with me this morning to Ephesians 3. Ephesians 3, we're continuing in our series, "A Call to Pray." We're looking at verses 14-21 this morning. Now to this point in our series, "A Call to Pray," we've looked at prayers that in some ways you could view as prayers that have an especially corporate bent to them. We talked about a call to pray for God's glory and a call to pray for mission. So when I say they have a corporate bent, that's not to say they're exclusively corporate prayers. These aren't prayers you're supposed to pray alone just between you and God, but they are prayers that have an opportunity for us to join as the church gathered and to call out like we did this morning in the pastoral prayer that God would receive glory. And so many of the Psalms are written that way, aren't they? That as the people gather, the Psalm is written the gathered people of God would call upon the Lord to receive His glory. Or that the church would gather and that the church would pray for mission. We saw that last week in Acts, right? The church in Antioch gathering to pray, and as they gather to pray, the Spirit informs them, "You got to set apart your two best to send them out for My work." So we see especially corporate elements to that. This morning, I think that balance shifts though ever so slightly to a type of prayer that has corporate elements. It's a prayer that we would and do pray corporately, but a prayer that is really essential to an individual, to a believer's personal life of prayer. This morning we're looking at a call to pray for communion.
Now I'm not talking about a call to pray for the Lord's Supper. I'm talking about a call to pray for communion with God. A call to pray for your relationship, the intimacy of your fellowship with the Triune God, with especially God in Christ Jesus. One of the most important parts of corporate prayer, whether on Sunday mornings as the congregation gathers or in our care groups as the congregation scatters, one of the great things that corporate prayer does, when we pray corporately, it gives us a visible expression of the unity that we have together in Christ. The fact that we people who live in all these different homes, when we gather and when we pray as we're gathered, we express the fact that we have a union together in the Lord Jesus, right? That's part of what happens when we're with one another. But our faith isn't meant to be an exclusively me and Jesus experience, and we see that as we come together as the body. That's why Paul calls us members of one another. We have in our common faith a communion with each other. It's why fellowship is so important, why Scripture warns about people who neglect to meet together with other believers, and prayer is an essential ingredient of that. Having said that though, the union, the communion, and the fellowship that we experience with each other as significant as it is, right, that should never replace the communion that we're called to have with the Lord Jesus personally. In fact, the latter, the communion that we have with Jesus personally, that's what makes the former possible. The only reason we can gather here this morning and have a union with one another is because we individually have been united with Christ. And part of what we talk about in a call to pray for communion is to recognize that and to press into that, to seek to experience that at deeper, more meaningful levels. And part of our prayer life is to crucially work towards that, to make that a priority.
Jonathan Edwards is probably America's greatest theologian, the greatest theological mind the United States has ever produced, that's really not even up for debate. He talks about this, and he talks about the sublime importance of what that means, and he says a really profound thing. He says, "How good is God that he has created man for this very end." How good is God that this is why he made us. To make him happy. That is man, to make man happy in the enjoyment of himself, the Almighty, who is happy from the days of eternity in himself, that he might make them blessed in the beholding of his excellency and might this way glorify himself. Now, that's a little bit of a complex thought, right? What Edwards is saying is we were created to experience God and to enjoy God. And the reason why God created us to enjoy God is because that's what God has been doing for all of eternity. He's been enjoying himself. Now that's a strange thought, isn't it? But that's part of the beauty of the Trinity, is the Father, Son, and the Spirit for all eternity have been delighting in each other. And if they'd been delighting most supremely in anything but themselves, it'd be idolatry. Because there's nothing more worthy of delight. And so Edward says that's one of the most incredible things about God's graciousness to us is He makes us so that we can enjoy that. So that we can enter into that. The technical name for that is the beatific vision. The Father beholding and rejoicing and delighting in the Son for all eternity. But God wants all of us, His adopted children, to experience that. He wants us to enter into that, to participate in God's delight in being God. God wants His children to enjoy communion with Christ just as He enjoys communion with Christ. Now the promise of Scripture is that there's a day coming, right, when the Lord returns when we're gonna see Jesus face to face. We'll see Him face to face, and as 1 John 3:2 says, we'll see Jesus as He is. But until that day, we're called, we're invited to a foretaste of that communion, and we're called to that foretaste of communion through prayer.
