40 Years of Asking...: Ephesians 1:15-23

The sermon this morning comes from Ephesians chapter 1, verses 15 to 23.

Ephesians 1:15–23

Think of it as a companion prayer with what Stacy read earlier from Colossians.

You know if you want to learn how to pray?

Do you want to learn how to pray?

Read the Bible.

The best prayers are in the Bible.

And we've got one of the great ones here.

Listen to what the Apostle Paul had to say from prison.

For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and of revelation and the knowledge of Him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might, that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come.

And he put all things under his feet and gave him his head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

This is the reading of God's infallible, inerrant, precious word that we get to hear.

Can you believe it?

Just ask the Holy Spirit for his help.

Lord, we thank you.

We thank you for the gift, the privilege of worship.

But worship is not worship without the word of God.

So, Holy Spirit, take the word that you inspired and turn on the lights in our minds and our hearts, every one of us.

That we will fall more deeply in love with Jesus.

We pray this in his name, amen.

The title of the sermon is 40 years of asking.

As I thought about what to preach on homecoming weekend, I thought, okay, yeah, it's been 40 years of asking.

It's been 40 years of a lot of things, but not without asking.

It seems to me that I've pastored seven different congregations.

This is DC.

All the people that come and go and turn over.

And yet this has been the one constant for me.

This is where I learned how to pray in a different way.

I had to.

Because I needed what only God could give me as a pastor.

And I realized that you needed what only Jesus could give you as sheep.

I couldn't give it to you, but Jesus could.

And so I learned how to pray in a different way over the last 40 years.

Forty years of asking.

When I'm asked what kind of church is APC, one of the first things that always comes out of my mouth is APC is a praying church.

That explains what I can't explain otherwise.

That explains why we're in this building today.

But more important, that explains why a lot of you are here.

A lot of you have been saved by this gospel.

You've been saved by the prayers of God's people.

And your lives have been changed by this power, and that's what we're going to look at this morning.

Yes, don't you we all have to learn how to pray in new ways?

The challenges have been great over 40 years, but I've discovered that God's grace is greater.

As a church, we have learned that.

He pastored for about three years.

He knew them better than probably any other congregation he ministered to.

He said, I do not cease to give thanks for you.

Is that what you would be thinking about in prison?

I don't stop thanking God for you.

And he had faces in his mind, in his imagination.

He had names of people.

I have not stopped praying for you, remembering you in my prayers.

Now here's a question we have to ask.

Praying what?

Verse 17.

That the Father may give you the Spirit.

This is not little S, this is capital S, that the Father would give you the Holy Spirit.

Why?

In Ephesians chapter 1 is probably one of our favorite scriptures for many of us.

Ephesians 1 · chapter mention

If you know this passage, the first half of the chapter is digging deep into the gold mines of just how precious God's love is for you.

Before you were created, he knew you.

Long before you came on this earth.

He was thinking of you.

Isn't that amazing?

It's a, and so we read in the first half of the chapter, before the foundations of the world, he knew you, he called you by faith.

And he knew that he would one day send his son to redeem you and to adopt you into his family.

Don't ever get over that.

These truths that are so transformative when they connect heart to heart.

But then interestingly, Paul not only tells us these great doctrines, but the second part of the chapter is equally important.

Are they real to you?

Are they becoming more precious to you?

Are they changing your life 5, 10, 20, 30 years after you came to Christ?

Or do you feel like you've hit the ceiling?

Do you feel like you've been a Christian long enough that you kind of know that you've just about hit the ceiling?

Oh, that's a lie.

There is so much more ceiling above you than you could possibly know.

He wants you to know.

This prayer is how you get there.

This is how we get there.

Followed by this beautiful and necessary prayer, Paul is teaching us here.

Don't miss it.

The powerful word of God, the first half, the promises of God, the doctrine of God's sovereignty, followed by the power of prayer.

I find that in reformed circles, this is often hard to connect.

