Today, I want to begin looking at Ephesians chapter 1, verses 15 to 23. And before we go any further, let's read that passage together. Therefore, I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him. the eyes of your understanding being enlightened, that you may know what is the hope of his calling, what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, which he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead, and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion and every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in that which is to come. And he put all things under his feet and gave him to be head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all." There is an awful lot in that prayer of the apostle for the church at Ephesus And therefore, we're going to divide it into two parts. This time, we're going to consider verses 15 to 18a. And next time, God willing, we'll look at verses 18b to 23. The epistle to the Ephesians is unusual among Paul's epistles in this regard, that usually Paul follows his greeting to the church immediately with his prayer for the church. In almost all of his letters, you find him referring to the prayers he's making on behalf of the church. The only exceptions are Galatians, 1 Timothy, and Titus. You find also that these prayers are similar in that they contain two parts, usually first a part of thanksgiving and then a part of petition, as we find also here. and yet that these prayers are also unique. The apostle gives thanks for specific blessings given to specific congregations. and he prays for specific things for the specific congregations. These prayers are unique to each of the churches. But what's unusual about Ephesians is that the prayer does not follow immediately upon the greeting. Instead, the apostle inserts between the prayer and the greeting the doxology that we've been looking at in the past few weeks. 2 Corinthians 1 is the only other letter where he does this. So we're coming here not to what would usually be the second part of the epistle, the part that follows the greeting, but we're coming to the third part of the epistle to the Ephesians. We have greeting, doxology, and then prayer. Now there are four things that we want to notice about that prayer of the apostle before we begin to look at the prayer itself. First of all, the apostle connects this prayer to the doxology with the word therefore. Therefore, I also do not cease to give thanks for you, he says. Therefore. What is the purpose of that word therefore? Well, I think the way to look at it, though some commentators would disagree, is that the apostle is making a connection with the doxology. He has blessed the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He has blessed the Beloved. He has blessed the Holy Spirit for their many blessings to the saints. And that blessing is therefore a form of thanksgiving. And the apostle is saying, I give thanks. Now he just follows up in the natural course of his thought with this explicit giving of thanks for them. He's blessed God. He says, that is implicitly anyway, a giving of thanks. Let me now make it explicit. I do give thanks for you. The second feature that we should notice is that word also, therefore I also, and that's a little bit difficult because it suggests that the apostle here is not the only one giving thanks, but who is the other or who are the others who are giving thanks for them? Well, I think that we should look at a sequence here of pronouns throughout the doxology and the prayer. Remember, when we talked about the doxology, we saw that in the first two parts of the doxology, the apostle uses the first person plural pronouns, we and us. Then in verses 13 and 14, the part of the doxology that pertains to the Holy Spirit, he switches to you." Addressing specifically the saints in Ephesus. And now he says, I. So we have we, we have you, and we have I. And I think what Paul is doing there is he's very emphatically saying, what I have done in that doxology is indeed something I have done for you also. Therefore, I, we all give thanks, we all bless the triune God for the many blessings he gives. But let me tell you that I also give thanks for you, that I also bless God and specifically that I bless him for you. The third thing that we want to notice then about this prayer is that it has two parts, and this is the ordinary formula for the prayers in the other letters as well. He gives thanks and he makes petition. Here, he gives thanks for the faith and love of the saints in Ephesus, and he makes petition for the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Christ. And the fourth thing that we want to notice about this prayer of the apostle is its Trinitarian character. We noticed the Trinitarian character of the doxology, but this prayer also is Trinitarian in character. Notice what he says in verse 17. He prays that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him. Now, perhaps your translation, like mine, does not capitalize the word spirit, makes it therefore a reference to the spirit of man, a spirit of wisdom in man. as we would speak, for example, of a spirit of bitterness. So the apostle is talking about a spirit of wisdom. That's the understanding. Besides the fact that I think we have a reference to the Trinity here, we're going to see in a few minutes that that phrase, spirit of wisdom, is a name that is given to the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament scriptures. So I think for those two reasons that there's a Trinitarian character to this prayer and because that phrase Spirit of Wisdom is a name for the Holy Spirit. we should understand that this is a reference to the Holy Spirit. And we have a Trinitarian prayer. We're