Well, good morning. If you would
open your Bibles with me to Ephesians chapter three. Ephesians chapter
three. Before we begin, let's bow before
our Lord in prayer. Our Father, which art in heaven,
holy and reverent is your matchless name. Lord, we come into your
presence and bow before your throne. carefully, reverently,
with fear and trembling, knowing that we come before the God of
heaven and earth, God Almighty. And yet how thankful we are that
you've told us in your word that we can come boldly and confidently
in our Lord Jesus Christ, because of his perfect obedience, which
is our only righteousness, because of his precious blood that was
shed to cleanse us of our sin, Father, how thankful we are for
such a savior. And I pray that his name would
be exalted and magnified this morning. Father, that you take
your word as it's taught and as it's preached and that you
would apply it to each heart here that we might see and believe
in and rest in Christ our savior. Father, we thank you for this
opportunity to worship. Thank you for a place that you've
given us we can meet together and open your word and hear the
gospel preached, worship together with our brothers and sisters.
Father, I pray you'd give us the grace and the wisdom to very
carefully protect this place, the unity of this place, that
we might always have one goal in mind, is to exalt Christ our
Savior. Father, we thank you for the
many blessings of this life, how richly that you've blessed
us. And we pray, Father, for those that you brought into the
time of trouble and trial and need your, especially your comforting
presence, your healing hand. Father, we pray that you would
be with your people in a mighty and special way. All these things
that we ask in that name, which is above every name, the name
of Christ our Savior. I have a lesson this morning
that I think it's proper to say is intensely personal. I've titled
it My Prayer for You. And I'm sure that this is a message from
my heart to yours. I hope I can preach it that way.
I trust it's a message from God's heart to my heart to yours. But
it's my prayer for you. The verses in our text this morning,
Ephesians 3, contain the prayer that every pastor and every preacher
has for the people to whom he preaches. You're the reason that
we continue to preach Christ and only him, is that's the only
means that God uses to give six vital blessings that are listed
in our text this morning. These are the things I pray for
you all, each of you, every week. Paul begins his prayer in verse
14. This is Paul's prayer, I borrow
it as mine. In verse 14, he says, for this
cause, I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Paul says, I bow. I bow in prayer
to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And I'm thankful to remember
how the Savior said, he told his disciples, remember as he's
getting ready to go to Calvary, he said, I go to my Father and
your Father. We bow before the Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ. We're bowing before our Father.
He's made himself our Father. And we bow. We bow. Bowing is
the only proper attitude that there can be in prayer. Now,
you notice I didn't say the only proper posture. I said the only
proper attitude. In public, we don't get down
on our knees and pray. I've told you this before. I
was a little boy in Danville. There was a man came, I don't
even remember who it was, but he came as a guest speaker, visiting
speaker. And before the service, he wanted
to pray. Now, I'm just a little guy, you
know, And I know, oh, you're supposed to keep your eyes closed
when you pray. But I looked, and I thought,
where'd he go? He was kneeling behind the pulpit. Now, the one and only reason
he did that is to make a show. That's not what we're doing.
But we bow our heads, don't we? As an outward symbol, we're bowing
in the heart. We bow before God in worship. We bow before him. In humility,
how can you not come into the presence of God Almighty and
not bow? Of course you do. In prayer,
we bow as a beggar, seeking blessings from the King of Kings. We know
who we're talking to, so we bow. And here's what I beg God to
give you, what Paul prayed for these Ephesian believers. Number one, I pray that you might
be made part of the family of God. Verse 15, Paul says, of
whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named. Now God is
the father, he's the head of the home, the head of the family,
isn't he? And the whole family is named after him. And my prayer
for you is that God in his mercy and grace would adopt you into
his family. Now we were born the first time
in the family of Adam, weren't we? We were born with Adam's
name, we were born with Adam's nature, we were born just like
him. We don't look like anybody in God's family. We're not born
with the nature of anybody in God's family. We're born sinners. We're born defiled by sin. We're
born loving sin. So our prayer is that we might
be adopted into the family of God. Look back at Ephesians chapter
one. You know, this is what God does
for his people and it's by his will, by his choice. And this
is why we pray that God would adopt us into his family. It
happens by his will. Ephesians 1 verse 5, having predestinated
us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ himself, according
to the good pleasure of his will. I know that the father is going
to adopt somebody into his family, according to the good pleasure
of his will. I pray to you. Look back at Romans chapter 8.
