It's always a good day to assemble
as the saints. Some young college students in
the Richmond area of California, one of them was in my church
for some time out there and went off to a school to become a ministry
leader, if you will, and this school that I've recently discovered
by way of another person at that school reaching out to me to
see if I would partner with them on some things. And I looked
at their doctrines and their belief system and other things
yesterday, and I was a little discouraged. I was a little discouraged
because one of the primary things that they look for in their ministry
is the power of God. And so everything that they build
All of the programs and all the teaching that they have is centered
around seeking and tapping into God's power. And you might say,
well, that's not a bad thing. Well, it's not a bad thing, except that all
that they are doing to, and I hate to use the term, that's what
they use, to tap into God's power is not found in Scripture, but
rather is a philosophy of man that's very young in its construct,
less than probably 150 years old. But we think about these things
and when we look at them, we realize that it is not because
we are so wise, for we are wrong on some things. It's not because
we have come to our senses. It's not because God loves us
greater than he loves others. It's because just in his timing
and in his way, he has given us the light of the gospel in
the face of Jesus Christ. And I want to encourage you,
church, that no matter what you know and what you learn as you
become part of our congregation or as you grow through preaching
or through your personal study of the word, no matter what you
learn, if it is apart from Scripture, it is superlative to Scripture
and it is to be ignored. It really is. It doesn't mean
that if we don't grasp it, as brother was sharing with me today,
that it was wrong, but if it's there, if it's proven there,
through the whole of the writings. So one thing I want you to listen
for, and if you haven't picked up one of those little booklets
on the bottom shelf back there, do so afterward, how to effectively
listen to sermons. One thing I want you to listen
for every week is to listen and ask the question, can what is
being taught be proven with what has already been taught in this
letter? Though the Scripture is synergistic,
though all the way through the Old Testament is completely in
line with what is taught in the New Testament and affirmed. And
I'll repeat this over and over again, is that if we say we know
what the Old Testament means and the apostles have not confirmed
that for us, we best hold our tongue. Because if it's not historical
evidence or textual evidence, then it must be apostolic evidence.
In other words, if Paul says that the creation of man and
woman, for example, when we get there in a few months, is to
display the gospel in God creating a people for Himself that he
calls the Bride and the Body of Christ, and He gives them... Why do you think Jesus uses that
term? He gives them to me, and all He gives to me comes to me,
and all who come to me will never be cast away. See, this is the
language of marriage. Who gives the bride? The reason
we ask who gives this bride to be wed is because in Genesis,
we see that God created the woman and brought her to Adam and gave
her to him. And such is marriage. It is the
picture. And is it a temporal picture?
For the church is the eternal picture. Marriage is a temporal
picture. How do we know that? Well, we
can say, and people can study, and they can go through archaeological
evidence, and they can go through all sorts of sociological and
anthropological ideals and philosophies of man, and they can say, well,
what that really means in Genesis is this and this, and you know,
over here in this culture is probably influenced by this.
But God says through His own mouth, through the hands of Paul,
that it is a picture of Christ in the church. So there is no
other meaning for the first man and woman except that it is a
picture of the church. And Hebrews commands us to hold
marriage in high honor. It is an absolute abomination
when Christians don't hold marriage in high honor. Because it spits
in the very picture of Christ in the church. And we fail at
that every day, even those who have been married faithfully
for 50 years fail. Thank God for his grace and that
he is faithful, for he cannot deny himself. So as you hear
the sermon today, I want you not to try to look at it academically. I want you to look at it through
the lens of doctrine and theology. And then I want you to see the
essence and the outcome of what this writing did in Paul's life. He's sharing his heart with us
and with these Christians in Ephesus. And now as I have studied
it and prayed over it and done a very poor job of preparing
it for presentation today, my prayer is that through God's
Spirit, you would be encouraged and uplifted, and that the outcome
would be to the praise of His glory. To the praise of His glorious
grace. Look at chapter 3, verse 20 through
21. If we want to know how God is
going to be powerful in our lives, we need to first understand that
this power is here. We see Paul praying for it. Last
week we dealt with the prayer of Paul. Very quickly, in my
opinion, I think I could have taken two or three more weeks
in those verses. Very quickly, we looked at what Paul has prayed.
