Ephesians 3:13-16

It is such a wonderful privilege to be worshipping the Lord in the last few days as a church in fasting and prayer starting at Thursday night, continuing on all throughout every single meeting that we had, experienced the tremendous grace of God and the presence and wonderful work of God in our lives, whether it be in the midst of our intercessory prayers, in our worship, in the speaking of God’s Word. God has truly spoken to our hearts. And it is so wonderful to have this privilege of coming at the end of the year in the presence of Almighty God, who is the giver of all good things in our life, and once again consecrate our lives in His presence, and ask for His renewed strengthening of our hearts before we enter into a new year.

One of the things that we do not know as we face a new year are the challenges that we will face in this new year. We said the same thing at the end of 2023 as well, and 2024 definitely presented us with a lot of challenges that we could not have anticipated in our lives. So in the midst of that, we have to constantly rely upon grace and strength that comes from an unchanging God, a God who is constant, who is constantly available to help His children at their hour of need and their time of need. And so we are so grateful for these times when we come to come and experience wonderful fellowship with fellow believers, but also able to sing praises and be drawn closer to God like never before.

We started last night talking through the book of Ephesians chapter 3. And briefly, we started on verse 12 last night. The context is very, very important. The apostle Paul is in prison in Rome. By the time he writes the book of Ephesians, it’s already been almost two to three years of imprisonment in Rome as he writes the book of Ephesians, mainly to the church at Ephesus and the surrounding churches. But you will see in this book, it’s one of the greatest descriptions of our salvation and the great work that Jesus has already done for us. You will never hear any kind of a pity party coming from Him, any kind of a sorrow about His imprisonment, but rather we see a man who is more energized, more strengthened than ever before. Even after two to three years of being in prison, we see him more amazed at the grace of God, more amazed at what God has already done in his life in spite of his circumstance. What a great encouragement and example that He is for us.

Last night we talked through verse 12. We talked about the three things that verse 12 teaches us. That through the Lord Jesus Christ and because of faith in Him, we may approach God with freedom and confidence. The three things that Jesus’ faith in Christ gives to us, which is boldness, confidence, and access to Him. Boldness, to come to the presence of God without fear. Confidence, to have complete trust in someone or something. Access, unhindered approach to God available at all times. What a great privileges we have as believers of the Lord Jesus Christ. But the most important takeaway point from last night was this. The faith that the apostle is talking about. It is truly what brings us this initial boldness and confidence and access to the presence of God. But if you want to have continued boldness, continued confidence, continued access into the presence of God, you need to have a faith that is vibrant and that is marked by a complete and continued surrender before the Lord.

So we defined the continued faith in Him as this, a firm conviction, a surrender to the truth that you know to be true, but a conduct that is very important flowing from that surrender in your heart. Our Christian faith is not just lip service. Our Christian life is not something that is just confined to our Sunday morning worship or a Saturday night fasting prayer. It is not something in which we just profess faith by words where our actions do not have any kind of an outflow coming from our words. But the faith that he’s talking about is a continued faith, a faith that is growing, a faith that is a faith of surrender, a faith that completely trusts in God. When you do that, guess what happens in your life? You will have renewed boldness when you come to the presence of God. You have renewed confidence when you come to the presence of God. And you would have the willingness and the eagerness to go from access to access because you cannot wait to be in the presence of God.

This morning when someone was praying, they prayed this prayer, Oh God, give us a desire in every prayer meeting that we are eagerly looking forward to the next prayer meeting. That only happens when your faith life is growing and vibrant. If it is not growing, you know what will happen? You’ll be looking at the watch and thinking, when will this prayer meeting happen? And so that I can just go on and go back to my normal routine of life. But if you are really wanting to look forward to the next prayer meeting, your faith life has to be vibrant. Your relationship with the Lord has to be a living relationship. And then when that happens, you will want to be in his presence. You will want to experience that access that you have, especially when believers come together in worship. What a wonderful time that is.

