From prison, Paul's writing this
letter to his brothers and sisters in Ephesus. Those that he labored
with for a couple years there, two years, and he kept in contact
with them. He loved those brethren. We've been here together, been
meeting together for about two years, laboring together. But I don't live with you, and
you don't live with me. We only come here for three services
a week, don't we? Can you imagine hearing the gospel? The Lord speaks to your heart,
and you want to know more of that gospel. And the Lord sends
an apostle to that town, and you can just go back and forth
with each other. Well, tonight, Paul is going to stay with me. And
you get up the next morning, and you go pick weeds in the
garden, and Paul is there with you. And you're just talking
together, and praying together. That would be something special,
wouldn't it? He begins there in chapter 3, reminding them
again of that mystery of the gospel in Christ. It tells them
the same thing over and over, doesn't it? Beats himself. How
sinners are chosen by the Father. They're put in the person of
Christ before time. And they're justified and they're
sanctified, made acceptable to God, made holy and righteous
by the work of Christ. We're put in His person. We're
made righteous by His work that He did on this earth, that He
accomplished on that cross. And the Holy Spirit comes to
us and calls us to Christ. not to a place, not to a thing,
not to a creed, to a person. That's who He calls us to. Through
this work of the Lord and His people, you and I who believe,
us that's been given a new spirit to believe Him, we're made fellow
heirs with Christ. We're made of the same body,
made one with His body, being made one with our Savior, and
we are partakers. Now, we ain't going to be partakers.
We could be partakers. We are partakers right now of
His promise, His promise to us. What a great message to preach
to sinners. Nobody else cares to hear that.
But a true sinner, someone that's just on the brink of damnation,
just about to lose it all, have no hope in themselves, Christ
accomplished everything. Apostle writes there in verse
8, Ephesians 3.8, Unto me, who am less than least of all the
saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the
Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ. What a gift of grace
that God would save one sinner. That's a great gift of grace.
and then that God would save another hell-deserving sinner
and use that one to preach his unsearchable riches. What a gift
of grace. Not only was Paul sent to bring
this gospel of Christ, but he prays for those saints. That's
what we're going to see in verses 14-21 of this chapter. We're
in Ephesians 3. But that's kind of the pattern,
isn't it? Paul preached to them there in chapter 1, and then
he prayed for them. Told them the gospel, and he
prayed for them. It tells us in chapter 2, beginning in chapter
3 in the gospel, and he prays for them. That's the pattern. But before he begins to pray
for them there in verse 14, the Holy Spirit moved Paul to write
verse 12. For those of Ephesus and those
of us sitting here today. And to give us an insight as
to why he's praying for them. What right he has to pray for
them. Why is it okay to pray to the
Lord? Do you get that? Is it okay to
pray to God? He will tell us why it's okay.
And our reason to pray. Our text there is going to be
one verse. Chapter 3, verse 12. Ephesians 3, 12. In whom we have
boldness and access with confidence by the faith of Him. As we begin
this new year, I pray we can come boldly to that throne of
God's grace, His mercies, and we find mercy in our time of
need. You that believe, you have access to the throne of God's
grace. Just consider that for a minute. Those that the Lord has done
a work in their heart, you have access accessibility to the throne
of Almighty God and His grace. And we have a confidence and
come boldly inside that access that He's given us in confidence
of our Savior. The Almighty, omnipotent God
will provide all that we need. I need mercy. He'll provide mercy.
I need bread for today. He'll provide bread for today.
Everything we need. All of this, the cause of our
boldness, the cause of our access to that God that we were born
offending, and the source of all of our confidence to come
to Him, that He's willing and able to do exceedingly above
all that we seek. is by the faith of Christ. He's the reason. That'll be our
four points this morning. We're going to look at the boldness,
access, confidence, and why the child of God has these things.
What makes these possible? Look at these three words first.
That boldness, access, and confidence. But the why bookends The gift
our Savior has given us. He ends verse 11 there, chapter
3, saying, cross Jesus our Lord, and begins verse 12. In whom?
It's in Him we have boldness, access, and confidence. And He
ends that verse by the faith of Him. He's the beginning and
the end of these gifts we've been given. So first, boldness.
