here is a link to an audio recording of this sermon from August 2025at HopeWhangarei.
J A Robinson says of Paul’s prayer for the church in the
portion of scripture we had read out today ‘That no Prayer that has ever been
framed has uttered a bolder request’…we’ve maybe become used to the words,
we’ve domesticated them, but when you think of what is being prayed its pretty
amazing… that we may be strengthened through the presence of God’s Holy Spirit
in our inner most being, that Christ may dwell in our hearts that we may know
the vastness of God’s love for us in Christ and that we may be filled with the fullness
of God. That's radical beyond comprehension right… But says Paul the great thing
that makes it possible is we have a God who is not limited by our ability to
ask or even our ability to imagine, but can do immeasurably more than that. It’s a prayer made possible because of the
love and power of God.
In the first half of his letter to the church at Ephesus
Paul has laid out the gospel, the riches of God’s mercy. That in Christ we have
been blessed with every spiritual blessing, chosen, adopted, sealed, reconciled
with God, we were dead but now are alive, objects of God’s wrath but now
adopted children welcomed at his table, he has talked of the amazing fact that,
through Christ, Jew and Gentile have been bought together to form a new people
a new creation, a new temple in which God resides, and Paul had even taken a
bit of an aside and talked of the amazing fact that God had graciously called
him to unveil this amazing mystery to the gentiles. Before he goes on to talk
about how this new life in Christ is to be lived out in the second half of his
letter, he concludes this section with that prayer. That the church, this new
group of believers, may know the reality of what he has talking about, know the
one who has given us these blessings,
and grow in that. Be strengthened, have the power to grasp and be
filled… the three main verbs in this prayer.
As I was thinking about how to illustrate this I couldn’t
help but think that it is forty years this year, back in February… since I was
first surprised by the smiley-est grey blue eyes I have seen. I had been at
Bible College (now Laidlaw) for about a week and came round into the main
courtyard and there was Kris, barefoot splashing about in a puddle, with those
wonderful smiley eyes…. Over a three year period we got to be friends and a
romance bloomed as we spent time together. We got engaged sitting on a broken
trailer on a pile of weeds down the back of the bible college orchard, we’d
been talking about weddings and I asked kris to marry me only after checking
out that if I did she’d say yes. Who says romance is dead. We’ve been married for
thirty seven years and our love for each other has grown deeper and deeper year
by year. I’ve been greeted by Kris smiley eyes in a hospital bed a she has had
each of our four children, and we’ve worked at parenting them together as well
as we could… Like all marriages we’ve been through rocky times… ups and downs…
We are still learning and growing to love one another. To work and make
decisions and act as a couple… out of our love for each other… There are many
of you who are further along that track than we are… and I know some of you
when I speak of this feel that ache of sorrow as you have had to face the death
of a spouse. Paul’s prayer is inviting the new believers, inviting us, to go together
on that same journey of growing in intimacy and love with God and allowing
that to bring transformation and change… to strengthen, give the power for them
to grasp and be filled…
Ok, lets unpack this prayer a bit, or more technically a
prayer report, Paul tells us what he prays, and then I want to draw out some
applications and implications for us.
The portion starts off ‘for this reason, it ties us back to Ephesians
3:1. The gospel had made the two people, jew and gentile one people, and Paul
had been part of that as God had called him to be an apostle to the gentiles.
Because of these two things he now Prays. He describes his prayer by the
posture of kneeling. For Jewish men the usual praying position was standing. We
have instances of kneeling to prayer in scripture, for example in Daniel and Jesus
in he garden of gethsemane… to knee denotes both a fervency in prayer and also
a posture of reverence acknowledging the sovereignty of God. In Philippians 2
Paul talks of Christ’s self-emptying and humbling himself and then God’s exaltation
of him and in that Paul says every knee shall bow and every tongue confess
Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God. Paul kneels to pray.
Paul addresses his prayers to the Father, from whom every
family in heaven and earth derives its name. It seems an appropriate way of speaking
of God as the God of all the nations of the world, the clans, tribes, people
groups, Whanau, hapu and iwi when they are being bought together as a new
people in Christ. Isn’t that a challenge for us as a church in New Zealand…maori/pakeha…
and this new multicultural nation we have become in the 21st century.
