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Ephesians 3 verses 13-19. This is God's holy word. Therefore I ask you not to lose heart at my tribulations on your behalf, for they are your glory. For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ, which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God. Thus far, God's holy, inspired, and infallible word. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God shall stand forever. Let us pray. Father, we ask now for receptive hearts, We pray, Lord, that what we need to hear, you will speak directly to us, so there's no doubt that you want us to hear this word. And then, Lord, give us grace to follow upon it as we should. We ask all this in Jesus' name, amen. Years ago, when I was a boy, I used to lie in bed at night and sometimes my grandparents were visiting and they were in the same room and they had the radio turned on and we could hear various programs. I always fell asleep before the end of them. But there was one of them called Inner Sanctum. You remember Inner Sanctum? It always started off with this creaking door going... Well, we're going to talk about something inner today, but it's the inner person. What Paul uses here is the inner man. And speak about Christ in your hearts through faith. Now, Paul is in prison primarily because he preaches the gospel of salvation by grace alone. But there is a further reason. He is in jail because his special mission is the union of Jews and Gentile believers in Christ. Christ whom the Jews have hoped for and the Savior that the whole world needs. And this is the reason that he is willing to suffer in prison or wherever he might have suffered. But you'll find this word reason in chapter one, verse 15 of Ephesians, and then closer to what we're looking at in chapter three, verse one and in verse 14. For this reason, he says, we're gonna look at that as we go along. What Jew and Gentile believers now have in common is Christ dwelling in the inner person through faith. And it is that inner person we want to look at this morning. Now it's best to think of humans, I believe, as a duality. I've been in serious discussions with people over this before, but I would say that human beings are a duality, body and spirit. And somebody will say, well, what about the soul? I think mostly in the scriptures, the soul is the total person. You read, for example, that so many souls are here or there. It's talking about the total person. And I think it's probably more helpful to think of man as body and spirit. Now, the inner man is where the spirit and I'm not talking about the Holy Spirit yet, but where one's spirit, that is the essence of that person, resides. Another way that it's put sometimes, even in the Scriptures, is the heart. I remember in Sunday school, as I grew up, we used to sing this little chorus, Into my heart, into my heart, come into my heart, Lord Jesus. Come in today, come in to stay, come into my heart. Lord Jesus, this is the inner person. This is where the spirit of our total nature resides. The inner man is also where we interact with God, either with love or rejection. That is to say, the Word of God is preached to us. The Lord comes to us. He says, I want to be your Savior. And we say, Lord, do come in and save me and be my master and the one who grants me eternal life. Or we say, no thank you, go away, please. This all happens in the inner person, essentially, of course, inextricably connected to us as a whole person, our bodies as well. But it's the inner person that's being referred to here. And that's what Paul is talking about when he is speaking to the Ephesians. So Paul then is praying that the inner person of each believer will be immersed, if you will, in the glory of God. In other words, it will just come and cover him in many respects, and he'll deal with some of those respects as he goes along. But I want you to appreciate the inner person. You have an inner person, a heart, if you will, not the thing that pumps the blood, but that part of you that's inside. And sometimes it manifests itself in outward things that we can see or feel, but essentially it's all an inward matter. So again, Paul is praying that all of his hearers, each believer, will have that immersion in the glory of God that he speaks about. The inner man, the inner person. Secondly, this morning, I want us to think about the indwelling Christ. That was sort of the title of the message today, Christ in your hearts through faith. Back in the Old Testament, there was a woman who was greatly appreciative of the ministry of Elisha, and he would come her way, the way of her family from time to time. And I guess the Lord put the idea in her heart, let's make a chamber for him, a room that he can stay in and he can study or rest or whatever he needs. And we sometimes call places that we give to visiting ministers, a prophet's chamber. And there are people who in their house, maybe their children are all gone, they have an extra room, and they just set that room aside for a visiting evangelist or a minister or even just a Christian who happens to come their way. But it's called sometimes a prophet's chamber. Well, faith in Christ as Savior will result in His abiding