Filled with the Fullness of God

This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. To access other sermons or to learn more about us, please visit our website at graceedmonton .ca.

Paul’s Prayer as a Model for Christian Desire

As we look at Ephesians chapter 3 this afternoon, I want to pose an interesting question to you. It's a question that you'll have to suspend disbelief for for a moment. Now, if you were granted the opportunity to pray just one prayer, that would be forever immortalized in the pages of history, what would be that one recorded prayer?

And what I mean by that, to set the stage, is that if a publisher were to come to you and say that we want you to compose one petition to God that would appear online, on every Christian website, that would appear in every English, any dictionary for that matter, as an example of what prayer is, or in study Bibles as a model prayer, what prayer would you pray for the glory of God, and because it's being recorded, the benefit of your readers?

It made me think, would you pray for the advancement of the gospel, for the deliverance of the nations? Would you pray for the end of all wars, the end of all hunger and famine? Or would you hone in your prayers a little bit and pray for the church, or even more honed in, this church, or just one Christian in all the world?

Now, while this might seem like an outlandish idea, there have been a number of saints throughout the history of the church whose prayers have, to some extent, been immortalized in the pages of church history, and you can read those in Christian biographies, you can read those in books on Christian spirituality, and you can read that in the life of at least one reformer, and one reformer I have in mind is the man Martin Luther.

In 1540, Martin Luther had learned that his dear assistant, a man named Friedrich Meikonius, I think a brother Sam in his German could probably correct me on the pronunciation, but Friedrich Meikonius, he learned that he had become ill and was soon expected to die.

And Meikonius' disease was so severe that he didn't have the opportunity to go to his dearest friends and family to bid them goodbye, but instead wrote letters. And he wrote a letter to Martin Luther to let him know that he was on his deathbed and soon to expire.

And when Martin Luther, the reformer, received this letter, he was so saddened, so taken aback by it, that he quickly wrote a response in another letter and sent it back to Meikonius. And he wrote this.

And if you know Martin Luther at all, you know his personality, you know that I can quote him with a smile on my face when we read what it was that he wrote and prayed.

He said,.

I command you in the name of God to live, writing to Meikonius. He said, Because I still have need of you in reforming the churches. The Lord will never let me hear that you are dead, but he will permit you to outlive me.

For this I am praying. And so Martin Luther prayed just that. O Lord, he must live. He must live beyond even me. And adding to this prayer, Luther brazenly wrote this in his letter. He said, and again, this is a Lutheranism if there ever was one.

He said, this is my will. And may my will be done. Because I seek only to glorify the name of God. Now that is certainly an unorthodox prayer. I don't want to hear that at prayer meeting on Thursdays.

Lord, my will be done. And yet, in God's good grace, it was his joy, I suppose, to hear Luther's prayer and to grant his request. And so even though Miconius was as good as dead, he could no longer even speak, after Luther sent this letter and prayed his prayers, Miconius experienced a miraculous recovery.

And before long he was back supporting the work of the Reformation. And he did that for another six years. And interestingly enough, the Lord did not allow Miconius to die until Martin Luther went first.

And it was only two months after Luther died that Miconius then went to be into the joy of his master and was reunited with his friend. Makes me wonder if when he got there he said to Luther, why would you pray that prayer when we have this glory now to dwell in?

Now, if anyone were to have a famous recorded prayer as bold and perhaps as bizarre as that, it would be Martin Luther. But if you were to be put in a similar opportunity, what would be your prayer? This afternoon as we wrap up Ephesians chapter 3, we get to see one of Paul's immortalized prayers, written as if it were in eternal ink in sacred scripture.

And what is Paul praying for as he writes this prayer down that will be preserved for an eternity of eternities? What could be so important that God would preserve it forever? In this text, we find the Apostle Paul praying for the spiritual increase of, and I'm going to use some of the language that I did from a couple of weeks ago, for the spiritual increase of the one new and true people of God.

He has just revealed to them their mysterious new identity as the true Israel of God. As the one people of God that had been grafted into the cultivated olive tree. And now as he prays for them, we discover his apostolic priorities.