I find in many churches it's the temptation is to really center in on the doctrine, or to really center into prayer and other acts of Christian piety.

Don't make that mistake.

Jesus wants you to know that they were intended to be connected.

The truth from God is supposed to change me and clean me and redeem me and grow me, transform me.

Oh, and you too.

Paul launches into this one long sentence in verse 3 to 14.

What is his prayer that we would all know our great God better?

And then verse 17, you've got your Bible open, you've got the bolt in, okay, keep your eyes down.

See this truth.

You're not here just to listen, you're here to read.

Verse 17.

What is he asking?

That the glorious Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you.

I want to remind you this morning the you is you.

It's not just the person next to you.

He may give you the spirit of wisdom and of revelation and the knowledge of Him.

What this prayer is coming to in the climax is God wants you and me to keep getting to know Him better and don't stop until the day you die.

The ceiling is so much higher than you know or I know.

But I've been challenged by this over the years, and the Holy Spirit has convinced me of this more and more that this is true.

I keep asking.

Are you still asking?

Or somewhere along the way did you stop asking?

And well, why would you stop asking?

Because life gets hard, and sometimes we feel like our prayers aren't answered.

And sometimes we wonder if God's really listening to us, and sometimes we wonder, have I messed up so badly that God's cut me off?

Sometimes we think these kind of thoughts.

Are you still asking?

I keep asking that he may give you the Holy Spirit of wisdom and of revelation and the knowledge of him having the eyes of your hearts enlightened.

Paul, why do you keep asking?

He heard it the first time.

I've got two questions.

What are you asking?

Secondly, why do you keep asking?

Let's dig in.

What are you asking, Paul?

Let's ask what he asked.

That God will give us the spirit of wisdom and revelation and to know him better and better.

Isn't this like any other person you love?

Let's think of the relationships that you're closest to on this earth, whether it's friendship, whether it's marriage, sibling, whatever it may be.

The more you love someone, the more you want to get to know them, right?

Like a good marriage.

Sharon and I celebrated our 50th anniversary this summer.

Come on, stop it.

I didn't allow time for that in there.

Fifty years of learning more about each other.

Why?

One answer.

Because of love.

I can't tell you how much deeper our love is than when we first got married.

To no more.

Because relationships are not static, they're dynamic.

They're always moving.

They're moving up, they're moving down, they're always moving.

So let me take you into my pastor's office for those of you that I didn't counsel for premarital counseling or marriage counseling.

We always have this conversation.

You and your spouse were both made in the image of God.

You are image bearers of God.

What that means is you are a treasure chest of God's glory.

Now you may not have ever heard that today.

I'm glad you're here.

You are a treasure chest of God's glory.

But do you know what happens in every marriage?

Eventually you get bored with the other person.

Eventually you think you've kind of dug into the chest and you've kind of discovered all the good stuff, and we just get bored because of our sinful flesh.

We think we know everything that there is to learn about this person.

And then sometimes we get distracted, we want to pursue other things with the passion that we once pursued our spouse.

That's sinful.

Everybody does it.

You know what we need to learn?

How to repent.

I needed to learn how to repent when I thought I discovered everything that there was to learn about Sharon and closed the lid.

You've done it.

I had to learn how to repent of thinking that that was pretty much all that I needed to learn about this person.

But we we are dynamic.

Sharon is not the same woman that she was 50 years ago.

Neither is your spouse or your friends.

When you get the gospel, you repent and you open up the lid again, and you say, surely there is so much more treasure that God has put into the soul of my mate or my friend.

Teach me, show me, let's grow together.

So why are we doing this little marriage counseling today?

Isn't that God?

About your relationship with God?

We just get to the point where we think, we won't, nobody would say I know everything about God, we're not that stupid.

We wouldn't say it.

But is this book becoming more precious to you?

Are the promises of God becoming more believable to you?

Are you repenting of thinking, you know what?