And the essence and the inner core of this prayer is that the
church would be empowered by God and therefore, through God's
power, be strengthened. And if they are strengthened,
then they will have the ability, once they're strengthened, to
comprehend and to perceive the depth and the breadth and the
height of the love of Jesus Christ. And when we see that church,
then we're rooted. and grounded. That means we're
rooted. We grow deep into that. It's sort of like a agricultural
term. We're rooted and we grow. We get our sustenance from that.
We feed off of that. We are going to grow out of that. And we're also grounded. That's
an archaeological term. We're foundationally firm. We do not shift. And so when
we understand that, we see Paul practicing this all throughout
the text when he says, especially when he says, I become all things
to all people that I might win some. And what that means is
that Paul stands firmly and grounded and rooted in the gospel of Jesus
Christ, which is the love of God displayed for us And then
actively done for us, it's in the manner in which God loved
us that He gave His Son. It's not the massiveness of God's
love, it's the manner in which God loves. And He stands firmly in that
root and on that ground, on that foundation. We see this in 1
Corinthians 2, where Paul says, if anybody builds on the foundation
of Jesus Christ, the gospel of Jesus Christ, with anything but
the gospel, it will burn. It will be destroyed. And it
will be a fruitless fruit. You will think that it's fruit,
but it will rot on the vine, for the vine is not connected
to the gospel. Jesus is the vine. How many vines do we have in
our lives apart from Christ? So now we know that Paul says
that these things will help you see. There's several things that
will be confrontational today in this text, and I want to give
them to you, there's four. ideas that I want to suggest. So, the application of what you
should be thinking is coming in the beginning of the sermon.
First, I want you to know that you need to look at your affections. You need to look at the trueness
of your affections. What do you love most in your heart? What
do you desire most in your heart? Is it Christ? Not what Christ
gives, not what God gives, not what the church provides, but
is it Christ? Is Christ, is faith in Christ truly your heart pulse? And I want us to evaluate our
thoughts on what we believe about the power of God. I want us to
look into our lives and I want us to realize that we need to
see that where our passions are, it will be very parallel. It
will be very comparable to where our thoughts are on how God's
power works in our life. Under salvation, nobody in the
church usually says that, well, I don't believe that God's power
can't save me. I do believe that, but then we
leave it there so God can save us from certain destruction and
wrath. But yet He can't help us in anything
along the way. We need to evaluate our thoughts
on the power of God in our lives under salvation and sanctification,
as well as everything in between. The second thing we need to do
is consider the depth of our understanding of the power of
God, as Paul describes it as the immeasurable great power
or the immeasurable greatness of His power toward us who believe,
who are the saints. He can do all things. What things? All things. God can do all things. God can strengthen in all ways.
God can lift in the darkest of days. The third thing we need
to be looking at, we need to evaluate or confront in our hearts
and minds is that we should ask if we're truly trusting in the
might and the power of God who owns all things. Or if we're
dismissing the power of God in our lives, because somewhere
in our culture, the supernatural has become a little weird. Friends,
I'll tell you something. If God, who is Spirit, is not
spiritually and supernaturally working, I doubt you're saved. For salvation comes through a
supernatural agent, the Holy Spirit of God. It comes through natural means
as the vehicle, but the agent of life, the agent of salvation
is God, the Holy Spirit, not God's spirit that he just sort
of takes and sends out like a dove, not God's spirit that he sort
of sends out like a messenger bird, but God, the Holy Spirit,
completely God at all times, active in the world today, even
in the lives of the unregenerate. For even the paths of the wicked,
even the plans of the wicked are under the will and the power
of God. No one can thwart God's plan. The wicked don't move in
this world and God go, man, I wish you hadn't done that. I didn't
see that coming. I better try something different.
That's not God. That's not omnipotent. That's
not omniscient. And it's not just God having the knowledge
of what will be. He's intimately involved in all that is. The fourth and final thing I
want you to reflect on, I want it to be confronted in your life
today as we hear these words, is we need to see if we are truly
living under the power and through the power of God. I want us to
recognize this power and I want us to see if we're truly worshiping
Him because of who He is. And if we're not, we must repent
of that unbelief. We must believe and pray that
God would empower us to believe and to see And this, friends,
is truly a test of our faith. And as we know, the children
of God, according to the command and the declaration of Scripture,
truly do trust in the power of God. So if if we believe, if
we truly believe, if we're truly trusting by faith in God who
is omnipotent, that word means all powerful. That means all
power that exists in the cosmos is his. Evidenced even though
the devil is a powerful creature, he is a creature just the same.
