A Prayer for Those Who Have Everything

Church, please pray with me. Oh Lord, we are so thankful.

I'm so thankful to stand in the midst of your inheritance.

You've said that, that your inheritance, your glorious

inheritance is found in the Saints.

It's found in this local church where your authority has been

given. Your truth is preserved.

Your truth is preached. And what a privilege it is to

see coming out in time all of the plans that you foreordained

from all eternity that this is your church.

And as a one of the pastors here, Lord, I'm so thankful to

see their faith increasing in you, their, their knowledge

increasing, their love for one another increasing to see all of

the fruit of all the good works that you've prepared for them an

eternity past. That they would go into these

crisis women's shelters and they would be in the prisons and they

would be with your orphans and your widows and that they would

be out with the homeless. Lord, and to hear the reports of

all that's happening. God, there's nothing to do but

to to give thanks. We're so incredibly grateful

that you've not left us alone in this world, but you've given us

a body and you've given us a family.

You've allowed us through adoption to be participants in

the divine life, God. And what a privilege it is to

stand here. Lord, we say, look, look where

we're standing. God, we're so grateful.

We ask all this in Jesus name, whose son we pray and in him we

thank and praise. Amen. 1st Corinthians 1415, also

written by the apostle Paul. Paul reasons out loud and he

sees reasoning. He says if I pray in a tongue,

he says my, my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful.

So he's working out what, what am I to do?

And he's this. He says, if I pray with my

spirit, I will also pray with my mind.

I will pray with my spirit, but I will pray with my mind also.

There's a famous Puritan, you've heard of him, John Bunyan.

He wrote Pilgrim's Progress, one of the greatest Christian works

to ever come to us. That's where we get Little

Pilgrim's Progress, which was a lot of our, as parents, a lot of

our favorite books. He wrote another work whose

title is First Corinthians 1415. He calls it I Will Pray with the

Spirit and with the understanding, also a discourse

touching prayer. And it's extremely short.

You could read it in an hour. And what he's, what he's trying

to get in this is in the short pamphlet, he says, I want you to

know what it means to pray, what is true prayer.

And then he says, and I want you to know in this systematic

ordered list, what does it mean to pray with your spirit and

with your mind? What does it mean to pray with

your spirit and with your understanding?

And he asked the question that everyone of you ought to be able

to answer quickly and thoroughly.

It's what is prayer or to ask it the way he asks it, what is true

prayer? And we often know prayer more by

what it's not than what it is. You know, prayers not a, a

magical formula where we get God to do the things that we want

him to do. That's what it was in Ephesus.

That's not what it is for us. It's not bargaining with God to

get him to do something and we'll do something else.

It's not informing him of something that he doesn't know.

It's not a performance. It's not vain repetition like it

was to the 1st century Jews or even the Catholics today.

It's not self-centered. If it's not these things, then

to ask his question again, what is true prayer?

And Bunyan answers it this way. Prayer is a sincere, sensible

and affectionate pouring out of the heart or soul to God through

Christ and the strength and assistance of the Holy Spirit

for such things as God has promised or according to the

Word, for the good of the church, with submission and

faith to the will of God. You all get it by the end of

this. I hope you will.

I want you to see this prayer of Bunyan.

We're going to say it over and over again.

He's going to lead us through Ephesians 115 to 18.

The progress of Ephesians 115 to 18 follows this prayer.

It teaches us what true prayer is.

And I hope this prayer will guide you so that you understand

our passage. And I hope by the end of it, as

we take these, these line by line, you will have a working

definition of prayer. You can internalize this.

You can take this, you can commit it to your memory.

We'll go through a line at a time.

First, we say prayer is a sincere, sensible, affectionate

pouring out of the heart or soul to God through Christ, and we're

going to see. Second, it's in the strength and

the assistance of the Holy Spirit. 3rd, it's for the things

that God has promised us or according to his Word. 4th, it's

for the good of the church. And 5th, it's with submission

and faith to the will of God. And we'll take it in those

chunks. But let's read our passage today

in Ephesians one beginning in verse 15.