There's so much more.

I need to learn about who this God is.

Give me an appetite for you, Lord.

And whenever God gives his people an appetite for him, it always takes us deeper into the scriptures.

Always.

And it also takes us deeper into prayer.

What does this have to do with our relationship with God?

How many times have we closed the lid of the greatest treasure chest of all?

The God of glory.

The infinite, eternal, unchangeable God, whose glory we will never exhaust.

How quickly and easily we can think that we have figured him out and we get bored with him.

Do you know the number one reason why people don't come to church according to the surveys?

They think worship is boring.

Is it boring this morning for you?

Not for me.

There must be something wrong.

There must be something we're missing if we think that God is boring.

And we must repent.

We must repent.

And we must say, God, what did Paul pray?

Open the eyes of my heart so I can see what I haven't seen, so I can believe what I haven't believed.

Change me, Lord.

Change me.

What if getting to know God was like a good marriage?

Are you asking God for a better marriage on your end?

You don't have to ask on his end.

He's the perfect spouse.

Are you asking to know him better?

To love him more deeply, to understand his love for you more clearly?

What was Paul's prayer for the Ephesians?

I pray that the Father may give you the spirit of wisdom that our eyes may be enlightened.

You know, we all have two sets of eyes.

We've got these.

We've got these.

The eyes of our heart.

Did you know that?

Every one of us.

You may have, you may have 20-20 vision here.

What's the vision of your heart?

You know, you can have 20-20 vision with these eyes, and you can have 2200 vision with the heart.

Jesus didn't come to do that.

Jesus came to give you the Spirit, says that the vision of your heart would be like really good eyesight.

Do you pray often for better spiritual eyesight?

Do you ask the Holy Spirit to give you wisdom to reveal the Father's character, the Father's goodness to you?

There's three things specifically that Paul is asking for.

Number one, to learn how to live with hope.

Number two, to see our great inheritance, and number three, to learn how to access the power of the gospel.

Those are the three things that Paul is asking for specifically.

Number one, and quickly.

Number one, living with hope.

The language says the hope of his call.

Literally, that's what that says.

How to learn how to live with the hope of his call.

Are you learning that?

Man, I want to.

Living with a tilt toward the future.

When you consider what's waiting for you in heaven.

You know, when you have hope, you can get through anything.

My good friend Red McDaniel, POW in the Honoi Hilton, Vietnam, taught me a lot about that in my 20-year friendship with Red.

Even in a prisoner of war camp, beaten brutally often, skin and bones.

With all that he faced six years, he taught me a lot.

Because his faith in God.

When the timing is hard, when waiting is hard, when you consider what is waiting for you, when I consider what is waiting for me, we wait well.

It's true.

And when we don't, we won't.

Secondly, to see our great inheritance.

That's what he prays in this phrase.

What are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints?

And Bible scholars debate is this the inheritance that God gives or is this the inheritance that God receives?

And if you know your Bible well, you know that the scriptures teach both.

Did you know that?

Oh, one of my most precious truths I learned years ago, and it changed my life.

When Peter had the audacity to say, in 1 Peter chapter 2, verse 7, for those of us who are those precious stones, to you who believe, you are the precious of God.

1 Peter 2:7

Man.

You're God's precious.

Did you need to hear that today?

Did you need to hear, did you need to be remembered of that today?

That changed my life.

Many years ago when I finally understood this verse.

Tom, you're my precious.

I better not linger too long on that.

Touches my heart.

I need to hear that.

But hear me, only the Holy Spirit can convince you of that.

You can't convince yourself.

Nobody else can convince you of this.

No matter how many times you read it, you can read it a thousand times, and you're not going to be convinced.

Only the Holy Spirit can convince you that you are God's precious.

It's more likely that this text in this context means.

Not that, but that what God gives you his inheritance.

The Bible's full of what's waiting for you in heaven.

It's good to go back and read again what's waiting for you in heaven, Christian.

