Prayer that Reflect the Heart of God Part 2 - Ephesians 1:15-23

0:32But we started that study a year ago, and then a couple weeks ago we picked back up. And so in that study, we saw that verses 3 through 14 really is a record of Paul's praise to God. It's a praise to God for the blessings of redemption, the blessings of salvation, and all that that entails. And then in verses 15 through 23, which take us through the end of chapter 1, is where Paul turns to pray for the saints. So we see Paul's praise to God, and now we are studying Paul's prayer for the saints at Ephesus, for the believers at Ephesus. And last time, a few weeks ago, we looked at the first few verses, verses 15 through 17. And we talked about several things, and I just want to quickly review them for you to kind of. To get our minds back into the text, but we started out by defining prayer as a reflection of our heart.

1:39Prayer is the overflow of our heart, and it often reveals the true spiritual condition of our hearts. It reveals our truest motives, our attitudes that we bring to our prayer life. And it reveals our greatest desires and our greatest longings through the things that we ask God for. Now, of course, as a believer, our hearts ought to always reflect God's heart. So our prayers should reflect the heart of God. But if we are honest with ourselves, that's not always the case. And our prayers are evidence of that. And so last time, we looked at Paul's example of prayer, and we made three observations about a prayer that reflects the heart of God. First, we saw that they possessed the right motivation. The prayer that reflects God's heart is motivated by the grace of God in the lives of others. That's what we saw in verse 15. For this reason, I too, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus that exists among you and the love for all the saints, do not cease to pray for you. So it's motivated by the grace of God. We saw that last time.

3:00Secondly, we observed that a prayer that reflects the heart of God produces the right attitude. And that is an attitude of thankfulness. And when Paul heard of the grace of God that was at work in the Ephesian believers in the Ephesian church, it produced in him an overwhelming attitude of thankfulness for them. And we see that in verse 16. I do not cease giving thanks for you while making mention of you in my prayers. So it's a prayer of thanksgiving, an attitude of thankfulness. And then thirdly, the final observation we made last time was that his prayer petitioned the right request. It asked the right thing, and that is true of all prayers that reflect the heart of God. It asked for things that God desires to happen. And we see that in verse 17. It says that he asked that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him.

4:09And we saw that that was Paul's primary request for the Ephesian believers, that they would come to this full knowledge of God, that God would give them this spirit of wisdom and revelation, that they would see the truths about God and then have the wisdom to apply those. Truths to their life. And that becomes the overarching request that Paul makes in this prayer. It's a prayer for the knowledge of God. And then, as I mentioned last time, the rest of the passage really falls under that request. And Paul makes three additional sub-requests, if you will, of that knowledge of God. And so that's what we're going to look at this morning. We're going to look at those three additional requests that Paul makes for the Ephesians in his prayer for them. But before we get into the text, I want to share with you a quick story.

5:14Have you ever had one of those moments where kind of the light bulb goes off, right? One of those, I think they call them an aha moment, right? Where something, you finally get it. And when you come to understand that one thing, it makes all the difference in the world, right? I think we've probably all experienced something like that, and it changes everything. And for me, it was when I was about my oldest son's age, 11 or 12 years old, and I was at home, and one of my chores was to mow the grass. And my dad decided that it would be helpful to have a push mower. And that would teach me some good lessons of hard work. And I remember one summer, I was just, you know, Just teaching me how to mow the grass, and he had shown me kind of how it worked. And it was the middle of summer, it was hot, and the grass was pretty tall.

6:10Probably seemed this big to me when I was 11 behind a push mower. And he said, It's time to mow the grass, so go mow the grass. And I get out there, and I was trying to remember all that he told me about how to operate the mower. You, you know, you push this, you pull, pull that, make sure there's gas in it. And it started, right? And so here I go, and I'm and I'm pushing. I get behind that mower and I'm pushing. I get about halfway through and start thinking to myself, you know, this is a bit harder than it looked like my dad had, you know, when he was mowing. It didn't look so hard for him. And so I started thinking through all that he had told me, and I saw this little lever on the side. I'm like, you know, I wonder what that does. I remember he talked about it and pushed that lever, and lo and behold, the wheel started turning. It started turning, you know, and you're running to keep up with it. And I'm like, wow, this thing's got a lot of power, you know, and it's too bad I'd already finished most of the yard before I figured it out.