Read with me, He says, for this reason, because I have heard of

your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and your love toward all

the Saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you.

And Paul is connecting theology to prayer in verse 15 when he

says for this reason, for this reason is is not pointing

forward. It's pointing back to all the

Trinitarian theology that you've just heard.

They didn't just come to faith. This began in the mind of God

the Father when he predestined the Saints for adoptions that

they might be his people and he would be their God.

And they were purchased in time by the eternal Son of God

through his death on the cross. He says I bought you, I redeemed

you and his Holy Spirit sealed them.

And it's in all of this fulfilled prophecy as the

prophet Joel said, as Ezekiel said, as Isaiah and Jeremiah

said, it's coming to pass. I'm, I'm hearing about it in

jail, the eternal workings of, of God in time, his promises

coming true, All these fireworks are going off.

And it, they, it was a gift of God.

It was in love that he first loved them and now they're

loving one another. And it's, it's an incredible

thing. And he says their faith and

their love are the living proof that God's decrees are true.

And he's hearing about their public reputation of their faith

and their fellowship. And he's hearing about it in

these little humble churches that he's planted.

And there's another firework that's going off in his mind.

He says, I see the, the horizontal or the vertical

dimensions and the horizontal dimensions.

He says, I see that you're, you have a love for God the Father

and that your faith in God the Father is increasing.

And he says because of that, you love your, the Lord, your God

with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your

mind, with all your strength. He says, and I hear that you

love your neighbor as well. Evidence of their regeneration.

This is what they were known for.

He says I heard, remember in Thessalonians.

He says I heard of it like the roar of a stadium, like you can

hear it from miles away. I heard it on Friday as I was

running around airport track. Everyone seemed to be having a

really good time at Shawnee High School in the football games.

Like man, I should be there. He says I heard about your faith

like that. He says it the same with these

Ephesians. I hear about it all the way here

under house arrest. I hear about your faith.

And he says it's faith. Verse 15, in All the Saints, not

just Jews, not just Gentiles, not just the rich, not just the

people that were like them, he says your love for all, for one

another. He says it's a city that's known

for diversity and the Spirit has bought unity through the

submission to Jesus Christ. And so remembering all of that

context, I go back to highlight Bunyan's definition of prayer.

He says that prayer is first sensible, which to him would

have meant guided by understanding and perceptive and

spiritually aware. And so when you see all of this

context, you read verses 3 to 14, you realize just how

perceptive and theological and spiritually aware the apostle

Paul was. His prayer, if anything, is

sensible, and he's praying here with his spirit and with his

mind. And you move on.

It says Paul's prayer is first affectionate, and you can see

that if you go again back to the book of Acts.

If you remember the goodbye that Paul had with the Ephesian

elders back in Acts 20, verse 36, he's leaving the church and

Acts 20:36

Luke records there was much weeping on the part of all.

They embraced Paul and kissed him, being sorrowful most of all

because they would never see his face again.

And so that's the kind of love that happened between the pastor

and his congregation. You can feel it dripping out of

the pages of Ephesians and you can feel it coming out of the

prayer. It's affectionate and it's

pastoral warmth. And he says also that his prayer

is sincere. And we say that he doesn't have

to write this letter again. There wasn't anything he was

correcting. There's no bad theology.

There's no he's writing to them because he's their pastor and he

loves them. He's he's writing them to to

encourage them. And he hears that they're still

believing and they're standing strong in the faith.

And so he writes in verse 16. I do not cease to give thanks

for you. Very helpful in a sermon on the

1st week of the month is to understand the word is

Eucharisto. I give thanks.

And that's an alternative name for our Lord's Supper.

We call it the Eucharist, which is this Greek word.

It means I give thanks. And there's a scholar named

Ledogre. He did a careful word of the

word, a careful study of the word Eucharisto to say what does

it mean in the 1st century? What did it mean to them?

And he said it means simply to thank, to give thanks or to

return thanks. And he says, quote, it always

signifies the outward expression in Word or deed of the interior

sentiment of gratitude for a favour received.