God is the father by
right of being the creator of every being in heaven, and families in heaven
here is best understood as the different ranks of angels, and on earth. AS God
is our creator we are all on one level God’s children, human dignity comes from
being made in the image of God. In Christ it becomes a greater reality. Also in the ancient world the right to name
something is seen as having authority over it, here God as the sovereign father
and creator has that power. Paul is praying to the sovereign God of all nations
all people all family groupings, in Christ making it possible for all to come
to be part of God’s new family and people.
Then Paul’s prays that God out of his glorious riches, which
he just spent the last three chapters explaining, might strengthen the
believers by filling them with the power of his Spirit in their innermost
being. In Ephesians 1 Paul had talked of God giving us his spirit as a seal of belonging.
Paul is asking for that we may have more and more of that. That the presence of
God would strengthen us, again he’d been talking of the new people of God as
the new temple. I hate to bring up the idea of earthquake strengthening, but
it’s like Paul is praying that the spirits presence in us would strengthen, not
just the individual but the whole temple, the whole body of Christ, tying these
different people groups together… That we may stand strong and be this new
people together. If you think of a bouncey castle, its filled with compressed air
and it stands up to the constant pounding of children joyfully jumping up and
down.
So that Christ may dwell in our hearts by Faith. The way
that we experience the presence of the risen Jesus in our lives is through the
spirits indwelling. Here Paul prays that we may know that. We are used to
speaking of receiving Jesus in our heart, but this is the only place in the New
Testament where Christ is said to dwell our hearts… In our western world we
think of the heart as the seat of emotions, however in Jewish and Greek thought
the heart is the centre of reason, and decision making of the will. I have real
feelings for those smiley eyes, but marriage is based on making decisions to
live for and with each other… So Paul is saying as we are filled with the
Spirit his prayer is that Christ would be the centre of all we do individually
and as a church. This is shown in the fact that right after this prayer we have
the therefore moment in this epistle where Paul turns from theology to talk of
ethics, how we live out that new life.
Paul had spoken of the fact that the church was built on the
foundation of the apostles and the prophets, with Christ as the corner stone… now
in his prayer he picks that up again by talking of the fact that the church has
been rooted, an agricultural term and established, a construction term, in
love… That the Church is this new people of God because of what Jesus Christ
has done in the cross and his resurrection and that it was in fulfilment of the
scriptures and proclaimed by the apostles. With that base Paul now prays that
the spirit would give us the power to grasp the dimensions of God love for us
in Christ.
I couldn’t help but have a New Zealand music moment and
remember the band Supergrooves song ‘can’t get enough’ which used the
old spiritual refrain… ‘so high can’t get over it, so low can’t get under it
so wide can’t get round it O rock my soul.’ We need the spirit’s power to
understand the dimensions of what God has done for us in Christ. The height,
the breath, the depth and the length of God love in Christ. Some commentators see
here a cruciform shape, the shape of the cross, when we think Of God’s love we
cannot move away from the cross. Praying for a church that is multi cultural
from across the various barriers of the world, it invites us to see God’s love
stretching out beyond those barriers we put up to all people.. It gives us hope
as the amazing thing is God’s love reaches down enough to gather me and you up and
raise us to life in Christ. After coming to Christ Australian musicians Robert Harkness
and C.Bishop penned the hymn such love in 1929..
That God should love a sinner such
as I,
should yearn to change my sorrow
into bliss,
nor rest till He had planned to
bring me nigh—
how wonderful is love like this!
This love that surpasses all knowledge… does not mean that we down play intellect but rather as that hymn expresses, it is so incomprehensible to think of all the love God has for us. We can know of it know it but we also need to experience it.
