“Thou art coming to a King;
Large petitions with thee bring;
For His grace and power are such,
None can ever ask too much.”
-John Newton
We are on the threshold of the portion of this epistle that deals with the Christian’s walk. To this point, Paul has laid out very clearly and powerfully, what God has done. The salvation He has provided through Christ, the unity He has established between Jew and Gentile through Christ and by the Holy Spirit, the blessings He has bestowed, the spiritual house He has built and continues to build as He adds new saints to the structure, the free and glorious access He has provided to the presence of the Father, all through the death and resurrection of His Son, and the work of the Holy Spirit.
As we enter into chapter 4 we will see that word ‘therefore’ again, as Paul begins to paint a picture of what kind of person the Christian ought to be, and we will be reminded that his exhortations there are founded upon what he has taught us in the first three chapters.
But before we leave chapter three we have to stop for a time of refreshing and encouragement, as in our mind’s eye we can almost see Paul, lifting up holy hands and praising our marvelous, gracious, merciful, just, …and all-powerful, God.
“Now to Him who is able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.”
One of the first things I think about when sitting down to prepare a sermon, is what the main point was in the mind of the writer. I ask, ‘what did the human writer want to convey first and foremost, in this passage; or in this verse; or in this sentence; or in using this word?’
Then I ask, ‘what was the Holy Spirit saying through the writer, and further, what might He be saying to me and want me to say to others, now, through this same verse?’
Because you see, the Holy Spirit still speaks. And He will never contradict Himself, that we know and can be confident of; but from the unfathomable depths of God’s Word, He can continue to speak to us from the same portion of scripture and never exhaust its message for us.
So when I asked my first question this time, ‘what did the human writer want to convey first and foremost’, the conclusion I drew was that he wasn’t overly concerned at this moment about conveying anything deep or mysterious; he was praising the God he had been writing about. He had been prayerfully brooding over his work as he carefully chose his words and as he poured them out, he became increasingly filled. By the time he finished with the things he wanted to express to the Ephesians for their strength and future growth, he was so blessed by all he had been contemplating that he just burst into a virtual song of praise.
It’s what the Holy Spirit was, and is, saying, that I want us to go forward and consider today.
THE POWER THAT WORKS WITHIN US
The Spirit has inspired the human writer to make promises that no human would dare to make on his own, unless he was a false prophet, or a priest of false gods, and knew he had the people duped, or had his route of escape already planned.
He has talked about ancient mysteries being revealed to us. He has prayed in faith that we would receive a supernatural strengthening in the inner man; and more, a supernatural understanding of that which is unknowable to the unregenerate mind.
He has prayed, … and again, the fact of his prayer is a statement that he believes what he’s asking is both possible and available … he has prayed that we would be filled up to all the fulness of God.
Now remember, I‘m wanting us to get a look at what the Holy Spirit’s message is, in inspiring the man to write these things. So if we believe in that inspiration, we have to believe that the Holy Spirit of God, who is that power working within us, wants to impress upon us that these are things God wants to make real in our lives. They are not just the yearnings of a loving old man in a jail cell, wishing the very best for his children.
God has told us through this prayer of Paul that He wants us to know the unsearchable riches of Christ; He wants us to comprehend the unfathomable love of Christ; He wants to fill us up to all His fulness, and give of Himself to overflowing, until we become veritable fountains of His love and grace.
So I want to go on and look closely at these two verses of study today, and this is how I want to approach them.
WE MUST BELIEVE GOD CAN
Notice in the wording of verse 20, that we are not simply told that God is able to accomplish all those things Paul has been praying for in previous verses. And that would and should be enough for us, if it weren’t for our fallen nature and our life’s experiences that teach us otherwise.
It should be enough to say, “Now, to Him who is able to perform all these promises, and to do all that we could ask…”
The Christian should have no problem believing, and clinging to the belief, that God is able to do what He says He will do.
But so often, our lives don’t demonstrate a confidence in God’s ability; they demonstrate a lack of confidence. Now that may be due to a lack of confidence, not in God, but in ourselves. But that is only indicative of a deeper problem.
Because if our lack of response to Him; if our failure to live as though we believe He can and wants to do all these things in and for us, is due to a lack of confidence in ourselves to follow, to give ourselves over, to have a consistent walk, then we are putting our faith in ourselves, and not in God.
The first step in believing that God can, is ceasing to think that somehow He needs our help.
This, I believe, is the most difficult struggle for the Christian. However we might term it, “Denying self”, “Putting off the old man”, “Turning from the flesh”, I think many Christians never come to fully understand what they are being exhorted to do.
On some shallow level they may comprehend that what is being said is that they have a tendency to fall into temptation and sin. And nothing has been accomplished at that point, because even most non-Christians would admit that this life is filled with temptations, and that they occasionally fall. They may not be willing to call it sin; they may even be bragging about it when they tell you, but they recognize the condition nevertheless.