going to see that again and again throughout this letter to the Ephesians. The apostle does not specifically describe the doctrine of the Trinity, but he founds his teaching and his exhortations even to the Ephesian church on the doctrine of the Trinity. He continues in many different passages in the epistle to reference Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It's a very Trinitarian letter in that regard. So those are the four things then that we wanted to mention by way of introduction. Let's look now at the thanksgiving that the Apostle gives for them in verses 15 and 16. The Apostle says there that he had heard of their faith in the Lord Jesus and their love for all the saints. The Apostle had first-hand knowledge of some of the churches to which he wrote. An exception was Romans. But for most of the other churches, the apostle himself had visited those cities, had preached the gospel there, had been instrumental in the foundation of the churches in those cities. He often had firsthand knowledge. And that was the case in Ephesus as well. The apostle had spent more than two years there in Ephesus preaching the gospel. And so he knew the saints in Ephesus well, he knew the church in Ephesus well, but he writes here that he has heard of their faith in love. He does not have, therefore, at this stage in his life, firsthand knowledge of the particular things for which he's giving thanks. He's heard about it from others. And that should not surprise us. Paul often in his epistles makes reference to hearing about things that were going on in the churches from those who were his assistants and from others who visited him or whom he met in various places throughout the Mediterranean world. And so his knowledge of the churches was sometimes firsthand and sometimes secondhand. And the second-hand knowledge came sometimes through official messengers, official assistants to the apostle whom he sent specifically to various churches to find out what was going on, to preach the gospel, to bring letters, admonitions, encouragement, whatever it might be. Men like Timothy and Titus and Luke, Priscilla and Aquila may be included in this group, others as well. The apostle had this group of people who helped him in his work and who served sometimes as messengers to the churches and they would report back to the apostle Paul. And the apostles sometimes acted on this second knowledge, secondhand knowledge. He didn't always receive all of it as gospel truth immediately. In one place he says, I partly believe it. Nevertheless, he was not afraid to act on this kind of secondhand knowledge he was receiving about the churches. There were also informal connections with the churches. People would be traveling from one city to another and they would perhaps visit another church and find the Apostle Paul there, or they would come specifically to visit the Apostle Paul. Or as we find in the Epistle to Philemon, Paul made a convert of Onesimus and then sent Onesimus back to his master with a letter for him. These are informal, more informal kinds of connections. So the apostle had a network of people from whom he would receive information about the churches. And based on this information, he would write to the churches or he would send messengers to the churches. He would also pray for the churches. And here we find him on the basis of this secondhand knowledge that he has received, giving thanks. for the saints in Ephesus and giving thanks for two specific things, their faith in the Lord Jesus and their love to all the saints. Now there's something a little bit unusual about that phrase that our new King James translates, your faith in the Lord Jesus. Because in the Greek it really reads literally, the faith in the Lord Jesus that is among you. The faith among you. Rather than the simple possessive pronoun, you have that prepositional phrase. And I think that John Eady in his commentary on Ephesians is correct in saying that What Paul is doing here is talking about the faith that is peculiarly characteristic of the Ephesian church. Their faith in the Lord Jesus stood out from the faith of other churches in certain respects, in its orthodoxy, in its strength, or whatever it was that he's talking about. He doesn't tell us here. the specific area in which their faith stood out. But I think that's the idea. He's saying this is a faith that's peculiarly among you. It sets you apart in some way from the other churches. Now this faith is, of course, in a general sense, as Paul says here, faith in the gospel that Paul had preached, or faith in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ who was revealed in that gospel. Because faith is not just in the scriptures, objectively, but faith is in the person revealed in the scriptures, our Lord Jesus Christ. The gospel is his word. He reveals himself in it. He sets himself before us in it. And he says to us, believe in me and you will be saved. And the apostle is talking then about that faith being a special character somehow in the Ephesian church. And he's very grateful for the strength or orthodoxy of that faith of the Ephesian church. He gives thanks especially for that. He's giving thanks, therefore, not just for their salvation, but for their perseverance in the faith which had been preached to them. And this is something I think that we may say, that the Apostle John also commends in the church in Ephesus when he writes in Revelation 2, his short letter to them. Revelation 2, verses 2 and 3, I know your works, your labor, your patience, and that you cannot bear those who are evil. And you have, here's where he comes to their faith, I think, especially, you have tested those who say they are apostles and are not, and have found them liars. and