Enriched by God! (Ephesians 3:14-21)

Welcome to God's Word for You, a ministry of Sharon R.P. Church in Morning Sun, Iowa. Check us out online at www.sharonrpc.org. We pray that this message will be a blessing to you and that the Lord will use it to transform your faith and your life. Helps if you turn on the sound. Let's go ahead and turn in our Bibles to the book of Ephesians. Ephesians chapter 3. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Romans, 1st and 2nd Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians. If you've gotten to Philippians or Colossians or James you're too far, come back a few. Philippians chapter 3. And this morning, we're gonna be looking specifically at verses 14 through 21. Ephesians chapter three, verses 14 through 21.

Here now, God's holy and perfect word. For this reason, I bow my knee to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for 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 his might through his Spirit in the inner man. That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width, and the length, and the depth, and the height, to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us, to him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.

Thus ends this portion of the reading of God's Word. God's Word is holy, and it is perfect, it is true, and it is sharper than any two-edged sword. It pierces even to the division of soul and spirit. Take careful heed to its words. What is God talking about here? What we're going to look at this morning is how God wants His people to think about Him. How God wants you to grow in Him.

I was always interested by rich people. And a while ago, when we were living north of Chicago, I had the opportunity to work for some very wealthy families, some who were extremely nice, some who were extremely gracious, some who were very godly. But I remember one family where the family was exceedingly wealthy, and yet The father gave his son almost anything he wanted. But yet what the one thing that his son wanted was not all his stuff. But he wanted his father. He wanted his father.

And here in Ephesians chapter 3 verses 14 through 21, Paul prays a prayer that is inspired by the Holy Spirit. for the church, then and now, that shows us something beautiful, that we do not just get the riches of the Father, but we get the Father Himself. So first, let's look at verses 14 and 15. And in verses 14 and 15, you're going to see that you are going to be enriched by your Father, enriched by God, because you have a rich Father. Look with me at verses 14 and 15.

For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named. Here we find that Paul is down on his knees in a posture of humility. He is on his knees praying to God for the church in Ephesus. As Paul is in that dark, dank prison with shackles upon his wrist, his heart is there for the Ephesians. And what we find in his prayer is this is not just his prayer for the Ephesians, but the Holy Spirit through the inspiration is showing that this is the prayer that is for all of the churches. And so what is his prayer?

Well, look with me at verse 15. For whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named. Now I told you that your father is rich, but you might say, but hold on pastor, the word rich is nowhere there in verses 14 and 15. Well hold on, I want you to think about what this passage means. God is saying here that we are to pray to our father who is in heaven, who has named every family in heaven and upon earth. Think about that.

If you name something, you own it. It is the right of the owner to name what he possesses. And indeed, that is what God does in the book of Genesis. And he gives Adam the responsibility to name the rest of creation. But it is God who owns it. It is God who created it. It is God who has dominion over all of creation. And so the cattle on a thousand hills are his, and the hills are his also. God owns everything.

And so when Paul gets down on his knees and he prays to the God who is in heaven, he's saying this God has dominion over everything. Have you thought about that? When you pray to your Father in heaven, you are praying to the One who holds all the storehouses of the universe. Even heaven is His. Heaven cannot even contain Him, for it is but His throne. He owns the earth and the fullness thereof. It's all His. He can give all of it to us.

But what is Paul's prayer for the church? Well, the first is that they would be enriched by God's presence. Look with me at verses 16 through the first part of verse 17. That He, that being God the Father, would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man. that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith."

At the heart of this prayer in verse 15 is to be strengthened with His might through His Spirit in the inner man. Strengthened with might. Strengthened, the word after that is dunamai, strengthened with power. This is where we get our word dynamite from. It's God wants to give us strength and power.

God is wanting you to be a strong Christian. God wants you to be strong. And that sounds great to American ears, doesn't it? Doesn't it? I mean, God wants you to be strong. God wants you to be able to pick yourself up by the bootstraps. God wants you to look inside your... No, that's not... Hold on. We just slipped into... American self-help. See, American self-help books, the world will teach you if you want strength, you need to look inside for inner strength.

