, we push him off to the side. Jesus wants to dwell in us and with us at all times, continually, intimately, solely.
He wants to dwell in all of us, not just the parts that we want to give to Him. I’ve mentioned a little booklet called My Heart Christ Home in the Past by Robert Munger and He compares our lives to a real house. And he talks about all these rooms in our life where Jesus wants to come and live. He wants to live in your library, in other words, in your mind. He wants to be there and have full authority to look at the magazines you look at your books, to be able to look at what apps are on your computer, on your phone, to see the websites that you visit in your browsers, and to look at whatever you have stored on your computer.
Jesus wants to be with you in your mind and have the freedom to say, look, you need to get rid of these things because you can’t have the power of the Spirit in you when you have things here that go against my word. But not only does he want the library, he also wants your living room, where we find the sources of fellowship and fun in our lives. Our living room is where our friends come to visit us, where we have activities, we, we play games, we watch television shows, and we converse with others. Jesus wants to be in that part of your life all the time. He also wants to be with you in your dining room, in your exercise room.
He wants to guard you so that you take care of yourself because you are the temple of God. He wants to be in your office. I think a lot of people, they’re fine with Jesus being with them at church and they’re okay when he’s at home, but when they go to their, they completely shut off any talk or thought of Jesus Christ in their life. Jesus wants to be with you at your work. And lastly, Munger talks about the fact that people sometimes have closets in their lives where things are locked up that they don’t allow anybody else to have access to.
It could be some evil habit that you have, it could be wrong thoughts that you have about yourself, but it’s something that has you in bondage so strong that you don’t want to show anybody else. And we have the tendency to say, jesus, I can’t give this to you because I want to hold onto it. Jesus wants the key to those closets and the permission to go in and to clean out all those things so that once again you can be completely filled by the Holy Spirit. This all happens when we permit Jesus to take up the full residence by his Spirit in our hearts and not hold back. But it is a choice that we have to make day by day.
The next thing that Paul prays is that they will have an inner understanding. We read in verse 17, I pray that you, being rooted and firmly established in love, may be able to Comprehend with all the saints what is the length and width, the height and depth of God love. And to know Christ’s love that surpasses knowledge so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. What’s the repeated word there? You tell me.
It’s love. God wants us to fully understand, not just mentally, but have this inner understanding of how much he loves us and how great his love is for us. John 3:16 tells us that God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, because he what? He loved the world. When we allow Jesus to reside in every part of our life, we experience his love for every part of us.
Experience his love only on Sundays or only during our devotion times is going to leave us lacking in a full understanding of his love. Imagine a newborn baby if it was only given love on Sundays or even once a day. What’s going to happen to that baby? It’s going to die. It’s not going to grow and be strengthened.
Babies need to experience love. How much? All the time. That’s how God wants you to experience his love. Not just on Sundays, not just during your time of prayer, but all the day.
Jesus wants access to all of you. The Spirit has baptized you. Your position in Christ is secure, but he still wants to fill you every single day. We have to make a choice to allow him there and not to shut him out. But with our human tendencies, thinking back to the house, there are going to be days.
No, I don’t want you in the living room today, Jesus. No, I don’t want you in my office. And we close the door. If we keep doing that, we’re not going to experience the love of Christ completely in our lives. How many of y’ all know of at least one person that appreciates love?
How many people enjoy love? We all do. It’s something that God has put inside of us that we desire to have love from other people. We look for it in many places. Some of those places are good places, but some people look for love in the wrong places.
But the truth is that the love that we really desire, this strong desire that God has put in us, the only love that will satisfy our need completely is the love that God is. And we grow in our understanding of his love as we experience it. That’s how it is with your relationships with people. If you’re with somebody once, yeah, they maybe love me. But if you start spending day by day with them, you marry them, you raise them in your home, that over and over, expanding, growing, maturing, continual relationships helps you to understand how much you love one another.
And it’s the same way with Christ. His dwelling in us, his fellowship with us, his conversation with us, gives us this lasting, growing, loving relationship. And however much great love you experience from people in your life, it’s only a small glimmer of the love that God has to offer for you. The passage tells us here that his love is not short. In other words, it’s long.