Look with me at Ephesians 3. Hear God's holy and authoritative word. 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 that we 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. May He write its truth upon our hearts.
Oh Father, we want to join our prayer with Paul's prayers. We come before You, Lord. We ask that according to the riches of Your glory, You would grant us to be strengthened with power through Your Spirit in our inner being Because we want to see Jesus. We want to comprehend your love for us in Christ. We want to know more accurately the texture of that love, the nature of that love. We want Jesus to take up residence in our hearts. We want to know all of your fullness. So now, Father, in the preaching of your word, would you stir that up in us? Would you stir up a sight of what Paul describes, but also, Lord, would you stir up prayerfulness, Lord, a desire to do as Paul does, to call on you and to pray and ask that you would do these things. We pray this in the name of your Son, Jesus. Amen.
Well, I'll admit we've had a little bit of a heady introduction talking about Edwards and the beatific vision, to be caught up beholding and delighting in the beauty of God. If you were tracking through all of that, your next conclusion is maybe, that's pretty incredible stuff. I have no idea how that happens. How does one go about doing that? What does that look like? I mean, is there a special posture in prayer that like Edwards recommends, like a yoga pose that you get into when you pray like that, that allows you to see those sorts of things? How do you do that?
6 · The unit expounds Paul's opening petition in Ephesians 3:14-16, establishing that communion with God is a gift initiated by God, not a human achievement
Well, Paul doesn't start by expecting communion with God through prayer to actually begin with us. He wants us to pray. He's praying for us, but the way he starts the prayer is helpful. He is thinking of this as a gift, a gift that God delights to give us, but it's a gift that God gives. This whole idea starts with God. We see that because Paul begins by praying that the church in Ephesus would be strengthened. I think that's helpful for us. A place to start when we're desiring this, if you want to increase the nature of your communion and fellowship with Christ, you start by asking that God would strengthen you. Right off the bat, it's a fascinating thought. To behold God's glory, to see God's beauty in Christ, we have to be strengthened. Paul recognizes that, and so he says, To see God's glory, we have to be strengthened. Strengthened by what? God's glory. More literally, according to the riches of His glory. In other words, God reaches into the infinite storehouse of His own glory to empower your inner being so that you can comprehend, you can have hope and access to the task at hand.
7 · The pastor tells a cautionary story of a well-meaning pastor who misapplied Ephesians 3:16 to anxiety and performance (specifically, baseball hitting slumps), illustrating a common misunderstanding of what it means to pray for strength in the inner being
What exactly is that? Is the task. What does it mean to pray to be strengthened in this way? How are we supposed to imagine and think of it? I heard a pastor once teaching on this passage. It wasn't a sermon, it was sort of a little vignette he was giving in a class. And he wasn't a false teacher. He wasn't intentionally teaching false things. This is a good shepherd. He's a faithful man. I think he was seeking to help and encourage the people, specifically kind of dealing with the topic of anxiety. Like, what do you do when you suffer from anxiety and you find yourself just kind of debilitated by anxious thoughts and feelings? So whether you're a teacher or a teenager and you get massive test anxiety before a big exam, or you're an adult who fears public speaking, he was pointing to this passage, the pastor was, and suggesting if you suffer from anxiety in those kinds of situations, you should go to this prayer in Ephesians and pray that God would strengthen you in your inner being. And by praying that, then God will strengthen you and help to dissipate the anxiety and help you to accomplish the task before you. His reasoning for all that was born out of experience. He told us he'd actually been a Division I baseball player. He'd played baseball. He was an infielder for the University of Minnesota. He's one of those really intimidating Golden Gophers, one of the strangest mascots that's out there. He was a Golden Gopher baseball player. And before we denigrate the quality of Big Ten baseball too much, let's just— he was a D1 baseball player, so he was a good athlete, right? But he described how early in his career for the Gophers, he just couldn't hit. And he started out in a slump, and the slump continued. It got to the point where every time he stepped in the batter's box, he was just consumed with anxiousness and just basically anticipating the strikeout until someone pointed him to this prayer, this passage in Paul. And so he just said, I just started praying when I'm in the on-deck circle. I started praying before I would step into the batter's box, Lord, strengthen me in my inner being. And then he started getting hits and his batting average increased. And by the end of his career, he ended up being first team all Big Ten as a senior. And so he exhorted the people that were gathered, pray for strength in your inner being. Pray that way before a big at-bat or a big test or a big presentation or whatever it might be that makes you feel uneasy. Now his heart was in the right place, but Paul isn't praying for us to be strengthened so that we would increase our batting averages. That's not why this prayer is here in the letter of Ephesians.