But where does this strength come from? Look with me a little bit closer at verses 16 and 17. that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. Do you see? The blessing is not just that you are strong, but that the God of heaven, who is rich in glory, will make you strong. And how will He make you strong? By the indwelling of His Spirit. Did you catch that?

We're not strong by ourselves. It's not in us to be strong. We're not looking to ourselves and thinking, oh, hold on, I know God, I gotta be strong, and so I can just tough through this. No, that's not what God's plan for you is. God isn't saying, suck it up, buttercup, put your shoulders down and get to work. That's not what He's saying here. He's saying you will be made strong, because He will have His Spirit dwell in you. He will make you strong, in verse 17, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.

Do you want to be strong? Then you need to have God. If you want to be strong and you need to have God, then you need to have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Do you want to be strong? Then you need to have God. Then you need to have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. What does that mean? It means that Christ dwells in you. If you want to be strong and you want to have God bless you and you want to have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and you want to have Jesus dwell in you, how does that happen?

By faith. It is by faith that the Son of God, Jesus Christ, dwells in your heart. And it is by faith that the Son dwells in your heart and that His Spirit is in you. And then you are strengthened because this is God's riches of glory poured out in you. Do you see this is God's doing? He is the one who will make you strong.

It doesn't make any sense to cry out to God and pray, God, I'm strong, help me to get through this. That would be a contradiction in terms. No, what does the very posture of prayer on your knees look like? It's saying, I am weak, but I have a strong God. I am weak, but God will enrich me with His presence. So first, that prayer is that you will be enriched by the presence of God in your life. But secondly, you will be enriched by knowing God's love. The second petition or the second prayer is that you would be enriched by God's love.

Look with me at verses 17 through 19. That you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints What is the width and length and depth and height? To know the love of Christ which passes knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. That you being rooted and grounded in love. God is not just going to be in you, but God loves His people. God cares for His saints. And the prayer here is that you would be rooted in that love. and that you would be built up in that love, both agriculture language and architecture language, both being out in the soil and being good soil with a good fruit that produces 10, 20, 30, 40, 100-fold worth of fruit. It's rooted in love, love of God, shown in Jesus Christ. It is built upon the foundation of love in Jesus Christ. He is the chief cornerstone. We are built up on Him. And we are built on that foundation and growing in that soil of God's love.

That in Christ we might be rooted and grounded in love and we may be able to comprehend With all the saints, what is the width, and what is the length, and what is the depth, and what is the height, to know the love of Christ which surpasses all understanding.

God wants you, the idea of comprehending here is the idea of grasping it. God doesn't just want it to be a far-off notion in your mind, but God wants you to know it experientially. God wants you to take hold of it. God wants you to taste and see that He is good. God wants you to know that He loves him.

And God wants you to know that when you go to that well of love, that you will never reach the bottom of it. that that reservoir of grace will never dry up, that He wants you to know that even if you stretched out a measuring line as far as you could, you cannot measure His love. Even if you plumbed the depths, you could never know the depths of His love. Even though you could scale the highest of heights, you would never reach the ends of His love, because His love is infinite. For as 1 John tells us, God is love.

Oh, what a grace that is to know that we are enriched by knowing his love. And this is something that is incomprehensible. That doesn't mean that you can't know it, but that means that you'll never exhaust it. One of the things I love, I love teaching. I absolutely love teaching. I love teaching almost any subject. But I remember teaching one kid specifically algebra.

And I remember struggling and struggling and struggling and struggling with him. And then all of a sudden, it was like a light bulb went off, ding! And you could see it in his eyes and variables clicked. And all of a sudden, he got it. At that point, it was something that all of a sudden, all this memorization working out, all of a sudden it made sense to him. It was like his eyes were illuminated and he was able to follow along. Now that didn't mean the second that that light went off, he understood everything about mathematics. But he truly grasped on to what it was. Has a light gone on for you? Have you just had a little taste of God's goodness and love for you?

