Here are copies of God's Word. I invite you to turn to the book of Ephesians, Ephesians chapter 3. You can find this on page 977 in your pew Bibles, 977, Ephesians chapter 3. We come to the closing section. of the first half of this letter, and the first half of this letter is dealing with the rich theology and doctrine of the gospel and what God has done for sinners through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And he is moving and starting in chapter four, which we'll pick up. At some point, this, what we'll look at in, I don't know, maybe two, three weeks and turning there, is really the practical application of the gospel and what does it look like to live faithfully to God in light of those glorious truths of the gospel. And so we come to this final section here, and really what Paul is doing is coming back to a prayer. This is a prayer report, verses 14 to 21. This is really a prayer report and a doxology, and he's going to go back to some language back in chapter one and in chapter three to kind of bring us back to really the central understanding of redemption that we have in Christ, and of the family that we are as part of God's family, both Jew and Gentile together into the church. Now in the text, before I read the text, if you would look at the beginning of verse 16, where it says that, or so that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant you to be strengthened with power through the spirit in your inner being. Verse 17, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. In the end of verse 19, that or so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. What's happening in this text is we call these hena clauses, and there's three of them, and it's a purpose statement. It's basically demonstrating here are three purposes. Now, I don't think these are just parallel purposes. I think these are actually growing in intensity that crescendos to the final two verses of the text, which is this doxology of praise. It's as if Paul opening up the book, this letter, and he's going through these glorious, majestic doctrines. He's talking about how through Christ's death, he has brought together Jew and Gentile into the church, into the family, the household of God, and he is overwhelmed with God's grace and glory that he just soars in the last two verses in this doxology of praise. Now, I realized early this morning that we're not gonna be able to get through all of this. And so, we're only gonna be taking that first henna clause, really just the first three verses, 14, 15, and 16. That first 16, though, as a central verse to this text, it talks about being strengthened with power through the Holy Spirit in the inner being. What does that mean? And how can we be strengthened? How does the Spirit actually strengthen us in the inner being." This is a very Trinitarian prayer. In fact, there's only two sentences in the original in this text. Verses 14 to 19 is one sentence, and that's why, as we read this in just a moment, it's just like comma, em dash, comma. They're trying to somehow make sense that this is just one sentence, one kind of contained thought, and then verses 20 and 21 is also one sentence. So, we're going to take the first kind of hymn of clause here, but very Trinitarian, speaking of the Father, speaking of the Son, and the Spirit, and this glorious truth that He strengthens His people. So, if you're able, would you please stand for the reading of God's Word, Ephesians chapter 3, and I'll read verses 14 to 21. For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever, amen. This is God's holy inspired and in there we're gonna be seated. A number of years ago, Many of you prayed for me during this time. I went to officer training school, military, and during this, it was almost three months' time that I was away. And throughout that process, they promoted various elements of strength. what they would call strength or fitness. And of course, physical fitness or physical strength was part of it. Every morning, we were out on the tarmac by four. We were doing pushups and sit-ups, rain or shine or I guess dark at that point, but rain for sure. They wanted you to be physically fit. And of course, that's a good thing. I mean, we're called to be good stewards of our bodies in that way. They also would promote an emotional strength, or emotional fitness, because as you were doing those push-ups and sit-ups and everything else out there, you had what they called MTIs, military training instructors, that were not your friends during that period of time, and they were down in your face, yelling at you and calling you all kinds of names. Most of them were a lot younger than I was. And so I'm listening to them, and they're calling you all these things, and you had to have some kind of emotional strength Not to just start crying. My feelings get hurt. I mean, every day your feelings are kind of hurt. And so, but you had to press through that. You had to press through. I know that my generation and younger, there's a lot of people that say that, you know, we get offended very easily. We can't take this. This may be true, I don't know. But for certain, they want you to have an emotional resilience and strength. There was also a third one, and it was a mental strength. We had class every day. We had papers and exams. We had to memorize a whole lot of things. And with all of these, there were a number of people that they called washed out. They couldn't do it. At some point, they would just break down. They couldn't do it. And that led to actually what the military called a spiritual fitness. You might be surprised by that, but a spiritual strength that they promoted, that there's something below the physical, the mental, maybe the emotional, something deeper, more visceral to us that was to persevere. I mean, it's one thing to be like, yeah, this is challenging to learn or to memorize. I mean, we were being scrutinized every time we marched somewhere. I mean, our uniforms, everything had to be scrutinized and in perfect order. But there is something deeper that when it got difficult, when you get into a position or a place where you didn't see a way out, that at that moment that you could still press through, in that moment there was still a perseverance. It's what one author calls grit. Grit. It's