8 · The unit returns to expounding the text, explaining the purpose of Paul's petition for strength: 'so that Christ would dwell in our hearts
He's praying that we'd be strengthened by the riches of God's own glory so that— so that tells us why it's there— so that Christ would dwell in our hearts. You know this is important because Paul is devoting his prayers to it. He's telling them, "This is what I pray for you. I pray for the people, the saints in Ephesus, that this would be your experience." We know it's important because he isn't just praying that way, he's teaching the Ephesians like him to pray that way as well. That's why it's in this letter. He's instructing them. He's showing them, "I pray this way for you and I want you to pray this way." He's doing that so that we would pray in a way that would allow us to experience more of Christ's presence. It's really, if you look at it, a really richly Trinitarian prayer, isn't it? Paul prays to the Father that we would be strengthened by the Spirit so that Christ the Son would dwell in our hearts through faith. This isn't just a special one-off prayer. It's not the kind of prayer that Paul would only pray occasionally. A prayer that he only has so many of in his repertoire, so he has to be careful how he utilizes it. You know, I've only got a couple of these prayers I can divvy out. Ephesus is a special church, I pray for them this way. No, that's not the nature of it at all. What Paul's praying, what he's envisioning for the Ephesians, what he's calling us to, is to make this kind of prayer a continual part of how you pray, of how you come before the Lord.
9 · The unit addresses an interpretive question about Ephesians 3:17: if believers already have Christ dwelling in them through conversion, why does Paul pray for Christ to dwell in their hearts? The answer: Paul is praying not for initial indwelling but for believers to experience the full benefits of Christ's permanent residence—a deepening and intensification of what has already begun
And that's why he prays for Jesus to dwell in our hearts. Now, Jesus dwells in our hearts already, doesn't He? Maybe that question has popped up. Why is Paul praying for Jesus to dwell in the hearts of the saints in Ephesus? I thought when you got converted, when the Spirit regenerated you, that part of what happens is the Spirit regenerates you and Jesus now comes and resides in you. Well, that's true. That is what happens. This is a prayer not for conversion. He's praying for people who already have Jesus. They've already been united with Christ. So what does Paul mean by dwell? He's praying that we would experience the full benefits of Christ. The full benefits of Christ taking up permanent residence in us.
10 · The unit develops an extended analogy drawn from D
D.A. Carson has a book, A Call to Spiritual Reformation, where he comments, has a whole chapter devoted just to this prayer, and he makes a really helpful point. He gives us an image to understand what Paul is saying here about dwell. He likens it to buying a home. When you buy a home and you close on a house and you take possession and you move in, you dwell there. You live there. It's now your address. You move your stuff in and it's officially your home. But unless the house is turnkey, right? Unless it's completely move-in ready or you built it brand new, there's going to be things about that house that you want to change, especially if the house is a fixer-upper. It's one of my wife and sister-in-law's favorite shows on HGTV, Fixer Upper. These people coming into just these miserable homes and magically gutting them and renovating them and flipping them and turning them into these beautiful houses to live in. Well, if you have a fixer-upper, there's all sorts of renovation that has to be done. And so you repaint the walls and you come in and you thank the Lord that there was orange '70s shag carpet because it drove the price down and so you were able to get into it with more square footage for less money. Or like us, you thank the Lord that all the walls were pink and that the people that owned the house thought pink was a great color to have on every wall. But you get in now and you realize, I don't want shag carpet. I don't want things living in my carpet. I don't want pink walls. I don't want flowery floral wallpaper in every single bathroom of the house. Right? And so you go in and you start gutting things. You put a new furnace in. There's new flooring you put down. You tile the bathroom. You gut the kitchen. You get new appliances. You finish the basement. There's all these things that you do. And then you start decorating. And you keep decorating, right guys? You keep hanging pictures, moving things around. Bringing in your furniture, making it your house, putting your fingerprints on it. I remember a couple years after we moved into our home, going back online and looking at the pictures that were still up of our house when it was being sold to us and just how different it looked. We'd gone from living there to living there to dwelling there. To making it our place.
