Sermon Series: 

Ephesians: The Believer's Bank

Fill ‘er Up!

Ephesians 3:14-21

PSBC  8/6/00 PM

In a nutshell: Our challenge is to not only KNOW about God, but to live by what we KNOW about Him. Paul's prayer is a model for us to use to ask God for what we need so that we can live a life that allows our knowledge of God to truly impact our lives and our world.

I. Introduction

A. Martin Luther Story

Illustration: Martin Luther, the reformer of the church, had a good friend and assistant, by the name of Friedrich Myconius. In 1540, Myconius became sick and was expected to die shortly. On his deathbed he wrote a very tender and heartfelt farewell message to Luther. Luther read the message and immediately sent a reply: "I command you in the name of God to live because I still have need of you in the work of reforming the church... the Lord will never let me hear that you are dead, but will permit you to survive me. For this I am praying, this is my will, and may my will be done, because I seek only to glorify the name of God."

And while those words might seem a little bold and brash, the fact is that Myconius, who had already lost the ability to speak when Luther's reply came, soon recovered from his illness, and lived six more years. He finally died two months after Luther did.

Prayer is powerful. Paul knew that. That is one of the reasons he starts this new section of his letter to the Ephesians with a prayer. He needed us to see some of God's power.

B. 2nd of 2 Prayers

The passage that we'll be looking at tonight is the second of two prayers prayed by Paul in this letter to the Ephesians. And it introduces the second half of the book of Ephesians.

In the first half of the book, our spiritual "Quicken program" has been opened, and the spiritual bank account, that's in our names has been laid out before us and we've been given a good long look at all the rich and wonderful blessings that belong to us because we are people who are "in Christ", or Christians.

Now, in the second half of the book Paul is going to show us how to invest what we already have as Christians... into our daily living, into the world around us, and into the unique human relationships we each have.

But to do this, he realizes that this shift from knowing truth to applying truth is going to take some power. And so he prays. And in this prayer, he gives us a model to follow when we seek to tap into the power of God that will allow us to take the knowledge of what we have as Christians and let that knowledge impact our lives.

C. The equation

If I could put this into a math equation, it would look something like this...

Knowledge of what we have in Christ + the ability to live what we know = the experience of
God working in us, through us and all around us.

With that in mind, let's get into tonight's passage. Paul starts out by saying...

D. For this reason...

Eph. 3:14-15
14 For this reason I kneel before the Father,
15 from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name.

He's left the "bunny trail" that we looked at two weeks ago, and gets back to his thought that he started in verse 1.

The "reason" he's referring to, goes back to something he said in chapter 2.
-Jesus Christ makes us spiritually alive
-we are His workmanship
-we are no longer strangers and aliens, but fellow citizens with all the saints
-we are part of the household of God
-we are built on the foundation of the lives and the writings of the apostles and prophets who's lives and writings were under the direction of God's Holy Spirit
-and we are being built into a dwelling place for God
...for this reason, Paul humbly comes into the presence of God...,
...to ask for the power of God...,
...to be able to put the things we know about God...,
...into practice for God.

What does he pray for? We'll see that he prays for 4 things. And these 4 things become a model of how we need to be praying if we're serious about experiencing God's power to help us invest what belongs to us because we are Christians, so we get a significant return on those blessings.

II. Paul's Petitions

A. Strength (in our inner being)

Eph. 3:16
16 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being,

The first thing Paul prays for is that we might have strength. And the place we need that strength is in our inner being.

Illustration: When I was competitive power lifter, about 12 years ago, I need a lot of strength to compete against the other guys in my weight and age division. But because power lifting consists of very specific lifts–the squat, the bench press and the dead lift–I needed strength in very specific muscle groups to succeed.

So in my six-day-a-week workout routine, I concentrated only on exercising the specific muscle groups that would allow me to lift the most weight in each of those three lifts. I needed strength to compete, but if that strength was concentrated on my neck muscles or stomach muscles, it wouldn't do me any good, because those are not the muscles that I used to a great degree in my lifts.

Well, Paul identifies where we need to be praying for God's strength to invade us, so it allow us to invest our spiritual blessings where they'll do the most good. And Paul says that this investment must take place in our inner beings.

The Christian Chinese philosopher, Lin Yü-T'ang defines our inner beings this way... We do not know a man until we know how he spends his leisure. It is when a man ceases to do the things he has to do and does the things he likes to do, that the character is revealed. It is when the repressions of society and business are gone and when the goads of money and fame and ambition are lifted, that we see the inner man, his real self.