I'll show you the blessing that it is being adopted into the
family of God. Romans 8. Verse 15, for you have not received
the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the spirit
of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. And the Spirit
himself beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children
of God. This thing is real. When God
adopts people in his family, the Holy Spirit beareth witness,
you are the children of God. And if children, then heirs,
heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. If so be that we
suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together. If almighty God has adopted you
into his family, you can truly call the God of heaven and earth,
your father. That's not just religious words.
The God of heaven and earth is your father. He's adopted you
into his family. Now I ask you, if God almighty
is your father, your father is in charge of everything. What
do you got to worry about? What do you have to worry about?
If God is our father, he'll see to it we're glorified together
with him. That's a good prayer, isn't it? That you be adopted
into God's family. But I also pray that you be born
into God's family. God's children, I don't know
if you can say that they're double children, but they've been adopted
into God's family. They've also been born, born
again into the family of God. They've been born with a new
nature. the nature of our heavenly father who began us. If God gives
you the nature of Christ, we may not be able to understand
everything that that is, but I can understand this. If God
gives me the nature of Christ, my soul is saved. My soul is
saved. That's a good prayer, isn't it?
And let me give you this about the family of God. If we're part
of the family of God, Please remember this. Families have
responsibilities to each other. Families have responsibility
to each other. Fathers, wives, children, they
all have responsibilities to each other. My sister and brother
are here. I got responsibilities to them. They're my family. I
have responsibilities to them. Keep that in mind. We have responsibilities
to each other. And I tell you, a big part of
the responsibility that we have is what Paul's doing right here.
Pray for each other. Don't leave this place and forget
about the people there. Think about them through the
week. Pray for them. Pray that God would bless them. When somebody's
hurting, pray that God would help them. If we're part of the
family of God, he's shed abroad the love of God in our hearts.
He's put that in you. We'll see that you act on it.
See that you act on that love. Put it into action by reaching
out and helping one another. Don't just think about somebody
and feel sorry for them that they're going through this. Do
something. Do something to help them. If
you can't do anything to help them, go sit beside them and
weep with them while they weep. Just do something. And you know what? Here's a big
family responsibility. It's to bear one another's burdens.
to feed one another, to teach one another, to sacrifice for
each other. Isn't that especially what we
do for babies and toddlers in the family? We sacrifice for
them. Everybody pitches in. Now do
that for each other. You all know this. We've got
a new grandson. And the whole family is just
rallying around this kid. I mean, he can't do one blessed
thing for himself. He can't eat, he can't change
his diaper, he can't bathe. I mean, he can't do one blessed
thing for himself, not one. And nobody complains about doing
for him. Why? Because we love him. Now
see that you have that attitude for your brothers and sisters
here. It's very important. Have each other's back. I like
watching police shows, and here's what they say on those shows.
I got your six. Have everybody's six here. Watch their back. That's our
family responsibilities. All right, number two. I pray
that you might be strengthened in the inner man. Verse 16, back
in our text, Ephesians chapter 3, that he would grant you, according
to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by
his spirit in the inner man. Now this inner man, that's the
new man born of God. That's the child that's been
born into the family of God with the nature of God. Now that new
man is holy. He's righteous. He has eternal
life, but that new man needs to be strengthened. And the way
we strengthen that new man is by preaching Christ. The new
man can only feed on the word of God. He can only drink the
milk of the word of God. He can only feed on Christ, the
bread of life. And you know, every single one
of us here needs to be constantly reminded, look to Christ. That's my message to everyone,
whether they're a believer or unbeliever. The message is, look
to Christ. Doesn't the unbeliever need to
be told that? The only way we can be saved is look to Christ. Somebody's got to be like Moses
and tell us look and live, don't they? We need to be pointed to
Christ. He's our only hope. He's our
only savior. He's the only way we could be made righteous. He's
the only way that our sin could be cleansed. Look to Christ.