presence within you. In other words, this inner person that you have, you can make it, with God's help, a prophet's chamber, as it were, a place for Him to dwell. Now, let me insist, of course, that if you're a believer, then Christ does come to dwell in you. You won't turn Him away. You wouldn't want that. And you may not always be conscious of His indwelling, but nevertheless, He does dwell within you. But it's very good when in our minds, our understanding, we can say that Christ lives within me. Christ lives within us. And we sang this morning, may the mind of Christ my Savior dwell in me from day to day. But not just the mind, but Christ Himself. his abiding presence within us. I told you about that little chorus that we used to sing in Sunday school, Into My Heart, and I always wondered for a while, how is he going to get in there? He's risen from the dead. He has a body. He invited people to touch Him. How's He going to get into my heart? But Scripture is very clear when we study about that, that He comes in by His Spirit. He comes through the Holy Spirit, as a matter of fact. That's how He dwells within us. And that's why we can say with absolute confidence and putting aside all questions, into my heart, come into my heart, Lord Jesus, let Your Spirit dwell in me." Now, there in the inner person, you see, Christ then pours out spiritual riches. And these are some of the things that the Apostle describes here in the passage that we just read. Spiritual riches, strengthening power, divine love. All this is poured out by the one who is dwelling within us so that it literally does fill us up in that sense that all the riches of God, all his power, all his love is there. We don't always draw upon it. We sometimes sort of present problems for the Holy Spirit by our reluctance to serve Him and obey Him. But nevertheless, it's that that Christ pours out because He dwells within us. He lives within us. So we find that Paul saying here, he's on his knees. Well, he wasn't looking for a lost coin or something. He could have been on his knees for that reason. But he's on his knees in prayer. And he's crying out to God, he's pleading with God that every Ephesian believer, and I think we can say safely that every believer anywhere at any time, will know Christ inwardly and gloriously. The indwelling Christ. Christ in me. as the verse says later on, Christ in you, but he's talking to some people, but Christ in you, the hope of glory. Christ does dwell within us. Well, where do we go from there? Well, first of all, let's talk about the interaction, if you will. of renewed spirits. What do I mean by that? Well, there are other believers. There are other people who've been born again. There are other people into whom the Spirit of Christ has entered. And you don't have just millions and millions of sort of separate entities that maybe someday somehow will all get together. They are together because the Holy Spirit, the same Spirit, not a different Spirit, but the same Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, The indwelling Christ is in all who know him, who have him as a savior, who have been born again, and who are now serving him and looking forward to many things that he has for his people. There are some sports that people play that are individual sports. That is to say, you kind of play them by yourself, but not many. It may be as few as you and one other person. Often it's a whole team of people, multiple players. We're very familiar with team sports. I had the TV on yesterday and I watched about four or five different football games. And believe me, there were more than just one person out there on the field. There were 11 on one side and 11 on the other side. And on the sidelines, there were many more than that. It was a team sport. Well, I just use that as a kind of illustration that we don't live the Christian life by ourselves. We don't live just me and Jesus and that's it, but we interact. We have an intertwining, if you will, of our spirits together, the renewed spirits, those who have Jesus as their Savior. We can't get away from interacting. And that's why it's very sad. When some people say, well, I don't need to go to church or I don't need to come to a meeting like this because it's just me and Jesus and we go out on the golf course or we go out under the trees and we have fellowship that way. That's not what the Bible teaches. We are all together. by the working of the Spirit in what we call the church, or Jesus calls it His church. This indwelling of the Spirit of Christ, yes, it is a personal experience, and no one else is going to experience it just in exactly the same way that another person, but there's enough in common, there's enough that all together we do have this experience. And so, I think it's safe to say that the interaction of the Spirit is something that is shared. Something that is shared. And notice His words in verse 18. He talks about, with all the saints. Now it's a little different sentence there. Comprehending with all the saints. But I think that's the idea that Christ in us is something we share with all believers, with all the saints. And in fact, That's the way it works. That's the way it works best. That's