First thing we see there in verse 12, we have boldness to enter
in. What does that mean? I've been
called bold many times in my life, and that wasn't a compliment.
We think of those things as bad, don't we? Arrogant and reckless.
That's not what it means. Self-righteous, demanding, bold. No, that's not what it means.
Holy boldness means we come with the deepest reverence, respect,
and honor for our Holy God. We don't ever forget we're coming,
we're petitioning the Holy Father. We're coming to Holy King Jesus,
and we never forget we're coming in the Holy Spirit. That's the
ground on which we approach wholly. Boldness does not mean we come
forgetting what I am and what Christ has done for me. We don't come boldly because
of our righteousness. We come because of His righteousness.
We don't come boldly because we walk consistently or steadfast. No, we come on Christ's steadfastness. We don't come boldly because
we've smashed out all of our sins, all of our desires and
cleaned our act up. We come by the blood of Christ.
That's what brings us near. He would turn us away if we came
like that. It wouldn't have anything to do with us. But we come on
Him. Boldness is to come freely, to
speak plainly and honestly, bearing your heart to God. We can do
that. That's not instruction, that's
trying to announce an ability we've been given. It's opposite
of physical fear, opposite of being afraid, because we ain't
good enough to come to Him, or He's so holy He'll turn away
from me. It's coming with liberty to speak to God our Father. Even
though you've sinned, even though you've not walked the way You
want to walk as honorably as you want to. It's to come freely
knowing we have an advocate with the Father. Come to Him freely,
boldly, but with a humble heart when we come. Sometimes you hear
people pray and it's so demanding towards God. I've spoke about
that often. I say, well, we're going to have
a prayer meeting. That's ganging up on the Lord. That's a mutiny.
Lord, do this. I wouldn't go to my mother's
house and say, you do this. I honor her, I respect her, don't
I? We don't come demanding. When Abraham was praying for
Lot and those righteous men in Sodom and Gomorrah, over verse
50, will you save it? There's ten, what about one?
He spoke plainly, spoke boldly, plainly. He spoke about what
he was asking for and he said, Behold, now I have taken upon
me to speak unto the Lord, but I am but dust and ashes. That's
the attitude we approach with. Boldness and prayer, it goes
hand in hand with a humble heart. Boldness comes freely, but it
comes humbly and reverently. It's come to submission, just
as our Father approached, or our Lord approached His Father
with that. He said, nevertheless, not as
I will, but thou will be done. Our Master did that. Telling
God in prayer, boldness is to come believing that Christ has
made us one with Him. robed us in His righteousness,
making us partakers of that divine nature that He's promised us.
So He'll receive us. He's made us kings and priests
unto God. And with that, Him putting us
in that office, we get the privilege of those offices, don't we? We
get to boldly come to Him, plainly come to Him. We enter in without fear into
His holy courts, praying to Him. The illustration I have may ruffle
some feathers of people. That's all right. Some feathers
need to be ruffled. We teach our children not to
just walk plainly into other people's homes. And that has
to be taught, don't it? We take them trick-or-treating,
and one time one of them just, they opened the door and they
kept on going. They just went in somebody else's house. And
I didn't know whether to go in and get them. I said, what am
I supposed to do? I don't want to go into your
home. But whenever we get to our house, we get back that big
bag of candy. You know what they did? They
went to my house and they opened the door and they went and sat
down. They didn't think nothing of it and I didn't think nothing
of it. They boldly entered my house. That's what we are able
to do. A child of God is able to walk
into their father's home and speak to him boldly, freely,
comfortably. The Hebrew writer said, let us
therefore come boldly unto his throne of grace. Next word we
have there is access. He also says we have access. We may always enter because that
veil is ripped in twain across Jesus. Whenever he yielded up
the Holy Ghost, it says that great big veil between the holiest
of holies and all of us. The thing that pictured separation
in top in picture, it was split from top to bottom. Torn in half. It's been done away with for
maternity, as separation has. We now have access. It hasn't
always been that way. Turn over to Leviticus 16. Leviticus
16. This wasn't the case under that
old covenant. This was not the case when we were in our unregenerate
state before the Lord did a work in our hearts, when we were still
bound to that curse of our father Adam. There was a separation. In Leviticus 16, we'll begin
in verse 1. And the Lord spake unto Moses
after the death of the two sons of Aaron, and they offered before
the Lord and died. They brought that strange fire,
didn't they? He says there in verse 2, And the Lord said unto
Moses, Speak unto Aaron thy brother, that he come not at all times
into the holy place within the veil before the mercy seat, which
is upon the ark, that he die not. He don't come whenever you
please. For I will appear in the cloud
upon the mercy seat. There was a timing there, wasn't
there? There was a restriction. There
was a separation and there was a set time that that high priest
had to come in there into that Holy of Holies. There were some
requirements. They had to be sprinkled with
blood. They had to be washed. And then they had to come in
on the right time, on the Lord's time. Christ's blood has covered
our sins. We've been sprinkled with His
blood. Our new man is washed by that regeneration, the washing
of regeneration. And that blood and water was
accomplished once by Christ on the cross. That veil's been removed. And so now that that veil's been
removed, we've been washed, we've been sprinkled with the blood,
and there's no more veil. There's no more time restraints.