That's the way we begin our spiritual life. We begin with a look, looking
to Christ. And I tell you the way we continue
our journey here below. It's look to Christ. Something's
always trying to get you to look off on a tangent. And somebody
needs to be constantly reminding us, now look to Christ, look
to Christ, keep looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher
of our faith. So somebody's got to preach Christ
to remind us, look to Christ, trust him. You know, when we
get all in a mess and we're just worried about everything and
we're all out of source, the reason for that always is we're
looking at ourselves or we're looking at the power of somebody
else to do something that they cannot do. Look to Christ. Look to Christ. Look at 2 Corinthians chapter
12. Now this goes completely against
human logic, but the way that the inner man is strengthened
is by being made dependent, by being put in the dust and being
made needy. Let me show you that, 2 Corinthians
chapter 12. The apostle here has been talking about how he
was caught up into heaven. I mean, he was taken into heaven. He said, I saw things human language
can't express. I mean, I just can't even tell
you the glory that I saw there. And he says in verse seven, and
after this experience, lest I should be exalted above measure through
the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn
in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet me. lest I should
be exalted above measure. Every time I thought about this
mountaintop experience, you know, Satan would buff at me, would
just beat me back down. The Lord was using it to humble
me, Paul says. And for this thing, I besought the Lord thrice that
it might depart from me. And he said unto me, my grace
is sufficient for thee, for my strength is made perfect in your
weakness. Most gladly, therefore, will
I rather glory in my infirmities that the power of Christ may
rest upon me. Now this is what Paul learned
in this experience of what he's teaching us. The only way we'll
ever be strong is when the Lord makes us see we're so weak, we
have to depend entirely on Christ. Because we don't have any power
and he has all power. The only way we can have any
strength whatsoever is by relying on Christ alone. And if you're
a believer, you know this about your spiritual life. I can't
worship. I can't pray. I can't believe. I can't love God. I can't love
others. I can't even desire Christ. I can't desire to hear of him.
I can't desire to be in the worship service and hear of him. I can't
even desire those things unless the Lord enables me to do it.
I mean, that's pretty weak, isn't it? When you can't even pray.
I mean, you can't do anything. But you know why that's good?
Seeing how utterly useless I am, how utterly unable I am to do
anything, that makes me lean on Christ. And that's what strengthens
the inner man. I'm only strong when I'm begging
the Lord. I'm only strong when I bow the
knee before the Father. I'm begging, then I'm strong,
then I'm strong. All right, number three. I pray
that Christ would dwell in your hearts. Verse 17, Ephesians 3. That Christ may dwell in your
hearts by faith. Now, Paul here is talking about
the two natures of a believer. In verse 16, he referred to the
inner man. Well, if there's an inner man, there has to be an
outer man, doesn't there? There's the flesh and the spirit,
inner man and outer man. Here he calls the new man, Christ,
dwelling in your hearts. Now this is the way that we're
made partakers of the divine nature. It's because Christ dwells
in the heart of all of his people. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 3
verse 16, he said, don't you know this? You're the temple
of God because the spirit of God dwells in you. He dwells
in you. Now that's a miracle. I mean,
what a miracle of God's grace that he would dwell in the hearts
by his spirit, dwell in the hearts of his people. You know, we're
born the first time, just like our father, Adam. We're born
with Satan ruling in our hearts. He's a strong man who's ruling
in our hearts. And I preach Christ to you, I
do my best to preach Christ and only Christ to you. So that the
Lord will come, the stronger man and cast that strong man
out. and that he'll take possession
of your heart. If he comes into your heart,
this I promise you, he's raining there, because he rains everywhere
that he is. See, we can't cast that strong man out. We can't
cast Satan out. We can't make ourselves not be
deceived. We can't make ourselves believe. We can't make ourselves
see and understand and love the gospel. But he can. God can. And that's why we pray. That's
why we keep preaching it. You parents understand this fully. You pray for your children every
day, don't you? Nobody has to remind you, you pray for them
every day. And you're very faithful to bring them here and put them
in these classes and bring them out here and let them sit and
hear the gospel. We're getting ready to have vacation Bible
school. I mean, something weird's gotta
happen that you don't bring your children, you know, because it's
important time. It's an important time that we
teach them. Why do you do that? Praying the Lord will reveal
himself to them, don't you? I'm praying right along with you.