The priorities that make for, and if you see the title of our bulletin, this is the title of the sermon, that make for a powerful church that is filled with all the fullness of God. And if someone were to describe our church, wouldn't it be an astounding and a wonderful thing if we were to hear that we could be described that way?

A church that is not only powerful and knowledgeable, but that is filled with all the fullness of God. That is my desire for us and for you. And here Paul shows us how that is. How it is that we can be filled with all the fullness of God.

How it is that we should pray and then not only that, but how we should live and how we should think and then how we should emphasize, what we should emphasize as the chief end of our lives. So with our Bibles open to Ephesians chapter 3 and verse 14, let's look at this together.

Bowing the Knee Before the Father

How is it that we can be filled with all the fullness of God? We'll begin by reading the first two verses. Verse 14, For this reason, Paul writes, I bow my knees before the Father from whom every family in heaven on earth is named.

Paul begins Ephesians chapter 3 and verse 14 by looping back to Ephesians chapter 3 and verse 1. Sometimes I'm guilty of this, that I will begin a sentence and then I pause and I go on a digression and then I go, oh yeah, and by the way, where I was, let's get back to that.

That's exactly what Paul has done here. You see in Ephesians chapter 3 and verse 1, he says, for this reason, I Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles. So Paul is in prison. He has this concern for the Gentiles and then if at least if you have the ESV, there's a dash there and then he goes assuming and he goes on to this digression.

You'll see that in verse 14, he picks back up from verse 1 by saying again, for this reason, I bow my knee. And so what we know is that Paul's prayer here in Ephesians chapter 3 and verse 14 hinges upon what he has just been teaching in Ephesians chapter 2 and specifically Ephesians chapter 2 and verses 11 through 22.

You'll remember that we looked at that two weeks ago, that we are all now Jew and Gentile, one in Christ, that God has no second class citizens. There is no parenthetical church. You'll remember I used that saying last time, but just one true people of God and not just one true people of God, but one true people of God who are the temple of the living God, the dwelling place of God himself, one church and it's upon this foundational truth.

This is the launching pad upon which Paul launches up his rocket, his eruption into prayer. In verse 14, he says that it is for this reason that he bows his knee before the father. Now, when we read that, we immediately know that Paul was speaking about prayer because that's just been baked into us that when one bends the knee, they're bending the knee for prayer.

But in Paul's day, that actually wasn't the case. It wasn't a common thing to speak about bended knee as a reference to prayer. But actually, if you were a first century Jew, it was more common than not, more likely than not, you would pray standing.

And we actually see this in one of our Lord's parables as he speaks about the Pharisees and the tax collectors in Luke chapter 18. You don't have to go there, but in that parable, he speaks about the Pharisee who went into the temple and in his pride and in his self-righteousness, he stood there and prayed.

Now, you might think, well, that makes sense. He's proud, he's arrogant, he's self-righteous. Of course, he's going to stand and pray. But in that same parable, he speaks to the tax collector who went in and what did he go in with but an attitude of repentance and of shame, beating his breast.

And yet, scripture says, our Lord says in that parable that he too stood in the temple. It was just a common practice to stand in prayer in first century Israel. And yet, when Paul speaks to this bended knee, this now speaks to a shifting of gears.

There's a different kind of prayer. This is not an everyday, ordinary prayer. But in fact, there's a significant change in the attitude of the individual who's praying. And we see this pattern throughout scripture.

I'm going to mention chapters and not verse numbers because I don't want us to turn there. I'm just going to reference it. But Ephesians chapter nine, when Ezra the priest confessed the sins of the nation to God in an act of self-humiliation, in an act of self-abasement, he fell to his knees and prayed.

When Paul, you might remember in Acts chapter 20, when he was on the shore in Miletus bidding goodbye, bidding farewell to the Ephesian elders. What were they doing? But they were weeping. They were embracing each other and when it came time to pray, they went to their knees to pray.

Or in Acts chapter seven, when Stephen was stoned and as he cried out for the forgiveness of those who were putting him to death, what did he do? But he went to his knees to pray. Why was that? Because while standing was the normal prayer posture, to go to one's knees communicated a special fervency in one's prayers.