And so he tells them about this great privilege that he has. And then in verse 13, he tells them, don’t be feeling sorry for what is happening to me. I ask you therefore not to be discouraged because of my sufferings for you, which are your glory. Now this verse is so beautiful because it doesn’t say which are for your glory. He’s literally saying his sufferings in the prison in Rome are actually for the glory of the church at Ephesus. You might be asking, how is that possible? See, by this time, probably people are wondering, the man who came and preached the gospel to you, the founder of your church has been sitting in a Roman prison for two plus years by now. You should be ashamed that you are now people who are following after him. How come your God is not delivering him? Paul is telling them, don’t feel sorry for me. Actually be rejoicing because literally what I’m going through are your glory. And that is also, he’s reminding them, the sufferings in the life of a believer are not wasted sufferings. They’re ultimately for the glory, our glorification and also for greater resurrection and glory, even for the church at Ephesus and encouraging them to thrive in the midst of the sufferings.

And in the context of that, he comes to verse 14 and 15. The second prayer that he prays for the church at Ephesus in the book of Ephesians, verse 14 and 15. For this reason, everything that he has been telling us to from verse 1 all the way to verse 15. The fact that in one body Jesus has made Jews and Gentiles to be one. God has divided, taken away all the hostility between them. But not only that, in the manifold wisdom of God, something, a mystery that was so wonderful. God has now made it available to be known to the people of this age and the wonder of the salvation of God. All of this makes him to be so amazed at what God has done. He says, for this reason, in this prison, I kneel before the father.

I mentioned this to you a couple of weeks ago. Kneeling before a God was something that was rarely seen in the old Testament. The Jew often stood and prayed. In fact, the Pharisees constantly did that. If you go to the wailing wall, even in Jerusalem today, they do not kneel on the ground. What they do is they rock back and forth as they look against the wall and they cry out to God in prayer. But Paul does something in his writing and in his life that is so unique. He kneels before the father in heaven. Can you imagine the soldier who is tied to him in prison? He has to kneel with him because he is tied to him in his hands and his feet. And you know, I don’t know exactly how much freedom they had. But when he’s kneeling, guess what is happening to the soldier? He’s also kneeling with him onto the ground. I think it’s a funny sight. He doesn’t really want to kneel, but he’s kneeling. And he’s looking at this man and going, what is this guy doing? He’s been in prison for two plus years and he should be sitting here crying. But he’s kneeling right there in that prison. And he’s kneeling before the father.

This kneeling is a sign of humility on the part of the servant of God. He’s thinking about the manifold wisdom of God. The excellency of the salvation that has been given to him. And the fact that even though he was the least of all the apostles, has been given the wonderful grace of proclaiming these wonderful gospels to the Gentiles and to the ends of the earth. So thinking about all that makes him to have a great deal of humility in his heart. He kneels and then he says, I kneel before the father. And this whole idea of calling God by father is something that is so unique to the New Testament. In fact, you can take the 39 books in the Old Testament. There is not a single prayer in which a person addressed God as a father. There’s not a single prayer in the Old Testament where a person addressed God as father. Can you imagine how revolutionary that thought would have been when Jesus was asked to teach the disciples how to pray. And the first words that came out of his mouth was this, our father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. And the disciples would have been so marveled at hearing that. Here is the son of God who has been with the father, who has come down to this earth, who is now telling the disciples, when you come to your God in heaven, you can address him by father. Because he is now about to become the father of your life. He has become the father of your soul. I kneel before the father.

So in that one sentence, we see not only the humility and the great fear that he has before the Lord, but also gives to us the closeness that he feels before his heavenly father. He is my heavenly father. This reason I kneel before the father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives his name. A lot of people have misinterpreted verse 15 to preach about the universal fatherhood of God. God is a father to all the people in the sense that he created every single one of us. But God is not the father as Paul is talking about to every person in the world. Remember the context of this writing. He’s talking about people who are now born again into the family of God. You have to be born again into the family of God for God the father to become your father. And so he says to us, every family… What is that family? He’s not talking about the family of humanity. He is talking about the family of the children of God. People who are born again. People who are washed by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. People who have been adopted into the family of God. People who have gotten the right to known as the sons and daughters of the living God because of the finished work on the cross. Those people, family in heaven and family on earth derives their name from this father that he’s praying to.