the power of passion and perseverance. Having fortitude. Having a spiritual strength. And that's what this text is talking about. There's something of a spiritual strength in the, it calls it the inner being, something that's deeper, something that when times are tough, when you lose your job, when you're faced with a tremendous financial difficulty, when you are in a really hard relationship, when you feel the sting of slander from someone or you get the email And in that moment, to say, how can I press through? If I get one more phone call, I feel like I'm gonna throw in the towel. How is it that I can have fortitude or strength in the inner being in this moment? And that's what he's getting at in this text. And I wanna look at how we can do that, how we can gain that spiritual strength. Well, again, this is a prayer report. He begins with these three words, for this reason, which if you go back and you look at chapter 1 verse 15, you will have the same phrase. If you look at chapter three, verse one, you will have the same phrase. What he's doing is he's reminding us of an earlier prayer, back in chapter one, that he prayed for the Ephesians, and he's returning to some of those glorious themes of chapters one and two. Again, of God's redemption in Christ, and us being brought together as a family, both Jew and Gentile, in one body. And this is what Pastor Chuck led us in last week, in showing in God's redemptive history, This grand mystery that is now revealed where Gentiles are brought into the family of God with Jews. He is going before the Lord in prayer. He knows he has access as an adopted son of God, and he says here that, I bow my knees before the Father. Now, there's all kinds of postures of prayer in the Bible. Actually, it was more common in the ancient Near East during this time in the first century to stand and pray. There are many examples of people lying prostrate on the ground in prayer, some kneeling in prayer. I don't think the point here is what posture of prayer. The point is that he's bowing himself. You might even say bowing his heart before the Lord. He's recognizing his own unworthiness, in humility and God's glory and his greatness, his grace. There's a gratitude here you can see just dripping from the words that are in this text. And this really convicted me this past week. When I approach God in prayer, is this the kind of heart attitude I have when I go to God in prayer? Is it with this kind of humility, seeking the Lord and recognizing my own unworthiness before him? Or, am I going to the Lord with my list of demand because he owes it to me? Sometimes we can go, we can charge into prayer with this kind of attitude. But here, he's bowing before, it says, not just his creator, but his what? His father. His father. Now the word father is used eight times in the book of Ephesians. And this father, actually I'll come back to the father point of this in just a moment, but what this father is doing in verse 15, it says, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named. Okay, so the father, he's bound before the father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named. Now the naming, The naming of someone, all throughout the Bible, the idea of naming someone conveyed authority. The person that can name you is pretty authoritative. It's kind of like Jesus, in John chapter one, Simon is there. Simon, and this is what it says, I think it's John 1, 42. It says, Simon, you're now shall be called Peter. Like, that's just raw sovereign. I mean, if I went up to you, and like, you know, Brandon, Hi Brandon, now you're now called David. Like that would be, it's just, you know, that's just raw sovereign authority. And this is what Jesus did, it's what he has. And so the naming of a family conveyed authority, it also conveyed belonging or ownership, and it conveyed identity. It conveyed identity. Jesus calls him Peter. Petras, rock, it conveyed something of a purpose or identity. You know, we did this with our kids. I'm not gonna embarrass them too much right now, but when we named our children Lydia, obviously from Acts 16, and there in Acts 16, Lydia says that the Lord opened up her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul. It also means the beautiful one, that's another, that's what it means. And then we had Garrett, and his name means strength of the spear. I just like that. I like blades, so there's that part of it. But strength of the spear, we wanted him to be strong, a strong man of God. And of course, Knox, from John Knox, the reformer, and by the way, John Knox carried around this broad He had this sword, double-edged sword everywhere, so this is kind of appropriate maybe. But anyway, for Knox to be strong, it conveyed something in what we thought of the naming. We see this all the way through the Bible, obadiah. Obed in Hebrew means to serve. And then anything with yah on the word is for Yahweh, so the servant of the Lord. It conveyed an identity, and that's what's going on here, the naming of these families in heaven and on earth. Now, we're not told exactly, specifically, what these names are. It's not stated. But what we do know is that all those who belong to God, who are part of the family of God, are called children of God. They're adopted as children. And why is that significant here? And why do I think it's going on here? He's just called God his father. And listen to this, 1 John, 3 verse 1, see what kind of love the Father has given to us that we should be called children of God and so we are. There's another reason I think that it's referring to the family of God here, is that linguistically the word for father, and you're gonna have a footnote for family in just a moment, but the word for father, patera, the word for family as it's translated in verse 15, for family, patria. There's a play on words here. that if you belong to the patera, the father, you are part of the patria, the family. Do you see that? If you look at the footnote for family, if you're reading the ESV there, if you look at the footnote, it talks about the fatherhood, part of this, whom the father of, sorry, or from whom all fatherhood. So that's what they're trying to connect. That if you're part of the family of God, you have God as your father, but it says here, interestingly, not only on