11 · The unit applies the renovation analogy to the believer's heart: our hearts are not turnkey but condemned fixer-uppers, and when Christ dwells in us, He begins the ongoing work of renovation through communion
Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Jesus doesn't take up residence in any of our hearts because our hearts are turnkey. No, our hearts are major fixer-uppers. Every room and every corner of your hearts needs the gospel to do a work of renovation. And so Jesus comes into that crazy mess, a mess so bad that if our heart was a house, it would have been condemned. And Jesus dwells there. He takes up residence. And Paul now prays that in his dwelling, he would start to renovate. He would start to work over the house and transform your heart and make it his own. When we commune with Christ, that's what happens to our hearts. They change more and more and transformation happens. And the heart, the house, begins to look more and more like the owner, Jesus. And this happens in a very particular way, Paul says. It happens through faith. Just before our passage, Paul writes in verse 12, In Christ Jesus our Lord, we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him. That, that's a, that's a powerful image. By faith in Christ, we can boldly come into God's presence. This is a big prayer that Paul is praying, right? This is a weighty prayer. And before he prays it, Paul reminds the Ephesians, he reminds us, through faith in Christ Jesus, because of who Christ Jesus is, because of what He's done, because of the way that you are connected to Him inherently by faith, you now get to come with boldness. You have access. A special kind of access. You get to come into the throne room of the Sovereign of the universe, not trembling, not timidly, not with trepidation. You have access to come with confidence.
12 · The pastor illustrates bold, confident access to God through a personal story of his son Lincoln running to him after church, calling 'Daddy!' and embracing him
One of my favorite parts about Sunday morning, almost without fail— there's a lot of things I love about Sunday morning, but in a very personal sense, One of my favorite things is after the service is over, after Lincoln has been retrieved from children's ministry, at some point I'm expecting he's going to come trotting down the aisle and spot me and he's going to yell out, "Daddy!" He's going to come running up and he's going to hug me and there's going to be this special moment for 2 seconds and then he's going to leave and go terrorize the church. You can mark your calendar by it. Sunday mornings, that's what happens. But that moment when he sees me, he lights up. Daddy! And he comes running. That's what Paul is talking about. Boldness and access with confidence. Is that the way you come before the Lord in prayer? Galatians 4:6: "And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, 'Abba! Father!'" Paul is praying that we'd be strengthened in our inner being so that Christ would take up residence through faith, that we would come with boldness before the Father and ask, Father, reach into the riches of your glory and strengthen me so that I can see Jesus and so that Jesus would change me.
13 · The unit establishes the theological foundation for calling God 'Father' in prayer by highlighting that throughout the New Testament, Jesus always addresses God as Father—except on the cross when He cries 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' Jesus endured that separation so that believers could experience the opposite: the privilege and security of calling God 'Father' and knowing His fatherly love in Christ
And that's precisely what Paul envisions our prayers for communion to be about. That we would see the Father and the access we have and that we would see God as our Father. It's a fascinating— it's a fascinating— you want to know the only place in the New Testament where Jesus doesn't refer to God as Father when He prays to Him? There's only one place. When He's hanging on the cross and He cries out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" That's the only place where the Son doesn't refer to God as His Father. It's the nature of their relationship from all eternity. And only in that point, as He's hanging on the cross and He's bearing our condemnation and He's bearing our guilt and He's dying for our sins, as He's suffering the Father's wrath and this separation takes place, it's the only place He prays and doesn't refer to God as Father. But he experiences that and he prays that way so that when you come to God in prayer, so that when we come, we can call upon God as Father and so that we can know the Father's love for us in Christ.