He is a created being who is in existence because God made
him. He has the reign that he has
because God gave it to him. Threw him to the earth, the power
of the prince of the air, as we see it in scripture, and he
has the ability to do what he does because God uses him as
an agent in the life of Job. in the life of Judas, in the
life of the serpent. Satan can do nothing outside
the will of God, ever. God permits what is done, and
any power that he has is God's power. God sent and allowed Satan
to touch Job's life. Satan did not do it, for he cannot
do anything outside the will or the permission of the Father.
And so if we believe in the fullness of the power of God, we will
look at things differently. We will think differently. We'll
believe differently. We'll trust differently. We'll
approach, this is big, we'll approach holiness differently. We'll look at our plans differently. We'll share our faith differently. We'll walk in faith. We'll walk
in joy. We'll walk in the fullness of
God's love. We will understand the urgency
of God's glory. Why do we have an urgency to
share the gospel? Because God's glory is at stake. Yes, people are dying. People
are dead. People are perishing. That ought
to be up there on the list that we want to proclaim the gospel,
so that through the proclamation of the Word of God, through hearing,
they may have ears to hear, and through that hearing, they will
have faith to believe, and they will be transformed by hearing
the Word of God. It's the only way someone comes
to faith, by the way, not through means of man. But the ultimate reason we share
faith is because of God's glory. His name is at stake. The children
of God operate under the imperative of His name being great in their
lives, individually and corporately, into the world. And we die for
the sake of the glory of God's name. We would walk with a better
battle over sin if we believed truly in the power of God. We
would not just give up or say, well, I'm forgiven, it's alright,
God understands. He understands sin perfectly.
And if you want to see what He thinks about it, look at the
cross. Jesus. on whom sin was placed. We did
not. He did not sin. He had no sin
of his own. So he took mine. He took yours if you are in Christ.
And God made him sin who knew no sin. And then he made us righteous
even though we're not. That's the power of God. We have
the power in God's power. We have the ability. We would
battle sin. We would fight it. We would flee
temptation. We would love others unconditionally if we truly believe
in the power of God. Well, there's no reason for me
to love or forgive that guy because he's never going to change. That's
right. He's not. Just as bread that you could
eat could never come from the sky and just as an ocean that
you could swim and drown in could never become dry land. And just
as the God who created the womb from which He was born could
never become a human being, but He did. We could love others
unconditionally. If we believe in the fullness
of the power of God, we also will preach the gospel. We'll
preach it first to ourselves every day. The gospel of Jesus
Christ is the power of God unto salvation. It is the power of
God. His divine power in 2 Peter 3,
chapter 1, teaches us is all we need for life and godly living.
It's all we need. His power. We don't need counseling,
though it's beneficial. We don't need stuff, even though
it might help us in resources. We don't need classes, though
it's good to learn. Those things are not going to
replace God's power. I know a lot of educated, counseled,
fellowshiping people who are powerless in the gospel. I know
a lot of people with PhDs who don't know a microphone from
a corncob when it comes to theology, because they've not been empowered.
If it weren't for God's power, we'd all be educated idiots. It doesn't take education to
become saved. None of the disciples were educated. Well, yeah, they
were. Most of the disciples were not
educated. Luke was educated. Peter wasn't educated. John wasn't
educated. Nathaniel. Luke was educated
as a doctor, medical doctor. Very verse had really good grasp
on the language. Paul was highly educated. But
what does Paul say about what he has done? It's good, but it's
not going to lead us to spirituality. It's not going to lead us to
a new awakening. It's not going to lead us to
the power of God. Study does, but study is not
always education. I believe it ought to be worship
first. Intimacy with God. If we believe in the fullness
of the power of God, we would preach the gospel to ourselves
and then we would also preach it to others. We preach it to
others in every circumstance. Well, my dog died last week. It was a very terrible thing.
The power of the gospel is sufficient to help us in the death of a
pet. It's sufficient to help us in the death of a loved one.