7:14But I tell you that, you know, the light bulb went off. You know, there's something missing. And when I connected the dots and I realized the power that the mower had to mow the grass, I didn't have to struggle as much. It was still hot. And I didn't enjoy doing it, but the point is, I think on a spiritual level, that happens to us often. In the Christian life, we know all these things, right? Week in, week out, we hear sermons, and we're taught about God, we're taught about his attributes, about who he is. We have all this knowledge about the salvation that is ours in Christ, and we hear about all these great things. But we leave here, and sometimes the light bulb doesn't go off.

8:04We don't realize what those truths, the power and the richness of those truths. We don't realize them in our daily life. And so we walk out of here and we don't fully understand the practical implications of those things. And so what, and so I tell that because that is what Paul is praying for here. Paul understood this, and this is the heart of his request that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, would give you, that would give us a spirit of wisdom and revelation and the knowledge of him. That we wouldn't just know a bunch of facts about God, but that the light bulb would go off and we would understand the richness and the power and the glory that we have access to as believers.

9:00That the eyes, like in verse 18, that the eyes of our heart might be enlightened, right? That the light of our understanding, he would illumine our minds and our hearts. Because Paul understood this, that the knowledge of God is what transforms our heart. When we come to fully understand who God is, not just about him, but what we have in him, it transforms, it changes everything for us. It enlightens our heart. And so Paul's prayed specifically that the Ephesians would come to know and understand three truths about God, three truths. And my hope for this morning, my prayer this morning, is that we also might come to know those same three truths and that by knowing them, it would change the way we live, right? That we would walk out of here, changed people, that everything would be different for us. So again, there's three truths you need to know about God this morning, and it will transform your life. And I didn't get a chance to do a PowerPoint, so let me just kind of give you the three points, give you a roadmap for where we're heading. It should be obvious in the text as we go through it. But the first thing you need to know is the hope of His calling. We need to know the hope of His calling. Number two, we need to know the glory of His inheritance. And number three, we need to know the greatness of His power towards us who believe.

10:30So let me read our text again this morning, and then we will kind of dive into it. Starting in verse 18, I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what the hope of his calling, what is the hope of his calling, what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of his power towards us who believe. These are in accordance with the working of the strength of his might, which he brought about in Christ when he raised him from the dead, and he seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all of rule and authority and power and dominion and every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the age to come. And he put all things in subjection under his feet, and he gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all and all. All right. So three truths. Let's look at the first one.

11:36Beginning at the end of verse 18, he prays that we would know what is the hope of his calling. Now, if we're going to understand this truth, we first need to kind of define what hope is and spend a minute or two developing a good definition of what biblical hope is. And that's a little difficult to do because the Bible is a hope. Bible says a lot about hope, and it's hard to kind of summarize it all into a succinct definition, a lot of different elements. But I think as we survey the scriptures, and especially the New Testament, and survey what the scriptures say about the believer's hope, you will find that it is related to a promise of something better. Something better. It's a promise that what we're experiencing now, our present condition, is not as good as what is to come. That's what hope is. And as I said, it's especially true for the believer. We've been made great and glorious promises to those who believe in Christ. Let me just review a couple of them for you. You don't have to turn here. I'll give you the references and you can write them down. But first and foremost, we have a hope of salvation.

12:58And if you want to summarize all of it, that is our hope. That is our greatest hope, to be saved. 1 Thessalonians 5, 8, but since we are of the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet, the hope of salvation. That is our hope. For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation. That is our hope. That's the hope of a believer, that we would not experience the wrath of God, but the The saving grace of God. We're also promised a hope of glory.

13:38Colossians 1:27, the mystery which has been hidden in past generations has now been made known, and that mystery is Christ in you, the hope of glory, right? The hope of being glorified one day, that our present bodies that are falling apart will not always be the case. We have a hope of future glory. We have a hope of the resurrection. 1 Thessalonians 4:13. We are not like those who have no hope, who grieve. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. We have a hope of the resurrection. We have a hope of redemption of our bodies, Romans 8. We have a hope of righteousness, Galatians 5:5.