And Paul first of all prays for God's strength to enter this inner person that is in each of us. Because as Jesus said to the Pharisees,

Matthew 12:34-35
34 You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.
35 The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him.

No good can come from the spiritual blessings that are ours until we first of all have the core of our being operating under God's strength.

B. Dwell with Christ

The next thing he asks God for, on our behalf is found in the first part of verse 17...

Ephesians 3:17a
17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.

The word dwell is a compound form of two Greek words–kata (to get down); and oikos (house). Literally it means to "get down in the house". We might say, "to get comfortable in our house". Paul realizes that if Jesus Christ isn't comfortable in our lives, the blessings we have, will stay locked up in our spiritual bank vault, and we won't see any of God's power in our lives.

Illustration: Robert Munger wrote a booklet a number of years ago called, "My Heart Christ's Home". In the story, he pictures a Christian's life as a house. Jesus enters into the house and goes from room to room. And the story line goes that Jesus is surprised by many things that He finds–many things that make Him uncomfortable. So Jesus goes through the Christian's life, room by room and gets rid of the things that cause Him discomfort...
-He goes into the library of the mind and begins to clean up the trash that's on the shelves, and replaces the trash with His Word.
-He goes into the dining room of the appetite and finds worldly and sinful desires listed on the menu–things like materialism, envy, pride, and lust. So he replaces them with humility, love, meekness, and other virtues that please Him.
-He enters the living room of fellowship and finds companions and activities that have nothing in common with Him.
-He goes into the workshop and sees that only good and useful things are being made.
-In the closet He finds many hidden sins.
And Munger writes that Jesus only feels comfortable in that house when every room of that house is cleaned and made compatible with His character.

In order for Christ to dwell in our hearts, our hearts must dwell on Him. Our faith must cause us to be faithful exclusively to Him.

Illustration: In my study this week, I came across the story of Ray Hoo. Ray had just graduated from Iowa State University. He returned to his native Jamaica where he tried to find a job. His brother arranged for him to have an interview with the chairman of the Jamaican banana industry. Things went well during the interview and the chairman decided to make an opening for Ray, even though there wasn't one. Then the chairman asked Ray how he liked to spend his spare time. Ray answered him that he liked to read and play sports–especially soccer and basketball, and then he said, "I also spend a lot of time in Christian activities because I hope to someday give my life to Christian missions." Upon hearing that, the chairman decided that he couldn't spend the money needed to train a new man only to have him leave for the mission field. He said, "Young man, your ambitions are noble; but we want men who will give their lives to bananas."

You see, friends, whatever you give your life to is where your heart dwells. Is your goal to give your life to bananas? All around you, people dedicate themselves to bananas–climbing the corporate ladder, technological toys, investing in the stock market, a comfortable retirement, certain kinds of music or movies, or whatever. But don't you see? Life is too short to give it to bananas..., or anything other than Jesus Christ.

C. Comprehend the love of Christ

The third petition Paul makes, that we should follow as a model is found in the second half of verse 17 thru the first half of verse 19...

Ephesians 3:17-19
17b And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love,
18 may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ,
19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge–

Here Paul is praying that we might grasp and comprehend how much Jesus Christ really loves us.

I like what C. S. Lewis wrote to describe Christ's love for us...

One may think of a diver first reducing himself to nakedness, then glancing in mid-air, then gone with a splash, vanished, rushing down through green and warm water into black and cold water, down through the increasing pressure into the deathlike region of ooze and slime and old decay,/ and then back up again, back to color and light, his lungs almost bursting until suddenly he breaks the surface again, holding in his hand the dripping, precious thing he went down to recover. That dripping, precious thing is you and me.

-The width of God's love is immense. It reaches to all people, all nations, all sins, all needs, all cares, and all situations.
-The length of God's love is eternal. It existed before time. It is never ending. It is unconditional. And it has no boundaries.
-The height of God's love is infinite. With it we ascend to joy and truth and character and love.
-The depth of God's love is unfathomable. It caused God to stoop as low as man is, when He reached down to us through His Son.

Measuring the love of God is impossible. To do it would be to try and measure the immeasurable.
It surpasses knowledge. It is beyond comprehension. Yet we can know it by experience in every situation, in each decision, in the outcome of every event–we can see the love of God.

Turn with me in your hymnals to #67. "The Love of God" is my favorite hymn and verses 1 and 3 are my favorite two verses in all of hymnody, verses 1 and 3.