It's sufficient to help us in the fact when the doctor tells
us, look, you've got cancer and it's terminal. God's power is
sufficient for us to preach the gospel to ourselves in the midst
of no real wisdom to be found. Well, I'm so sorry. One of the
most devastating times in our lives as a couple is when we
lost our first child due to miscarriage. And it was hard for people to
understand how much pain that was. But when you've set up a
nursery and you've named a child, it doesn't matter. That child
was real intangible and it hurt, and we wondered why. And some
of the advice we got from some of our church friends, well,
it's all right. It's better off. And that's not wisdom. That's
that's deep, deep, deep desire to help. But that's not what
helps us. Christ, what helps is God's power
in the midst of that. If we really believe in the power
of God, we'll have a desire for a richer relationship with Him
through His Word, in His Son, by His grace and for His glory.
We will approach the Scriptures with trembling and devotion and
delight. We will renounce underhanded
ways, as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4. We will renounce disgraceful
ways. We will renounce cunning and
practical ways of trying to coerce people to hear or receive or
believe. We'll renounce those things.
We'll renounce underhanded and wicked ways and sinful worldly
ways of dealing with sin in our own lives and our struggle with
sin. We will joyfully rejoice. Seems a little redundant, but
Paul does it. I can too. We'll joyfully rejoice with thanksgiving
in all things, even in the deepest deaths of our days. We'll passionately
love each other and we'll passionately love our enemies. We will pray
as Paul has prayed, and we will pray even when we cannot pray.
Romans 8 teaches us that the Spirit will pray for us if we
truly believe by faith in the power of God. We will walk differently
in this life. And in my opinion, not that it's
worth anything, but I do believe based on what I have read and
studied, And two languages in this text, the first three chapters
of Ephesians is probably one of the greatest and fullest theological
arguments found in the entire word of God. Second, only maybe
to some of the arguments of Scripture that you find in Romans. But
Romans is just it's big, it's hard to grasp these first three
small little paragraphs of Ephesians or something that we can actually
it's only about four sentences, what we've already preached this
far. These few sentences, have such a deep impact in the life
of the church. And yet these three sentences are for a few
few sentences, I haven't really truly counted them, but these
few sentences are some of the most quickly overlooked sentences
in the entire Bible. We go, we love four, we love
five because we can put those on a little list with a box beside
it. I'm working on that and I'm working on that. But the whole
power of how we work on these things in our lives is found
in chapters one through three. And so, Paul, has established
the fullness of God's glory in His church for and through Jesus
Christ, which was His plan before the world began. See, this is
something that we always need to keep fresh in our minds. We
have seen that God's everlasting plan was to create a people for
Himself, which He calls the church, which is the bride of Jesus Christ,
which is the body. And ultimately, until Christ
is united with His body forever, He is in some sense considering
Himself incomplete. Though he's not, we see that
language in the Scripture where Jesus longs to have his church. And we in turn will lovingly
and passionately praise Him for His glorious grace, which is
the outcome as we see in the first two chapters here in Ephesians.
God's glory then, as I've already stated, is paramount. It is the
utmost, vital, most important foundational aspect of the entire
universe that God's glory is revealed to all that there is.
I can make a theological argument that in the very beginning of
Genesis chapter one, when it says that the Spirit of God was
hovering over the waters of the deep and then God said, let there
be light, that light was a creative essence of something existing
so that he could be seen. And we see it, we see it reiterated,
we see recapitulated in John chapter one, the light with the
light of the life of men. The light of the world. And then
Jesus says the church is the light of the world. You'll see
that in just a minute. It's perfectly and divinely orchestrated. His
glory is paramount. It is the purpose for which he
created all things in general, and then specifically it is the
purpose for which he created the church. And so why, you ask,
then what does Paul do? Why is affection and forgiveness
and love important in the life of the church? Because God's
glory is seen perfectly in Jesus Christ and demonstrated perfectly
in His eternal affection for His people, evidenced perfectly
by the life and death of Jesus Christ as the God-man. And His
glory then is also seen in His power toward the church and promised
as the resurrection of Christ from the dead, we also will be
raised from the dead. This is all the argument that
Paul has already established here. And so what should we remember
very quickly? Let me repreach these first three
chapters. We should remember that we were created in Christ
Jesus to be blameless, verse four, chapter one, we should
be blameless and holy before him. that we were predestined,
the latter part of that verse, to be adopted as sons in the
image of Christ, which was his eternal purpose in order that
so that the consequence, the outcome, why did he do it? So
that we would live and be to the praise of his glorious grace.