And so you see the internal affection and sincerity of the

Apostle Paul with his the the use of his mind, you feel the

heart with the affection and sincerity.

You see the mind and the sensibility.

And he puts all of these together with all of this rich

theology that's going around in his head.

And it out pours into this one glorious prayer for all the

Saints and we see that with Paul, all his prayers are done.

Verse 3, verse 17 to God the Father through Jesus Christ.

Jesus says we've been given access to the the Father through

the son. We pray John 15 through the son

so that our prayers may be complete.

All of this happening in our prayer before our eyes.

The the second point I want to bring you is is as Bunyan's

sentence increases and continues.

He says we do all of our praying in the strength and assistance

of the Holy Spirit. We do it by the power of the

Holy Spirit. Read verse 17 with me.

We're coming out of the introduction now into this, the

prayer itself. He says that the God of our Lord

Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit

of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him.

And so verses 15 to 16 are kind of introducing the prayer.

He's teeing it up. When you come to verse 17, he

says this is the heart of the matter.

He really only has one thing he's praying for and you see it

in, in this verse, all of verses 15 to 22 for a prayer for one

thing. This is Paul's prayer for his

church, for these churches. It's the prayer for our church.

He says, I'm praying for spiritual deepening.

I want you to know God better. I want you to experientially

know God more intellectually, experientially spiritual

deepening. And he's going to elaborate in

verses 18 and on. I want you to know God better.

He's going to say, really? So you can know three things #1

the hope of your calling, it says #2 the glorious inheritance

of God in the Saints. And then third, the immeasurable

greatness of his power. So three things He wants you to

know, the hope of your calling, God's inheritance in his church,

and the immeasurable greatness of his power, which will be

that. That point alone will be the

subject of next week's sermon as we continue through this.

But but how do we come to know these things?

How do you know God more? Paul 17 verse 17 Paul prays that

the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory may

give you the spirit of wisdom and the spirit of revelation.

You know, through the strength and the assistance of God's Holy

Spirit. That's how you come to know God

more. And this is significant because

they already have the Holy Spirit.

And so this means Paul's not praying for them to receive the

Spirit for the first time, but he's praying for special

manifestations of the Holy Spirit.

So we pray that we would be filled with the Spirit.

We've been filled with the Spirit once when we were

baptized with the Spirit. But now we pray, Lord, fill us

with your spirit. It's something that only he can

do. It's a passive commandment.

And Ephesians be being filled with the Spirit.

So we're praying for special manifestations of the Spirit

that he might search the deep things of God and make them

known to us. And nearly every scholar that I

read this week has said the spirit of revelation here in

this passage is capital S spirit.

You're in ASB will have it as a lowercase S, but they argue it's

it's capital S, it's the Holy Spirit.

And those that's that argue that this is a capital S spirit are

arguing that he's teaching essentially the same thing that

we already read in First Corinthians 2IN verses 10 to 16.

It says the Spirit searches the deep things of God and makes

them known to you. Hear this again.

Now he says, Quote these things God has revealed to us through

the Spirit. For the Spirit searches

everything, even the depths of God.

For who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of

that person which is in him? So also no one comprehends the

thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.

Now we have received not the Spirit of the world, but the

Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things

freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not

taught by human wisdom, but taught by the Spirit,

interpreting spiritual truth to those who are spiritual.

So Paul's praying a very deep and bold prayer to these local

congregations. He's praying that they would

give, that God would give the Holy Spirit's insight and

disclosure in the sphere or area of the knowledge of God himself.

He's praying to God saying, deepen our understanding of you,

teach us to know you. And he prays in the power of the

Holy Spirit for the power of the Holy Spirit in the lives of the

Ephesians Saints so that they can know God more and more

deeply. Third Point, as we continue

down, what are we to pray for? How are we to pray?

What is true prayer? We pray for such things as God

has promised or according to his word.

If you look at verse 18, Paul says we've been given very great

and precious promises and he calls him in verse 18, riches.

You have been given riches. And the word is plutos.

It translates abundance or riches or wealth.

You've been given wealth. I want to give you a much

shorter definition of prayer that you can remember alongside

John Bunyan's, and you're going to remember this a lot easier.