you have persevered in the faith and have patience and have labored for my namesake and have not become weary." So the apostle John in Revelation 2 also commends them for their faith, the faith by which they tested the false prophets among them. And perhaps Paul had the same kind of thing in mind in Ephesians chapter one. But the other thing that the apostle gives thanks for is their love to all the saints. And he means not just their fellow saints in Ephesus, but for all the saints throughout the world. The Ephesian church was apparently characterized by a great love for all the saints throughout the world. Now, we have really no specifics in the New Testament, I think, about how that love manifested itself. We can ask, well, how would the love of some saints for other saints manifest itself? And of course, the first answer to that would be, well, in prayer. And of course, that would be part of the Ephesians love for all the saints, that they prayed for them. But there could have been other ways as well. They might perhaps have participated in taking collections for churches or saints in need. They might have sent men to help out other churches. They might have had meetings with other churches at various times to encourage and support and help to deal with difficult questions and that sort of things. Things that congregations today do in denominational or federational meetings of one sort or another. They showed their love for the saints, however they showed it, and Paul gives thanks for that too. It apparently also stood out as a characteristic of this church, that they loved all the saints. But now, if you go back to Revelation chapter 2, you find that John does not commend them in this regard. Revelation 2 verse 4, nevertheless, I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Now, John undoubtedly means your first love for God and your first love for the gospel and that excitement and passion which characterizes new Christians and should characterize us at all times, even as we become mature. But that love of God, that passionate, exuberant, enthusiastic love for God manifests itself, of course, in love for the saints. And that love has fallen off somewhat by the time John writes to the church in Ephesus in Revelation chapter two. Paul gives thanks. John says, I have this against you. that you have left your first love. Now another thing about this Thanksgiving and that is that the Apostle says that he does this without ceasing. Go and look, if you will, at the rest of the epistles of the Apostle to the other churches and to the prayers that you find in those letters, and notice that in almost every case, the apostle uses either this phrase, without ceasing, or the word always. He says in almost all those letters, I always give thanks, or I give thanks without ceasing. And consider then how much time the Apostle Paul must have spent in prayer. When he describes these prayers that he's making for these various churches, These prayers are very specific to the church to which he's writing. He gives thanks for specific blessings in those churches. He prays for specific things for those churches. Every prayer is different. So he wasn't just praying in a general way for these churches, for all the churches of God at once, but he was taking time to think about the particular blessings given to each church and about the particular needs and circumstances of each church. And he was making petition and giving thanks according to what he knew about these churches. He must have spent a lot of time in prayer. I cease not, he says, to give thanks for you. He's always praying for the church in Ephesus and he's always praying for the churches to whom he wrote the other letters. And this on top of all the other prayers, the prayers for himself, the prayers for the church in general, the prayers for individual saints within the churches, the prayers for the magistrates and on and on. The apostle must have been a great man of prayer, spending much time in prayer to God for many different things and giving thanks to God for many different things. That brings us then to the first part of the Apostles' petitions for the church in Ephesus. And we're going to look just at, in this regard, at verses 17 and 18a. Here we have just the petitions themselves, and then in verses 18b and following, the purpose really of these petitions, what he wants to result from these petitions. Or we might say, put it this way, that he describes a his general petition in verses 17 and 18, and then in verses 18b and following, he describes the particular petitions related to that general petition. So we're going to look just at the general part first, and Soon we'll look, if God wills, at the rest, the more specific part of this petitionary part of his prayer. Let's notice in the first place, then, to whom the apostle addressed his prayer, because he uses some Rather striking language, unusual language there. He prays, he says, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of Glory, he uses those two titles for God, the God of our Lord Jesus Christ and the Father of Glory, and both of them are somewhat unusual. The phrase or the title, the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, sounds, I think, a little strange to us. It's not the kind of language we generally use. We put such emphasis on the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ and on his equality with God that it sounds peculiar to us to say the God of our Lord Jesus Christ. But our Lord Jesus Christ himself used this kind of language about himself. in his great cry of desolation on the cross. