Ephesians, the book of Ephesians, a circular letter, not actually called the book of Ephesians, but it was written and copied and distributed through the church at Ephesus. It is a heavenly letter, a letter written by the Apostle Paul with so much beautiful language and terms in it that it just absolutely astounds the mind. We're going to start with verse number 14. I'm going to read it from Amplified Bible first. We'll go on with verse 311 actually. This is in accordance with the terms of the eternal purpose, God's eternal purpose, which He carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord. I want you to understand something right off. Everything went away from the Garden of Eden and even in eternity past when God created Lucifer, He created the spirits and angels in eternity past, and God put Lucifer over this earth. You look up in Isaiah 14, 12-15 and Ezekiel 28, 11-19 and you'll see what happened back there in eternity past. That was not in time and space. It was in eternity. The earth was created in eternity, not in time and space. The earth is not 6,000 years old. The earth may be millions of years old. However, it was created in eternity so it That's a long time ago. But, now that may flabbergast some of you, but the earth is not 6,000 years old. The earth was created in eternity past. Lucifer, sand, and destroy it basically. The earth, Genesis 1-1 says, Barashith, Barah, Elihim, Etz, Asher, Vayim, Vedat, Tavarez. It says, in beginnings, in beginnings, he had created God, It says, et ha'shemayim, the heavens, that means the universe. And then it says, and then, v'et ha'arez. And then it says, and the earth. He created the heavens, he created the universe, and he put the earth in exactly the right place after it was created. Then it says, v'ha'arez, ha-ya-tu-hu-o-hu, v'ho-shu-kel-te-nei-hu-ma-yo. It says, and the earth, she had become formless than earth. God did not create the earth formless and void. He does not create imperfect things. He created the earth perfect, the earth became formless and void, and then in Genesis 1 and 2 and there on, He begins to reconstruct it, and then instead of Lucifer being hung over the material creation of God, He puts Avam, Ha-Avam, the man. And when man sinned, the earth went awry. But everything all the way through all the history of mankind, all of mankind will be those that will be saved. That is, Jesus Christ died for all man. The atonement was universal. It was efficient to cover all mankind. But it is only efficacious to those that believe. And God calls all mankind. Some come, some do not. I am not a superlapsarian. I'm not an infralapsarian. I'm a modified sublapsarian. Okay? Those of you might know that, that know what those terms are. Then, in Christ Jesus, God brings all things back together in harmony with Himself. Through the person and the work of Jesus Christ, all the earth is brought back, mankind is brought back, everything is brought back in harmony with God through the purpose and love of Jesus Christ in this world. 3 in 11, God's eternal purpose to bring back all things in harmony with His Son through His efficacious atonement. In whom we have the boldness, that means freedom of speech, we can come to God in prayer and confident access to faith in Him. That is, our faith gives us sufficient courage to freely and openly approach God through Christ by His merits, not ours. So I ask you to not lose heart at my sufferings. In other words, don't give up on your behalf for they are for your glory and honor. For this reason, grasping the greatness of this plan by which Jews and Gentiles are joined together in Christ, I bow my knees in reverence before the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. from whom every family in heaven and earth derives its name, the first and the ultimate Father. When we are saved and we are engrafted into the family of God, and the family of God is not the church, the church comes out of the family of God, but the family of God is all the saved. And all the saved have access to God in prayer and in love. And then it says here, May He grant you out of the riches of His glory to be strengthened and spiritually energized with the power through His Spirit in your inner self, indwelling your innermost being and personality. The Spirit of God, when you're born again, comes to dwell in you forever. It's there. That's what causes your body to be raised in the resurrection to that spiritual birth. We're body, we're spirit, and we're soul. The soul is everything that you are, that you carry with you, all of your thoughts, good, bad, and indifferent, and that you carry with you throughout life. All of your experiences culminated together define what you are. Everything that you do and how you have reacted to them defines what you are. Now the Christ, through the Holy Spirit, dwells in His church in leading her in truth, leading the church in all truth. And that says in verse 17, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through your faith, and you having been deeply rooted and securely grounded in love, be fully capable of comprehending with all the saints, God's people, and the width and the length