There's another famous theologian in church history.

His name is John Calvin. He says this is his description

of prayer. Prayer is digging up treasure.

Prayer is digging up treasure, he says in his book, Book 3,

Chapter 20 of the Institute's. It is thereby the benefit of

prayer that we reach those riches which are laid up for us

with the Heavenly Father, for we dig up the treasures that were

pointed out by the Lord's gospel in which our faith has gazed

upon. That's so beautiful.

I'm going to read it again. It's therefore by the benefit of

prayer that we reach those riches which are laid up for us

with the heavenly Father, for we dig up the treasures that were

pointed out by the Lord's gospel of which our faith has gazed

upon. So what Paul's doing is Paul's

praying to a congregation or to congregations of of churches

that he says have received every spiritual blessing in the

heavenly places. You have received everything in

Christ. You are rich, you are wealthy,

you have an overabundance. And now he prays that they may

have more. And we say, is this selfish that

to those who have everything, he would pray that we would abound

still more and more. And we say, is it selfish or is

this the very will of God for his church?

You go to Jeremiah 923 to 24 a verse I hope you all will

memorize. It's been incredible.

One of the most foundational verses for me and my life and my

ministry. He goes through and he says all

the things we're not allowed to boast in, and then one thing we

get to boast. And he says we can't.

We can't boast in riches. Let not the rich man glory in

his riches. Let not the wise man glory in

his wisdom. Let not the strongman glory in

his strength, or boast in his strength.

But let him who boast, boast in this that he understands and

knows me. For I am the Lord, exercising

loving kindness, righteousness, and justice in the earth.

For in these things I delight, says the Lord, we boast.

The one thing we're given to boast in is that we know God

deeply. Hosea 6/6 He says I desire

knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.

So he's telling the church rather than all your external

rituals, rather than than giving all of your money or rather than

doing all the external things and washing the feet of orphans.

He said I want you to know me because doctrine is morally

transformative. That will come.

You need to know me, Paul. To the Philippians, I count

everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing

Christ Jesus my Lord, that I may know the power of His

resurrection. Colossians 19 to 10.

Another prayer. We have not ceased to pray for

you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of His

will and all spiritual wisdom and understanding increasing in

the knowledge of God. So, so to Calvin, prayer was was

digging up treasure. The promises of God are are

objectively true, but he says this is you've been given these

things, but you bring them down. You pray them down in your

conversations with God, you pray down his benefits.

You pray according to the blessings that he's promised you

in Christ. And John Bunyan said the same.

He says you have to pray for such things as God has promised

or according to his word. You don't get to pray for just

anything and everything you want.

You pray according to his promises.

You pray consistent with his word, and we pray those things

that God has promised us. Paul says we are to know God,

and we were promised that we might know him.

And so Paul's praying to uncover the treasure for this church,

which brings another amazing reality.

Paul's not praying for his own treasure.

This is intercessory prayer. So he's not digging up his own

treasures. He's praying on behalf of local

churches, digging up their treasure for them.

And so you can search your own heart and say, what?

What am I praying for when I pray?

Is it for the good of the church, or is it for the good of

me, myself and I? And are you digging up treasures

for others? Are you praying consistent with

the promises of God, or are you praying for whatever your heart

desires? Paul's digging up treasure on

behalf of his network of local churches.

And there's one treasure that Paul is interested in above all,

one promise that he's trying to bring down.

He says, I want you to know God more.

I want you to be deepened spiritually to know God better.

Spurgeon says in all of this, in this knowledge of of God and his

immensity, He says there's a bomb for every wound, there's

quiet us for every grief, there's treatment for every sore

that he says as application. Therefore go and plunge yourself

in the Godheads deepest sea, get lost in his immensity and you

will come forth as from a bed of rest, refreshed and

reinvigorated. I know nothing which can so

comfort the soul, so calm the swelling billows of sorrow and

grief. So speak peace to the wind of

trial as a devout musing upon the subject of God.

So prayer is for such things as God has promised or according to

his word. And fourthly, he says your

prayers must be for the good of the church.

