Ephesians chapter 3, and I want
to begin reading in verse 12. In Christ, in Christ Jesus our
Lord, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence by
the faith of Him, by believing in Him, wherefore I desire that
you faint not at my tribulations for you, which is your glory.
For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named,
that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to
be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man,
that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith, that you, being
rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with
all saints what is the breadth, the length, the depth, and the
height, and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge,
that you might be filled with all the fullness of God. Now
unto him that is able to do exceedingly, abundantly, above all that we
ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, Unto
Him be glory in the church by Jesus Christ throughout all ages,
world without end. Amen. I sometimes think that the difference
in those people, those dear Christians, who accomplished a lot in the
service of our Lord Jesus Christ, and those of us who accomplish
very little, is the strength of their faith. I think the reason,
at least humanly speaking, you and I look at it, the difference
between the two is their faith. Those who accomplish little usually
have little faith. They believe just about half
of what the Lord says, and they believe it half-heartedly. Those
who accomplish much, they believe God much. Abel believed that God would
accept him in a blood sacrifice. How did that affect that man?
He killed him a lamb and took it in his arms and went unto
God because he believed. Noah believed that God would
send a flood and destroy the world. How did that affect that
man? He built an ark in the time that
it never rained. Abraham believed God would give
him the land of Canaan. How did that affect him? He left
his father's house, his own house, his country, and went off into
a place that he had never been before. Shadrach, Meshach, and
Abednego said, We believe God will deliver us from your hands,
Nebuchadnezzar. How did that affect them? They
refused to bow to his image. And here we find the same strength
of faith, the same degree of heart, trust in this great apostle
as we did these men of old. I read to you here verse 12,
and I think that you can link it so closely to verse 14. He had already said in chapter
3 and down in verse 18, for through Him we both have access by one
Spirit unto the Father. Paul believed that. And he says
here in our text that we read unto you, in Christ we have access
with confidence by believing in Him. And so how does that
affect this man? Well, he says in verse 14, for
this cause, Now last week I linked that to chapter 2. And you can
just as easily link, for this cause I bow my knee, unto this
thing that Paul believed concerning a mediator between God and man. We have access through the Lord
Jesus unto the Father. Therefore I bow my knees unto
the Father. Therefore I pray. I simply believe
what God has said, that He has indeed, through His dear and
blessed Son, prepared a complete, unchanging, unchangeable access
unto His holy presence. So He comes to the Father here.
He says, I come and I bow my knee, and this is the way I do
it. I do it with boldness. I do it
with frankness. We often say, let's be frank
about it, don't we? Let's just be open about it.
Let's be honest. Let's be upfront about it. Paul
said, that's the way I am when I go to my Father in prayer. I'm just outspoken about it.
I come into His presence with perfect liberty, without any
torment and fear, to be accepted as a child would approach unto
a Father in whom he delights. He says, that's how free that
I am. That's what liberty and assurance
I have. Paul, how could you come with
such liberty and boldness? Because I believe that God has
prepared the way into His presence for me to come and every other
believing sinner. And as you read the Apostle Paul's
prayer, and I just got a thick book, I think there's 340 or
350 pages just of the prayers of the Apostle Paul. And until
you begin to look at it, you don't realize how he prayed in
these epistles. And if he prayed like this in
these epistles, and he had to almost reframe
himself, to cut it off, he could have wrote chapter after chapter
down in prayers. But he had to reframe himself.
But can you imagine, if he wrote like this in these prayers, how
he prayed in private? He prayed long prayers. He must
have prayed long prayers. He tells us here in chapter 1,
and look back at it, and we look at this in chapter 1 and there
in verse 16. He was telling them, since he
had heard of their faith in Christ and loved of the saints, I ceased
not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayer. I ceased not to pray. He must
have felt somewhat comfortable coming into the Father's presence.
He must have felt somewhat at ease there. He tells us in the
6th chapter and verse 18, This, listen to this, he says, praying
always. This is what he instructed the
saints to do. He says, you be like me. Be like me. Be followers of me. I pray always
with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit and watch and learn
to with all perseverance and supplications from all saints.
And he said, for me. that utterance may be given me,
that I may open my mouth boldly to make known the mystery of
the gospel." And I begin reading to you here in our text. He begins
to pray here in verse 14. He begins to bow his knee, and
he goes on verse after verse, making his request to the Father
in heaven. Why does he feel so free in prayer? Why does he feel that he can
spend so much time here? Well, because he believes God.