It was to come to God with an urgent prayer, with a humble prayer, with an earnest prayer. And so 2 ,000 years after this prayer was recorded for us, we can still hear Paul's tone of voice. It is an urgent prayer offered in a spirit of reverence to a holy God.

And as is often the case, Paul is praying not for himself, but for someone else. And so here we find Paul in fervent prayer. What could he be praying? And Paul uses an expression that we might not expect in verse 15, from whom every family in heaven on earth is named.

Now what does that mean? Some liberal theologians have used this to teach a doctrine of what they call the universal fatherhood of God, meaning that God is the father of believer and of unbeliever alike.

And they've said that, see, God is the father of everyone. But we know from places like 1 John that that just is not the case, that there are actually two fathers in the world. There are those who are children to the father, the devil, and those who are children to the father, God himself.

This is not what Paul was after, but rather what this is is a reference to people from every generation and every nationality and every language who now find themselves in the one family of God through Christ with God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as their father.

And we see this because it is the father who names them, that act of naming. If we see it, for instance, in Genesis 2, when Adam named all of the creatures in the garden at creation, it is an act of royalty and of fatherliness.

And what God is doing here is we see one new creation out of the old that God himself has named one family of God, and that family is the church. And Paul prays for this family in verse 16, that according to the riches of his glory, he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.

Strengthened with Power in the Inner Being

Now we're going to look at the subject matter of Paul's prayers. And the first thing we see him praying for is that the church, this church family of God would be strengthened with power. Already at length, we've heard Paul preach on the immeasurable riches of God.

And I know at least as a preacher that you can begin to feel shy when you repeat something too many times. Not only do I feel it, but then my wife will say, you know, you said that thing three or four times in the same sermon.

You don't need to repeat yourself that many times. It's always an encouragement, by the way, I should note. But here, Paul, he repeats the same thing twice in chapter one, the immeasurable riches of God.

And in Ephesians chapter two, he repeats it again two times. And now this is the second time that it's mentioned in Ephesians chapter three. And this is why Ephesians has been called by some, you'll remember this from our very first sermon, the believer's bank account.

Because in it we find all the riches of God that lie at our disposal, at the disposal of the believer. God wants us, through Paul, to be continually aware of the inexhaustible wealth of God's power that is available to every Christian at every hour.

And looking to the storehouse of God's riches, Paul prays that the whole church, he says in verse 16, you, that is a plural you, all of you, in the southern US,.

All y 'all,.

That the whole church would be strengthened with power through God's spirit in the inner being. Paul's desire for the Ephesian church and the whole of God's family across all generations is that our Christian lives would be characterized not by a mere external tidiness.

You know that? I think that sometimes as Christians we suffice, we're satisfied, we're happy when we say, well, my life is neat and tidy, at least on the outside. At least what people see looks orderly.

But Paul wants more than orderliness. Not less than orderliness, but more than. Not that we would just be clean and proper in our conduct, but that we would be characterized by the power of the Holy Spirit in the inner man.

Not an external resilience. Not a fake it till you make it kind of Christianity. But Paul is on his knees that the whole church would be marked by an otherworldly strength and supernatural power that is granted through the Holy Spirit alone in the inner man.

And brethren, it is God's will that we would possess that true spirit-enabled power in our lives. Power that is altogether unknown by unbelievers in the world around us and yet power that is more real than anything that we can see or touch in this room.

More real than this pulpit. Power from God. Power for godly living. And power for godly speech. Where do we need God's power? Power to resist temptation, to preach the gospel effectually, to love and lead our families, to act in a wise and prudent manner in a foolish generation.

Power to read our Bibles profitably. To pray consistently. Power to expect great things from God and to do great things for God. Power to make much of Christ in the world. Paul wants us, through his prayers, on bended knee, to have power.

Now, this phraseology is not at all common in our sometimes stuffy Reformed circles. Maybe some of you are nervous that I'm speaking so much about having the power of the Holy Spirit. But in this prayer that we will read and that we'll be remembered for all of eternity and that if Christ should tarry, He will outlive all of us.

