Ephesians: The Holy Spirit Strengthens You (3:13-21)

Hello, friends.

This is Pastor Creighton.

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For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, 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, 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.

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all we can ask or think, according to the power at work within us.

To him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever.

Amen.

The word of the Lord.

Thanks.

I bow my knees before the Father, that he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit.

Let's pray.

Gracious and merciful God, the Father from whom every family on heaven and earth is named, the Father who is rich in glory.

We pray that you would illumine this your word to our hearts, such that we would be rooted like a tree next to the stream of life, that we would bear fruit in every season and be full of life, your life.

For Christ's name we pray.

Amen.

Please be seated.

So, dear saints, we've been journeying together through Paul's letter to the church in Ephesus.

And we've been journeying through this letter with a question on our mind.

And that question is, why bother with the church?

This morning we're landing at the end of the first part of his letter.

Ephesians really neatly divides into two, the first part being the first three chapters, and the second part being the second three chapters.

Paul didn't write it, of course, with chapters and verses in mind, but it happens to be pretty fair chapter and verse divisions here.

So we're ending today at the end of his first part of the letter, and then in the weeks to come, we're going to be diving into what Paul understands as the application of all of the gospel doctrine we've learned.

Why is it that we should bother with the church?

Well, we've seen so far that the church is made up of those who are chosen and redeemed and sealed in Christ.

Paul's prayer for the church at the end of chapter one is that the church would know the hope to which we are called, that we are God's inheritance, his prized possession, and that we have power through his spirit.

As the church, we ought to know that by grace God helps us who are helpless, and he makes us one body in Christ, such that walls of hostility and division fall away.

And he makes this good news known through his apostles and through our shared life together as the church.

And he has all this in mind, we know, because of this, the first three words of this, our passage, for this reason.

Paul is carrying all of the content he's communicated to the Ephesians into this prayer.

And so this is a very significant prayer.

This is Paul's desire to see the gospel impressed upon this church and its community.

And we know it's a prayer because Paul says he bows his knees before the Father.

This is Paul taking a posture of prayer, and not just a posture of prayer, but a humble posture, a posture of utter dependence upon the Father.

The Father, he says, from whom every family in heaven on earth is named.

This Father is the source of all unity.

He's the creator of everything.

And this Father, Paul describes as rich in glory.

Did you catch that in verse 16?

When it comes to splendor and majesty, this father is not impoverished, he's lavish, he's abundant.

He bows his knees before the Father and prays for what exactly?

How would you fill in that blank?

How would you pray for the Ephesian church?

How would you pray for our church here at New Song?

What would be on your heart for a church community?

This is what's on Paul's heart.

Given everything that he's taught, everything we've learned so far in our journey, this is his prayer to the Father for this church, that he, the Father, may grant you to be strengthened.

And this word strengthened is huge.

This Greek word is the word kratos, which is a fun word to say, because it's very guttural.

But this word communicates being invested with power.

If you break down the word democracy, we see the word kratos, and the power we would say belongs to the demos, the people.

This is being invested with power we would otherwise not have, to be strengthened, to be empowered.

Not from without, or pardon me, not from within, but from without, that we may be strengthened with power through his spirit.

The spirit's been a lot, uh, pardon me, the spirit's been up to a lot so far in our journey through Ephesians.

We've seen chapter 1, verses 13 and 14, that the promised Holy Spirit is the guarantee of our inheritance.

The Holy Spirit seals us for our heavenly inheritance, our heavenly hope.

In chapter 1, verse 17, we've seen the Spirit described as the Spirit of wisdom and revelation.

The Holy Spirit enlightens and illumines the heart of the Christian and discloses God's good news to us.

Chapter 2, verse 18, Paul writes, We both, that is, Jews and Gentiles together, have access in one spirit to the Father.

In other words, the Spirit unifies the church.

We don't just share a common interest, saints.

We share a common spirit together.

And the Spirit is our access to God the Father.

Chapter 2, verse 22, this Spirit builds us into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.

The Spirit sanctifies us, and he abides with us.