The love of God is greater far,
Than tongue or pen can ever tell,
It goes beyond the highest star
And reaches to the lowest hell;
The guilty pair, bowed down with care,
God gave His Son to win;
His erring child He reconciled
And pardoned from His sin.

O love of God, how rich and pure!
How measureless and strong!
It shall forevermore endure,
The saints and angels song.

Could we with ink the ocean fill
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were ev'ry stalk on earth a quill
And ev'ry man a scribe by trade.
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry;
Nor could the scroll contain the whole
Tho stretched from sky to sky.

O love of God, how rich and pure!
How measureless and strong!
It shall forevermore endure,
The saints and angels song.

D. Filled with the fullness of God

So far, Paul has prayed that we have...
-strength in our inner beings;
-that we dwell with Christ; and
-that we comprehend the love of Christ...
Now, the final petition is found in the last part of verse 19...

Ephesians 3:19
19 that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Paul is praying that our lives will be filled with everything that belongs to God.

J. Wilbur Chapman, a preacher and evangelist from the early 1900's used to tell this story quite often...

A young man got off at the Pennsylvania train depot as a tramp. He had run away from home, years before and he begged on the streets for a living. One day, he touched the shoulder of a man and said, "Hey, mister, can you give me a dime?" When the stranger turned around, the young man let out a gasp of shock. The man whom he had just asked for a dime, was his own father. So, the young man said, "Father, father, do you know me?" Without hesitation, the father threw his arms around his son and with tear in his eyes he said, "Oh, my son, at last I've found you! I've found you. You want a dime? Everything I have is yours."

Then Dr. Chapman said, "Think of it. He was a tramp, begging even his own father for ten cents, when for years the father had been looking for him to give him all that he had."

When Paul uses that word, filled, he's using a word that in the Greek means "total dominance". ...A person filled with rage is totally dominated by hatred.
...A person filled with happiness is totally dominated by joy.
...To be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God, means to be totally dominated by God, with nothing left of our old self that existed before we became a Christian.

By definition, then, to be filled in this way, Paul is praying that we be emptied of our old sinful selfishness, self-centeredness and non-godly stuff that we may be hanging on to from our "Before Christ" days–totally–not just a little bit–or mostly–but totally. And when we are emptied of self, we can have all the richness, all the riches, and all the power that belong to God.

That's hard to comprehend, nevertheless, that's what we are to pray–that we be emptied of self and filled with everything of God.

III. Conclusion

These four things that Paul prayed for–these four petitions– can easily seem beyond our reach. And in reality, friends, they are out of our reach. So, we might as well trash this entire evening.

Unless... there is some divine intervention. If you understand that, then you'll understand why Paul ends his prayer this way. Look at verses 20-21...

Ephesians 3:20-21
20 Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us,
21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

We need divine intervention to
-Have strength in our inner being
-Dwell with Christ
-Comprehend the Love of Christ
-Be filled with the fullness of God

And Paul describes God as being able. His ability works according to the power that works within us. The power that is within us is the risen Jesus Christ, who lives in us and through us when He is the Lord of our lives. And look at how this power is described...

–He is able
–not only is He able, but He is able to do
–and not only is He able to do, He is able to do beyond what we ask
–and not only is He able to do beyond what we ask, He is able to do beyond what we can imagine –but not only that, He is able to do immeasurably more than we ask or imagine
–And then the Greek rendering has one little adverb that is missing in the NIV text because it doesn't read very well in English, but it is very important... HE IS ABLE TO DO EXCEEDINGLY IMMEASURABLY BEYOND ALL THAT WE ASK OR IMAGINE.

Illustration: One New Year's Day, in the Tournament of Roses parade, a beautiful float suddenly sputtered and quit. It was out of gas. The whole parade was held up until someone could get a can of gas. The amusing thing was this float belonged to and represented the Standard Oil Company. With its vast oil resources, the motor that powered that float was out of gas.

Too often we Christians neglect to fill up our spiritual tanks, and we find ourselves out of what's needed to power effective Christian lives–even though God has plenty of power to give us.

God wants to fill your spiritual tank exceedingly and immeasurably. Why would you settle for anything less?

Paul shows us the way to fill up...

-Pray for the strength of God to take up residence in your innermost being
-Pray that your life would be a house where Christ is comfortable in dwelling
-Pray that you'll comprehend and feel the magnitude of God's love for you
-Pray that you can empty yourself of your self-centeredness, and be filled with the fullness of God

And it's only when you or I, or our church are filled with this fuel, that we will be able to be a true FORCE for Jesus Christ.

Amen.