That's it, brothers and sisters. He believes God. He says it here
in my text that I read to you. We have boldness and access in
Christ by the faith of Him. Through Him we have access. We have admission. I want to
stress that over and over. I know that I preached this to
you just two or three Sundays ago in which I really stressed
this to you. But I can't stress it enough.
It's done. This is accomplished. Admission
has been obtained into God's presence. You and I should lay
hold upon this by faith and put into practice what we believe
in our hearts. In another place, one of the
writers said this, having that high priest over the house of
God, let us draw near. Let us draw near to God, to the
very heart of God, our Father. You know, we talk so much, we
hear so much, as well we should, about the Son of God coming to
this earth, about His holy walk in this world, His obedience.
His vicarious death upon the cross? He suffered for our sins? God raised Him from the dead
and set sunset on my right hand? You're my way? You're my way
that I can reach out to poor sinners? And you're their way
to come into my presence. You've reconciled me to poor,
helpless sinners. Now we can come together as father
and as children and sup one with another. Do we believe that,
brothers and sisters? Do we have to believe that? Paul
believed this. And because he believed this,
he said, I bow my knees. I spend time with my Father in
heaven. I feel at ease there. I feel
so much ease there and freedom that when I come into His presence,
I don't have to be in any hurry. I can talk with Him. And He'll
listen to me. He's my Father. In Christ, He's
a tender and merciful Father unto me. I think you and I have to believe
sometimes that our access depends upon us. Do we not believe that? Do we not get it in our head
sometimes? We've done something wrong. We taste something of
the guilt of it upon our conscience. Well, we can't come and pray
now. We don't have a right frame of mind, as we say. We're not
as spiritual in our minds as we think we should be. So we
say, well, we can't pray like this. We don't feel a desire. We don't feel a felt need to
pray. So we can't pray like this. We've been neglecting our duty.
We've been slothful. The world has overcome us. The
cares of this life, the pleasures of this world has consumed us.
And what do we say? We can't pray like this. Don't
we do that? And we're saying by that, that
this is our access. This is the means by which we're
approaching to the Father. And because we have sinned or
because we don't feel good or we've not done right, we think,
well, we can't pray like this. We believe our access depends
upon us. And we begin to spend a lot of
time and a lot of thought and a lot of effort in trying to
get our act together and prepare ourselves because we believe
that it's through this means that we have access unto the
Father. Do we not do that? Paul said,
no, no, no, he says. I used to believe that way. I
used to stand and pray with the Pharisees in the temple. Father,
I thank you that I'm not like other men are. Just look at me. Look at me, what a good frame
of mind I've got. Look what a good man I am. If
you don't believe me, ask me. Look how I give. Look how I'm
fasting. Look how I pay tithes. I'm not bad like other men are.
I'm a good man. And therefore, I have access
unto the Father. That's what Paul used to think.
But he said, I don't think like that anymore. I've been converted
from that way of thinking. I've cast that to the dogs. That's
dumb. He said, I've heard the Gospel.
I've found out how a poor sinner can come into the Father in Heaven.
And it's through Christ the Lord. Through His blood, through His
merits, through His intercession. And he said, I just believe it.
I believe it. And what do you do, Paul? I bow
my knees. And I come into His presence.
And he says, I'm in no hurry when I get there. I'm in no hurry
to leave. Do you think Paul ever sinned? Do you think he ever felt wretched
because of it? You think he ever had the wrong
frame of mind? You think his circumstances were
less than favorable sometimes? Sure. He's just like us. In and of himself, he was a man
with like passions as you and I are, as Elijah was, as Moses
was, and all the other apostles. But the difference between Paul
and I fear us He didn't believe His access depended upon such
things. He believed His access was in
Christ and through Christ and because of Christ Jesus, the
Lord. He wrote this in Romans chapter
5. He says, being justified by faith, we have peace with God
through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom Also, we have access
by faith unto this grace wherein we stand and rejoice in hope
of the glory of God. And then in that same chapter,
verse 11, he says this, we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus
Christ. See that? Peace, joy, rejoicing
through Christ. But it's laid hold of by faith. We simply believe it. That's
why I go back to this. Do we have to believe this? Do
you have to believe this? Do I have to believe it? Believing
it causes us to practice it, you see. My experience in prayer for years,
and you probably, you know this in your own self. I've noticed
this in myself. ever since I've been praying.