See, when we gather as the church, we gather as those who come together, not just as a common interest group, but as a holy temple.

That's the Holy Spirit's work in our midst.

And in chapter 3, we've seen that the mystery of Christ has been revealed to God's Holy Spirits and prophets by the Spirit.

See, it's by the Spirit that we come to a saving knowledge of God in Christ.

See, the Spirit does what we cannot do for ourselves.

And so that's what he's doing right here in this passage.

He is strengthening us, empowering us in a way that we otherwise could not be.

And he's doing so in our inner being.

At the very core of who you are, if you are in Christ, the Spirit is at work strengthening you.

And for what purpose is he strengthening us?

I think Paul gives us three outcomes of the Spirit's strengthening, three reasons why the Spirit is at work within us, within us individually, and within us as a church.

See, we need the Spirit's unique, empowering strength to live the Christian life, to be indwelt by Christ, to be those of a higher learning in Christ, and to be filled up by Christ.

I know those three things don't start with the same letter, but there's a hyphen in each one, so I feel like I get partial marks.

Indwelt by Christ, higher learning in Christ, and filled up by Christ.

And this is important for us to consider saints.

Because unless we reckon with the Spirit's strengthening in our inner being, we're going to be those who endeavor and strive to live the Christian life on our own power.

And that's just not going to work.

In fact, that's going to be the most toilsome thing we could imagine.

But it's with the Spirit that we're empowered to live a full, abundant, lavish, rich Christian life, a fruitful life, a grounded life in Him.

It's only through the Spirit's empowering that we can be indwelt, higher learning, and filled up Christians.

So let's dive in.

It's through the Spirit's strengthening work that we are indwelt.

If you've got your order of service, by the way, if you've got your Bible, open it up to Ephesians chapter 3 with me.

Ephesians 3 · chapter mention

Let's look at verse 17.

Paul is praying that the Holy Spirit strengthened these Christians.

Why?

So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.

This word dwell is really important.

There's two Greek words that you could translate dwell.

One is more common than the other.

The common one is parikio, which is also fun to say.

This communicates the idea of living in a place for a time, but nevertheless being somewhat transient, something of a stranger.

The more or the less common word is this word ketoikio, also fun to say.

Greek is a lot of fun sometimes.

This word communicates being an inhabitant, a settler, putting down roots.

It kind of makes me think of what Rachel and I were really excited about moving to Port Perry.

I'd been in two ministry positions previous to this one as curate in both in Texas and in Ottawa, and we were very excited to take those positions.

We were very glad to serve in those roles, but we know going into them that this is a temporary situation.

Curates are around for a period of time to be equipped, to be trained up and get sent out for future ministries.

So we knew going into those positions, we're going to be around for only so long.

We were glad to be.

But we knew we were going to be paraichios and not katochios.

We were going to be around for a while.

We were excited to come to Port Perry because we knew we were going to put down roots.

This was going to be a long-term katochyo for us, which is what we're committed to it to be.

Christ's dwelling within our hearts is not a Parechyo, it's a katochyo.

It's a permanent residence within us.

In other words, He is going nowhere.

He takes up a permanent residence in our hearts, and he intends to stick around, and so he shall.

In our deepest and most essential self, Christ will live.

And by what means does he do so?

Paul writes, through faith, through a personal trust.

See, it's not that faith reaches up to heaven and grabs Christ and pulls him down into our hearts.

It's that Jesus, who is knocking on our hearts, is waiting for us to open the door, and so that's faith.

Faith is what it is to respond to Jesus' invitation to come to me, to let him in, to let him take up residence, to be with us and abide with us forever.

And when we do, as imperfect as our faith is, we do so only as a response to his calling, to his knocking.

But we can rest assured that Jesus is going to stick around through thick and thin.

See, Paul's prayers that the Spirit would strengthen you such that Jesus takes up a permanent residence in your innermost being through your trust in him.

And this might raise a question for some Christians.

Well, doesn't Jesus indwell everyone at their conversion?

Why would Paul pray this at all?

Because it's if we read the scriptures and if we read the New Testament especially, when we put our trust in Christ, we know he indwells us.