14:36We have a hope of eternal life. And lastly, we have a hope that we will one day become like our Lord when he appears. It says that in 1 John 3, it says, Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. But we know that when he appears, we will be like him, because we will see him just as he is, and everyone who has this hope fixed on him purifies himself just as he is pure. So hope, I know that was a lot, a lot of verses, but hope is at its core a promise of something better. And for believers, again, we have extraordinary promises. But it's not just a promise of something better.

15:30It is a confident expectation that that promise will become a reality. You see that? It's not just wishful thinking. It's not just, well, I kind of, you know, that may happen. It may not happen. I hope it does. No, it is a confident expectation. It's a longing for, a waiting for, that promise to be made whole. We see that in Romans 8. That's, I know, a familiar passage probably to many of you. But, you know, Paul says, you know, I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us, right? That promise of the future. And then he goes on to say that not only the creation, but we ourselves are waiting eagerly for that adoption as sons, for the redemption of our body.

16:25It's that eager anticipation, that waiting. That's what hope is. And then, lastly, in our definition of hope, it's a promise of something better. It's an expectation that that promise will be made whole. And then true hope does not disappoint. So, when that time comes for that promise to be made whole, you're not disappointed. Have you ever been made a promise by someone and then been disappointed by what they promised you? I have, I'll, again, give you another personal example.

17:05Kim and I just celebrated our 13th year anniversary this August. And every year we try and get away, go someplace nice. And when we were first married, we didn't have a whole lot of money, and so we didn't go to a lot of nice places. But there was one year, I can't remember which year it was, probably four or five, fifth year, and I was really, I was wanting to take someplace nice. So I found this place in Mexico. We were going to go to this nice resort, and you get online, and they promise you all this great stuff. I mean, they got the pictures. It's gorgeous. You know, the blue water you can see for miles, miles out and miles down, and you can see to the ground, white, clean beaches, great. Food, you know, they promised all these restaurants and activities and all these great things. And so I'm like, man, this is going to be great. I'm going to really, it's going to be a real treat. They promised me all these great things. And then we get there, we get off the plane, and we're all excited and anticipating all these great promises. And then we get to the resort. And, well, the water wasn't as blue as the pictures were.

18:27In fact, there was a bunch of big mounds of burlap barriers that they had put in, so it obstructed your entire view. The beach was not as white and pristine as the pictures made it out to look. It was full of seaweed that they were constantly trying to clean up. About half the restaurants were closed and under construction, and half the activities couldn't be partaken in because it was too windy. And so it was a big letdown, right? It was a disappointment. Now, we've made the best of it, but it didn't deliver. And I say that because that's not true hope. True hope always delivers, it never disappoints. And that's what Paul makes this point, especially in relation to the hope of the glory of God, the future glory that we have been promised. When it gets there, when we get there, You will not be disappointed, I promise, I can assure you.

19:35And that word says that hope does not disappoint. It does not put us to shame, literally speaking. And that's what biblical hope is: it's a promise of something better, and it leads us to confidently wait for that promise in the future, and it will not be put to shame. Okay, so that's kind of a working definition of hope. Now, let's look back at our text and see where that hope comes from. Where can we find that kind of hope? And what makes it to where we won't be disappointed? What is the foundation of our hope? Well, Paul says that he wants them to know the hope of what? Of his calling. The hope of his calling. Now, this is where true hope is found.

20:29So, what's Paul talking about? He's talking about the entire plan that God has put into place, the entire plan of salvation. And our hope is secure because three things. Number one, it's his calling. You see that? It's his calling. We can have hope in a future glory because it's he that has called us. And that's important because if it was anybody else who was making that promise, we would have no hope. We would be greatly disappointed.