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? He spoke of himself as one who came to do his father's will, who came to do the work that the father sent him to do. He prayed to his father. The prophet Isaiah calls him the servant of the Lord. Psalm 40 says of him, I come to do your will, O God. Your law is within my heart. So our Lord Jesus Christ thought of himself in this way. He thought of God as his father. He thought of God as superior to himself, in some respect, anyway. Now this is not, though some have used it that way, this is not to deny the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ. The scriptures are full, Old and New Testament scriptures, are full of testimony about the equality of our Lord Jesus Christ with God, about his full divine character. He is God. The scriptures make that abundantly clear. He is one with the Father. He is the God whom we worship and serve. So how then can we speak of him, of the Father, as the God of our Lord Jesus Christ? Well, I think the Athanasian Creed, and if you're not familiar with that creed, you should look it up sometime, because it's very helpful in understanding the doctrine of the Trinity and the doctrine of the Incarnation. The Athanasian Creed explains this for us. It says that according to his human nature, our Lord is subordinate to the Father. But according to his divine nature, he is equal to the Father. It's in his human nature, then, that he says to God, my God, my God, and that we speak of God as the God of our Lord Jesus Christ. In his human nature, he is our elder brother in the family of God. He has come down to our level. And so we may speak of God as the God of our Lord Jesus Christ. The apostle is very much interested, I think, here in emphasizing Christ's relationship to us. In Colossians chapter 1, he emphasizes the deity, the preeminence, the exaltedness of Christ. But here in Ephesians, his emphasis is much more on Christ's humility, on Christ's relationship to us, his people. And therefore, he speaks of the God of our Lord Jesus Christ. The second title that the apostle uses for God is the Father of Glory. And that, I think, is unique in the scriptures. We read about the God of glory, but the Father of glory, I think, does not occur anywhere else in the scriptures. That phrase, that title, could mean one of two things. It could mean that he is the Father who begets glory, who brings glory into being. Just as we would say, he is the father, such and such a man is the father of David or of John or of Henry or whoever. This title for God may mean that God is the father, the begetter of glory. And he brings it into being. He brought it into being in the creation of the world. He brought it into being work of salvation. He brought it into being in the incarnation and exaltation of our Lord Jesus Christ and he has revealed that glory to us so that we should be to the praise of his glory. But it's also possible to take this as meaning the Father who is glorious and The father of glory may mean the father who is glorious, and that's how I would prefer to take it. It is the father, he is the father to whom glory belongs. Now, I would not, however, want to translate this as the glorious father, because I think the idea of the father of glory is bigger than that. He is glorious as the Father. He has glory in himself. Glory is inherent in him. But he also lives in glory. Glory surrounds him. Glory radiates from him. Glory is revealed in all his works. In the stars and in the heavens and in the storms of the sea and all around is the glory of God. The heavens declare the glory of God. So he lives in glory. He is the one whose glory fills the world. And he's called the father of glory then because of that character, that revealed character. It's a glory that's visible. And I think that kind of brings us back then to the first interpretation of the phrase, too, because we, as it were, live in that glory with Him. We participate in that glory. We see that glory. But as we see that glory of God, we are made glorious ourselves. So that glory is, as it were, begotten in us. He is the father of glory then because he is both glorious in himself and because he has brought us to see and to live in that glory with him. So those are the two names that the apostle uses for God. Now let's look at the specific requests he makes here, and they are two. He asks for the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him, and for the enlightening of the eyes of their understanding. Now I said in the introduction that That name, Spirit of Wisdom, is a name given to the Holy Spirit in other places of the Scriptures. Let me just give you some examples. Though, again, some people might question these examples, there's at least one that cannot be questioned. Let's look first at Exodus 28, verse 3. Here God is speaking to Moses and he says to him, you shall speak to all who are gifted artisans whom I have filled with the spirit of wisdom that they may make Aaron's garments to consecrate him that he may minister to me as priest. Now again, in the New King James, that word spirit is not capitalized and so it's not taken there as a reference to the Holy Spirit. But I think it should be understood that way. It is, I think, a reference to the Holy Spirit. God is talking about giving to these artisans a gift of the Holy Spirit to make them wise and skilled craftsmen to do the work of making Aaron's garments. Deuteronomy 34 verse nine is another example. Now Joshua, the son of Nun, was full of the spirit of wisdom. And again, the word's not capitalized in the translation, but I think it should be. Joshua, the son of Nun, was full of the Holy Spirit, the spirit of wisdom, for Moses had laid his hands on him. That laying out of hands was in fact a sign of the giving of the Holy Spirit. But the passage that indisputably refers to