Why would he pray specifically for this church that they would experience this indwelling?

Well, yes, that is true, but I think we need to be mindful of Paul's sense here.

Paul's not talking about the initial indwelling of Christ that he performs when we first put our trust in him, but he's talking about spiritual growth in the context of his indwelling.

See, I think we can be Christians, but we can operate as though Christ is not at the center of our lives.

In other words, we can act unlike ourselves in Christ.

Spiritual growth, reckoning with the indwelling work of Christ through his Holy Spirit, means reckoning with reality, reckoning with who we really are and who we are made to be in Christ.

And the result of this living into this indwelling reality is that we would be rooted and grounded in love.

Did you catch that in the last half of verse 17?

To be rooted is an agricultural metaphor.

It's to plant deep, life-giving roots.

Maybe our image from Psalm 1 comes to mind that the godly person is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither.

Spiritual growth for us means growing deeper and deeper roots into the reality that Christ permanently lives within our hearts.

He is the soil, the nutrients of our spiritual growth.

And so too, Paul says we would be grounded, which is an architectural metaphor.

It's the same word in the Greek that Jesus uses when he describes the one who's the wise person who's built his house on the rock and not on the sand.

Jesus says that the rain fell, the floods came, the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall because it had been founded.

It had been grounded on the rock.

So too, spiritual growth for us means resting more and more firmly fixed on this sure foundation.

And what's that foundation?

Love.

Love is willing the good of the other, and especially at one's own expense.

Being rooted and grounded in love means being firmly fixed both in Christ's love for us, but also in our love for one another.

We see that we are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.

Being rooted and grounded in love is a reality of the indwelling of Christ and shows forth in our life together.

The indwelling of Christ in our hearts is not something that we earn.

It's not something we strive after.

It's not something we show ourselves worthy of.

The indwelling of Christ is his miraculous work that he does to us when we say yes and invite him in to take up residence in our hearts.

But Christ's indwelling invites us to grow as those who are rooted and grounded in this reality through our obedience, through our practice of the faith, through centering our whole selves, our whole lives on who he is.

See, friends, we need to pray for the indwelling of Christ, not as those who need to earn it, but we need to pray for the strength of the Spirit, because only through the Spirit can we experience the presence of Christ who takes up residence in us when we respond to Him through faith.

See, for Paul, it's only through the Spirit's power that we can grow in the indwelling of Christ.

But in Paul's mind, it's only through the Spirit's power that we can know.

Grow and know.

Sorry, that's the rhyme.

I wanted y'all to catch it.

That is, it's only through the Spirit's strengthening that we can apprehend the truth.

We can have a higher learning only through the Spirit.

Let's look at verse 18 together.

Paul prays for the strengthening of the Holy Spirit to comprehend, verse 18 and 19, to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.

To comprehend something is to grasp, to lay hold.

It's used in military terms, to seize upon.

And the question for us is comprehend what?

Because it's a little open-ended in verse 18.

Do you see that?

That you may have strength to comprehend what is the breadth and length and height and depth.

And then we're kind of just left wondering what that might be.

I think Paul clarifies in the verses to follow, but I think there's a clear parallel with what he writes to the church in Rome.

Romans chapter 8, verses 38 to 39.

Romans 8:38–39

Paul says that I am sure that neither height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from what?

From the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Friends, it's only through the strengthening of the Spirit that we can begin to grasp the divine dimensions of God's love.

Pastor John Stott writes that the love of Christ is broad enough to encompass all mankind, long enough to last for all eternity, deep enough to reach the most degraded sinner, and high enough to exalt him to heaven.

Those are divine dimensions.

And we need the Spirit's strength to begin to grasp at what that means for us.

Likewise, we need the Spirit's strength to know, to understand, to perceive, and to learn what is the love of Christ for us.

This is the same word agape that he's used in verse 17.

It's this word that appears in the great chapter of agape, John 15.

Jesus says to his disciples, as the Father has loved me, agape me, so I have agape you.

Abide in my agape, abide in my love.