We have access at any point to Him, fully provided for. We have
boldness by His blood to come to the throne at any time. When your faith's weak, you have
access. When you feel more like a child
of hell than a child of heaven, you have access. When your sin
just brings you down slow, you just want to despair, at your
wits end, you have access. When you're grieving, you have
access. At all times, in Christ, we have
access to the Father. And there will never be another
separation between God and His elect, those that's been redeemed,
those that's been regenerated by His blood. He said, who shall
separate us from the love of God? Satan can't separate us. He can't remove that boldness
and that access from us. There must be that free access
forever because Christ has removed what separated us from the Father. It wasn't just that veil, that
piece of cloth that hung in a tabernacle that was torn. It was our separation
from the Lord. What separators? He satisfied
the law for us. He swallowed the wrath of God
for our sins for us. All those things that separated
us, it's been accomplished forever. He put it away. God laid the
sin of all His elect on His Son and cross-willingly went to that
cross for His people. He bled and died for His people.
And because of that, we have reason to freely come to Him. And we have access to the Father. And it says there in our text,
in verse 12, we've got boldness, we have access, and all of this is with confidence.
boldly come to the Lord, have access to the Lord to come to
Him, and we have a confidence when we come. Confidence is the
opposite of doubt and fear. We don't come dreading. We don't
come with apprehension. We don't come scared. We come
with confidence. It's to come with assurance.
What we ask will be met. He said in Ephesians 2.13, we've
been brought near by the blood of Christ. We've been made nigh
by His blood. When Christ brings us near, He
makes us to know that truly, as John said, our fellowship
is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ. That's who
our fellowship's with. So we can now come to His throne
of grace with confidence. And His blood, that's the reason
we can allow to approach. We have confidence to speak to
the Lord. His blood that's made us atonement, that's made us
at one, that's joined us with Him, reconciled us to God, that
should be all the confidence we need. That's the payment that's
been made for our boldness and our access to Him. Our confidence
is in His blood. And that's what the Lord was
speaking of in Exodus 12, about the Passover. He didn't say,
when I see you looking at me, I'll pass over you. Whenever
I see you out there working real hard, trying to paint them doorposts,
I'll pass over you. He said, when I see the blood,
I'll pass over you. So let's look to the blood for
assurance and not to ourselves. I need to look to his blood and
not to myself for assurance, for confidence. To come with
confidence also means we know he's going to hear us. We know
He will. So many times we pray to the
Lord and there's no answer, is there? That's an answer. It ain't an answer I'm happy
with. My old flesh gets frustrated many times, doesn't it? And I
get downtrodden and feel like I did something wrong, but there
I'm right back in that trap of looking to me again. Our Father
hears us. He knows that if we know we ask
of something and the Lord doesn't answer us. James told us, he
said, that's because you've asked amiss. You've asked wrongly. And the Lord teaches us in these
things. Because He gives us that confidence
to come to Him with repetition. We ask Him. We ask Him again. We pray to Him. We give thanks
over and over, don't we? And through that, the Lord teaches
us. In that submission of prayer, He teaches His people. With that
coming in confidence, that's to come ask Him without reservation,
all sorts of petitions, whatever it is. There have been so many
times in my life I've just been overwhelmed and put down. I thought, I don't need to bother
the Lord with that. He knows what I need before I
know it. He said, you come to me with
anything. Ask of me. Lay all your burdens and cares
on me. I'll hear you. Come confidently is to come assured
of whatever we ask, whatever is burdening us, it's going to
be significant to Him. I have a lot to learn about that.