Some of you have known what it is like to drink deeply of the well of life. Some of you know deeply what it means to have that love. Now I'm going to warn you. I'm going to warn you here that knowing God's love often means being stripped of worldly things. Let me flesh that out a little bit for you, okay? Because this is a hard concept, hard not mentally, but hard emotionally.

What if God has you going through some of the things in your life right now? Because he's wanting you to stop loving the things of this world and love him. What if God has taken things or even people from you? that you might love him. When is he going to become the pearl of great price for you that you would be willing to sell everything he has?

For some of us, he had to take away everything that we loved in this world that we might gain everything in him. I'm not saying this is easy. The Bible doesn't say that this is going to be pleasant, but oh, when Paul is sitting there in that dank, dark prison and he is saying that the love of God is so broad and so wide and so deep and so high, he knows this because even in his affliction, they can't take Christ from him because Christ is in him. I'm always encouraged when I read stories of saints who have been persecuted. And when I read those stories, I remember one of them of this woman in a foreign country, who the foreign government came in, or that government came in that was oppressive and against Christianity, and they took away her entire family.

And then they took away her job. And then they took away where she could live. And eventually, they took away her freedom and put her in jail. And then after that, they took away her food. And after that, they took away her physical health. And as she was in that prison and cold and worn out, there was one thing which they could not take from her. God's love in Jesus Christ was inside of her.

Christian, do you know it? Have you experienced that love of God, which surpasses all understanding? This is God's prayer, is that you would be enriched by knowing His love, that He is greater than everything else on this earth. He wants you to be enriched by His presence, and He wants you to be enriched by His love, but He also wants you to be enriched by His fullness. God wants you to be enriched by His fullness. This is a third petition that Paul prays.

The third petition is the second half of verse 19, that you may be filled, go there with me, Ephesians 3.19, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

God doesn't want you to stay where you are. Let me say that again. God doesn't want you to stay where you are, but God's desire and God's working in you is that you will progress and be conformed to the image of Christ. that you will grow in your Christian life, that you will be sanctified.

Yes, you are holy, you are the saints, but more and more you are being conformed into the image and likeness of His Son. This is beautiful, that God's not done with you yet. Again, this doesn't make it easy. The Bible doesn't promise an easy life, it promises a good life, an eternal life. Not the life here and now.

But God is conforming you, God is filling you, God is making you more and more and more and more and more like Him. That is God's goal for your life, that the day that you were reborn, was the very beginning of your Christian walk, and the day that you die, you will be more like Jesus Christ. Now again, this is not some type of legalism, but this is God's Spirit working in you.

Now we're going to get into some hard stuff here. I mean, right after this in chapter four, we're going to get into some real true commands, right? We've been looking at the first three chapters, which is all what grammarians call the indicatives, the truth statements. But pretty soon we're going to change from the indicatives to the imperatives. We're going to go from the truth statements to the commands. We're going to go from the way things are to the way things you ought to do and ought to be.

And so when we get into your sin, when we get into your marriage, when we get into how you raise your children, when we get into how you interact with your employers, how you walk in this world, there's going to be some hard things, but they must be rooted here. That you were once a sinner. But God has raised you up in Jesus Christ, has lavished His love upon you, and He is going to strengthen you. It is God who will make you strong. Now this is counterintuitive, right? I mean, you think of being strong and you think of, oh, I got to go do these things. I got to go lift weights. I need to eat. I need to run. I get strong by things I do. You don't get strong on your own strength.

There is a direct proportionality to our strength in God's work. God is the one who will strengthen you. God is the one who will conform you. Without God, if you're just trying to be strong, what you're really being is a legalist. Without the grace of Christ in your heart, if you're trying to be strong and earn God's favor, all you are is moral, but with a dead heart. So the question is, is Ephesians chapter two, verses one through 10, right for you, that though you were dead in your trespasses and sins, you were made alive through Christ Jesus. Is that true for you? If it is, then God is enriching you. God, your Father, who is rich in heaven, is indwelling in you, is teaching you His love, and is making you conform more and more to Christ.