14 · The unit expounds Ephesians 3:17-19, explaining Paul's petition that believers would be 'rooted and grounded in love' and 'comprehend
That's what he says, 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, to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. Pray to be strengthened, but also pray to be anchored. Pray to be anchored in love, to be rooted and grounded. That reaction of Lincoln, of him running up to me, That's a helpful starting point, right? That he has the sense that he can just come to me and throw his arms around me. But that doesn't exhaust the nature of my love for Lincoln, does it? I hope not. I certainly hope that doesn't exhaust his experience of my fatherly affection for him. There's so much more to it. It's just a starting point. And that's what Paul is talking about here. He prays that we'd be rooted and grounded, that, that as I prayed earlier, that we would have a sense of the texture of God's love for us in Christ. We would just keep going deeper and deeper into it. Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones writes this, and I think it's very helpful. In one sense, The whole object of being a Christian is that you may know the love of Jesus Christ, his personal love to you, that he may tell you in unmistakable language that he loves you, that he has given himself for you, that he has loved you with an everlasting love. He does this through the Spirit. He seals all his statements to you through the Spirit. You believe it because it is in the word. But there is more than that. He will tell you this directly as a great secret. The Spirit gives manifestations of the Son of God to His own, to His beloved, to those for whom He has gladly died and given Himself. The whole object of being a Christian, Lloyd-Jones says, is that you would know the love of Jesus Christ, that you would know it's a personal love. When we talk about praying for communion with God, that's the heart of what we're talking about. That in your prayers and the way that you would pray to the Father, you would be asking and seeking an experience of the personal nature of the love of Christ for you. And that the Spirit would strengthen you so that your heart could, could comprehend the nature of this.
15 · The pastor steps outside the expositional flow to address the congregation directly with pastoral concern: too many Christians today rarely experience communion with God, treating the Christian life as duty and rule-keeping rather than delighting in being loved by God in Christ
And I think the sad thing about— one of the reasons we wanted to have this series is I think for far too many of us, far too many Christians today, we rarely experience that. We imagine the Christian life is really about duty. It's about rule keeping. But at its heart, it's about being reclaimed from destruction renovated by God's grace so that you can experience the glory of loving and being loved by God in Christ Jesus. J. Packer talks about moving from duty to delight in the way that we pray. I don't think you move from prayer as a duty to prayer as a delight unless you are seeking communion, you are seeking experience with the real love that God has for you in Christ Jesus. When we lapse into prayerlessness, and we've been there, when your prayers become infrequent, when they are just formulaic, We're essentially saying we're content with a Christianity that's largely disconnected from actually experiencing the great joy of our faith. The great joy of your faith is that you're connected to Christ and He's taken up residence in your heart. And through that, there's access to enjoying and experiencing the love that He has for you. We sang it this morning. I stopped in worship and I pulled out my pen and I wrote it in the margin. All the redeemed washed by His blood, come rejoice in His great love. Feels good to sing that, doesn't it? It feels good to sing that because you're meant to experience that. Peter didn't envision for our Christian experience to be mostly cut off from experiencing that kind of joy. He writes in 1 Peter 1:8, "Though you have not seen Him (Jesus), you love Him, and though you do not now see Him, you believe in Him," and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory.
16 · The unit develops a theological claim about the nature and frequency of communion with God
I think somehow we convince ourselves that that's just like maybe half a dozen times in the Christian life experience. I don't think that's how Peter's imagining it. I think there's a scope, there's a breadth, there's a spectrum to what it means to commune with Christ. I do think sometimes it is just these incredible moments where the Lord breaks in and you are in unique ways like you hardly ever do experiencing new levels and texture of the love of God for us in Christ Jesus. But I think that spectrum of communion also just includes times where you come to the Lord in prayer and you're praying and you're just testifying to His love. And the Spirit softly bears witness to it. And it's good and it's right and it's going to bring you back again for more. John Murray is not a guy who is given over to flowery language. He is a pastor-theologian who tends to write pretty dry, if you could use the word, theological discourse. It's helpful, it's true, it's good doctrine, but it's not usually all that quotable. But when he describes the life of faith, he gets very quotable. He says, "The life of faith is a living union and communion with the exalted and ever-present Redeemer. He communes with his people and his people commune with him in conscious, reciprocal love. The life of true faith cannot be that of cold metallic assent. It must be the passion and warmth of love and communion, because communion with God is the crown and the apex of true religion. I want to experience that, don't you? Don't you want to know this conscious reciprocal love that he talks about? The crown and apex of true religion.