You pray for the good of the church.

And we've already seen him praying in verse 17.

We've already seen this. He's praying for their for their

knowledge and their deepening of the wisdom of God.

And you look to verse 18. You can read it with me.

He says, I pray that you all that you is plural, that you all

may know. What is the hope to which he has

called you? What are the riches of his

glorious inheritance in the Saints?

And again, we're going to we're going to look at this more

deeply next week. What are the three things he

wants them to know? The hope of your calling, the

riches of his glorious inheritance and the immeasurable

greatness of his powers. There's a commentator named

Folks who writes in his commentary on Ephesians.

He says it's an amazing thought. The fellowship of Christians is

the sphere in which the inheritance of God is found.

You all are sitting among God's inheritance right now, he says,

just as it is also true that it is in and through his church

that the truth of God's purpose becomes known and declared.

It's at that point we stop and we say what an amazing assembly

this is. This is where God has put his

authority in this world. He's put it in this local body,

in all of his local bodies. This is where we guard truth.

This is where we preserve and proclaim truth.

This is where God's inheritance is found.

And so when he prays that we would know the hope of Our

Calling, he's saying, I if, if you would know the hope of your

calling, you would know that your inheritance is secure and

it would be fueled for you to weather any storm in this life

because you know your inheritance is coming.

It's been promised by his Holy Spirit.

And by knowing the riches of God's glorious inheritance, he's

saying that you have value regardless how much you value

yourself, which I think if you ask most of us, we don't value

ourselves a whole lot. But you say in God's eyes, you

are his inheritance, you are his riches, and you go back.

This has been the teaching from the very beginning.

You go all the way back to Moses.

He's saying I will be their people, they will be my people

and I will be their God over and over.

This is the point of creation. We were supposed to be his

people. He's supposed to be our God.

And through Christ, these promises and this plan is coming

back. It comes in and Deuteronomy 10/9

where it says that the Levites, so you remember, they didn't get

land, they didn't get a special inheritance.

And why? Because God was their

inheritance, he says I'm a better inheritance to them than

anything they can get in this world.

And you come to Deuteronomy 32, nine, it says the Lord's

portion, the Lord's inheritance is his people.

Jacob is his allotted inheritance.

And so Jesus has bought, purchased, redeemed the church

that we might be. We, we have immeasurable value

in the eyes of God. We are his inheritance and he is

ours. We are his people.

He is our God. And Paul, what he's doing in

verse 18 with these words, as he's focusing them on their new

identity in Jesus Christ, it's his glorious inheritance in the

Saints, and he's orienting them. He's focusing them on their new

identity and he's orienting them toward their future hope and

their inheritance. And you'll see that all of his

prayers, like Jesus before him, all of his prayers are for the

good of the church. Everything is oriented toward

the Saints, and Jesus said the same.

You go back to his high priestly prayer in John 17.

Jesus prayed for the church. He prayed for its unity, it's

perseverance, it's holiness, it's glory.

Paul's modeling his prayers on Jesus.

We're modeling our prayers on Jesus and the apostle Paul.

And finally, to complete our definition of prayer, we pray

fifthly with submission and faith to the will of God.

And so we above all people in redemptive history of all

people, we are to be those who submit to the will of God,

because this is this is the things angels long to look at

verse 9 Paul said that the insight that God has for all

eternity been planning to make fully known to his Saints.

He has made known in time according to his purposes, which

he set forth in Christ. At the end of our passage in

verse 18, he says, the eyes of your heart have already been

enlightened. It's it's, it's already

happened. Your eyes have been opened.

You've been enlightened to spiritual truth.

The mystery of God from all time has been revealed to you.

And now the responsibility for you is to submit in faith to

that will. And this is what it means when

we call him Lord. I begin every prayer with the

word Lord, and that's it's submitting at the beginning

saying not my will Lord, but your I submit your will.

I submit to you in faith. You are my Lord.

I bow the knee to you and you look back to verse 17 again, you

see a dependence on and a submission to God the Father.