But Paul doesn't stop here. See, it's not just enough that we have a rich Father in heaven. It's not just enough that we are enriched by His presence. It's not just enough that we are enriched by His love. It's not just enough that we are enriched by being made full in Him. But we are enriched by praising Him.

You are enriched, Christian, by praising God. Look with me at the last two verses, 20 and 21. Now to him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us, to him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. We need to praise our generous, rich God. For he is the one who is powerful. He is the one who is able to do more abundantly than anything we could ask or think.

Are you being too small with your prayers? Are you being too small thinking, oh, there's no way, I've struggled with my anger for so long, I just can't get over it. No, you are thinking too small of your God. Are you thinking, Lord, there's no way I'm able to get through what's going on. I can't get rid of my worry, God. There's no way I could do it. Stop making God small.

He's able to do far more than you could ask or imagine. Just this past week, in the day of prayer and fasting, there was someone who prayed out to God, and they said, God, it is not too small of a thing for you to do a miracle and stop this virus in its tracks.

And I thought, there's a man who knows the power of God. God is generous and God is powerful and we should praise him for his generosity and power, but we should also praise him for his generosity in the church and towards the church. Now don't get me wrong, I'm a pastor and I love the church, but you know why the church exists? Because God loves the church. Look with me at verse 21. To him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus.

Right now, this is a hard time. Right now, you're at home. Right now, the words are true that where two or three are gathered, there he is in the midst of us. And right now, for some of us, we're together spiritually. Even here, there's only a few of us in the room. The church is not a building, but you are the church.

Christians together declare the glory of God. When we get together and we give Him praise, this section here is called a doxology, a word of God's glory. God is magnified in the church when we praise Him. God's glory is seen in the church as people are converted, as people are built up, as people grasp and understand and get deeper and deeper in their understanding of the love of God, as people learn to get on their knees and cry out to God and say, you alone are God. It is in the church by Christ Jesus that God is glorified. But lastly, we are also seeing our glorious God's praise in the very last section to all generations forever and ever.

We live more and more in a society that separates the generations. We live more and more in a society where the generations don't intermix. We live more and more where old people live here, and middle-aged people live in these neighborhoods, and people with families, they live over here, and the kids are compartmentalized to their area over here. But in all generations, God is to be praised. In all generations, our generous God is to be worshiped amongst all generations and to all generations from now to eternity, from Adam to the last Adam, forever and ever.

The goal of redemption is the praise of God. It is not so you will have a good life here and now, but we look forward to that great day. when we are raised again from the dead, and we bring Him glory, and we sing out His praises, when we worship Him in spirit and in truth with no sin, with all the generations of all times and all ages, when He will be with us, and we will be with Him that has started now, We have just a small taste of it. Oh, but I long, we long, the church longs, as people long for the day when we will see him as he is face to face.

Closing Prayer

Oh, Christian, you have a generous God who is rich in glory, who dwells in you, who loves you, and who is making you full. Praise Him. Let's pray now. Oh Father, we do thank You for Your Word and for letting us know who You are. Father, we pray that we would soak in Your riches, that we would be thankful for Your grace, that we would know Your love, that no matter what we are going through, God, that we would cling to You. Lord, that You would give us strength in our days of weakness. And Lord, when we boast, let us not boast in ourselves, but let us boast in our strength in you. God, please don't just let these be words which are in our minds, but Lord, let them be the words of our experience and the foundation of our souls. Thank you, Lord, for your generosity towards us.

In Jesus' name, amen. Well, let's go ahead and turn into Thanks for listening to this week's message from God's Word for You, a ministry of Sharon R.P. Church in rural southeast Iowa. We pray that the message would be used by God to transform your faith in your life this week. If you'd like to get more information about us, feel free to go to the website, SharonRPC.org. We'd love to invite you to worship with us. Our worship time is 10 a.m. every Sunday at 25204 160th Avenue, Morning Sun, Iowa, 52640. May God richly bless you this week.