The very first thing that Paul prays for in light of who we now are in Christ and of the riches of God's glory is that we would be filled with God's power. And I ask you, Christian, is this your daily experience?

Would you say, absolutely, yes, my inner life could best be described with this one word, power. Or with two words, God's power. Or would you say that your existence is more readily defined by the word impotence?

Not power, but of weakness and of struggle and of succumbing to temptations and of sadness and of neglect of the good and important things of the Christian life. Or are you somewhere in between? As I was thinking on this, I thought this, this is not just me trying to find a fallen condition focus in the text that will help people to go, oh, this is relevant for me.

But this is real. Have you ever thought that perhaps many who are in the visible church today live like people that Paul warned Timothy about in 2 Timothy 3, verse 5, where he wrote that those people have, in his words, the appearance of godliness but deny its power.

And he says to Timothy, avoid such people. What has become of the church's power in this world today? And why is it that many of us act as if we were meant to live this Christian life by the arm of the flesh only?

Perhaps it is because we have altogether lost sight of this great truth that Paul has been trying to hammer into our minds in all three of these chapters of Ephesians now and is now praying that we would fully grasp.

We rejoice that we were saved by God's sovereign power in Ephesians chapter 1 and 2. That not by our choice but by his divine election brought about through his perfect power. We rejoiced in that power.

We rejoiced in the unity of the one body by God's reconciling power in Ephesians chapter 2 and 3. That God had the power to break down the dividing wall of hostility and make the two, Jew and Gentile, one in Christ.

But having admired that power from afar, are we now meant to live every day in our own power? I think Ephesians chapter 3 all the way through chapter 6 shows us a life that is lived every day by God's power through the indwelt spirit of God.

And John MacArthur tells a story I think that parallels the Christian experience that many have today in our world. He tells the story of a man named Julian Ellis Morris who was an English eccentric. He was a very, very wealthy man.

And yet, during the day, and it's interesting there are so many stories like this that I can keep leaning on. Perhaps we have a propensity to this type of behavior. But yet, being a very wealthy man, first thing in the morning, he would wake up, he would get dressed into his tattered clothes, the clothes that you'd expect a poor drifter to wear.

He would head out with his bag of goods and he would sell razor blades and shampoo and soap door to door. Just going to every common house as a door to door salesman. But his customers would have been shocked that when the work day was done, he would go back home to a mansion amongst the elite of England.

He would put on his proper attire and then his chauffeur would drive him in his limousine to one of the local restaurants in his city. And if that wasn't enough, on days when he wanted to switch it up, he would jump on a plane and fly to Paris, land in Paris, have an elegant meal, an elegant French meal, and upon finishing up, get back in his plane, fly home in time to go to bed so he could sell his razor blades the next day.

And MacArthur says, many Christians live something like Mr. Morris. Spending their day by day lives in apparent spiritual poverty and only occasionally enjoying the vast riches of God's glory. Many of us spend our days in apparent spiritual weakness when we have God's immeasurable power available to us at every moment.

And brethren, this is not a hyper charismatic stew that I'm trying to feed you. This is biblical Christianity. But many of us have missed this and we've been much poorer for it. In the Old Testament, we read about the Old Testament saints in Psalm chapter 68 and verse 35, where the psalmist says, awesome is God from his sanctuary, the God of Israel.

He is the one who gives power and strength to his people. Blessed be God. He gives strength and power to who? To his people. Or in the New Testament, the Apostle Paul, speaking about all of his labors.

He says, for this I toil, struggling. He uses the Greek word kapio. It means to sweat profusely. Paul is working hard. And yet he's struggling with all his energy that he, God, powerfully works within me.

Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 4 and verse 19 that power is the defining feature of God's kingdom in the lives of men. He says, but I will come to you soon if the Lord wills. And I will find not only the talk of these arrogant people, but their power for the kingdom of God does not consist in talk, but what?

In power. So brethren, how then do we avail ourselves of this power? I think first we need to recognize this is the power of God. It cannot be as some have tried to buy it, to acquire it through human means.