Paul's praying demonstrates that when he prays that he may impart

wisdom. So Paul is praying to God for

things that only God can do. When we pray for spiritual

deepening, we're praying to God for something that we could

never do on our own. When we pray for spiritual

Deeping, when we pray for conversion, saying Lord change

their heart, that's something that only He can do.

Jeremiah said it this way. Can the Ethiopian change his

skin? Can the leopard change his

spots? Neither can you do good who are

accustomed to doing evil. Only God can make You Beautiful

and moral and righteous and good.

Only God can impart wisdom. Verse 18 and he's done it.

You have had the eyes of your heart enlightened.

Your heart of stone has been taken away and you've been given

a heart of flesh. Your soul has been flooded with

light. When you pray to God, do you

pray to him to do things that only he can do?

Is there a submission to him? Is there a deference to him?

We say that the eyes of your heart are enlightened.

There's, there's literally been a, an enlightenment in your

soul. The the light has been shown in.

And what's the opposite of being enlightened?

It's what you were before. It's where the world stands now.

They don't have morally transforming doctrine.

They're they're deaf, they're in ignorance, they're in sin,

they're in darkness, they're in despair.

Ephesians 5/8 For at one time you were darkness, but now you

are light, and the Lord walk therefore as children of light.

Matthew 1315 For this people's hearts have grown dull, with

their ears they can barely hear, and their eyes they have closed.

Romans 121 They have become futile, and their thinking and

their foolish hearts were darkened.

But Church, not so with you. You have been enlightened.

Acts 2618 Your eyes have been opened, that you have turned

from darkness to light, from the power of Satan to God, that you

may receive forgiveness of sins, and a place among those who are

sanctified by faith in Christ. Matthew 1316 God calls you

blessed. He says blessed are your eyes.

We could say it this way, blessed are your eyes for they

see. Blessed are your ears for they

hear. For truly I say to you, many

prophets and righteous people long to see what you see, and

could not see it, and to hear what you hear and did not hear

it. So you have made been made known

the will of God, and now He says His will for you is to know Him

more deeply. But to do this, you submit to

Christ by submitting to His Word, submitting to His will,

knowing spiritual deepening is possible for you.

We pray this, this is my prayer for you, that you would know God

more. And you pray with anticipation

because it's actually possible. It's, it's coming and you're

promised inheritance. The Spirit's guaranteeing that

your inheritance, it's coming, it's promised.

You pray for it, you pray it down.

And these come to us. All of these things come to us

in prayer. And so I ask again, is this how

you pray when you pray? Do you pray for the good of the

church, or do you pray for the good of yourself?

And when you pray, are you praying for His promises, or are

you praying for your desires? And what is true prayer?

We'll wrap it up by remembering these words one more time,

bringing it all together. What is true prayer?

Prayer is a sincere, sensible and affectionate pouring out the

heart or soul to God through Christ and the strength and

assistance of the Holy Spirit for such things as God has

promised or according to His Word, for the good of the

church, with submission and faith to the will of God.

I invite the deacons to come down as we take this Lord's

Supper in unity and as you come, I want to pray, and I pray that

as I pray, you will pray with me in your spirit and in your mind.

Lord, we pray the same thing that Paul prayed for for his

local churches, for this local body.

Lord, I pray that this congregation would know you more

deeply. And we pray through Jesus Christ

who bought us, but in the power of the Holy Spirit, who alone

knows the deep things of God. And we pray, Lord Spirit,

impress these truths on us so that we can know new things of

God, Give us new framework, help us to understand things that we

never even thought of before. Lord, expand our understanding,

teach us and make us confident in the hope that is Our Calling

and in the immeasurable greatness of your power.

And to see our own value, especially, Lord, when we don't,

when we see no value in ourselves and we see no value in

the the humility in this humble little local church.

Lord, impress on us what our true value is.

Teach us to know you better. And Lord, make our faith

increase me our love increase. We ask all this in your Son's

name. Amen.

Thanks for listening. To learn more about Heritage

Church or if you'd like to respond to this sermon, visit

our website at www.heritage Shawnee dot.

Org.