I'm praying right along with you for them and all of us here
that the Lord will be merciful and he dwell in our hearts by
faith. Here's the fourth thing I pray, that you would be given
faith in Christ. Paul says in verse 17, that Christ
may dwell in your hearts by faith. Now salvation, is by faith. And you know, it's not faith
in the Baptist doctrine. It's not faith in the Calvinistic
doctrine. It's not faith in the Baptist religion. Be sure you
get this. It's faith in Christ. Salvation
is faith in Christ. It's not our religious works.
It's not our religious doing. Salvation is trusting Christ. I've got great big books written
on what faith is. And faith is just this. It's
no more complicated than this. It's trusting Christ. It's trusting
him to be everything that you need. That's faith in Christ. It is that simple. Faith, trust,
Christ obedience, his obedience. He was made a man under the law
and he obeyed that law perfectly. His obedience is my obedience.
That's how I'm made righteous by his, I trust I don't have
to add and keep some laws too. No, I trust Christ is enough.
His obedience is enough. If I start trying to add to Christ's
righteousness, I ruin it. Just trust Christ. Faith in Christ,
trust that Christ's sacrifice is all it takes to cleanse me
from my sin and wash me white as snow. I don't have to do anything
to help it out. I don't have to live the right
Christian life in order to keep sin out of my life and keep myself
from being condemned. Faith trusts Christ. His blood
is enough to pay the debt for me. It's paid in full. Faith
says, I don't add one blessed thing to Christ, not one. Christ
is all. Christ is all. Scripture says that that kind
of faith in Christ comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.
It's pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that
believe. Could God strike you with lightning
and give you faith? Could God just move one day while
you're in your sleep and give you faith and you just wake up
and suddenly have faith? Well, I mean, I reckon he could. He's got the power to do it,
but he won't do it. He won't do it because he said,
faith cometh by hearing. It pleased God by the foolishness
of preaching to save them that believe. So we keep preaching
Christ. Christ in Christ alone. If you're
going to trust your soul to Christ, I mean, trust it all to him and
not try to help him out a bit. Somebody is going to have to
tell you who he is. Somebody's going to have to tell
you he's trustworthy. I mean, before you trust somebody,
you got to learn that they're trustworthy, don't you? And the Holy Spirit, he's gonna
have to give us a nature that believes Christ. And he only
does that by the preaching of the word. We can't give this
blessing of faith to anybody. Oh, I want you to have it. Oh,
I've said this before. One of the reasons I love being
in the auditorium when Brother Tom Harding preaches, you just
get to sense, if Tom could just reach out and grab your heart
and put it in you, he would. He just, you know? Oh, I want
that for you. I can't give it to you. But that's
why we pray that God give it to you. That's why we keep preaching
Christ, because that's the only way we'll ever believe him. And
I'm sure this is a true statement. There's no greater gift God could
give you than faith in Christ. All right, here's the fifth thing. I pray that you would know the
love of God for you. Verse 18, or verse 17, that you
may be rooted and grounded in love, being able to comprehend
with all saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height,
and to know the love of Christ, which passes knowledge that you
might be filled with all the fullness of God. Now, the word
Paul uses comprehend here, it doesn't mean that you completely
understand it. It means, the word means that you lay hold
of as your own. And the word no means to have
some knowledge of, to perceive. I pray that the Lord will enable
you to perceive what God's love really is. I promise you that
the love of God is not some sappy emotion that you hear people
talk about. You know, God loves everybody.