But a Christian must be taken farther than that. The Christian must be made to understand that when he is disappointed with himself for sinning, and when he feels defeated because he reads what he believes the Bible is telling him he should be and cannot do it; when he hears preachers and other Christian leaders admonishing him to do and not do, touch and not touch, and then fails to live up to those standards and goes away despondent over his condition, he is in essence saying that it’s up to him to bring to pass all those things Paul prayed for, and therefore it’s just never going to happen.
It’s a nice list, and maybe there have been some great Christians who have attained to those things; like Moody and Spurgeon and Madam Guyon, and Watchman Nee and others, but not the average Joe like me.
To have the Holy Spirit’s power working in and through me? To comprehend the breadth and length and height and depth of Christ’s love? Me, be filled up to God’s fulness? Well there’s just two thing wrong with that; I fail once in a while, and besides, I have too much else going on in the ‘real’ world, to get so committed that I go searching for those things.
Paul knew that about us, and so does the Holy Spirit. So in verse 20 He gives us the assurance that God is able to do beyond anything we could ask or even think.
Now think about that for a moment. If God is able to do beyond all that we can ask or think, then what else is there?
But the Holy Spirit didn’t stop there. He wants us to know that God is able to do
abundantly beyond all that we could ask or even think.
Now, it has long since left our capacity to join in the doing, hasn’t it? I mean, If it’s more than we could ask or even imagine, then that’s where we stopped. We might as well drop our hands at our side and watch, because from that point on we’re useless.
My computer gave me a great example as I was typing this sermon. I have a new program that has not yet had all the Bible words added to the dictionary that I will eventually add. Like Perezite. It underlined that in red when I typed it. Now I have to add it.
A nice thing about this program, most of the time, is that if I misspell a word accidentally, like typing ‘t-e-h’ instead of t-h-e-, as soon as I hit the space bar the computer will correct the word.
But earlier in this sermon when I typed the ‘unsearchable riches of Christ’, my program, not yet recognizing the word ‘unsearchable’, changed it to ‘unreachable’.
I almost didn’t catch it. I was going back over what I had said, and thought to myself, why did I say ‘unreachable’? So I typed ‘unsearchable’, and as I watched, my computer changed it to ‘unreachable’.
So I have to keep an eye on my computer, just like I do my own thinking. The intentions might be very good. My computer wants to help me spell. But like a wise man once said about cult religions, ‘they may be sincere, but they’re sincerely wrong’.
And just like my computer, a lot of Christians tend to go about with the attitude that the riches of Christ are not ‘unsearchable’, but ‘unreachable’. And there is an infinite difference between the two.
We may spend an eternity delving into and enjoying our unsearchable riches in Christ, but brothers and sisters, they are not ‘unreachable’. God has made them reachable.
He is able to do, not only abundantly beyond all that we could ask or think; but He is able to exceed doing abundantly beyond all that we could ask or even think.
At this point we’ve just sailed out so far beyond what our minds can handle, that we can’t even get a mental picture of what is being said here. Remember, we were left with our hands dangling at our side, back there at ‘beyond what we could ask or think’. But God can go exceedingly, abundantly beyond that.
So go ahead and leave those hands dangling, or raise them in praise and worship, because it is God’s power and not your own that strengthens your inner man to have Christ dwelling in your heart through faith, so that you, being rooted and grounded in love may be able to comprehend with all the saints, the breadth and length and height and depth, and to understand the love of Christ which surpasses human knowledge, so that you may be filled up to all the fulness of God.
WE MUST EXPECT HIS POWER TO WORK
There’s an old joke about a guy who was wandering through a country cemetery at night and fell into an empty grave that had been dug the day before in preparation for a funeral. After about 30 minutes of trying to jump, claw or climb his way back out, he gave up, exhausted, and sat back in a corner of the grave to wait until morning. A few minutes later a farmer hunting raccoons came along and fell into the same hole. After he had jumped and clawed for a few minutes with no success, the first man reached out from the dark corner, placed a hand on the farmer’s shoulder and said, “You’ll never make it”. But he did.
Many times we go along with this defeatist attitude, that the power available to us for any given thing is just not going to be sufficient when we need it, or not be what we thought is was when it comes time to perform.
Like the scene from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, which is taken from an actual event in the career of those robbers. They were robbing a train, and had to blow the safe open in order to get at the money. So Butch Cassidy ties bundles of dynamite all around the safe and the gang all runs for cover. When the dynamite finally goes off, it blows the boxcar to toothpicks, and money just rains down all over the adjacent desert. Butch had not expected the dynamite to be as powerful as it was.
Once we have understood that it is God’s power working, we must expect His power to work.
I think that to a large degree we just have this subconscious opinion that it’s too good to be true.