It keeps us going.

It keeps us faithful.

It keeps us repenting.

It keeps us rejoicing in this gospel.

And we're going to have it forever.

No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him.

He's waiting for us.

Are you learning how to live and pray in your greater growing understanding of the great inheritance that he has for you?

But thirdly, how to access his power.

We read that.

And what is verse 19?

And what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe?

According to the working of his great might, that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places.

Paul uses four different Greek words for power.

Why did he do that?

Why is he just bursting the banks?

Wouldn't one word for power have been sufficient?

Apparently not.

That's been my last 40 years.

New challenges bring new desperation.

How to do this.

Our average attendance after a year was 30.

And we weren't growing.

We didn't have any families, hardly.

And there were a lot of challenges.

There were a lot of challenges in our family.

There were a lot of challenges in this little church.

I just got desperate.

I needed Jesus.

And I needed to learn how to repent in new ways.

And I needed to learn how to believe the gospel in new ways.

And it was the best thing that could have happened to me.

Are you learning how to pray out of desperation?

Or do you just get discouraged to the point of stop praying?

Or your prayers get cold and distant and you just feel like, does he even hear me?

Does he even hear me?

What's the point?

Or do you just say your prayers?

No.

Don't just say your prayers.

Learn to pray the prayers of the Bible.

These prayers are a great primer to learn how to pray.

If you don't know what else to pray, take this bulletin home with you.

How about that?

You've got two great prayers in this little bulletin.

And start with them this week.

Colossians chapter 1 and Ephesians chapter 1.

Colossians 1 · chapter mention Ephesians 1 · chapter mention

And say, God, would you please open the eyes of my heart?

That I would learn how to live with hope.

That I would learn how to live with the reality of the inheritance that you have waited for me.

That I would learn how to access your power.

I need your power in my life.

Yes, you do.

Yes, I do.

That's a beautiful prayer.

God, would you please convince me of how good you are?

When sometimes it's easier to believe it than others.

Accessing his power, Martin Luther said, I don't despair.

That you despair of yourself, that you doubt your own power does not alarm me.

What alarms me is that you also despair of the power of God.

Man, that's beautiful.

Doesn't alarm me that you're running out of resources.

May you run out of all your resources quickly.

Stop trying to live like you can control your life.

But what does cause me to despair is when you think little of the power of God, what he can do.

This is what Paul is saying here is to comprehend and apprehend the power of God.

We first have to comprehend, we have to understand, we have to be in the Word.

But then the Holy Spirit says, now this word that I've given you, I want you to take.

I want handles to grab onto the power and to the beauty and to the mercy of God.

I need that every day.

I sure do.

Of accessing the power.

Accessing the power.

Paul writing to the Ephesians, in Acts chapter 19, we read about how Paul planted this church in Ephesus.

Acts 19 · chapter mention

And I don't know if you remember, but the treasure for the treasure.

Remember all these people who were magicians and sorcerers, and they had all these, they had all this heretical literature.

They were trying to access their own God, their own way, and then once they got saved, do you remember what they did?

They burned it.

They got together, they had a trash, they had a fire.

Scholars say today it would be the equivalent of nine million dollars.

Sinclair Ferguson said that it would be the equivalent of nine million dollars, they just trashed.

They traded treasure for treasure, false treasure for real treasure.

That's what happens when the gospel lights up in your life.

That's what happens when Jesus becomes your treasure.

You demote the other treasures in your life, whatever they are, and you promote, the Holy Spirit promotes real treasure.

This is this is oh the gospel.

This is the gospel.

Accessing his power.

So why, here's my last question in closing.

So why do we keep asking?

Because we have so much more to learn about God, but God himself.

Holy Spirit, open my mind every day.

Open my heart every day.

And fill me with your glory.

And fill me with the love of Jesus.

You can't do this.

Only the Holy Spirit can do this.

I'm here today to tell you that.