And I've been praying ever since the Lord taught me to pray and
taught me how to pray. And it began this way, God be
merciful to me a sinner. But I often notice in my prayers
that I often stray. I have a neighbor that gets up
at four o'clock every morning. She gets up at four o'clock and
she prays. I know she does. She's not just telling me that,
and she'd be embarrassed if she knew I told you that, and I won't
dare tell you her name. But every morning at 4 o'clock,
she gets up to pray. I could never get up at 4 o'clock
and pray. If I got up and got out of my bed to pray, I'd go
to sleep. But I've noticed when I pray so often, I don't care
if it's 8 o'clock or 10 o'clock or whenever it is, so often I
stray in my prayer. Did you ever do that? Have you
ever been praying and suddenly you just come to yourself and
realize you're not even praying anymore? Your mind is drifted
off. Have you ever went to sleep while
you were praying? And you come to yourself and
how do you feel? You shame yourself. That's where
we should be. And we say, Lord, Lord, You should
cast me from Your presence. What a shame. How could I be
here in Your presence? and stray like that. It would
be like going before the President of our country and be talking
with him, and suddenly, you're just looking around. And there
he's waiting for you to finish what you were asking him or telling
him. But instead, you're just looking around. How would he
feel? What irreverence! And I've done
it! And I've often thought when I've
come back to myself, Are you standing there finally so disgusted
with me that you're ready just to cast me out of your presence?
That's what I used to think. I thought you were disgusted
with me as I am with myself. But last week this happened to
me. And when I finally come back to myself, and we should be ashamed,
oh brother, and we should repent of it. But when I came back to
myself and realized what I'd done, And I begin to think, Lord,
You should cast me out of Your presence. This wonderful thought
came to me. He's not casting me out of His
presence. He's not angry with me. He's
not even offended at me. He's not like me at all. And
I begin to think about that, and it's almost like I thought
the Lord rested down and shut me and said, You've lost your
concentration. Child, you've gone to sleep.
Wake up. You were saying something to me. What were you saying to
me? Talk to me, dear child. You think the Lord's that way.
I think He's exactly that way, brothers and sisters. We get
down on ourselves. We get disgusted in ourselves
because of the weakness of our flesh. He don't chide with us. He just
shakes us and wakes us like a tender father would his child that had
dozed off or strayed. And why would He do that? Because
He's made such a perfect way, such a holy way, such a just
way, such a gracious way for us to come right into His presence
and accept us. Oh, if He had to accept us because
of our prayers, yeah, He may well cuss us out. But that's
not our access. It's as though the father said
to his son, my son, I've got to have an access. I've got to
let them into my presence. That's what I desire. That's
what I want. But it's got to be a just access. It's got to
be right. One that I'm satisfied with.
And you're the only one that can do that for us. You set here. And when they come through You
to me, and they come through Your name and in Your merits,
then I'll be a tender father to them. And I'll never deal
with them as they deserve to be dealt with. Isn't that wonderful,
brothers and sisters? And thinking about that, can't
you feel why this apostle spent so much time in prayer? There's
a wonderful passage, and I won't turn to read it to you, but it's
found in Luke chapter 6 and verse 12. You'll remember this very
well. It's amazing. One of the most
amazing things in all the life of our Lord Jesus in His ministry.
It says He went out into one of the mountains and continued
all night in prayer to God. Isn't that amazing? The Lord
Jesus in His humanity, the Son of God, Jesus of Nazareth, felt
so comfortable in His Father's presence that He prayed all night
long. Isn't that wonderful? You say,
Bruce, yes, but that's the Lord Jesus Christ. Don't we in Him
have the same access? Is He any more accepted? Is He
any more loved than we are? I think not. I remember, I never
will forget this woman. best days of my life. I went
over to preach a meeting for Brother Paul Mayhem there in
Rocky Mount, Virginia. And Brother Henry said, when
you come over here, you're going to take a little trip. And after
the service had ended on Sunday, we had preached and closed out
the meeting and ate dinner. And then Henry got in his car
and we drove down Where's that road that goes down
the ridge? What? Blue Ridge. Blue Ridge
Parkway. For miles and miles and hours
and hours with Brother Henry Mann. Just me and him by ourselves. And I tell you, we talked, we
laughed, I cried, and we had a wonderful time. Can you imagine
that? And I love Him dearly. I respect Him as much as anybody
in this world. But I felt so free in His presence.
You know what it is to talk with Him. And can we not come into
our Father's presence the same way? And just stay there and
feel it's such liberty that we can just pray and then pray some
more and pray some more and not be in any hurry to get out. That's
what I see in this prayer of the Apostle Paul. Without ceasing,
he prayed. And it's all because he simply
believed what God had said, what God had done, what Christ had
done, what Christ is and where He is. Something else I see here in
general, in this passage, and I think this is very important. Well, Paul prayed continually. He never used vain repetition.