That the power of God that raised Jesus from the dead would be working in me? Oh, c’mon!
Yes!
Christians, listen carefully once more.
“But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Sprit who indwells you” Rom 8:11
“…in Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ; having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead.”. Col 2:11,12
And again in Ephesians 2:6,
“and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus.”
People you must come to know and understand clearly, that God is able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all that we can ask or think, and His power to do that is the same power that raised Christ Jesus from the dead, and, it is the same power that works in you, to justify you, and sanctify you, and glorify you.
So why would God hold back; what in all of time or eternity could hold Him back, from using that same power to accomplish His purpose in you?
I’ll tell you what could hold Him back. You. Only you can, by refusing to yield to Him; by quenching the Holy Spirit’s moving in your life.
WE MUST YIELD TO BE USED
Now in saying that we must yield to be used, I am not saying that by refusing to yield to God we deprive Him of glory.
God has been and will be glorified.
In John 13:31,32 Jesus says “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in Him; if God is glorified in Him, God will also glorify Him in Himself, and will glorify Him immediately.”
And in John 15:8 Jesus tells His disciples, “By this is My father glorified, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples.”
Then right here in our text, Paul says, “To Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus.
We have already witnessed that this is true. It’s not just a wish of Paul’s, but a statement of fact.
Throughout the centuries of mankind, God has been glorified despite the actions of men or angels.
Satan rebelled in pride, seeking to usurp the very Throne, but he and his legions fell to earth.
Since the fall of man, men have done everything in their power to stamp out God’s people and silence God’s voice in the world. But where are they? Where are the Nimrods and the Nebuchadnezzars and the Ahabs and the Caesars and the Tzars, and the Marxs and Lenins and the Hitlers and all the others?
They eventually fall to dust and are virtually forgotten. They are so unimportant, that the more time goes by, the more the historical accounts of them become twisted and inaccurate because memory fades, just as they become less and less significant.
But in and through it all, God’s purpose has gone on, untouched. Not even slowed down. The worst of men and the worst of their intents have only been puzzle pieces, ultimately fitting in perfectly with what He has declared would be.
The fulness of time came, and a child was born. A Son was given. Nothing hindered. Although Satan tried to stop it through Herod, God’s Anointed One came right on time, in the place that was prophesied, and went on with His work unhindered.
He died and no one could stop Him, or do it in any way other than He had decreed. He rose from the tomb, and no one could stop Him or discredit Him.
Then, just as He promised, He sent the Holy Spirit and built His church, and try as they might, no one has ever stopped it.
Oh, we have seen times in history when it seemed the church had lost its effectiveness. There are those who would tell you today that the church has no power any more, if it ever did.
They would say that there is nothing left of the church but weak people looking for a crutch; and they’d be as well off in a 12 step support group, or a lodge, or staying at home and reading psychology books.
But the church marches on, and God still brings glory to Himself through it, and in the end He will gather His church to Him from history’s boundaries, from the earth’s depths and heights. He will gather her to Himself and through her be glorified, as the powers and authorities in the heavenly places look on and wonder.
So going back to what I was saying, We as individuals must yield to Him for His glory, because that is His intention for us.
We must believe that He is able to do what He has said. We must expect that power to work in us, because to not expect it is unbelief. It is the same unbelief that the children of Israel displayed when they refused to enter the promised land.
And if we believe He can, and believe His power does and will work in us, then we must yield to Him and say, “So be it, Lord. Here am I; do as you will in and through me. By the working of your power which you exercised in raising Christ from the dead, strengthen me, give me understanding, fill me to the uttermost with yourself, and be glorified through me as I bear fruit.
It is what Your word declares would be; so let it be as You have said.”
To close I want to read to you a quote from E. K. Simpson’s commentary on Ephesians 3:21, concerning the future of the church.
“Through ages without end, inspired with His life and sustained by the Divine power which wrought in Him when raised from the dead, we shall ascend from height to height of righteousness, of wisdom and of joy; with unblenched vision we shall gaze on new manifestations of the light in which God dwells; with powers exalted and enlarged we shall discharge ever nobler forms of divine service and be filled with ever diviner bliss; and through eternity the infinite love of Christ will raise us from triumph to triumph, from blessedness to blessedness, from glory to glory.”
Christians, listen once more to the last line of Paul’s prayer.
“…to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever.”
Did you hear it? To Him will be glory in the church forever and ever. The church is forever and ever, believer. The church won’t end with the rapture. The church will go home, that’s all. And there, with Christ our Lord who purchased us for it and preserves us to it by the working of His power, we will glorify God through the ages of eternity.
To that I can only say, why wait? Look at those things Paul has prayed for the church in this chapter. Believe God can. Expect He will. Yield to Him and let His resurrection power work through you now, and by your fruit, glorify His name, both now and forever, through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