What is this family in heaven and family on earth? See, there is two kinds of God’s family in the universe today. There’s a family that has already gone to be with the Lord. The family that is already triumphant. The family that has already won the race. The family that has already finished the race. Saints of all the ages who have already gone to be with the Lord who is the family of God waiting for their bodily redemption in paradise in the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ. They derive their name from the father who is to be praised. But there is also the family of God here on earth. Who are they? It is all of us. People of God who have put their trust in the living God. Millions of people just like you and me around the world who are wagering their battle for the Lord. Who are running the race that is set before them. Trusting in the finished work on the cross. Until that day they join the family in heaven. What a beautiful picture here it is. The family in heaven that is already in the presence of God. The family on earth that is waiting for that day when they too shall join the family in heaven. Every family in heaven, every family on earth. They derive their name according from the father who sent his son to die for us on the cross of Calvary. When he thinks about saints gone before and saints still here on earth. He says, I kneel before the father from whom every family derives his name.

Then you come to verse 16. That he would grant you according to the riches of his glory to be strengthened with power through his spirit in the inner self. You can tell a lot about a person by listening to their prayer. You can tell a lot about a person by listening to their prayer request. Let me ask you something. What is your prayer like? What are the things that you pray for in your life? I, in my personal prayer, I kind of stopped praying for material things a long time ago. Not because I have everything that I need. Because I’m gonna trust that God will provide for my need if I take care of the spiritual things first. But I just want the church to think this thought for a second. Here’s a man who is in prison. Whose immediate need would be, what? Freedom from the prison. But in both prayers that he prayers, in this book, not a single mention about deliverance. Not a single mention for comfort. Not a single mention about food. Not a single mention about some kind of better prison conditions. Not a single mention about any kind of bodily healing in his own life. I’m not saying you should not pray for healing. I’m not praying that you should not pray for material things. I’m not saying that you should not pray for a job. All of these things, we all need them. And we should pray for them. But I want to really encourage the church to change your prayer life in the days to come. To model it according to the model that is given to us in God’s Word.

Look at the desire in the innermost heart of the servant of God. As he prays for the church at Ephesus. This is a church that is going through a lot of poverty by this time. You know why? Because the church that has been outcast from society of that world that day. Because they would not bow down before the goddess Diana. Many of them had lost their business by this time. Many of them had become poor in their life. Many of them had been persecuted. Many of them had been put to death. Many of them had gone through a lot of physical troubles in their life. Because they are believers of the Lord Jesus Christ. But the first thing that he mentions to them is this. That God would grant you certain things in your life. And you will see that in the coming verses. According to the riches of His glory. You have to really love God’s Word. The Bible does not say, out of the riches of His glory.

When Napoleon was emperor of France. One time a man came up to him and asked for a large sum of money. Large sum! Napoleon gave it to him. All of his advisors were amazed. That Napoleon would give that much money to a total stranger who came and asked of him. When asked, why did you give that much money to this man? He says, the sum that he asked of was proportionate to how rich and great I am. It felt his ego. He was able to feed the ego of this emperor. Because he asked the emperor for that much money. Because he knew that the emperor was wealthy enough to give him that much money. So Napoleon said, I would gladly give him that money. Because he understood what a great ruler and emperor. In his own vanity, he is saying that. When the Lord Jesus says to us, Paul went and prays and says, that He will grant you according to the riches of His glory and not out. There’s a big difference between the two.