That's the only reason God created us. The only reason God created
the world, the only reason God saved the church is so that we
would praise him for his glory. In verse 15 of chapter 1, Paul
begins to praise God and thank Him for the work that He's done
in the life of these Ephesians and in her creation and sustaining
and sanctification, being made like Jesus, because Paul sees
their faith in Jesus Christ and he sees that faith evidenced
by their love for all the saints. In verse 18 of chapter 1, Paul
prays that God will open their eyes. Their eyes have already
been opened. They've already been illuminated. They've been born again. He's not saying
they're dead in their sins and blind. He's saying open their
eyes again. Open it daily. Open their eyes so that they
might see and perceive. Give them eyes that see. Give
them eyes that perceive. Give them eyes that are amazed
and stand in wonder and stand in glory and adoration. and full
comprehension of what God has done. God is the one who is moving.
And what God has done is we can praise Him and see the hope that
we are called to. We can see the riches of His
glorious grace in Christ as an inheritance. We can see the immeasurable
great power toward us who believe. which is measured by the power
of His great might, which is proven and demonstrated by the
fact that He raised Christ from the dead, chapter 1, verse 20. And in verse 23 it says, that
fills all and all in the church. So this power has brought us
to life just as it's brought Christ to life from the dead.
Jesus died for the penalty of sin, and yet He lives. In the
same way, we as the children of God will also be made alive,
not only spiritually with our new hearts as regenerated Christians,
but also physically in our new bodies forever by the power of
Christ. In chapter 2, verse 4, he says
that God is rich in mercy, and because of the great love which
He loved us, He has brought us to life through faith. by the
power of God's mercy, by His glory, by His love. By His power,
we were created to live life of good works, which He created
beforehand for us to do. By His power, we are one in Christ
Jesus. Not separate peoples hoping to
come to God in different ways, but Jew and Greek alike now are
one body, and all who are Jews, who are Israel, have been saved
by faith alone. by grace alone, through faith
alone, which was not of their own doing, but is given by God
in Jesus, and so are we as Gentiles saved also. This power enables
us to suffer. And as we do that, we display
the glory of God. The purpose of the church in
chapter 3, verse 10, is to display His manifold wisdom, the power
of what He has done. And then Paul now prays, as we
dealt with last week, That we should be strengthened with power
so that we could understand. What should we understand? I'll
review. The great love of Christ, which is our fuel, which is our
grace, which is our hope, our joy, our bread, our sustenance.
Jesus is our all-in-all, all-sufficient, beautiful treasure. That's what
Paul's praying. And he's also praying that we
could comprehend more and more and more and more that which
is beyond all human comprehension, except by the power of God's
grace, that we be filled and be in awe and be filled with
the fullness of God with all the saints. And so Paul's not
praying just for the Ephesian Christians. He's praying for
all the saints in all the world that live today. And it is the
power of God that enables the church to exist and to exist.
And you might say, well, what does that mean? Well, very quickly,
God's power enables the church to exist. It's by God's power
that the church was birthed. And it's by God's power that
the church is sustained. Therefore, we have access to
one father, and with that one father, we have assurance and
boldness and courage. So how are these things to be
effective in our life? Well, in 2 Peter 1.3, you don't
have to turn there, I'm just going to mention it. His divine power
has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness
through the knowledge of Him who called us to His own glory
and excellence. And that's what Paul's praying there, is that
we'd be enlightened and our eyes would be opened and that we would
have an understanding, be strengthened so that we might comprehend this.
And so my prayer, churches, if you comprehend this today, that
you'd be filled with the fullness of God and that your joy be immeasurably
and inexpressible. And if you don't comprehend this
today, well, this teaching and this sermon is a prayer for you.
that you might be filled with the fullness of God, and you
might be strengthened to be able to understand and see. It's a
beautiful thing, is that as we pray to God for His glory, then
we are also blessed and glorified through our decision and our
desire and our determination to give God glory, which is His
power in the first place, doing it and effecting it in our lives.
So it's a circular continuation of glory to glory to glory for
the benefit of the saints, for the sake of God's name. And so
now we understand that it only by God's power are we able to
exist in harmony with his nature, with his being, with his essence,
holiness, and that's only through Christ. It is the power of God. Now we get to this text, verse
20. It is the power of God that enables us, the church, to worship.
Look what he says. Now to Him who is able. Now what
is He doing? Now He's speaking to the praise
of God. Now to him who is able. Paul,
the outcome of the power of God enables the church to worship
him, to love him for who he is, to recognize his immeasurable
power, to be strengthened by that we might see it, to understand
that it is what's effective in our lives. And now we are going
to worship him. Doxology, verse three of chapter
one's doxology. And then he ends with it here
in chapter and his last two verses to him be the glory. To Him be the glory in the church
and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations." See, that's
what he does there. Now, to Him be the glory. That's what he's starting to
say, but then he begins to continue to teach things, doctrine about
God's power. And look at it very quickly as
we see it. Now, what does he say first? To Him who is able.