the only way that it's really going to work as God intended it to work. That we have this spirit that causes us to have a closer relationship to each other who believe. then even with our parents or our siblings, we have the Spirit of God dwelling in us all. And then it will manifest itself in a lot of different ways. Let me just suggest a few for you. It will manifest itself in marriage. Scripture says don't marry an unbeliever. Why not? After all, this is a nice fellow or a nice gal. And why can't we get married? Well, because one of you has the Spirit of Christ and the other does not. And even if there's an accommodation and a likeness and all these things that people enjoy in connection with one another, it's not the same as having Christ. And so it manifests itself in marriage, when the husband and the wife together believe. And then, of course, you bring in the children, you bring in even some more distant relatives, but you all share the love of God through the Lord Jesus Christ. It manifests itself in marriage. It manifests itself in conversation. Now, that doesn't mean you can't talk about other things, you know, who won the game, or what's the weather going to be like, but there is a certain conversation that we have with each other. It's a language that we speak that unbelievers really can't understand themselves. They can't get into it. It's a great privilege to be able to speak to each other about Jesus. And, of course, to give a testimony to each other or to encourage one another. How has the Lord blessed you today? Well, let me tell you what He did for me. Or let me tell you how He took care of my family. It's a subject of conversation which we can have with each other as believers because we have the indwelling Christ through His Spirit within us. And then there's the matter of fellowship. Well, let me just put it in very colloquial terms, having a good time. we can have a good time with people that we know who know the Lord also. And so we come together, maybe we eat a meal, maybe we play a game, maybe we just take a walk, or whatever it may be, we have this wonderful fellowship together. We are fellows. You know, I preached on fellows just recently. But the people who have an important place not just in the things of God and in the service of the church, but in each other's lives. We have fellowship together. And you can't have that really. You can still have a sort of good time and do things with the unbelievers. But how much more valuable is it when you can have fellowship one with another, to have it in the Lord And then you bring in to just what we were talking about, the conversation and so forth. It's wonderful to be able to relate to other people in that way. And then one last way, and that's not exhausting everything here, but in witness. We can witness to the unbeliever about the glories of the Lord, the blessing of the Lord, the presence of the Lord, and we can do that together. When Jesus sent out His disciples, He didn't send them out one by one. He sent them out two by two. Why so? Because their witness was a common witness with one another. And then collectively all of His disciples, and then as that grew larger and larger, we have a witness together to who Jesus is and what He has done, what God can do for us. What a blessing to interact with people Now, there are people today, you see, there are people in China, there are people in South America, there are people here in North America. Wherever, there are people that we have some contact with. Maybe we've never met them, but we have the same spirit. Maybe we'll never meet them this side of glory, but we have that same spirit working in us, witnessing together to the truth of God's Word and the presence of Christ. Oh, what a blessing! to have this interaction of renewed spirits. Then, fourthly, there is a comprehension that passes knowledge. Now, probably not to my betterment, but anyway, I grew up with television. We left North Carolina, we never heard of television. Came to California, I was five years old, and they had 13 channels. Now you may think that that's not many now because you can get 150 channels, whatever, but wow, to go from nothing to 13 channels, that was something. And now, nowadays though, it's so different in terms of what you see. because we have these flat screen TVs. There's one right there. And here's an old show. You never noticed anything about Perry Mason before, but now you notice he has a mole on his cheek. You notice the lines in his face. Oh, it's so clear, the clarity of it. And you can say, boy, this is television that passes knowledge. All that I ever knew before, forget it. Now you can see so clearly and so dynamically. But here Paul is talking about the comprehension of the Lord that passes knowledge. There are things you can read about in the Scriptures, and there are things that people can tell you, but when you really see Him, when you really know Him, And believe me, there are no warts and there are no lines in this. It's just beauty and glory. And this is what Paul is talking about here, that you may comprehend with all the saints. He talks about the breadth and length and height and depth. He means everything. Everything about