But it must come by God and by God alone. I love pointing this out whenever we get the chance to see it. But if you look at verse 14, you see that we see reference to the Father. And then in verse 16, we see reference to the Holy Spirit.

And in verse 17, we see reference to the Christ, the Son of God, a picture of the Trinity. I think that what Paul is getting at as he speaks about this power coming through the Spirit so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith is that Paul is saying that this power is available only to those who have placed their faith in Jesus Christ, have been adopted by the Father, and are filled with the Holy Spirit.

And with the Spirit of Christ in us, Christ is seated on the thrones of our hearts as it were. See, when Paul says in verse 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that word dwell, he could have chosen one of two different words that were most appropriately within his reach.

He could have used.

One Greek word, paroikos, that denotes the inhabiting of a place by a stranger. Think a hotel room. It would be like, we went and stayed in Banff for the weekend. You didn't move to Banff. You were there for a day or two, and then you came home.

Paul could have used a term like that for dwell. That Christ could dwell in our hearts as a stranger,.

As it were.

Or option number two, he could have used the Greek word.

Katokeo,.

Which means to settle down somewhere, to make a permanent residence, to move in, to do what my wife is doing with our home, to make it her own. And she says, this is going to be our retirement villa. Which word do you think Paul would choose?

Well, he chose katokeo. Katokeo, excuse me. The one who knows God's powers. The one who does not treat Christ as an indwelling stranger, but as the permanent owner of that dwelling. You want to have the power of God.

We need to have Christ seated on the thrones of our hearts. And hearts in Paul's day, when we think of hearts, you hear that expression, to invite Jesus into your heart. We think of that as Christ coming and sitting on the seat of our emotions.

That Christ is in the happy place.

Of our hearts.

That's not what Paul was getting at here, but the heart was the control center of the life. And so what Paul means is that to have Christ dwell in our hearts through faith is to have Christ in his rightful place in our hearts.

On his throne. One scholar writes that the word selected conveys that the heart becomes the residence of its master and lord. Where he dwells. Where he must rule. Where he enters, not to cheer and to soothe alone, but before all things else.

To reign.

Paul confirms this. We see it in Galatians 2 .20 when he says, I have been crucified with Christ. And it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. Here we see this Christ dwelling in the heart of Paul.

And what does that mean? And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. To have Christ dwelling in our hearts is to live for Christ. It is to say, I am dead.

And the life I now live, I live in Christ. And so is it biblical to tell people that we should invite Jesus into our hearts. I think because of the context and the way people understand that, absolutely not.

But if you're going to tell people that they must yield their all to Jesus Christ as king of their hearts, then I suppose then we're heading in the right direction. And with our hearts yielded to Christ as king like Paul, we should pray for a greater and greater infilling of that spirit.

Hodge asks a question, if someone were to ask, or answers a question I should say, if someone were to ask, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, why would Paul pray that Christ would dwell in our hearts?

Is Christ not already in our hearts? And Charles Hodge says, the indwelling of Christ is a thing of degrees. That we can be more or less submitted to Christ's lordship in that hard attitude. And therefore we must submit.

To Him.

And ask of Him. Just as Paul is. Oh Lord that you would fill me more with Christ. Oh that Christ would have His rightful place on the throne of my heart that I might have power. But there are more dimensions than just this and Paul's prayer.

He prays that this new church family would be starting in verse 17b the second half of verse 17 rooted in Christ's love. He says, halfway through verse 17, that you being rooted and grounded in love may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Rooted and Grounded in Love

What does it mean to be rooted in Christ's love? As Paul continues his prayer he turns to this topic now of love unto God and the love of Christ for the believer. And at the forefront he relies on two metaphors to speak of the love of the church of being rooted in and of being grounded or founded.

Picture the foundation of a building founded in love. So he speaks in agricultural and then in structural terms. And I like what John Stott says in this. He says, love is to be the soil in which the Christian life is rooted.

Love is to be the foundation on which our life is built. And just as we speak about our own heart attitudes our own love emanating from us to God and to the world. Are you rooted in love? Would you say?