And Jesus gives that further definition by saying this, John 15, 13, greater love, greater agape has no one than this, then someone lay down his life for his friends.

Again, love is willing the good of the other, and especially at your own expense.

And Jesus is no exception to that, is he?

This love surpasses knowledge, Paul writes.

He wants us, through the power of the Spirit, to know the unknowable, know that thing which surpasses our knowledge.

See, this is a higher learning, a higher learning than we're capable of on our own.

Christ's love, Paul understands, is inexhaustible, unfathomable, boundless.

And it's only through the strength of the Spirit that we can be elevated to a place such where we can begin to reckon and grasp with what that means for us.

One of the coolest things about living in Chicago, which is where I did my school, was I spent two and a half years in the dormitory.

And no, that's not where the story ends.

As cool as the dormitory is.

Because Moody couldn't be more downtown Chicago, campus has to build up and not out.

So that means I lived on the 17th floor in a downtown Chicago dormitory room.

And outside my window was, I kid you not, a multimillion dollar view of the south skyline of Chicago.

And I used to just stare out my window in a thunderstorm and I'd watch the lightning strike the Sears Tower repeatedly.

It's supposed to do that.

But it was just the most gorgeous sight I thought I'd ever seen up to that point.

And then somehow a coupon came into my possession where I could get a real I could get a um a really discounted pass to the observatory deck on the Hancock Center, which was just a few blocks away from campus.

And suddenly, being as glorious as my view was from the 17th floor, I was elevated now to the 94th floor.

And I got to take uh a few dates up there too.

Sorry, Rachel.

But it was a fun situation.

Situation.

And so we, you know, I'd go up there and I'd look at the same skyline of the south of Chicago, and I'd see the same splendor and glory and absolute majesty of this skyline, except multiplied by many more neighborhoods and much more depth.

And so, friends, this so too does it take the strength of the Spirit to take our knowledge of the boundless love of Christ and elevate it more and more and more, such that we see glorious vistas that we would never otherwise see, such that we would see neighborhoods of Christ's love that we could never see otherwise.

And so too, for all eternity will we grow more and more and more into the boundless love of Christ.

I think that's the antidote for the common question of won't heaven just be really boring?

Are we doing the same thing over and over, day for day for day?

Not if we are growing from one degree of another to the full glory, the full love, the full knowledge of the love of God in Christ, from day to day we will journey, as it were, one floor higher and see that much more of Christ's boundless and limitless love for us for all eternity.

How could that be boring?

See, there's no end with Christ's love.

But the truth is that's not what our experience suggests about love, is there?

Our experience of a broken and love in a broken and fallen world is that there comes an ending point, a point where that transmission gets terminated.

Because I've just been hurt too many times.

So I'm just going to withdraw, I'm going to pull back, and I'm going to discontinue my love in one sense or another.

And so, because this is our fallen human experience, we get the sense that surely with Christ that must be the same.

He's the holy God, isn't he?

Surely, when I sin the same sin, I've sinned a thousand times, that sin I said I'd never do again, he pulls back his love just a little bit more.

But friends, what an antidote this verse is.

It's only through the power of the Spirit that we can begin to grasp the fact that Christ's love for us is limitless.

We need the Spirit's strength against our own inclination to believe that Christ's love must come to an end, to see more and more glorious vistas of his limitless love for us.

We need the strength of the Spirit.

Because only through the Spirit can we begin to wrap our minds around Christ's unfathomably high and deep and broad love for you and I.

That love that He's making known to us with all the saints.

Because there's a corporate dimension to that love too, isn't there?

Love is not just something we intellectualize and we know just in our own individual selves.

Love is something that we experience and share.

And as we receive and come to know Christ's love for us, we begin to show that for one another as his body, the church.

If we know Christ's love intellectually on our own, and yet we've pulled back from the life of the church, then we are missing something in true knowledge of our love of God in Christ.

It's being manifested, showed forth in our very life together.

And friends, that's our call as new song to be a manifestation, a demonstration of that incredible, boundless love that we've received in Christ, that forgiving love, that renewing love, that belonging kind of love.