it is so, so wonderful. Paul has pleaded for the whole congregation to be spirit-filled, and now that the whole congregation, all everyone together, will see the Lord in the same beautiful, wonderful way. Now the Lord may point out one thing to you and another thing to somebody else, but the point is that you see as you never saw. before, and even the knowledge that, in this case, some of the Ephesians who are Jewish and others who are just acquainted with the Scriptures that they had up to that point, mainly the Hebrew Scriptures, that they don't really get to the clarity that comes when the Spirit kind of takes that Scripture and makes things for you to see that you never saw before. And this, of course, the inward experience that we have, this clarity, it all has to conform to Scripture. Or we have to say, wait a minute, somebody's fooling me here. Somebody's putting something up there that's not right. But when it is what God has intended, when you have that comprehension, that passes knowledge, then you really see the Lord. And this is why your personal devotion, your time with the Lord, your studying the Scriptures in the power of the Holy Spirit, this is why it's so important. This is how it passes knowledge. What you have had up until this time, it was wonderful, it was great, but nothing like now you're able to experience and see. The goal is to comprehend the breadth and length and height and depth. of God's revelation, particularly His love, yes, in the context here, but everything. Again, conforming it to the Scriptures, we judge it by the Scriptures, but oh, that it's so true and so real for us. And so Paul prays for Christ to love us and to teach us to love so that mere knowledge is inadequate. Well, finally, We want to be filled with all the fullness of God. Where? In the inner person. In these North Carolina floods and some of the other states around, I was reading the other day that the ground was so saturated already with water, they had lots of rain there in the mountains of North Carolina and the neighboring states around it that when this heavy deluge came, it was as much as 30 inches of rain, in some places, there was no place for the water to go. The ground couldn't absorb it. And then the geography was that these mountains were so shaped that they made funnels and the water just came running through these funnel-like places between the mountains and just swamped everything. covered everything, swept houses and people away and so forth. And of course, that's sad. And I'm not trying to say that we should think on that in any way, but sorrow and hope for the best for all those people. But what I am saying is the fullness of God comes on you kind of like that. that you think, well, I'm saturated, I can't take any more, and God just keeps flooding it, flooding it, flooding it on down. That's what Paul means here when he says that you can be filled with all the fullness of God. Where we meet God inwardly, as I said before, is also a place where we make a serious attempt to please Him. We want to love Him from our hearts. We want our hearts to belong to Him. The inner person really has no boundaries. That's interesting, isn't it? Whereas, as I talked about the floods, there were boundaries. Thank the Lord. Somebody said if all the water that had gone down through those mountains had been spread over the whole state of North Carolina, it would be three feet deep. But the love of God and the power of God and the presence of God, the fullness of God in your life, you're not bound by any mountain crevices or any river depths or anything like that. You're filled with all the fullness of God. And that means to have his greatness and his goodness overflowing within you. If I can kind of refer to again a Sunday school song, it's that the Lord would overflow, overflow in our lives. And so our hope, our prayer, Paul's prayer for the Ephesians, but his word to us is that God would fill us to overflowing till it just spills out. And again, there's no boundaries. Once we're full up, He'll extend those boundaries so that we can take in more and more and yet still spill it out to the world around us, filled with all the fullness of God. You can see Paul writing to these Ephesian Christians, how he loves them, how he wants the best for them. And he says, there in the inner person, where Christ dwells, where He dwells in all the believers with you and beside you, where you go beyond any knowledge that you've ever had before, may that fullness, may that overflowing greatness of God be yours forever and ever. Let's pray. Lord, we ask to be filled with all the fullness of God. We know that we fall far short of that because of our own sinfulness and neglect and failure to seek it. But Lord, I don't think that you would deny anyone your fullness who really seeks it and asks that you fill them. Lord, we pray that we might be filled with the Spirit, filled with Christ, filled with all the greatness of the triune God, that it may reach out into this troubled world we live in today. We ask it in Jesus' name, Amen.
Christ in Your Hearts Through Faith
系列 Ephesians (2024)
讲道编号 | 113241840535538 |
期间 | 26:55 |
日期 | |
类别 | 周日 - 上午 |
圣经文本 | 使徒保羅與以弗所輩書 3:13-19 |
语言 | 英语 |