If you ask a millionaire to give you $1,000, what is he doing? He is giving you money out of his riches. But if you ask him for $500,000, you know what you’re asking? You’re asking according to his riches. One is a portion. The other one is proportional. There’s a big difference between the two. One is a portion. The riches of His glory that he’s talking about, from which he wants God to grant us certain things, is not just a portion of the riches of His glory. It is proportionate to the riches of His glory. And there is a mountain of difference between the two. Oh, I cannot even stand before you today and describe to you the riches of the glory of the Heavenly Father. And Paul is saying, according, proportionate to how rich you are. Proportionate to the unsearchable riches that are found in the Lord Jesus Christ. The indescribable riches that are present in my Heavenly Father. Oh God, will you not grant us certain spiritual blessings in my life?

Paul is not coming as a beggar before the Lord. Paul is coming as an heir before the Lord. You ask for a portion when you are a beggar. You ask for a proportion when you know that you are in the Lord. You belong to Him. He is your Heavenly Father. And you are a child and everything that belongs to Him is yours. And you are a co-heir with Christ. That’s when you ask for a proportion. If you ask a stranger for money, you will ask for a portion. If you ask your father for something, you will ask for a proportion. Because you know that everything that belongs to the Father is yours as well. According to the proportion of the riches of His glory. Church, what is available to you is not a portion. It is the proportion of the heavenly riches of the Heavenly Father who is so wonderful. From that proportion, God wants us to give us certain things. A lot of people live their Christian lives in so much poverty. Not understanding the vastness of the riches that God has given to them.

The story is told of a woman who lived in a remote valley. She went to a great deal of trouble to have electrical power installed in her home. They noticed that even after the power was installed that she did not use very much electricity at all. In fact, her usage was minuscule month after month. So they sent a meter reader out to check on the matter. Maybe they thought the meter was faulty. The man came to the door and said, we have looked at the amount of electricity that you’re using. Don’t you use electricity? Oh yes, she said, we turn it on every night to see how to light our lamps. And then we switch it off again. A lot of Christians live their life just like this. Our understanding that the vastness of the riches of the glory of the Heavenly Father is available. Just one breath, one request away. He pleases, He delights to hear us cry out to Him, especially in matters of spiritual strengthening. And God, I promise you, if you cry out to Him in all honesty, He will strengthen you. He will grant you the honest and godly desires of your life.

So what is His prayer according to the riches of His glory? He says, I want the church to be strengthened with power. I want the church to be strengthened with power. Early on in Ephesians chapter 1 verse 18 and 19, He prayed a prayer and He said, I want the eyes of their heart to be opened. That they will know what the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of the inheritance of the saints. And what is that? What is the boundless greatness of His power toward us who believe. So in the first chapter, when He prayed for them, He prayed for enlightenment. I just want their eyes to be open, eyes of the heart to be open. And I want them to realize how much riches and how much power that is available toward the people who believe in the presence of our God. By the time you come to chapter 3, He moves from enlightenment to enablement. He says, I don’t want them to just know that there is power. I want them to experience that power to be real in their lives. It is not enough for them to know that there is power that is available. I want them to receive that power and to be strengthened by that power.

In the Greek verb that is used for strengthen over there is so beautiful. Anytime in a Greek verb, the word ends with O. In fact, when two O’s are used at the end of it, it is used to describe something that is not adequately described by just that word. And that’s what Paul uses here in writing the book of Ephesus, Ephesians. When he came to this word, do they will be strengthened? He uses a Greek verb and he adds two O’s at the end of that word strengthened. You know what that means? I want them to be made mighty, that the strength on the inside of them will become evident and established in the strength of their outside behavior. He says, I want the strength that will come upon them by the power of the Spirit of God to be so amazing that their conduct, their behavior will be transformed by the strength that is in now in their inner man. I want, in other words, for them to become mighty men and women of God. That’s God’s desire for you. Before you enter into 2025, that you surrender your life, that you become mighty men and women of God strengthened by the Lord.