He just wants to save everybody. He just loves you so much that
he just can't bear to think about damning you for your sin and
your unbelief, because he loves everybody so much. That's a sappy
emotion that is not God's love. Now, the love of God means something. If God Almighty has set his love
upon you, you will not be condemned. You will not. The love of God
means the salvation of your soul. God's love is the origin of our
salvation. It was the Father's love that
moved him to purpose salvation for a people. He chose to save
them because He set His love upon them. It's God the Son's
love for sinners that moved Him to humiliate Himself to become
a man and to humiliate Himself further to suffer and die for
the sins of those people. It's His love that made Him do
that. It's God the Holy Spirit's love for sinners that moves Him
to go where his people are and give them life and faith in Christ,
to reveal Christ to them. I've loved you with an everlasting
love. Therefore, that's why the Holy
Spirit draws God's people to Christ, because he loves them.
God's love for his people moves him to keep his people and to
never cast them out in spite of all their sin and all their
failures and all their weak faith. And that love is immeasurable.
You can't measure the breadth, the length, the depth, or the
height of it. The love of God is higher than the heavens. It's
deeper than hell. It's longer than eternity and
broader than space. You can't measure. The human
mind cannot possibly grasp an immeasurable, eternal love. But I pray that you'll have some
understanding of the breadth of God's love. I've never been
to the depths of the ocean, but I know it's deep. I've never
swum across the ocean, but I know it's long. I can't tell you everything there
is about all the depths of the ocean, but I've been in it. I
know about the ocean. That's what I pray for you with
God's love. We can't understand how far it extends, but just
think about how far God's love extends. He's loved his people
so that it will never end. That's how far it extends. And
what about the length of God's love? Just think about the lengths
that God went to save his people from their sin. The son lowered
himself to become a man. He lowered himself to go to the
cross and suffer and die And the father slaughtered his beloved
son. He said, this is my son in whom
I'm well pleased. Proverbs, the book of Proverbs,
the savior says, I was with the father in eternity and I was
daily his delight. The father delights in his son.
Yet he went to such great lengths to save his people. He slaughtered
his son, slaughtered him. because that's the only way their
sin could be put away. Now God did that because he loves
his people. Herein is love, not that we love
God, but that he loved us. And here's the proof of his love.
He sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. The father chose the people,
the son redeemed them by his death, and the Holy Spirit comes
wherever I am, no matter how far off I've wandered from God,
he will go to such lengths as to get to where I am and bring
me to Christ because of the length of his love for his people. And I pray you'll have some understanding
of the depths of God's love. Just think of the depths God's
hand had to reach to find me at the bottom of the barrel and
save me. Just think of the depths that he sunk to become what I
am, so he could make me what he is. Oh, just think of that. Just think of the depths of his
suffering, what he suffered, how he made his soul an offering
for sin, so that he could put away the sin of his people. I
want you to know that love. I know you can't know the full
extent of it, but I want you to be in it, just like I've been
in the ocean. I want you to know about it.
We can't fully understand how vast God's love for his people
is. The songwriter said the love
of God is greater far than tongue or pen can ever tell. But I pray
God will give you some knowledge of his love because he's made
you to experience it. He's made you to experience it. I can't tell you everything there
is to know about the love of God. But I know something about the
joy of experiencing it. I know something about the security
in experiencing it. And that's what I pray for. And
here's the last thing. I pray that you would be filled
with all the fullness of God. Verse 19, and to know the love
of Christ, which passes knowledge that you might be filled with
all the fullness of God. That last phrase there, you might
be filled with all the fullness of God. I read and read and read
and read on that. I mean, I read everybody I could
find on that. And none of it really satisfied me, except for
this. I pray that you, that God make
you so full of Christ that there's not room for anything else. That's my prayer for you. I pray
God make you so full of Christ, there's no room for your self-righteousness. There's no room for your words. There's no room for the sacrifices
that you do to try to put away your sin. I pray that you be
so full of Christ there isn't room for anything else. So you're looking to him and
him alone. My prayer to God is that he make
you what Christ is. God does that for you. Your soul
is saved. And the only way the Father can
accept us is if he makes us what Christ is. So I pray God, fill
you with Christ so much. There's not room for anything
else. It's him and him alone. That's
my prayer for you. I pray God will grant it to us
today. Father, you're dismissed.