earth, but also where? In heaven. in heaven and on earth, is a family of God also in heaven. Yes, we call that the church triumphant. You know, coming up, November 1st is oftentimes referred to as All Saints Day for a lot of people. And All Saints Day, sometimes we'll sing the hymn for all the saints who from their labors rest. The church triumphant, the great cloud of witnesses, as it were, beckoning us onward in our race of faith. The saints triumphant. Even in chapter one, verse six, it talks about, in Ephesians 1.6, it talks about how God has made us alive and gathered us up into the heavenly places. There's a union with Christ. And if we're united to Christ, we're united with believers as the body of Christ, whether in heaven or on earth. I know it's hard for us to think about that which is to come because so much is right now. So much in our life is right now in front of us. It's hard to think about the glory that awaits us. This book is saying, hey, think about the glory that's coming. Talked about this back in chapter one with the spirit as a deposit for the future inheritance of the saints. And here we're reminded of the same thing as well. Well, the content of the prayer, and again, we're just looking at the first little one briefly this morning, but in verse 16, the content of that prayer, that according to the riches of his glory, he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his spirit in your inner being. I want you to see from the text here that the source of the strength with power is from God and the riches, it says, of his glory. Now when you see the word riches in the text, it's not the first time we've seen that word in the book of Ephesians. If you look back at chapter one, for example, verse 18, You find it there. When you hear the word or see the word riches, I want you to think of overflowing abundance. That's the idea. Overflowing abundance. The overflowing abundance of God's glory is the source of your strength with power. Let me say it again. The overflowing abundance of God and his glory is the source of your strength with power. How? He says, through the Holy Spirit. Where? In your inner being. All right, that's why we're only taking this one phrase here today. That piece, in your inner being. You're being strengthened with power. Now, the word for strengthen there, it means to have courage. It means to have fortitude. It means to have perseverance, or as that author said, grit. Perseverance. How can you continue? How can you be strong in your inner being when everything else is so difficult? How can you continue? And I say that because there's only one other time this word is used in Paul's writings. There's twice in the Gospels where it says that Jesus grew to be strong and have favor with God. That's the same word here. And there's only one other time that Paul uses this word. Only one other time in the New Testament. And it's in 1 Corinthians chapter 16. You don't have to turn there, but listen to this. 1 Corinthians 16 verse 13. It says, be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. There you go. Act like men, be strong. So here it's, and that's the same Greek word that's used in our text. There's something of courage, of standing firm, of not wavering, not being tossed to and fro. There's something of stability here that he's talking about, that not being a pushover. Like if someone is just, you know, there's the winds of doctrine blowing across the land, as he'll go on to write in the next chapter, and not being swayed by it. There's a strength of resolve that he's talking about here. The other places that we know about the understanding of this particular word strength, he mentions a different word in verse 18 of strength, we'll come back to that next time. But the way that we know this in the Old Testament, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, it's used 61 times, of this idea of courage. And so this is what this means, in the inner being, because when you're facing that job loss, and you're facing the financial hardship, or you're facing something that people are saying about you, or let's say you've written something, and they've taken it the wrong way, and you wanna blow up, but you can't. I mean, all of those things are difficult. How can you persevere when times get hard? How do you have strength in the inner being? Well, he says, through the Holy Spirit. My question is, how? Okay, through the Holy Spirit. Well, how then does the Spirit give you strength? Well, we know for sure one of them is just by the Word. Who inspired the Word? The Holy Spirit. It says that all scripture is theoponousos, God-breathed, it is breathed out by God, that the Holy Spirit carried along the prophets, 2 Peter 1 says, as they wrote. It's the Word of God, it's the Spirit of God in the Word. So we know that one of the ways that He strengthens us is by the Word. Therefore, let us be, let's avail ourselves to the ministry of the Word. He strengthens us in prayer. In fact, in Romans 8, listen to this. Because what's the connection between the Spirit of God and prayer? Here's the connection. Romans 8, verse 26. Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is in the mind of the spirit because the spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. One way that we can be strengthened in the inner being, this is the inner being would be the heart, the seat of man. The inner being would be maybe a reference to what's most visceral about you. That's the inner being. And here he's saying that it's the Spirit that, groaned too deep for words, it helps us in our weakness. One of the ways that we're strengthened with powers is that the Spirit himself, in prayer, as it were, as we've said before, fixes our prayers on the way up. The Lord's Supper, another way that the Spirit of God would strengthen his people in the Lord's Supper. Now, we don't believe that every time we take the Lord's Supper that we are re-sacrificing Jesus, because Jesus is where? He's at the right hand of the Father. He's ascended bodily into heaven. And from heaven he will come again. But what we do believe is that when Jesus ascended at the end of Matthew 28, he's going away and he tells his disciples, and yet I'm going to be with you till the end of the age. I can imagine if I was standing there and I heard