To make this more clear to you, there’s a verse in which the same usage is used. That is in James 2:21. When James is writing about justification by faith, but also accompanied by works, he writes this, was our father Abraham not justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? The word justified over here also is a Greek verb and the writer actually adds two O’s at the end of it. What is he saying? Was not Abraham justified when he believed in God? Absolutely, himself says that. But you know what happened when he offered Isaac on the altar? That justification that was on the inside, the relationship and trust that he had in the Lord was now more evident than ever before when he was willing to offer his son Isaac on the altar. You see the difference between the two? It is one thing to say, I believe in God. It’s another thing totally to take your only son to a mountain and offer him up on an altar and say, even from these ashes, my God is able to bring him up alive again. There’s a difference between the two. And that’s what James chapter 2 verse 21 is saying. The same kind of usage God uses in Ephesians as well. God does not just want you to be strengthened in the way strengthened you understand it. Beyond your understanding, God wants you to be strengthened in a mightier way. How? Where? In your inner man by the Holy Spirit.

In your inner man by the Holy Spirit. That is where real strength should be happening. It is possible to make my outer man very strong. Proper food, exercise, following certain regimen in my life. I can make my outer man to be very strong. I can also make my mind to be maybe calm, refreshed by following certain meditation or the things prescribed by this world. But the strength of the inner man can only be achieved by the work of the Spirit of God in the life of man. Where did this strength come from? The same Spirit that caused that inner man to become alive again. That is what he talked about in Ephesians chapter 2. We were dead in our sins and trespasses. What was dead? Your inner man was dead. The Spirit of God, by the grace of God, at the moment you believed on the finished work on the cross, came and made your inner man to be alive again. And that is what we call born again. The second birth that happens in the life of the redeemed. Where the inner man is now born again. It is the inner man that communicates with the Spirit of God.

But what is happening? As time passes by, if you don’t take care of the inner man, the inner man will become weaker and weaker every single day. If you don’t nourish the inner man with prayer and God’s Word, it will become weaker and weaker and weaker every day. As just as the outer man will become weaker if you don’t eat the physical food, the inner man will become weaker if you don’t feed on the Word of God, the living Word that made you alive to begin with. How can we neglect God’s Word? How can we neglect the meditation of God’s Word? It is the Word of God that made you alive to begin with. But unless and until you feed on that Word every day, your inner man will grow weak. It will become puny. It will lose its strength. It will become a shell of the life from which God redeemed you. And the greatest desire of our Heavenly Father is that your inner man is strengthened day by day, as we heard today. From glory to glory, from perfection to perfection by the work of the Spirit of God in the life of man. A lot of people think the Holy Spirit is given to us so we can clap our hands, so we can speak in tongues. All of that will happen as the Holy Spirit comes upon God’s people, their outer manifestation of the power of the Spirit of God coming upon God’s people. But the greatest work of the Spirit of God is in the strengthening of the inner man, the empowerment of the inner man, making the inner man to be something that is supernatural to do the work that God is calling us to do.

When your inner man is transformed, you know what happens? Your mind is transformed. When your inner man is transformed, your mind becomes transformed. You start thinking differently. You start acting differently. You start talking differently. That can only happen if the inner man is strengthened. Do you want to have boldness to preach the gospel? Your inner man needs to be strengthened. You want to have courage to stand before others with the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ? Your inner man needs to be strengthened. You want to have victory over the addictions of your life? Your inner man needs to be strengthened. You want to be set free from the bondages of your life? Your inner man needs to be strengthened. No amount of therapy, no amount of counseling, no amount of self-help tools can set you free from the bondages of sin. Only the strengthening of the inner man by the work of the Spirit of God can enable you to live a Christorious Christian life.