and the height and the depth of His love, fully experienced that amazing endless love, the unmeasurable love. Now let's go to number 14 from the original language from the Koine Greek. The Bible was written originally in the Greek language. All of the old Bibles are written in Greek. At first they were written in what we call ancient Greek and then later on in the 6, 7, 800 A.D. they began to be written in minuscules. In other words they were capital letters and lowercase letters. But all of it originally was written in all uppercase letters. Now the scriptures that we have today through the development and the guarding of the scriptures through like what's God and Hork and These people really searched out the many manuscripts that were left. You know, the Catholic Church burned the manuscripts. The Mohammed's people, the Islamic people, burned all the Bibles. The Catholics burned all the Bibles. The Muslims burned all the Bibles. And what we have left is probably, now they burned a lot of Bibles. But all the manuscripts we have left, if you stacked one on top of another, would be over a mile high. And these scriptural scholars went together and studied every family of manuscripts and found out what was the most valid scriptures, the canon of them. That's what you have like in Nestle Island text. Nestle Island is even later than that. But they spent their lives searching the scriptures. That's what we're going to study from right now. This is just like Paul wrote it. Now Paul begins his prayer here. He prays all the way through his different epistles that he wrote. He did a lot of praying. To know Paul is to know the love of Christ. I want you to know that. When you learn in Paul's writings, and Paul's writings in the original language, that's where you really get acquainted with him. You learn the love of God in Christ. It says, of this grace I bend the knees of me toward the Father according to the grace. Paul actually kneeled and began to pray as he dictated this letter. Now Paul had very poor eyesight according to what evidence we have. Now Paul mentions five petitions in this prayer. of this grace, I bend my knees." Now the word kompto, its first person singular present indicative actually comes from kompto, that's where it came from, that's the root of it. I bend the knees to me, the konata, toward the Father. You know that you have the right to bend your knees to the Lord today. You have the right to stand up and look up in heaven. You have the right to stand and close your eyes. You have the right to sit down and close your eyes and pray. How many of you pray 15, 20 times a day? How many of you pray 15 or 20 times a day? Do you leave God out of your life except when you go to church, or when you get ready to get up in the morning, or you go to bed at night, or when you go to pray? God wants to be part of your life every day, all the time. Every day, all the time. I'm not praying when I'm working on things. I just pray, Lord, help me fix this thing. Help me get this done. A lot of things I do by myself, and I need help, but I don't get it. But anyway, I pray that the Lord will help me do that. I pray when I'm driving that the Lord will help me get there. Also, that if I meet somebody that needs to know the Lord Jesus Christ, that I'll have the ability to talk to them and explain the gospel to them. You pray that you'll be a blessing to somebody and that you touch people's lives because that's why God leaves you in this world. He's not here to just fool around and do whatever you want to. It's to serve Him. servants. We are his slaves. He is our God and he is our master. Now it talks about the family of God in 315. Ek, hu, pasa, patria, en, huranois, kai, epik, geis, ona, mazete. It says out of whom, out, a little preposition there, page 121. Out of whom, a little genitive singular, relative pronoun, every little adjective, every family, every patria. I remember one time, I have a very good friend, his name is Photios. In English it's Frank. His name means light. Photios Kyriakopoulos. Light, the city belonging to the Lord. That's what his name is. Light, the city belonging to the Lord. Well one time he came to our house and Marilyn had a little gift package for him. And on that, I wrote the Patria to Kyriakos, Photios Kyriakopoulos. And he goes over and looks at that. He has a Greek guy with him. And he said, he wrote that wrong. Like that. He said, no, he wrote it right. You don't know any Greek. He does. Like that. the whole family, the whole fatherhood, the fatherhood of the family in heavens, in whom the whole family of God, the whole patria. When you come, God gives you, the Lord Jesus Christ gives you the right to say Father, our Father which art in heaven. We have the right to say that through Him. Through Him. We are in the family of God. We are in the patria of God. We are in the Fatherland. Heaven is our Fatherland. You know, a lot of people, they talk about the Fatherland. My step-grandfather used to talk about the old country. His name was Amadeo Lemuki. And he talked about the old country. The Fatherland. The old country. In the old country. We did this in the old country, we did that, in