17 · The unit applies the theological teaching to the congregation's prayer life, diagnosing why believers fail to experience communion: they don't fight for it through prayer
So why don't we always experience it? I think in part we don't experience it because oftentimes we don't fight for it. We don't pray for it. Do your prayers look like this? Are you asking God to do that? Because if your prayers don't look like that, the question is, are you really seeking it? Are you really seeking to know that? We seem to imagine like you just roll out of bed in the morning ready, joyful in Jesus. If you think you don't have to seek this and pray for this, that's the way you must imagine reality. But when I roll out of bed in the morning, I have a hard time figuring out how to open the toothpaste. Like I can't get my eyes open to do it. And I'm sitting there and I'm staring and sometimes I find myself just at the sink like, what am I doing next? That's the way I roll out of bed in the morning. I don't come leaping and praising the Lord. Infinitely joyful in Jesus. Part of that's human weakness. Part of that's just our finitude. What it means to be a creature. You need to sleep and it takes a while to come out of sleep. And part of that is just the indwelling sin in our hearts. But all of that points us to the fact that we need to fight for it. We shouldn't resign ourselves to the conclusion that enjoying this sort of communion is unusual and rare. You shouldn't resign yourselves to what Murray calls this cold metallic assent. Just raw theology that you believe and you never feel.
18 · The unit connects Paul's prayer in Ephesians 3 with his earlier prayer in Ephesians 1:16-19, demonstrating that both prayers are about knowing what surpasses natural knowledge
Paul prays that we would know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. It surpasses knowledge, yet he's praying that we would know it. In other words, it's not unknowable. It's something that has to be revealed to us through the Spirit's work. Now, I struggled in preparing this message because I was torn between the prayer that Paul prays in Ephesians 1 and then the prayer he prays in Ephesians 3. And earlier in the week, I was actually thinking, "I'm going to preach through both of them. We're going to try and do Ephesians 1 and Ephesians 3." But there was just too much there. I couldn't do it. And so all we're going to do now is take a peek at Ephesians 1. It's no coincidence that in Ephesians 1, Paul is praying as well and he says this, "I do not cease to give thanks for you," verse 16, remembering you in my prayers, that— this is the reason why I'm remembering you— 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, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, so that you may know what is the hope to which He has called you, that you may know what are the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of His power toward us who believe. Paul is praying that we would know God and that we would comprehend— comprehend our hope, the riches of our inheritance, comprehend the nature of God's power. It's no coincidence that when you fast forward to Ephesians 3, he's not praying, I pray that you would be strengthened in your inner being according to God's glorious power. And I'm praying in that strengthening that you would comprehend the love that God has for you are you in Christ Jesus. He's praying you know something that surpasses your knowledge after he's already prayed that God would impart knowledge to you. Notice how he describes it, verse 18: having the eyes of your hearts enlightened so that you may know. Paul's praying that we would have spiritual insight, and that's really good news.
19 · The unit draws out the implication of Spirit-enlightenment: communion with God is not reserved for the intellectual elite but depends on the Spirit's revelation
Communing with God in the way that Paul imagines here, it's not about being the smartest. This isn't just special ground for the person who's got the biggest IQ, right? This isn't reserved just just for people who can write weighty theological books. No, it depends on the Spirit revealing it to us, on the Spirit enlightening our hearts. That doesn't mean what we experience is irrational. It means it's something that comes through the Spirit's work in revelation. Which is why again and again and again in this series we've called you to pray, called you to pray for God's glory, Called you to pray for mission, right? For the nations and for your neighbors. Now calling you to pray for communion. And we keep doing that by pointing you to the prayers of Scripture and by exhorting you that as you pray, you would have the Scriptures open in front of you. Because you have to have your hearts enlightened. You have to see. You want to know when my prayers just kind of drift off? I just start circling around the same idea and I'm trying not to, but 10, 15 minutes later I'm still circling. It's usually when my Bible is not open as I'm praying, when the Scriptures aren't in front of me guiding me.
20 · The unit introduces Herman Bavinck's theological principle that the new life in Christ must be nourished and strengthened through communion with Christ, in the Holy Spirit, and through the word of Scripture—setting up the argument that Scripture is the indispensable means of experiencing communion
Herman Bavinck, one of the great theologians of the last century, said, The last century being the 20th century. It kind of seems weird that that's the last century, but it is now, I guess. The new life in Christ, just like all natural life, must be nourished and strengthened. This is possible only in communion with Christ, in the Holy Spirit, and through the word of Scripture.