What did Jesus say when he followed the Lord's Prayer, which we recited earlier, we prayed earlier this day?

He told the parable of the midnight knocker.

Man comes to his neighbor's house at midnight, he's got company that came, arrived, he's not prepared, he doesn't have the food, he doesn't have the bread, that's poor hospitality, and so he goes to his neighbor and starts knocking at midnight.

Guy doesn't want to get up, does he?

Go away.

I'm in bed with my family.

Get out of here.

I don't have time for you.

And you keep knocking until finally this guy gets out of bed.

He gets out of bed, and he gets up and he gives him bread.

Are you learning how to be a midnight knocker?

Don't just knock once.

Don't just knock twice.

He wants you to learn how to knock and knock and knock.

That's when Jesus says, whoever asks receives, whoever seeks finds.

It's true.

And only the Holy Spirit can teach you how to pray like this.

To access the power, to see the inheritance, to live with hope.

But you remember the end of that story that Jesus said?

How much more, how much greater is your Father in heaven than your neighbor?

How much greater is your God, his goodness?

Thank you, choir, for reminding us of that this morning.

How much more is our God good?

And then Jesus said, because of his impudence, that means his boldness.

Are you learning to pray boldly?

How much more will the Father give the huh?

Come on.

Holy Spirit.

To those who ask.

You say, well, I already have the Holy Spirit.

Do you?

Well, you you we do.

We were baptized in the Spirit when we came to Christ.

But why would you?

Jesus is the one that's saying this.

This is the paradox.

We who have the Holy Spirit must learn how to pray for the Spirit's greater control over us, his influence over us.

How much more will the Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?

I want to close with a true story.

It kind of brings it together, I think, at least for me.

The preacher Harry Ironside tells of a meeting of a very godly man early in his ministry.

He was a young man.

This man was dying of tuberculosis.

Ironside had gone to visit him in his home.

His name was Andrew Fraser.

He could barely speak above a whisper.

His lungs were almost gone.

Yet he said, Young man, you're trying to preach Christ, are you not?

He said, I am.

Well, sit down a little and let's talk together about the Word of God.

He opened his Bible, and until his strength was gone, he opened up one passage in Scripture after another, teaching truths that Ironside at that time had never seen or really known in his heart.

Before long, tears were running down Ironside's cheeks, this young man.

And he said, Where did you get these things?

What book can I read that will teach me what you know?

Did you get them in seminary?

Did you get them in college?

Fraser replied, My dear young man, I learned these things on my knees, on a mud floor of a little sod cottage in the north of Ireland.

There, with my open Bible before me, I used to kneel for hours at a time and ask the Spirit of God to reveal Christ to my soul and to open the word to my heart.

And he taught me more on my knees on that mud floor than I could have ever learned in all the seminaries of the world.

That's how you learn how to pray.

Desperation?

God's delight.

We need both.

The foundation is the delight of God for you.

You are his precious.

But he will take you through hard challenges in life.

And he wants us to be appropriately desperate so that we learn how to pray with impudence, boldness, because we believe that our Father is good.

This is what I had to say to you on the 40th anniversary homecoming.

Wherever you are, wherever you go to church these days, don't settle for anything less.

This gospel power, this gospel love, and how we access this.

In just a moment, we're going to sing a new song about thank you, Lord.

But as you sing the words this morning in a few moments, think about the desperation.

Think about the challenges in life that God sends to shape our souls, but think also of the great delight.

Let's pray.

Father, teach us how to pray.

Holy Spirit, teach us how to pray.

Jesus, you're our great high priest.

You're praying right now for your people.

And we want to pray with you as you pray for us.

May this gospel become more precious to us in the years ahead.

May we think much about what it looks like to live with hope, to live understanding the inheritance that you have reserved for your children.

May we learn how to access the power, the same power that raised your son from the dead is at work in your people.

May we believe that.

May we believe that.

Jesus.

Amen.