Oftentimes, before I come up to preach, I say to myself, don’t talk too fast. Don’t talk too loud. Don’t get too animated. Try to calm down. But topics such as this are too difficult to say calmly because our Christian life is so importantly connected to this one truth. It is God’s transformative work in the inner man. That’s what Christian life is all about. It is where real victories are found and that can only be done by the power of the Spirit of God. Let me ask you today, how is your inner man looking? How is my inner man at the end of 2024? If God were to open us up and give us a glimpse of what that inner man looks like today, is he barely breathing? Is he shriveled up, unable to resist the temptations of life, giving into the whims of every single lower of the flesh? There’s a battle that is going on between your flesh and this inner man. If you are not strengthened in the inner man, you will fail all the time to the flesh. Because the flesh is very strong. The flesh is mighty. The flesh is always with us. But we need to make sure that our inner man is getting stronger and stronger every day. That our flesh is subdued every single day because the inner man is getting stronger and stronger every day.

It is because of that strengthening that Paul is able to write what he wrote in 2 Corinthians 4 verse 16. We do not lose heart though our outer person is decaying. Don’t forget about the outer person. God will one day make it just like him. But what is happening to the inner person? It is being renewed day by day. Oh, what a beautiful picture. What a beautiful picture of the grace of God that wants to make you to be something so beautiful. Do you want to be used to my God? Be strengthened in the inner man? Do you want to have peace that passes all understanding? Be strengthened in the inner man. Do you want to have joy that no one can take away? Be strengthened in the inner man. And that only happens through the Holy Spirit. Oh, what a great God we have who gives us His Spirit and He strengthens us beyond anything that we can do.

So His prayer is that, according to the riches of His glory, proportionate to how vastly rich you are, oh God, that you will strengthen my inner man by the Holy Spirit.

We’re going to take some time for worship. We’re also going to take some time for you to come forward and pray. Once again, dedicate your life. Ask for a renewed strengthening in your inner man. See, as a pastor, I don’t have visibility in your inner man. I don’t know what it looks like. I can only tell what you look like on the outside. But your God knows you. He knows your situation. He knows where you’re at. And He wants to change your life from the inside out. So much so that your outside behavior and everything that you do completely changes because of transformation in the inner man.

In our study on osteoporosis, which is the, you know what osteoporosis is, the wasting away of the bones, the bones getting weaker as we get older. It writes like this. Like all living tissue, the bone is constantly being broken down and reformed. So one of the characteristics of any living tissue in our body is that it is constantly being broken down and reformed. The words, you know, not only apply to our bodies, but to the perpetual emphasis that we give on brokenness in the life of a believer. A lot of people say, I’m tired of repenting. I’m tired of confessing. I’m tired of saying, God, I need help. But that’s okay. You know what that is? That is a sign that you’re living. You know when you should be really worried? Is when you stop repenting. You know when you should be really worried? When you lose the brokenness. Every living tissue is broken, only to be reformed again. Same is true in our spiritual life as well. It’s okay to be broken. It is okay to say, I’m messed up. It is okay to say, I need repentance. It is okay to say, I need fixing. That is not a place of lostness. A place of lostness is where you refuse to acknowledge that you’re broken. That you need the Lord. That you need His forgiveness.

So don’t be ashamed to come for prayer. 2024 has been probably the most difficult year of my life. In my sermons, I always tell you, don’t ever say a year was bad. Because we only know if a year is bad when we reach the shores of heaven. Many years that we took were good and turn out to be bad. Many years that you thought were bad will turn out to be absolutely wonderful. So don’t say bad or good yet. We don’t know that yet. But I can tell you from a human perspective, God was good. But it was probably the most difficult year in my life. Untimely deaths. So many sorrows. So many difficulties I faced in 2024. Probably more than any other year in my life. Many things I have not shared with most of you. But God is still a good God. And when Brother Anil was saying that we need to pray for our pastors. The first person that needed prayer today is me. I need to be strengthened in my inner man. I have a lot of burdens in my heart today that I need answer for. So I’m going to ask Pastor Leslie and Pastor Joseph to come forward and pray for anyone who comes forward. And also for us as a family as well. Let us sing unto the Lord and worship His holy name.