He prayed with the understanding. He was specific in his request. You'll notice that here in our
text. You know, you and I can pray, God bless us, God bless
our church, God bless your people. But do we stop there? Do we just
stop there? Do we just say, Lord, bless Your
people? Now, I know when we come up here
to pray, public prayers, we're very limited. I realize that.
But when we're by ourselves, do we just stop when we say,
Lord, bless Your people? You know, I think if we do, then
It reveals a degree of laziness about us, a degree of indifference. That's fine if we want to stop
there, but when we come to Him and say, bless, what if He says,
what do you want me to do? You know, we often ask people
that, didn't we? They'd come to Him and He said,
what do you want me to do? What will you that I should do to
you? And what if you say, Father, bless your people? And what if
He returns? What do you want me to do? Can
you be more specific? I see this in the Apostle's prayers. He just didn't pray in general.
And it wasn't vain repetition. He got so specific. Look at it
here in verse 16. And we'll consider this next
week, or a week after next, or whenever. Look how specific he
got. This is amazing. Absolutely amazing
request. But look how specific it is.
He said, I bow my knees to the Father. I pray to Him that He
would grant you. That's wonderful in itself. According
to the riches of His glory. Now here he's praying. To be
strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man. Lord,
bless Your people. How do You want me to bless them,
Paul? I want you to strengthen By your might and by your Spirit
in their hearts, in their inner mans, their new mans. What else,
Paul? Oh, Father, that Christ may dwell
in their hearts by faith. That they, being rooted and grounded
in love, may be able to comprehend with all things. And on and on
he goes. And you see it in chapter 1,
in verse 17 through verse 19, the very same thing. He gets
so detailed about his prayer. What do you want God to do for
them? Oh, that they may know You. Give them the spirit of
wisdom and revelation that they may know You. These aren't vain repetitions.
These are specific requests. And our Father delights in these
prayers. And you know why He delights
in these prayers. Because it shows to Him That
we're praying with the understanding. We know what we need. I'm not speaking about every
detail, you know that. But what do you emphasize in
your prayer? Is that you want a new house?
You want a better job? You want a nicer car? Or even
better health? There may be a time to pray for
all of those things. But in your heart of hearts,
when you go to the Father, what do you emphasize to Him? What's
your greatest need with Him? Do you know it? Are you aware
of it? And do you articulate it before
Him? Do you express this need? Do you say, Father, here's my
need, and it's an awful need, and nobody else can meet it but
You? I need strength in my inner man. I need grace to believe. I need
mercy because of what I am and who I am. Do you know what your
need is? Do you express those needs? I
mean, you get specific. I often listen to the radio when
I go down to Brother Todd's. They have a large Catholic radio
station there somewhere because I pick it up. One time I was
coming back up the interstate and they were praying. You know
how they pray their prayer. Holy Mary, the Mother of God,
pray for us sinners. Holy Mary, the Mother of God,
pray for us sinners. And I thought, I'm going to listen
to this and see how long they say this. And I drove literally
for miles with them repeating the same prayer. Is that acceptable
in the Father's eyes? When our Master Himself said,
don't come to Me with your vain repetition. Don't do that. Come to Me with the understanding.
Come to Me in knowledge. Do you know your need? Have I
taught you your need? I tell you, when that publican
stood in the temple to pray, did he pray whether he understood
it or not? Did he come and say, well, I really don't know what
to say. I just received Jesus as my personal
Savior, I guess, and went on down to his house. No, he didn't
say that at all. He comes and he says, oh God,
I know my need. I know exactly what I need. There's
no doubt in my mind I know what I need. Oh, I can almost hear
the answer say, can you? Hear the answer come. Now, I
don't know if you know it or not. I really don't know. Let
me hear you say what you need. Let me see if I've taught you.
Let me see what you know about the truth. What is your request? God, be merciful to me. Yeah, yeah, I like that. I like that. You know why God
likes that? Because He put it there to begin
with. He put it there. There was a reason Paul said
here, I pray for you that you'd be strengthened by might, by
His Spirit in the inner man, because it's the Spirit that
puts these prayers there to begin with. And He enables us to pray
to begin with. And the Father delights in those
prayers. Look here with me in this passage in Hosea. Look all
the way back over in the Old Testament. Hosea. If you find Ezekiel, that's a
large book. You turn right to Daniel. And
then when you get to Daniel, just to the right of that will
be Hosea. Turn to Hosea chapter 14 and we'll close with this.