the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Wisdom is Isaiah 11, verse 2. Talking about our Lord Jesus Christ, the prophet says, the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord. The spirit of wisdom is the spirit of the Lord there in that passage. No question about it. And both because I think we have the Trinitarian character of the doxology carrying over into this prayer in Ephesians 1. And because that name, Spirit of Wisdom, is a name given to the Holy Spirit, I think this is indeed a reference to the Holy Spirit. Now, why is he called the Spirit of Wisdom? Well, he's called the Spirit of Wisdom not just because he is wise, he is, after all, the all-wise God, but because he gives wisdom. And that I think is especially important. God gives the spirit to his people. And one of the gifts that the spirit gives when he abides in us is the gift of wisdom. And that word wisdom actually takes us back into the doxology in verses three to 14, particularly to verse eight. where the apostle speaks of that grace of God, which he made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence. So wisdom is the gift of the spirit to us. And the apostle Paul is praying here for that wisdom, that spirit of wisdom to be given to the saints in Ephesus. And this word wisdom, I think, has to be taken in a very broad way here. Wisdom includes the knowledge, as he says, in fact, in the later part of the same verse, that he will give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him. So we have first wisdom. Secondly, we have knowledge. or revelation, he's the spirit of revelation as well. And this revelation is also a work of the spirit. The spirit is the spirit of revelation because he is the one who gives revelation. And we speak of revelation here in its full sense. Sometimes in the scriptures, you find this word revelation used in a limited way. That is, that God reveals himself objectively in the creation, or he reveals himself objectively in his word. He speaks about himself. He makes knowledge of himself available. in the Word and in creation. That's called sometimes revelation. But the full concept of revelation includes not only that Word of God, but also the work of the Holy Spirit in the heart by which we receive that Word of God, by which we come to faith in that Word. That's part of that revelation, and that's very clearly what the apostle has in mind here, because he wants this spirit of wisdom and revelation to be given to the saints in Ephesus, so that they may excel in the knowledge of Christ, that he may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him. And this knowledge is the mystery that the apostle talks about also in the doxology. The grace which he made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure which he purposed in himself. That is the mystery of the work of salvation, this work of saving the world, saving Gentiles as well as Jews." Hendrickson has a nice comment on this in his commentary on Ephesians. Paul then asks that the addressed may receive a continually growing supply of wisdom and and clear knowledge. Combine the two and note that he is asking that the Ephesians be given deeper penetration into the meaning of the gospel and a clearer insight into the will of God for their lives, enabling them at all times to use the best means for the attainment of the highest goal, that is wisdom, that's what wisdom is, namely the glory of God triune. So he wants the saints to have the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Christ. The second part of his petition is very similar. He talks about the enlightening of the eyes of their understanding. or some manuscripts have the enlightening of the eyes of their heart. But the meaning would be pretty much the same in either case. If you look up the word heart in a good concordance in the book of Proverbs, you will find that heart often is, in fact, the word heart is translated often as understanding in the book of Proverbs. So he wants them to be enlightened He wants this spirit of revelation to come and to enlighten them. That is, to stir up and strengthen and build the faith which is already present in them. This is the gift of the Holy Spirit for which Paul asks then, that that spirit dwell in them and enlighten the eyes of their understanding. So in a sense here, Paul is praying for gifts of the Spirit that go beyond those gifts of the Spirit that he's mentioned in verses 13 and 14, belonging to the doxology there. He talked about the sealing of the Spirit and the guarantee of the inheritance. Now he talks about the Spirit coming with wisdom and revelation and enlightenment. These are additional gifts of the Holy Spirit. This is a prayer which we should be making for ourselves and a prayer which we should be making for all the saints. That we may all have the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Christ. That we may all have the eyes of our hearts enlightened by the presence of that spirit in us and with us. We need knowledge. We are ignorant. Our minds are darkened. We are not susceptible to believing the word of God by ourselves. We are, in fact, in rebellion against God's revelatory word. We want no part of it unless the Holy Spirit comes and dwells in us and opens our eyes and gives to us the gift of faith. Next time then we'll look at the purpose of this gift of the Holy Spirit. Or as I said in the beginning, the more specific requests that the apostle is making here for them, and they are three, that you may know what is the hope of his calling, number one, two, that you may know what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, and three, that you may know what is the exceeding greatness of his power toward us who believe. May God bless you with his word.