See, what that teaches is that God is able. It teaches us that
God is able to do what? He is able to accomplish all
things that He desires to accomplish, beyond the scope of the laws
of the natural order of the universe. That's called supernatural, above
natural, beyond natural. God is able to affect things.
I love it when people try to, and you see these things on the
Discovery Channel, it's very creative, where they try to talk
about how bread came down from heaven. And one of the explanations
that I've seen lately, I'm talking about man in the wilderness,
as we see in the Exodus, where God provided. There's nothing
to eat there. And as someone who's driven through the desert
of this country's width eight times, nine times, we know what
it looks like. And if you break down with 300
miles between a gas station and you have no food and it's in
the middle of the night, you die. Because it could be cold. So here are these wilderness
experienced with the Jews, and they're in the desert and have
nothing to eat. They can't carry around food for 40 years. They
can't grow crops there. And so God, every morning, has
laid bread on the ground. And I love it. For 40 years,
the Discovery Channel says that whirlwinds and tornadoes picked
bread up and threw them thousands of miles into the desert and
just happened to just be in the same path that the Jews were
in. OK, then ask a meteorologist
the likelihood of that, even if it was a natural hand of a
tornado that dropped it. Is that really isn't that really
a supernatural thing? God can do what he wants to with
the wind. He do what he wants to the molecules. He upholds
them by the word of his power. He can rearrange us and turn
us into giraffes as he wanted to. That would be an awful sight.
But God's power is at work, and it is able to do all things. Paul is praising God, as we saw
last weekend today. Now to him, this doxology, he
is praising God for His glorious grace. It is this power of God.
Look what else. It's not just God's power. It's
God's power at work in us. Now to him who is able to do
far more abundantly than we ask That all we ask or think according
to the power at work within us. And so this power is at work,
and now all that we could think of, all that we could contemplate,
all that we could ever ask or dream, God is able to do far
more abundantly. That's not even correct grammar.
If you know your English grammar, that's incorrect to say that,
to put that together the way he sort of creates a new phraseology
and he just sticks it out there. But he needs to express himself. He needs to express the immeasurable
greatness of the power of God and what he can do. He is able
and this power is working. Within the church, God can accomplish
all that he desires, just like a child that makes a snake out
of Play-Doh can change his mind and ball it up and throw it like
a ping pong ball. So can God do anything he wants
as the creator. And one of the greatest creative
works that God does today is when he takes a wicked sinner
who is his enemy and hates him and he turns him into an affectionate
lover of holiness. At the cost of himself on the
cross. In Ezekiel 36, we see this played
out in the Old Testament when God speaks to the Jews through
the prophet Ezekiel, and God speaks and says, I will vindicate
the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among
the nations and which you, Israel, have profaned among them. And
the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Lord God.
And when though you, excuse me, when through you I vindicate
my holiness before their eyes, I will take you from the nations
and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land.
And I will sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean
from all your uncleanliness and from all of your idols. I will
cleanse you and I will listen to this church. I will give you
a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you. And I'll
remove that dead, and I'm adding something here, that dead heart
of stone from your flesh and give you a living heart of flesh.
And I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in
my statutes and be careful to obey my laws. And you shall dwell
within the land that I gave to your fathers and you shall be
my people and I will be your God. God is able. God is able to save
sinners, and he doesn't just make it possible, he certainly
affects it. Paul's not praising God for giving
him something. Paul is praising God for being
God. Paul is praising God, and he's not giving him glory because
God's looking for somebody to give it to him. Paul is praising
God and giving him glory because it's his already, and Paul recognizes
that it's his. And he affirms that in his heart.