Hosea chapter 14. Lord, help us to be praying people
and to pray with the understanding. Look in Hosea chapter 14, verses
1-4. This is one of the most amazing
passages of Scripture. The Lord was talking here to
Israel and He said, Return unto the Lord thy God, for you finally
got your life together. You finally got your life straightened
out. You've got everything together now and you've figured everything
out. And you're pretty good people. Now it's time to return unto
the Lord. He didn't say that at all, did He? And here's the
amazing thing about this. Return unto the Lord thy God,
for thou hast fallen by your nature. Do I need a motive for
coming to the Lord? If I do, you idiots, I'm a poor,
perishing sinner. Therefore, return to the Lord.
And look what he says. Take with you words. Now, don't
come without a heart. Old John Bunyan said, I'd rather
go to the Lord with a heart and no words than to go with words
and no heart. But he says, come with words.
Come and pray with the understanding. And turn unto the Lord. Lord,
what do you want me to say? Well, the Lord tells us. Say
unto him, take away all iniquity. All right. That's good. That's
good. You're praying with the understanding.
You know you've sinned, don't you? You just confessed it. Go
ahead. Go ahead, don't stop now, and
receive us graciously, not by any merit that we have, because
we have none, but lovingly, mercifully, freely, without any cost to us,
without any obligation on our part, graciously. Okay, go ahead,
that's good, I'm listening. And therefore we'll render the
caves of our lips. We'll praise you for it. We'll
never cease from the bottom of our hearts to give thanks and
to you. Okay? Okay? But don't stop there. Don't stop there. Go ahead. Assyria
shall not save us. Well, I like that the Father
says. Because you were trusting in Assyria, weren't you? You
was going to hire them to protect you, weren't you? Yeah, well,
that's good. That's good. It's showing now
that nobody can save you but me. That's good. That's a good
prayer. We will not ride upon our strong
horses. We're not going to do that. We don't have any means. Neither will we say any more,
as we have in the past, to the works of our hands, you are our
gods. Oh, that's good, ain't it? No
wonder the Father's delighted in this. They come and say, we're
sinners. Forgive us freely, graciously. And then they begin to tell what
they trusted in in the time past. I tell you what, brothers and
sisters, the Father loves this kind of prayer because it shows
that He's taught them something. And oh, one more thing they said.
We want to say this. The fatherless, the orphans,
finds mercy. Oh, ain't that wonderful? Ain't
that wonderful? And he heard. And he's so delighted
to hear this. In verse 4, he said, I will heal
their backsliding. I will love them freely. Full-mine anger is turned away
from him. Since you and I have access to
the Father's presence, why don't we just believe that? Why don't
we just go to Him just like we are, pleading this access that's
in Christ alone, and spend some time with our Father? And articulate what we think
of Him. What do we know of Him? Then tell Him what we know of
Him. Is He great? Is He good? Is He high? Is He
eternal? Tell Him. What is your need? What do you know about your need?
Tell it to Him. Have you sinned? Get specific
about it. If I've sinned? No. If it's an if I've sinned,
forget about it. If you've sinned, then tell Him
what your sin is. And right in His face, plead
the blood of His dear Son. Tell Him. Tell Him. I say this today, and I'll close
with this statement. And I'll close with this statement
in spite of all the flippant attitude that we see in religious
circles today in regards to prayer. And I've never in my life seen
such flippant attitude. People coming into God in prayer.
How flippant. Rushing into His presence. Are
we free there? Yes. But with reverence and humility. Remember whose presence we're
coming into. And I want to make this statement
today in spite of all the easy-believe-isms that's being taught in our time.
In spite of all of that, let me say this. Do you realize this
morning how welcome you are into your Father's presence?
Do you have any idea how welcomed you are to the throne of grace
this morning. A way has been provided for you
by God Himself, by the Son of God Himself, on purpose, that
you might know that you're welcome. You're welcome as you can possibly
be. Do you realize this morning that
you have every reason in the world to come and tarry there. Do you realize that this morning?
You have a Mediator that by His own merits, by His own intercessions,
by His own blood has made a perfect way for your admission. You have
a Holy Spirit that is more than willing and able to hold you
up and encourage you and strengthen you to pray. You have a Word,
this Word of Truth, to encourage you to come. Promises that you'll
never be rejected. And you have a Father who will
give you His bended ear to listen to your worship and praise. Did
we realize that this morning? I bow my knees unto the Father. because I simply believe that
through Jesus Christ I have access into His presence.