21:00If I were to make that promise to you, I could not deliver those great promises that we reviewed just a moment ago. And so it's important to note that it's his calling. God is the one who is behind it. He is a faithful God, He is a God who cannot lie, and He's a God who always delivers. And we're told this over and over and over again. In fact, Paul just got through mentioning all of this in the first half of this chapter: that it was God who determined to bless us with all the spiritual blessings. It was God who chose us according to His own divine love to be in Christ. It was God who took the initiative to and arrange, He predestined, He arranged all the details that go into us receiving that salvation. And it was all according to the kind intention of His will. You see that? It's His calling. Number two, it's a gracious calling. And that is where we can find hope because we don't deserve any of those blessings, any of those promises that have been made to us. We don't deserve it. And yet, in His calling, we find that God has been gracious to us, and He has given us a salvation and a hope that we don't deserve at all.

22:29But it's the hope. Of forgiveness. It's the hope of the removal of the stain and the penalty of our sin. In verse 7, it tells us that in Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished on us. You see that? Our hope is anchored into the graciousness of God, the gracious calling of God, and He's lavished His grace upon us. He's not withheld anything back. And even though we don't deserve it, it is our hope. It is our hope. And then, lastly, it's a calling that's secure. Our hope is found in the fact that our calling has been secured by God. He initiated it, He provided all the means for it, and then He secured it so that it would take place. And that's the part where it doesn't disappoint. In verses 13 and 14, it says that having believed in Christ, we were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance. We've already received the down payment. Now we're just waiting for the full thing, right? For the glorification of our bodies. And so the first thing that Paul wanted the Ephesians to know and understand, the first thing that we need to come to an understanding of. Is that there is incredible hope, and it's only found in the calling of God, of you and me, the calling to salvation, the gracious calling, the secure calling. And friends, when the light bulb goes off on that, and you realize that the hope of his calling is ours to be had, it changes everything.

24:27It motivates us to, you know, when our lives sometimes can be filled with many trials, right? We can oftentimes go through some tough times. But when you understand the hope of his calling, it becomes an anchor for your soul. And you're able to, like Paul says, persevere. You're able to eagerly wait for the day that Christ comes because the things that we're going through now are nothing to be compared with the glory that is to come. And so it motivates us to persevere.

25:02And it motivates us to live in a manner worthy of that calling, as he says in just a couple chapters later, that he calls us to live in the light of that hope. And so that's the first truth that I want us to understand this morning: the hope of his calling, the hope that we have in the fact that God has called us. But there's a second truth that. Paul mentions here, and that is that we need to know the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints. Now, this is an interesting verse here in the text at the end of verse 18. And it's interesting because it's talking about his inheritance, God's inheritance, and oftentimes we think of our inheritance. This is slightly different. So, I just want to go through piece by piece and unpack this meaning for us. And there are four things that I want to point out to you as we go through it. The first is the quantity of this inheritance. You need to see how much there is. That's the first thing I want you to notice. Now, in my career, my professional career, I'm a financial advisor, and I oftentimes get an opportunity to have a discussion about people's inheritance.

26:33And sometimes it's on the back end when someone has passed away, and I have all the beneficiaries, the kids, if you will, in my office. And one of the first questions that I always get is, how much is there? You know, I think especially the older generation, they keep things close to the chest. They don't oftentimes tell their kids what all they have. And so, then the first Time they find out is in my office, and that's usually the first question I get. How much is there? And that's what we see Paul addressing here. He addresses the quantity, says there are riches in this inheritance. This inheritance is described as containing riches, and that's plural. There's a lot here, there's a lot in this thing. There's an abundance, it's full, it's overflowing, plenty to go around. There's nothing lacking. That's the idea here when it says that Paul wants them to know the riches of the inheritance. One mental picture might be in Luke 5, when Jesus is telling Peter to let down his nets. You remember that story? And he hadn't caught anything all day. He says, no, Peter, let down your nets and catch some fish. And so he lets down his nets, and then what happens? It pulls up. I mean, there are fish. There's a great quantity of fish, and they're so much that their nets began to break. And they called over the other boats, and they filled up both boats. That's the idea of this abundance, this richness, this fullness. It's overflowing. And that's how he describes this inheritance. And then, secondly, the second thing that I want you to notice is its worth.