21 · The unit develops a sustained theological argument linking Scripture to communion with God
Enlightened by the Spirit, believers gain a new knowledge of faith. The gospel is the food of faith and must be known to be nourishment. Salvation that is not known and enjoyed beyond mere metallic assent—salvation that is not known and enjoyed is no salvation. God saves by causing himself to be known and enjoyed in Christ. All the redeemed washed by His blood, come! Rejoice in His great love! Come to His Word and have it inform how you understand these things. Deep communion with God happens through God's words. God's words are His personal active presence with His people. God's invested Himself in these words. These words are, are invested with God's own character. That's why we talk about them being inerrant and infallible, not because the authors were so special. A lot of them weren't that special, but because God has invested himself in these words. So when you come to the words of Scripture, you can encounter God because they're all God's words. So that when we trust God's words, we're trusting God himself, which means that when you seek to commune with God, you are greatly assisted if his words, God's words, are in front of you and central to your communion and to your prayers for communion. When you read and pray his words, when you put your trust in Jesus, when you come through faith in Christ Jesus like Paul talks about in this text, That's one of the most tangible ways that you experience the communion that Paul envisions for us, that Lloyd-Jones says is the great object of the Christian life, that Edwards says this is God's great gift to us. He creates us so that we can come and behold the Trinity, enjoying and delighting in the Trinity. And He doesn't just say, well, it's nice that you're here to look at this. He says, no, come! Be a part of it! Come! Enjoy this! Come and delight in this! And it's possible. This isn't reserved just for guys who get taken up to the third heaven, like Paul. It's not just reserved for spiritual giants to get to experience. Through the normal means of grace, Praying through the normal means of grace, reading God's scriptures, through the normal means of grace, gathering as God's people where there's prayer, where the scriptures are preached, and where there's singing, so that you can go and it stirs up in your heart a desire for these things.
22 · The unit returns to John Murray's language of 'conscious, reciprocal love' and connects it to the telos of Paul's prayer in Ephesians 3:19: 'that you may be filled with all the fullness of God
I think Murray is exactly right. God communes with his people and his people commune with him in conscious, reciprocal love. So that, Paul says at the end of the prayer, we might know the glorious fullness of God for all eternity, that we would be filled with all the fullness of God.
23 · The unit expounds Paul's doxology in Ephesians 3:20-21, interpreting it as Paul's gracious pastoral response to the overwhelming nature of what he has prayed
And because Paul knows himself, and because he knows the Ephesians, and because he knows us, He ends this prayer in the most gracious way possible. You hear all that and you think in one part of your heart, "I want that so badly!" Right? And you think in the other part of your heart, "How?" Even given everything that has been pointed out in this passage, how do I get the strength to do that? Where do I— Where do I get the perseverance to keep doing that and to keep praying like that? I think Paul knows exactly how incredible and majestic that prayer is and how overwhelming and at certain points just out of reach it can seem, which is why he concludes, now to him who is able to do far far more abundantly than all we ask or think. He can do way more than we can even think to ask. Another translation: all we can even think or imagine. There's things God can do that you can't even think of for Him to do. According to the power at work within us. That power is already working in you. You've already been regenerated. Christ already dwells there. He just wants to get on with the renovation work. Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly than all we 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.
24 · The closing prayer summarizes the sermon's argument and applies it corporately, asking God to do far more abundantly than expected, to stir up prayerfulness, to grant communion, and to strengthen believers by the Spirit
Father, we come to You And we ask that You would do this morning far more abundantly than everything we have ever asked for. Exceed our expectations. Lord, we confess that we in our weakness and in our sinfulness, we expect too little of You. And so Father, with Paul, we ask through Your Spirit in the name of Jesus with boldness and total access, we ask confidently before You because in Jesus You are our Father. We ask, do more. Please, Father, let Your power be at work within us. God, I pray that You would do this for us personally. Lord, I pray for Providence, for her elders, for the deacons, for all the people that are gathered here, from the heads of households to the youngest believers here, Lord, I pray that You would stir up by Your Spirit prayerfulness. Stir up a desire, Father, for this kind of communion with Your Son Jesus. And then, Lord, as a Father who gives good gifts, we ask You in the name of Jesus that by Your Spirit You would strengthen us And we ask You in the name of Jesus by Your Spirit that You would give us just that. Lord, we want to experience conscious reciprocal love. We want to know communion. We want to taste the texture of Your love for us in Christ Jesus. So we ask all these things filled with hope. Because your word promises you desire to give them. And your word, because it is your word, is true. In Jesus' name, amen.