Does your whole life grow as an offshoot of the soil of love in your heart? If I can put it that way. Is the foundation of your life built on Christ? Yes, on his word, yes. And on love, grounded in love.

Love is the very identity of the Christian. I don't think I need to repeat that too many times. But in John chapter 13 in verse 35 as our Lord is speaking about the very nature of his disciples. He says, by this all people will know that you are my disciples.

By your love for one another. In John chapter 1 John chapter 4 in verse 7 the Apostle John says, beloved let us love one another for love is from God. And whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.

Anyone who does not love does not know God because God is love. Now remember meeting a brother, I trust he was a brother a very sincere man who said he did not like it whenever anyone said if this, this, this and this describes your life then you have good reason to doubt that you are not a believer.

He detested that. And immediately my mind went to 1 John in all the areas in which John would seek to bolster our confidence in our confession, in our calling, in our standing with Christ by giving us these tests.

And what John is doing is this. Brethren, if you have placed your faith in Christ and you.

Love.

Then you're headed in the right direction. But if you look at your life and go I don't see any evidence at all of love. I don't see any rootedness in love, any groundedness in love, that John is saying anyone who does not love does not know God.

So Paul wants us to see that love is the very essence of the Christian's attitude toward God in the.

World.

And yet I think, again if I can pick on our stuffy reformed camp for a bit, that we emphasize so much on knowledge that love at times takes a back seat.

We need.

Knowledge to inform our love. But we don't need more knowledge at the cost of love, if that makes sense. Otherwise we are, in Paul's words, a noisy gong and a clanging cymbal. I once heard our brother Paul Washer speak about this.

How we can go for weeks without thinking of the great commandment to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and to love your neighbor as yourself. And he said, how would it change your life if you were reminded of that once, twice, three, four times a day that you would wake up in the morning and say the Lord has created me to glorify him and the chief way to do that is to love him and to love.

My neighbor. We don't think.

I think in those contexts. I think sometimes we get distracted with the thought that we need to achieve political control over the nations.

Or that.

We need to win the culture wars or some other marginal pursuit. But what is the great commandment that God has given us? But to love him. To love him with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength. Many of you need that reminder.

To know him, yes. To read about him, yes. To pray to him, yes. To worship him, yes. And to love.

Him. And then.

To love one another. And I asked you about the presence of power in your life. I'm going to ask you about the presence of love in your life. Is love for God and love for neighbor the controlling ethic of your life?

So that at every occasion you are looking for opportunities to love God more and to love neighbor better. Or is this the furthest thing from your mind? I think what Paul wants us to do here is to be sensitive as being rooted and grounded in love, to be sensitive to the needs of others.

Almost like his prayer life. I mentioned this at the onset. That when we study Paul's prayers, do you realize how many times we find Paul praying for Paul? Almost.

Never.

And when he does, it's almost always for the benefit of others. And a good example is this, that when Paul wrote in his letters to pray for him, what was he praying for? That I may preach the gospel clearly and boldly as I ought to speak.

Pray for me, for open doors of effective ministry, for who? For the welfare of others. We must be sensitive, like Paul, in his desire to pray for the people around him. We must be sensitive to the needs around us that we might manifest.

Christian love, maybe that we.

Might practice. I like that word better. Practice Christian love in any and every circumstance. And so for some of us, brothers and sisters, the way that we are going to love our neighbors well this week is by being made a fool for Christ's sake.

By sharing the gospel with those who will take great joy in pouring scorn and ridicule upon us. But because we love their souls, we share the gospel.

With them. For others,.

It will be loving the lives of the unborn, the preborn, whether it is standing outside an abortion mill, appealing to mothers who are going to take the lives of their children, appealing to elected representatives, fostering or adopting children who would otherwise be put to death.

And some of you might think that is an extreme idea, but I know that some of you know this, that I had an invitation once. It was a sweet occasion to preach at the baby shower of a child who was spared from abortion outside the Morgenthaler Clinic here in Edmonton.

I'm not going to call it the Morgenthaler Clinic. The Morgenthaler Mill. It's an abortion mill. And sisters there faithfully stood with their signs appealing to the mothers, do not take the lives of your children.