28:22Its quality. It's one thing to have an abundance, but it's another thing to have an abundance of something. That's worth something. And that's usually the second question I get. Okay, there's a lot, but how much is it worth? I don't want a bunch of junk. I want something that's quality. And that's what we see here. It's riches of what? Riches of glory. This inheritance is full of glory. And it possesses incredible value. Incredible richness. It's of the finest quality. And it's kind of hard to wrap our minds around what it means to be rich in glory, right? We don't really describe things that way in our modern words. And so let me draw your attention real quick to Revelation 21. I think this is a great example of what something looks like or is described as being rich in glory. It gives you a good mental picture of what this means. And Revelation 21 is, you know, we're at the end of the age, right? And in verse 10, John is describing this great city, right? The city, the holy city of Jerusalem, coming down from heaven, right? And in verse 11, it says, This city is coming down from heaven and is having the glory of God. And I want you to see how just How John describes this. In verse 11, it's having the glory of God, and it says that her brilliance, speaking of the city, was like a very costly stone, a stone of crystal clear jasper. And then in the next few verses, he begins describing the walls and the gates and the measurements of this great city. And in verse 18, he says, the material of the wall was jasper, and the city was pure gold, like clear glass. And then the foundation stones of the city wall were adorned with every kind of precious stone. And he starts listing them out: jasper and sapphire and emeralds, and on and on and on. And in verse 21, the twelve gates were twelve pearls, each one of the gates a single pearl. And then the streets of the city were pure gold, like transparent glass. And he says in verse 22, I saw no temple in it, for the Lord, the God, Lord God the Almighty, and the Lamb are its temple. And the city had no need of the sun or the moon to shine in it, because the glory of God had illumined it. And the lamp is the lamb. So you start to, I mean, you heard how this was described, the glory of God, the city full of glory, and it's described with things of incredible value, right? These precious stones and We're covering it, and the radiance of the glory of God was shining forth and spilling out through the walls and the windows and everywhere. An incredible picture.

31:43And friends, this is the kind of value that Paul is ascribing to God's inheritance here in Ephesians 1. It's a glorious inheritance, and it possesses supreme value. Its worth is truly immeasurable. It's rich in glory. Third, notice whose it is. We've already mentioned this briefly, but it's God's inheritance. And when I came across that, it kind of struck me a little different. Again, we typically think of our inheritance and the things that we get. This is saying that it's God's inheritance. And what does that mean? Well, of course, we know that God owns everything, right? We know this. He created everything. And so when we speak of God's inheritance, what we're speaking of is the portion that He has reserved for Himself. This is we're talking about God's special possession. Of all the wonderful things that God has created, this is God's most treasured piece. He has reserved it for Himself. It's His portion, His inheritance.

33:01And it's, again, it's rich and it's abundant in glory. It's of the highest quality. And it's God's treasure. It's his most treasured thing. Now, the last phrase I want you to notice before we move on is that the location of this inheritance. Where do we find such rich and glorious inheritance that God has reserved for himself? Notice what it says. It says it's in the saints. It's his inheritance in the saints, literally the holy ones, the ones who have been chosen before the foundation of the world and set apart to be holy and blameless before him. You see that? It's the assembly of the saints that God has reserved and is reserving for himself. That is what God truly treasures. It's his people. It's you, and it's I, the ones who have put our faith in him. The church is his most prized possession. And so that, friends, is what Paul is praying that God would show the Ephesian believers. And it's something that I hope we here this morning can come to understand, that we would understand God's perspective on the church, that God values it so greatly and he is reserving for himself. himself a special people, right? A peculiar people, a royal priesthood that he intends to display all the riches of his glory and grace through us.

34:44If you were here at the wedding yesterday, Jeff read a portion from Ephesians 5 where Paul reminds us that God, through Christ, loves the church. And of course, Jeff alluded to the fact that Anna and Noah, or Noah was to exhibit this kind of love for Anna. But Christ loves the church and he gave himself up for her. And here's why, in verse 26 of chapter 5, so that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of the water with the word, and that he might present to himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or no wrinkle or any such thing, but that we should be holy and blameless. You see that? So again, do you know the glory that exists among God's people? That God, again, is reserving a people for himself who in Christ will reflect his glory here on earth, and that one day Christ, our future glory, the hope of our future glory, is going to return. And take us to that glorious city that I just read about a few moments ago. You see that? It's amazing. It's an amazing richness, an amazing glory in God's people. And for me, when I became a Christian and God saved me from my sin and He gave me a new heart and a new mind, one of the first light bulbs that went off was this truth right here: that God has decided and determined to put all the blessings that He has, the blessings of heaven, and He has directed them towards the church. And it totally transformed my life. And I hope that today you catch a glimpse of that. Because when you understand that God is determined to bless His people and to bless the saints, it transforms the way you allocate your time and your resources, the way you spend your money, the way that you serve the body of Christ, the way that you treat other believers, it changes everything, right?