that, like, well, Jesus, where are you going? You said you're going to be with me to the end of the age. But he would say back in John 14 that I must go because if I go then I can send another helper or the Spirit, this advocate in my place. And he did that with Pentecost and empowered the church to fulfill its calling and its mission. In the Lord's Supper, when we take those elements, the Spirit sealing the promises of God to us. We're not just thinking about Jesus, the Spirit sealing the promises of God to us. And we feast upon him truly by faith. Even in worship, we wanna worship by the Spirit, empowered by the Spirit, in Spirit and in truth. When we think about using our gifts of ministry, actually it says in 1 Corinthians 12, that you've all been given gifts of the what? Of the Spirit, spiritual gifts. When you think about gospel community, How, you know, we actually, people can't create community. We can create the context that community can be created, but we don't create the actual community. That's the work of the Holy Spirit. And if you've noticed, and if you've picked up on this, I've just went through the six items in our mission statement. Those are the things that God uses to strengthen his people by his spirit. This is why we can say, as we often do, 1 Corinthians 3, 7, that neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. So our task is to avail ourselves to the means by which God is at work to strengthen us with power through the ministry of the Holy Spirit. If we neglect those, God can still strengthen us. He's God. but he ordinarily and usually works through the means that he's ordained for us. And so when we neglect those things and we feel weak and we feel when the lion as it were is roaring, the temptation is knocking at the door, we don't have anywhere to go. We don't have the fortitude, we don't have the stability, we don't have the strength, we don't have the community. with other people. This is how he strengthens his people. Well, I'm gonna leave you today by looking at just, just noting one passage, one quick, just a few verses. If you would, turn there. It's in 2 Corinthians 12. 2 Corinthians 12. the context you're, I'm sure, familiar with. Paul has been given a thorn in the flesh, this skalops, this thorn in the flesh, to keep him humble. Actually, literally, it says to keep him from getting a big head, puffed up with air is the literal here. And so he's given a thorn in the flesh. We don't know what it was. And he pleads, it says, with the Lord three times for God to remove whatever this thorn was that he was dealing with, some pain, some difficulty. And Jesus' response to him after pleading, verse nine, 2 Corinthians 12, nine, the Lord said, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect, my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore, and so Paul continues, therefore, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ then, I am content, you might say, in his inner being. I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then, I am strong. So you ask the question, how are we strengthened? How are we made strong? And I'm going to go back to where we started with the source of the strength. Because in the text, there's no competing source of strength. Please hear what I'm saying. There's no competing source of strength. He's not saying Well, God has some of the strength that I need, and I'll make up the rest where God is lacking. There is one source of strength. Therefore, I'm gonna boast not in my strength or in my partial strength, I'm gonna boast in what? Weakness. And you might be thinking, this is, how are you made strong in that moment? Here's how. Let me just paint a couple of examples in this. It could be some physical disease that you're dealing with. And some of you are. Some of you have chronic disease in here. Some of you are facing cancer in here. And in that moment, you're like, I am so tired of this. And I don't want to wake up tomorrow. Maybe you've thought that. I don't want to go on anymore. And you feel like you've got to somehow self-generate the strength to go on. And you're like, I don't have any left. And that moment is what the Puritans call the valley of vision. That's the valley of vision, where you can see from the depths God's grandeur and majesty and the source, the riches of his glory, the source of your strength. In that moment, you're like, I am done with myself. I can only boast in weakness. God, you must be a work in me. You must be my supply in this moment. If you're facing those difficulties at people at work, you're like, I can't go in another day with this. There's people ridiculing me every day, they're slandering me every day, I don't wanna go one more day with this. Where am I gonna get the strength to go anyway? This is a strength that he supplies, where you say, I don't have the strength in myself. God, you do. Will you give me the strength? Will you help me to trust in you? Will you, as we'll talk about next time, this being rooted and grounded in love, that the firm foundation is my savior, and I know who I am and whose I am. I know to whom I belong. And that's enough, that's enough. Psalm 73, whom have I in heaven but you? And on earth there's nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart, you might add, my body, my family, my job, whatever, may fail, but you are the strength of my heart and my portion forever. The inner being. Paul would talk about the inner being in 2 Corinthians 4 where he says, though the outer nature, the outer self, the outer being is wasting away, and we know that every day. The inner being is being renewed, he says. You can be strengthened. How? Boasting in weakness and boasting in Christ. There's no competing source of strength. He is the source of your strength. He must be the source of your strength. It's Christ alone. Let's pray together. God, I do pray that you'd humble us as individuals and families, as a church, and recognize that you are the source of the strength, that by your Spirit you are sanctifying your people. Thank you for the gospel of Christ and what he has done in living a life for us and dying a death that we deserve to die, being raised on the third day for our sake, so that our only boast is in him. We thank you for him. We pray this in his strong name. Amen.