We don't ascribe glory to God, we acknowledge it. God is worthy
of glory and has all glory, whether we see it or not, it's His. God
is the able one. God is able to do far more than
we could ever ask or think. He was able to create all things
from nothing. He was able to breathe life into
inanimate things that were created out of the dust of the world. He brought things to a beginning
that had no existence. God was able to secure salvation
before there was even people in the world knowing that Satan
would tempt and that man would die. God has been able to thwart
the plans of the wicked and destroy the world, saving only a family
and reproducing and repopulating the world for the sake of His
glory. God in His power was able to thwart the wisdom of man,
rescue them from miracles, provide bread in the desert, heal the
sick, speak to humans through animals and fire, give His law
part of sea, hang the stars and the planets into the void of
space. He filled the seas as though we poured water into a
spoon. He's been able to sustain a people through fire and through
lions and through death. He's been able to prepare for
a famine through slavery and bigotry and hatred. for the world
to be saved. To provide a barren woman and
an old man a son and through whom the world will be saved.
God was able to enforce judgment on His enemies with little hope
by human means. He was able to raise up leaders
from shepherds and take down giants with little boys. God is able to reveal His glory
through suffering. He has defeated the devil at
every turn. God upholds the world and the molecules of its existence
with the power of his word. He was able to protect his word
for the salvation of his people, us, his church. He preserved
his promise. He gave John to Elizabeth, able
to save him in the womb before he knew a word filled with the
Holy Spirit of God. He leapt inside of his mother. He created
Mary and Joseph, and at the perfect fullness of time, God created
an embryo to become his own body as he burst into the world that
he might create a people for himself. And while he was here,
he created Excuse me, he healed the sick. He spoke with power
and authority. He forgave sins. He raised people
from the dead and he laid down his own life as the Lamb of God
that he might save them from judgment. He was tempted, he
suffered and he rose from the dead, and now, church, he lives
in you. He lives in you. What else are
you going to do but praise him for his glory? His power should enact quick
and permanent judgment on us all, to be honest with you. I
thought about what else should God be doing with his power?
He should at the fall of man allowed us to populate and become
billions. And then with the spoken with
the thought of his mind, if you could give him one. He should
enact hell for all of us ultimately and immediately, but he didn't. He doesn't. Because of the great
love in which he loves us. He saved us before the world
knew itself to be. God has planned to save you and
he has. And God is able not only to do
that, he's able to do more than what we know and what we can
read in Scripture and the unimaginable idea of just creating all that
there is. We can't imagine things that
are much greater or more difficult than that. But Paul is saying
that God is able to do far more abundantly greater things than
we could think of or ask for. And He's already done what we've
asked for. He's already at work in us in
His power. And this power is working far
beyond what we could ask or think. Therefore, in this life, in this
life as children, He is working. Do you see the work of God and
His power in your life? See, that's the question. Is it there? If you're His, it's
there. And if it's not effective in
your life the way it should be, it's because you have been starved
to death. You haven't heard this Word at
all. But that the whole first four chapters of Ephesians have
boiled down to a walk worthy. Be nice. Be polite. Be loving. Work on that. I know what you
want to say, but just don't say it. See, that's not righteousness.
That's acting. Righteousness is thinking always
good toward people. Friends, my flesh is not like
that. But my heart is and your heart
is, and we battle that because God has given us a new heart.
God always does more than any of us could ever consider a dream.
God will do what we ask. We, his children, who pray and
ask him to do what he wills to do and desires to do. We who
are his children, we have desires that come from him. And so therefore,
we pray for his desires in our lives to be done. Paul has established
this phrase, as I've already said, far more abundantly than. It's an amazing thing, God power,
God's power at work far more abundantly than we could imagine,
think or ask for. Our hope and our understanding
of the love of Christ is the power in our lives. When is this? When is this gospel, when is
this love powerful in our lives? It should be powerful today as
you hear it. It should be powerful tomorrow
as you contemplate it. It should be powerful in the
best of days, in the greatest of financial prosperity. It should
be powerful in sickness. And then when death is knocking
at your door. It should be powerful in your life. God's power can
do greater things in divorce, in depression, When we feel like
the same sin catches us for decade after decade and we can never
overcome it. When we feel like we doubt, we
have anger, addiction, greed, pride. God is killing that sin
and His power is taking that sin and removing it as sometimes
small ways from our lives. But He's working in our lives
and one day that sin will be gone and it will not be in this
life. But we do become more like Christ. We're no longer condemned
even though we do still sin. For there is no condemnation
for those who are in Christ Jesus. We have been saved and our debt
has been paid. And we live a life before men
so that God could be glorified. Let your light so shine before
men that they see your good deeds and give glory to your Father
who is in heaven. That's the words of Jesus. We don't live
a good life before people because you know what? Living righteously
before people in love with Christ, when we do that, the world hates
us. The world hates us. John says that we ought not be
like Cain, who hated his brother. And why, he asked, did Cain hate
his brother Abel? Because Abel's works were righteous
and his were wicked. And what is the immeasurable
greatness of his power toward us who believe according to the
working of his great might, Paul says in 119, according to the
power that is at work in us. Church, we don't really have
to beg God for His power in our lives. We just have to understand
it and pray that He'd continue to work it out in us. By faith,
you know it is there. By faith, you are aware. By faith,
you know it is working. So ask God to continue to work
in you more and more and more and understand that without God's
working, we will not believe and we will not show His glory
to Him in the cosmos. And look at the very last phrase
that Paul says here. Now to him to be the glory in
the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever
and ever. Amen. Listen to this very quickly. This should be a whole nother
sermon. In John. We have seen His glory,
glory as of the only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth,
and from His fullness we all receive grace upon grace. No
one has ever seen God. He at His side has made Him known.