37:15When that light bulb goes off and you understand how much God loves His people and treasures His people, it changes the way that we live. And so I hope that that is true for you this morning. I hope that you understand. The true richness and glory of God's inheritance in the saints. All right. Number three, the final thing that God prayed, or that Paul prays that the Ephesians would come to know is that they would come to know the surpassing greatness of God's power, the surpassing greatness of his power towards us who believe.

37:54Now, our family, we like to eat dinner together. We try and eat together on a regular basis around the dinner table, and just so that we're not sitting around hearing each other chew our food, I try and spark some fun conversations with my kids. And so a few weeks ago, or a month or two ago, I proposed a question to the table or to the family at the table, and I said, What is the greatest superpower?

38:28And it was an interesting discussion. And I said, What, if you could pick one superpower that you could have, what would it be? And I was asking this, of course, to my kids, and my boys, both Stephen and Ryan, have been brainwashed from a very early age by my father-in-law to love flying airplanes. And so, of course, their natural response was, well, it's flying for sure, right? That's the greatest superpower you could ever have. You just, you can take off. You can go wherever you want. And so that's the greatest superpower. Okay. And I asked my daughter, I said, Caitlin, what do you think it is? And Caitlin's my quiet child, and she prides herself in being sneaky and likes to sneak up on people and scare them. That's a good thing that she likes to do in our house. And so, of course, hers was, well, I'd want to be invisible. I have the power to be invisible. That would be the greatest power. And then I wouldn't have to sneak around. I can just pop out of nowhere and scare everybody. And so we, of course, we kind of went around the table, everybody sharing their greatest superpower and debated back and forth. And, of course, myself, as being the good dad that I am, had to trump everybody. And I was like, no, the greatest superpower is a power over death.

39:59It's eternal life. And they just looked at me and they're like, that's cheating. That's not fair. That's cheating. No, but seriously, that is the greatest power. And so when we come to this text, and Paul prays that they would know the surpassing greatness of his power towards us that believe, that's what I want you to see. And he begins to describe this power. Notice how Paul. Paul describes this power. It says that it surpasses greatness. All those things that my kids mentioned, those are great powers. But there is a power that surpasses all other powers. It surpasses greatness. And that is true of God, of God's power. No one has ever or will ever be able to match the surpassing greatness of God's power. It's immeasurable. And that's what it literally means when it says surpassing greatness. You can't calculate it. You can't overpower it. There is nothing that surpasses it. And in fact, it's so powerful that Paul really has a difficult time describing it. When you read through the text, he actually uses four different words to describe this power. It says that you would know what is the surpassing greatness of his power, that's one word, towards us who believe. And these are in accordance with the working, that's the second word, of his strength, that's the third word.

41:34Lost my place here, which he brought about. Excuse me. These are in accordance with the working of his strength, of his might. There it is, the fourth word, his might, which he brought about in Christ. You see that? He uses four different Greek words, all to describe the power. Power, working, strength, might. This is incredible power. That's how he describes it. And then notice the direction of God's power. It says it's towards us who believe, right? Again, that power that surpasses greatness are for those who are in the Lord Jesus Christ, those who are believing. They are the ones who have access to this power. And it's important to note that it's already at work in you. You possess this power already. Paul's not praying that God gives you more power, right? We hear that a lot today, perhaps in different church circles. God, give me more power. I need more power to do this, more power to do that. You don't need more power. You already have power that surpasses greatness, and it's directed towards you already in Christ. And so that's what Paul is praying. He's praying that they would realize that they have access to that power and that the light bulb would go off, right? Like when I was mowing and I pulled the lever, that you would access this surpassing greatness of the power that is available to you who believe. And then lastly, and I'll close with this, that we see the demonstration of this great power. He's described it and he's shown us the direction of it. Now I want you to see the demonstration of it. And as you read through Scripture, I mean, we can see God's Power on display. You cannot miss it. God's power is all over the Old and the New Testament. I mean, from the very beginning, you see God with the word of His mouth speaking the entire universe into existence, and it only took him six days to do it. You know, He speaks, boom, let there be light. It happened. Let there be dry land. And He just goes through and He creates the whole universe. Incredible power. You see God delivering Israel over and over and over again with a display of God's mighty hand and His great power. And then you come to the New Testament, right? In the opening pages of the New Testament, you see God made flesh and dwelling among us. Incredible display. And then in the life of Christ, as he lives his life, you see him expressing that power by performing miracles and controlling nature and casting out demons. So this is nothing new. But then perhaps the greatest display of God's power Paul mentions right here in our text. Look at what it says.