My children come to me and they say, Daddy, and they ask a question.
In my thought, at my age, my understanding, I don't think
that's important. So I dismiss it. If it was important
enough for them to ask, it was important to them, wasn't it?
Aren't you thankful our Heavenly Father doesn't treat us that
way? Whatever I ask Him, that's significant to Him, isn't it? The only thing that will insult
Him is to not ask Him at all, to think we can do it ourselves
or we don't want to trouble Him. We can have far more confidence
in approaching our Heavenly Father than we can even our earthly
fathers. Come to Him. So these three words, boldness,
access, admittance, and confidence, they tell us we're invited to
enter His presence in Christ through prayer. We're allowed
to come to Him. And God would never have invited
us to pray to Him if He had not intended to answer us. He invites
us and He will not send us away empty-handed when we come to
Him. How do we have all this? That's
a great gift. I mean, that's amazing. I truly
get a hold of that. I can freely have access to the
Almighty God. That I offended and He's the
one that saved me. And I can have confidence that
anything I need, anything I petition of Him, is going to be dealt
with appropriately and in love and in wisdom. His wisdom, not
my wisdom. That's amazing. That's the unsearchable riches
of Christ, isn't it? If we truly can just see that
one spot, just in prayer. How do we have all that? By the
faith of Him. It speaks of Christ's faithfulness. Now when you read a scripture,
I'll tell you a quick story. Brother Tom Harding was one of
them, but there's several pastors that worked to get a Cambridge
Bible reprinted, the authorized King James Bible. And while they
was printing it, The printers, the men that do that, they're
scanning the original. They don't make that Bible anymore.
They're scanning it and putting it in a type and printing them.
And he called and had a few questions. He said, hey, there's a few spots
here. It says the faith of Christ. He said, do you want us to change
that to faith in Christ? That's what most of the folks
nowadays are doing. Do you all want to do that? And
they said, that's the way the Lord recorded it. You leave it
the way it is. It means something different. Now the believer has
faith in Christ. He gives it to us. His gift of
faith. That's who we look to. That's
who we trust in. We believe Him. Believe in Him and believe Him.
We have faith in Christ, but our faith is of Christ. Our faith in Him doesn't grant
us boldness. My faith in Him doesn't give
me access. That's not the grounds of it.
My faith in Him doesn't give me confidence that He's going
to answer any petition that I have, but the faith of Christ. Because of His faithfulness,
now I have boldness. Is access dependent on my payment
of faith? His payment of faith. Now we
have access. We've gained entry. and the confidence
that it will be fulfilled for His great namesake, like you
just read. His faithfulness. There in verse 12 it says, the
faith of Christ. It includes the faithfulness
of Christ and His redeeming work and His blood for us. His faithfulness
of sending the Holy Spirit to us to regenerate us. But especially
it's His faithfulness of making us truly pray. That's what Paul's
speaking of. It's by his faithfulness that
he gives us boldness, access, and confidence to enter the holiest
through faith in Christ. At the throne of God, believers
always have access to approach God through Christ. But personally,
in our hearts, many times, we don't always have boldness, do
we? We don't always have confidence in our access to God. Most times,
our approaching is just formal. It's not a matter of the heart.
We may decide to get on our knees and look like we're doing something
holy or feel like we're doing something holy if we're by ourselves.
We may look as straight as a gun barrel and be just as empty.
Most of the time we just have vain repetitions and words that
don't mean nothing and we end up saying something from our
mind and not from our heart. I do. But to truly enter into
God's presence is to enter into it when grace is reigning in
our hearts. When He's revealed Himself to
us, what we are, who He is and what He's accomplished for us.
We see His grace and we have a thankfulness in Him. We have
a belief in Him. His faith's been put in us, been
given to us. Now we can approach Him. Now
we have something to approach with, don't we? Because we dwell
in this body of death, it takes the faithfulness of Christ always
moving in us, always working in us, showing us our weight
of sin, our weakness in this flesh. And it brings us to behold
the one that forgave our sins. We look to our weakness and we
see the cross that's our strength. We see our sin and we see the
one that took it away from us, the one that bore it on the tree.