the fatherland. Our fatherland is not epites geis el har, it's not upon the earth, it's in heaven. Out of whom every family, fatherhood, fatherland in heavens and upon the earth. Now, we have to spend some time upon the earth after we've been saved. You know the thief on the cross, he was actually a murderer. He was actually a Saqqari. He was a Jewish assassin. And so was Barabbas. And Barabbas was a leader and Jesus took his place. He didn't stay very long on earth after he was saved. Sometimes people are saved in the battlefields. They're saved out there in the battlefields. The last breath they take, they're asking the Lord to save them, forgive them of their sins. It used to say, they used to say that there are no atheists on the battlefield. Now I don't know about that today, but when you're dying, you start thinking about God. Heavens and upon the earth, they are named. Onomazete, third person singular present indicative passive, they are named. When you are born again, you become part of the family of God, the patria, to the you. Verse 316 now, 316. Hina, do, himan, kata, to, plutos, teis, doxas, alto, diname, kato, uthene, dia, tu, numatos, alto, eston, eso, antropon. Nowhere else does the Apostle Paul sound such depths of spiritual emotion as he does in this prayer. The spiritual emotion and yet the heights of spiritual passion come out in this letter. In these verses, all seem to be colored with the brightness of the riches of the radiant glory of Christ shining from heaven down to the earth through his churches. In order that, he may give to you, he may give to you, according to the riches of Plutus. That means unlimited resources. Unlimited resources. Unlimited resources. You know, some people in the world are so rich they couldn't spend all the money they have. They couldn't do it. That's like God. God has so many riches. God has so much glory that it is unlimited. Unlimited. the riches of the glory belonging to Him. That Alto, that Genesis, Singular, Mass, and Third Person pronoun there, it's belonging to Him, the glory belongs to Him, and yet He shares it with us through His Word and through His Spirit in our lives and in our churches. Active power, the dynamite, we got our word dynamite out of that. That means the active power, the dynamite strength, the explosive power to become mighty, to seize it. That's 1 Therese infinity passage. To cause to be seized. We have that glory, we have that through His Word and His Spirit. We have that mighty glory and power and forgiveness and assurance through His Word And it's at our fingertips always. Just think about it for a while. You know in America we're somewhat safe to be a Christian here. But when I went into the Middle East, I was over there in 1975 and 76 studying biblical archaeology. And I went into places that were not safe. I went over there and we had a group of people going with us And we came to the Allenby Bridge. And we had been in Damascus area, Beirut, Lebanon. We had been on Jordan. Then one of the brethren there got up and started singing, crossing over in the glory land. And the leader pulled him down and said, shut up if you want to stay alive. Don't mention the name of Jesus. Don't do anything. Just shut up. Sing in your heart. that you can't sing out loud. You know, over there, we don't have religious freedom at all. They don't like you praying over your food in these countries. They sure don't want you praying in the name of Jesus. If you try to make a convert, your life is on the line. And if you are a convert, you just become saved If you tell them you've been saved and you left Islam, you are going to be executed. Simple as that. You will be executed. The person that led you to the Lord and the person that he led to the Lord are both going to die. That's it. We have freedom here. We ought to say hallelujah, we do, but we have brethren over there in all of these Islamic countries that don't have that freedom. They can believe in their hearts. They can do all this. They can have spiritual communion with God in the spirit. It's not even outside. It's all inside of their heart, their souls, their minds. They can hide in their homes and read their Bibles. They can't have church services with a sign outside or anything like that at all. You've got to do it in silence. You cannot try to make a convert or even let people hear you pray. I learned that over there in those countries. Okay, become mighty by the agency of the spirit of him. The spirit belonging to him. In the outward or inward man. Entrepreneur. Inside, a little adverb there, that's all. We, no matter where you are in the world, you can be lifted up to the heavenlies when you pray within yourself. Pray within yourself. Romans the 7th chapter, Galatians, Colossians all exalt Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the one that holds the earth together. He is the magnetism, He is the magnetic force that holds the world together. In Colossians, let's go to Colossians, the first chapter. I want to read this to you. Just think about this for a while. Colossians, the first chapter. Verse number 13. For He has rescued us and has drawn us to Himself through the