44:41In verse 20, it says that this power that we have access to is the power which he brought about in Christ when he raised him from the dead. When he raised him from the dead and he seated him at the right hand in the heavenly places. Now, Again, there's a lot in these few verses, and I'm not going to be able to unpack it all, but here's what I want you to see. First, I want you to see that the power that is at work in those who believe is the same power that raised Christ from the dead. It's that resurrection power. It's the power over sin and of death, both spiritually and physically. You see that? For the believer, the power that's directed to us when we place our hope and trust in the Lord Jesus is the power of resurrection.

45:37I think we know this as believers, but we were all once dead in our sins. We were spiritually dead in our sins. And that spiritual death leads to physical death. But God, the great scripture in just a chapter later, but God who is rich in mercy, because of his great love for us, he did what? He made us alive in Christ. He resurrected us from the dead and he granted us eternal life. He overcame our spiritual death so that our physical death would not be the end.

46:19We mentioned this morning that about Clyde His body is deteriorating, and the signs of physical death are approaching. But physical death for Clyde is not the end. And it's not the end for the believer. Rather, it is the realization of all that we have been hoping for. Death is the promise of eternal salvation for the believer, and it's the promise of that salvation becoming a true reality. And that is the hope that Clyde has. That is the hope that we have as believers, because the same power that raised Christ from the dead is the same power that's going to raise you and I from the dead, both physically and spiritually. And then, lastly, I want you to see that his great power is also demonstrated not only in the resurrection of Christ, but in the exaltation of Christ. Look back at the text. It says, He brought about this power when he raised him from the dead, and he seated him at the right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come.

47:41Not only have we been resurrected with Christ through God's power, but we have been exalted with Christ through God's power. And we have been, Christ here, as we just read, he's been given the position of supreme power and supreme authority. There is no one who can compare. Compare to him. Not only in this age, but in any age to come. It's eternal power, supreme power. And that's what Paul is communicating here. He's been exalted to the highest position. And don't miss this. Christ has shared this position with us. So when it says that the surpassing greatness of his power is towards us who believe, it is through Christ that we have access to this power. In verse 22, he says, He put all things in subjection under his feet, and he gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all and all.

48:46He's given us access through Christ as our head. And so that even when we were dead in our transgressions, he made us alive together with Christ. And he seated us with him in the heavenly places so that in the ages to come, he might show us the surpassing riches of his grace and kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. It's incredible power. We have access to wonderful, surpassing greatness of his power. And I hope you leave here today and realize that, that you don't need more power. You just need to access the stuff that you already have.

49:30And so I hope, again, my prayer is that God would burn this on your heart and that He would illumine your minds to understand the hope, the true hope that a believer has in his calling and the true treasure that is found in God's inheritance and the surpassing greatness of his power that you have through Christ. Let me tell the pianists will come up and play. Let me lead us in prayer and then we'll be dismissed. Heavenly Father, we're so grateful for your word. We're grateful for the truths that you have revealed. We're grateful that you have not left us in the dark trying to figure these things out, but you have made yourself known. You have declared yourself in the world, not only through creation, but through the written word and through Christ, who is the living word. And Father, we just ask, as we read in the scripture reading this morning, that you would come and explain these things to us and make them evident that we might see your glory and that it would transform our lives. We ask in Jesus' name.