We feel how lukewarm we are. Just wishy-washy, ain't I? I
see His steadfastness, the heat of His Word, the power of the
fire in it. And then truly, from a broken
and contrite heart, we can pray to Him. We can come to Him. Is
that up to me? Do I have to kindle my flame
and it's all on my shoulders to be able to look to Him, to
pray to Him? The Spirit even intercedes for
us, doesn't it? We read that in Romans 8, it said, The Spirit
helpeth our infirmities, for we know not what we should pray
for as we ought. But the Spirit itself maketh
intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. And
he hath searched the heart, knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit,
because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the
will of God. I want to be mindful of this.
The Holy Spirit moved Paul to write this text. And right there
in Romans 8, 2 Corinthians 3, Hebrews 4, he wrote all these.
And all these other scriptures that remind us we have access
to this throne of grace. But in those scriptures, Christ
with the Holy Spirit reminds us that he faithfully promises
to accompany us to his throne of grace. You can give somebody a map,
or you can take them. He didn't give us a road map
and say, I hope to meet you there. He accompanies us to His throne
of grace. It says there in Hebrews 4, let
us therefore come boldly into the throne of grace, that we
might obtain mercy and find grace and help at the time of need.
We come to Him. People say, well, that's Paul
saying me and you. Well, that is Paul saying me
and you, and that's the Holy Spirit speaking through Paul. I'll take
you. We'll go together. The Lord said,
come let us reason together. I do more reasoning when I'm
praying. You ever start to pray something? Oh, Lord, will you
let this happen? And before you get it out of
your mouth, you're like, I wish I would have said that. Lord,
you're right. Your will be done. You're wise. You're all-knowing.
You're loving to me as I don't even know what love is. You're
right. He said, Psalm 95, let us come
before his presence with thanksgiving and make a joyful noise unto
him with psalms. I'm not saying it ain't the way
I want it to be. I ain't thankful as I ought to
be. Somebody asked Kennedy one time, they said, you want to
say thanks before dinner? He said, you got two and a half
hours? We got a lot to be thankful for, don't we? In our prayers
of request, He brings us to His throne of mercy, His throne of
grace. And in our prayers of thanksgiving,
I seek and miss. I don't know what to be thankful
for. He says, come, let us be thankful together. He said, whatsoever
ye shall ask the Father in my name, He will give it to you. We say
it in His name or we ask in the name of Christ, but that's to
physically be in His name. My new man to be in Him. And
if it is, He intercedes for us and the Father hears us. By faith
of Christ, once He's drawn us to Him, He brings us to ask Him. It is Christ Himself who gives
what we are asking according to God's will. We have no room
to boast even in our prayers, do we? Be thankful for the faith
of Him. He's the author and He's the
finisher of our faith. And by the faith of Him, He sustains
what little bit of faith we have. He said in Philippians 1.6, He
which hath begun a good work in you will perform it unto the
day of Jesus Christ. By the faith of Christ, it's
Christ the way who draws us, who leads us, who guides us,
He bears us, carries us, we lean on Him, and He brings us near,
nigh unto the Lord, all the way to His feet, don't He? He comes
with us. All of our boldness that we have
to approach His throne, the admittance, the access we have to come to
Him, to go into His courts, the confidence we have, He won't
kill us when we put our hand to it. When the words come out
of our mouth, Lord, don't hear me. Hear your Son. That confidence, and He will
for His people. The confidence that we have,
it is all in Christ. It begins with Him, and it's
finished of Him. For of Him, and through Him,
and to Him are all things. What about my prayer? It's of
Him. What about my faith? Of Him. So when we speak of faithfulness,
speak of the faithfulness of Him, not my faithfulness. Don't let us ever pray without
Him. Don't let us read without Him.
Don't let me preach without Him. It's a lonely place in a pulpit
without Christ with you. Lord, be with me. And in the
heart, it's lonely earth. You feel like He just left you
alone. But we have boldness. We can freely ask of him. We
have access to him. We have confidence he'll be with
us, won't he? Let's look to him. All right.