dominion of darkness, from the dominion of darkness, and has transformed us into the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption because of His sacrifice resulting in the forgiveness of our sins and the cancellation of the penalty of our sins. He is the exact living image of the essential manifestation of the unseen God, the Father, that is, the invisible representation of the invisible, the visible representation of the invisible, the firstborn and preeminent, actually it's the head and preeminent one, the Sovereign and Originator of all creation. For by Him all things were created in heaven upon the earth, and things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created and exist through Him, that is, by His activity and for Him. And He Himself existed and is before all things, and in Him all things are held together. He is the controlling, cohesive force of the whole universe. He is the head, the life source and the leader of the body of the church. He is the beginning. He is the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will occupy the first place. He will stand supreme and be preeminent in everything. For it pleased the Father, for all the fullness of Deity, the sum of His total essence, all of His perfection and powers and attributes to dwell permanently in Him, His Son, the Son of God. And through the intervention of the Son to reconcile all things to Himself, making peace with believers through the blood of His cross, through Him, I say, whether things upon earth or things in heaven, all and all together You were at one time estranged and alienated and hostile-minded toward Him, participating in evil things. Yet Christ has now reconciled you to God in His physical body through the death in order that to present you before the Father holy and blameless and beyond reports." Beautiful, beautiful words. The same man. The same man. Verse number 17 now, Katoikese ton Christon dietes paspicios entes kardias himon in aga pe eris zominoi kai tete me liominoi Because of the love of God, we have a personal, continuous partner in this world. It says, to down home, to dwell, 1 Therese Infinitive Active from Kata and Oiko. Kata down and Oiko home. To down home to Christ through the faith, through the faith in the hearts of you. For in grace you are having been saved through faith and that not of yourself. It is the gift of God and not of works lest any man should boast. The faith that saved you is a gift of God. You don't muster up faith. Faith is a gift of God. Some people seem like they have more faith than others, but it's a gift of God. It's a gift of God. It's not something you work up. It's a gift of God. The faith in the hearts of you, in the cardias. You got to work cardiac from that. Cardiology, all of that comes from that word. The hearts belonging to you in love, having been rooted Nominative, plural, masculine, perfect, participle, passive, voice, having been caused to be rooted, and having been founded, having been caused to be founded in Christ. Having been caused to be founded in Christ. These few verses that we've studied tonight are dynamic. They are heavenly. They are a gift to you. They are a love letter from God to you. They are a love letter from God to you. God wants you to be at home with Him and He wants His Son to be at home in your life and in your heart every day, every hour. You know, over here I have about one and a half shelves of Islamic writings. I study religions. I've got Catholicism, Jehovah's Witness stuff over there, Mormonism, everything you can think of. Their own writings, their own books. Well, the Muslims don't have a free gift to heaven. They don't have a free pass to heaven except if they die in jihad, either in war, struggle, or blow themselves up. You don't have to die for Christ. He died for you. A man like Muhammad that would ask people to die for him is an imposter. You don't die for God, he died for you. Jesus Christ died for you. He died for you. The Bible was written by men that were guided by God. Every word in there, in the original languages, is without error. It has such beautiful, beautiful words. It's a love letter to you from God. A Muslim has to go to hell if he doesn't die in John. He has to go to hell and suffer for a while. Like the invention of the Catholic Church purgatory. The Catholic Church will tell you be prayed out of purgatory. The Bible says there is no purgatory and that when you ask the Lord to save your soul, forgive your sins and repent and call upon Him to lead your life, He gives you the key to heaven. No man, no religion can give that to you. Jesus Christ Himself gave it to you. Many religions call for a great service from the people. The Lord Jesus Christ installs the gift of faith in people that want to serve Him. When you are saved, you want to serve the Lord. You want to share in this beautiful love letter that God wrote to us tonight. Our Father, we send this message out to the world, letting them to know what salvation is. Father, guide them as they search the Scriptures and commune with you each and every day. Help them to pray always. In Jesus' name I pray, and please forgive me where I failed you.