We can never reach a point in any direction that his love is not going to be there for us. The passage tells us that his love is not narrow, it’s wide. That means it doesn’t matter whether we deviate off the path, no matter how far, one way or the other, he accepts us at all times. His love is not limited in height. In other words, it reaches to the heavens.
We can’t escape it. We can’t get so far away, we can’t be taken so far away by anyone or anything that we’re outside of God’s love. And his love is not shallow. In other words, it reaches to the depths. No matter how great our need is, God’s love is going to be there and it’s sufficient.
The next thing that Paul tells us is that we need an inner fullness.
Going back to verse 19 and to know Christ’s love that surpasses passes knowledge so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. God wants to give you this inner fullness.
We need his power in us to have this inner fullness. We need his presence in us to have this inner fullness. We need his love in us to have this inner fullness. In essence, we just need God completely and he readily gives that to us. And when we allow him to fill us with Himself, we’re going to be complete in every way.
And just like after having a good meal, you’re going to be completely satisfied when you allow God to fill you completely. God is everything and all that we need. Paul ends the prayer to God’s glory. That’s the real reason to want these four things. And he says in verse 20 now to him who is able to do a big above and beyond all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever.
Amen.
Can God really do this for me? Does God really want to do all this for me? The answer is yes. It says beyond all that we ask, beyond all that we think. You can never pray for God to fill you too much.
Because no matter how much you Ask. There’s more of him that he wants to pour into you his love and his power and his indwelling. But we have to be like Paul here. We have to trust him. And just as Paul is asking God to give these things to the believer, so we need to ask God to give these things to us.
So in closing today, I’m going to offer up five possible prayers. Maybe one of them applies to you, maybe all five. But the first prayer is going to be about having inner power. The second prayer is about asking for God’s inner presence. The third prayer is asking for inner understanding.
The fourth prayer is asking for inner fullness. And the fifth prayer is asking that all of this would be to God’s glory. So I’m going to ask today that you bow your heads, that you listen to me as I read through these prayers. And if this is a prayer that you need to pray, I’m asking you to ask God for these things today. So if you will bow your heads with me, I’ll read the first prayer for inner power.
God, I want to be filled with your spirit today. I want to give him complete control. Show me my sense of commission and omission that I need to confess now. Let me not grieve your spirit. Show me what you want me to do as I walk through my day to be salt and light in the world.
Keep me from saying no to the spirit’s promptings. Let me not quench your spirit. The second prayer is one for inner presence. God, I want to give Jesus the key to every room in my heart. And I want him to continually abide with me, not just at certain times of the week or certain hours of the day.
Third prayer is for inner understanding. God, I want to understand your love more fully, and I want to receive it more completely. The fourth prayer on inner fullness. God, I want you to be so full in my life that when I get bumped and squeezed, you spill out. And when I open my mouth to speak, I want your fullness to come out.
And fifth, to God’s glory. God, let my purpose in my prayer for these things today be to glorify your name that I might live a life that represents your son more fully in this world. Father, as we come now today to the Lord’s Supper, as we come and partake of the bread and the juice, Father, that represent the body and blood of Jesus Christ, we ask that you help us to examine our hearts to make sure that there is no unconfessed sin there that would cause us to become unworthy to your table, Father. And we offer up thanks that Jesus was willing to give his body not just on the cross, but for 33 years he went through the pain and the struggle and the sadness and all the problems that we have so that he could understand us and that we could talk to him freely. And we thank you for the blood that’s represented by the fruit of the vine, Father, That Jesus was willing to shed that on the cross.
And we understand that by shedding that blood, he was the sacrifice for our sins. The need that we had to get rid of the sin in our life came through him. And by his blood we’re covered and we’re cleansed, Father, so that now we don’t have to have a righteousness of our own, but we have a righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ. And we stand in him today. And when you look at us, you don’t see our sinful selves, but you see your son.
Let us examine our hearts now, Father. Let us come with thanksgiving. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. We’re going to have a worship song now.
Please remain seated. You’re welcome to sing with us. But in order to prepare for the Lord’s Supper, you may just want to sit and spend time in prayer to make sure that you’ve confessed any sins and you’ve asked the Lord to show you anything that you need to make right in your heart. Kelly.