Jesus, according to Paul and Colossians, is the image of the
invisible God, the exact imprint of His nature, the essence of
His being with the fullness of deed. He was pleased to dwell.
We looked at that last week, that word dwell was exactly here
in chapter three. In the church, the power of God
that dwelt in Christ, the same fullness of God dwells in the
church. We're not divine, but we have the same empowerment
and filling that filled Christ as God. And in Hebrews, it says, in many
times, in many ways, God spoke to us through the prophets. But
now in these days, he speaks to us through his son. The exact
imprint of His nature, the fullness of God's glory is revealed in
Jesus Christ. Now, church, look what Paul has
said. The fullness of the glory be
glory in the church and in Christ. Do you know what it means when
the Scriptures say that we who are in Christ, if we are in Christ,
then we are heirs and if heirs. You know that text. God's glory is revealed through
the church in an equal manner in which it is revealed through
His Son. Is that how we look? Do we really live that way? See, what Paul is about to say
is, I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in
a manner worthy of the calling to which you've been called by
the power of God that fills you and fills you up and empowers
you so that, Ephesians 3.10, the manifold wisdom of God may
be seen in you, church. We must exist for that purpose
and that purpose alone. And if we took a test and we
all stood up and we confessed, we all fall short. For there's
no distinction, Paul says in Romans three, for all have fallen
short of the glory of God and are what? Justified by his grace
as a gift. So our good works are prepared
beforehand and our ability to live in them is when we trust
and believe in the gospel for the sake of His name and for
the sake of His glory. As living worshippers in spirit
and in truth, John 4 and Romans 12, 1 and 2, by the renewal of
our mind as we pray for God to put our minds on the things that
are not of this world, but the things that are eternal forever. And ever through all generations,
amen and amen means it is done. So be it. It is done. Is it done? Are we filled with
all the fullness of God through his grace, for his glory, our
people for his glory, by his grace, for that tagline comes
from. In the book of Hebrews and John and Ephesians and Colossians
and a whole other places, John. First, John revelation. It's
why we're here. Is that what you want? See, that's the next question.
Is that really what you want? Do you want to be those people, that
people? Do you want to be part of that
body? And is your life reflecting from the inside His glory? And maybe you're powerless today
in your heart of hearts because your heart is being hardened
by the Word of God and you hate it. You don't want to hear another
word. But I would suggest that most of us who hear this today
are being impressed. Most of us are being softened,
most of us are being broken to see it and believe. So believe
in the gospel of Jesus Christ, turn of your sin and do not trust
in the things of this world, but put your faith completely
in Christ. And that's not something you do and then it's done. It's
something that we live in as a constant. So my encouragement
to you is to please realize that we are a people of God's own
possession. And we don't deserve it, but
through his mercy and his grace for his namesake and his glory,
he has created us to be his own. And we are the inheritance of
God. Let's pray. Father. Please allow this word to soak
into us, to empower us. I don't know what to pray. I just want to sit and just be
still and just let your spirit talk. God bring life to those who are
dead. and empower those who are alive. Lord, grow us powerfully and
supernaturally cohesive in the gospel for your glory. Protect
us from pride. Protect us from temptation. Lord, help us to be strengthened
by your grace. And all of this is done in the
name of Jesus. In His name we pray, Amen.