It's only through the Spirit's strength that we can be indwelt by Christ, that we can have a higher learning of God's love for us in Christ, and it's only through the strength of the Spirit that we can be filled up by Christ.

Let's look at verse 19 together.

Paul is praying for the Spirit's strength so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

I've never seen this movie, but I've seen this one scene a hundred thousand times, and it tells me this is not a movie I would enjoy.

The movie is Jerry Maguire, and the famous scene, of course, is when he pleads, I guess, with a love interest of his he's trying to reconcile or something with.

Maybe you've seen this movie, maybe you're going to watch it for Valentine's Day tomorrow.

My apologies if you do.

But the famous line, of course, is he says to his love interest, he says, You complete me.

Which in itself is a lovely sentiment, and I think I we kind of know what what he means.

And it does speak to the truth that we feel a certain incompleteness on our own, don't we?

But the question I guess that that line raises for me is it possible to find a sense of fullness in romance?

Is it possible to find a sense of our fullness in anything?

In our career or in our ambitions or in our vacations?

Is it possible to find our fullness?

Paul's prayer is for the strength of the Spirit such that we are made complete, that we are filled up, that nothing is lacking within us, that we are filled with the fullness of God, his perfection, his power, his love, his holiness, God's allness.

And Paul gives this fullness concrete shape in his letter to the Colossians, that in Christ the whole fullness of God dwells bodily.

When we go to Christ, we see God's allness.

And so Paul prays that we would be filled with the fullness of God.

We're right back to being indwelt by Christ, his presence taking up permanent residence in our heart.

But now not just with a sense of Jesus sticking around, with a sense of Jesus making us complete, making us whole again, making us full.

You have been filled in Christ, is what Paul says to the Colossians.

If we want to know God's fullness, if we want to be complete, we have one place to go, Christian.

We have to go to Christ.

We cannot go to Him from without on our own power, on our own initiative.

We need the Spirit's strength to grow in Christ.

We need his strength to know the love of Christ, and now it's clear we need the Spirit's strength to be filled to overflow with Christ.

You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in you.

Perhaps your story can bear witness to the same.

Only in Christ can we fill our restless hearts to the full.

It's pure gift, friends.

The difficult thing about the gospel is that means we have to surrender the right to go looking for anything else.

We have to surrender the right to go looking for our fullness in wherever our heart directs us to.

I think Jeremiah hits the nail on the head when he says the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick.

That might sound harsh, but how often has our heart led us astray?

Told us that this will make us feel complete and full, only to feel more empty once we seize upon it.

Christ is the only one who can satisfy our deepest desires and the longings of our human heart.

And we need the strength of the Spirit only because only the Spirit can we Christians be made complete by God's fullness in Christ.

So we go to Him.

Here's where I want to land the plane, friends.

Paul concludes with the doxology.

At this point, it should be clear that we cannot live an indwelt, higher learning, and filled-up Christian life on our own.

Our strength is sufficient only to live apart from Christ, to experience nothing of his love, and to be always left lacking and incomplete.

So Paul prays for the Spirit's strengthening because it's only through the Holy Spirit's work in our hearts, through his empowering strength, that we can be indwelt, higher learning, and filled up.

God alone is able to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves.

And so Paul prays not just to any God, but to him who is able.

To do far more abundantly than we can ask or think, according to the power at work with us.

God can accomplish what he sets out to do.

Whatever expectations we form of divine blessings, writes John Calvin, the infinite goodness of God will exceed all our wishes and all our thoughts.

God has so much abundantly more in store for us in Christ than we can ask or imagine.

So new song.

Such that you learn more and more of Christ's limitless love for you, and such that you are filled up by Christ and find your fullness in Him.

To God be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever.

Amen.

Thank you for listening today.

We worship a generous God who calls us to follow Him in giving willfully, cheerfully, and sacrificially.

Newsong Church's mission and ministry is one hundred percent funded by the generous gifts of those worshiping and journeying with us.

If you'd like to offer a gift towards Newsong's ministry, please visit Newsongportperry.ca slash giving for more information on how to do that.

May God bless you and keep you today and every day.