Paul's final request is perhaps the most bold… that we may be filled to the measure of all the fulness of God. this prayer is a trinitarian prayer, did you note that we may know and be filled with the whole of the God head, the Spirit, the son Jesus Christ and with the whole of God. Again Paul thinks back to the idea of a new temple, being the place where God dwells… Just like with the old temple as Solomon dedicated the temple the cloud of glory came and settled on it, Paul is praying for us, and again the you throughout this prayer is plural it’s talking about the Church might be the dwelling place of God. The reality of ‘God with us’… Immanuel.
Paul finishes his prayer with a doxology by giving glory to God. Glory to God who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine according to his power at work in us. Again we are reminder of every spiritual blessing that Paul has been speaking about. The fact that the spirit that raised Jesus from the dead is at work in us, we have been made alive again in Christ, all adopted into his family and forged into this new people this new creation together in Christ, and God dwells in our midst. That is the work of the spirit and we can trust that this God is not limited by our ability to ask or dream or imagine, God has done so much and will do so much more… sometimes I’ve sort of heard this used in a way that makes God to thin… that tries to turn God into a cosmic credit card. For Paul it gives him the ability to pray that God might be glorified in the Church and in Jesus Christ, throughout all generations forever and ever. The amazing thing is that at the end of this prayer we come into view. The dimensions of God’s love the power of God’s spirit the fullness of God dwelling with his people is for us as well, as we are drawn into relationship with God, from across the barriers of our own world and time. Paul is praying for us. Praying that God would be praised and exalted and given glory in the church this church today. God is glorified in the church as we glorify Christ when empowered by the spirit we live it out in a way that reflects his life and love. In the therefore that Paul now talks of after his amen.
Ok that’s a lot of unpacking, so I just want to finish with two implications and applications for us.
Firstly, Paul gives a model here of how to Pray. For the church and for one another. Our prayer for one another can simply become what one commentator calls hospital prayer. We pray for each other as people find themselves in difficult situations. There is nothing wrong with that, it is an amazing way in which we can care and for and love one another. There have been times when I’ve been in hospital, and I know people are praying for me… I love how our connect group and men’s pray group pray for each other’s needs. God answers those prayers.
But when you see Paul’s prayers you see time praying for the growth of the church and the growth of our knowing and being known by God. That the gospel would become more and more a reality in our lives and in our actions and words. That God would be glorified through us. Paul’s prayers echo Christ’s. Thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven… Father make them one as I am in the father and you are in me… These are what that same commentator called ‘frontline prayers’. Kingdom edge prayers. I remember my mentor Jim Wallace gave a sermon on Spiritual warfare one time and he said that we can spend an awful lot of energy and effort praying against things, but in the end what makes the difference is pray for the gospel to spread, for God to be at work, for the spirit to do its work in and through us. Not to focus on the negative but to be good news people… of course we are going to look at spiritual warfare later in this series when we come to the armour of God in Ephesians 6.
One of our city to city 90 day goals is that as a church we might be come more unified as we pray for one another. That we are held together by a web of prayer. That we not only pray for each others needs but also for each others growth…strengthening, ability to grasp the dimensions of Gods love and be filled with the fullness of God…
The second is just as Paul prayed for those first believers to know the reality of every spiritual blessing in Christ that is our hope for this church as well… that we would grow in our knowing of God and help others connect with God… As a group our leadership did a revisioning workshop with City to City we saw at the core of our church were two desires. The first was that people might welcome and experience the presence of God’s anticipating ripple effects far beyond the life of your congregation from this. The second was spiritual formation that changes people and takes them along a significant pathway towards spiritual maturity. In a cyclic manner the growth in maturity would facilitate an ongoing desire to experience God more.
Maybe talking of my relationship
with Kris may have romanticized this idea a bit. But we don’t want Paul's pray
to be domesticated words and nice sentiments… we want people to know the
strengthening of the Spirits presence, we want you to have the power to grasp
just how high and wide, and deep and long is the love of God in Christ for you.
That you are beloved beyond your wildest dreams. To embark or to continue and
take the next step on that life journey eternal journey of growing in intimacy
and love with God allowing it to flow out of you in word and action. That you
may be filled with the fullness of God in Christ. That this boldest of requests
might be a reality.
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