June 7, 2009

Lesson: Ephesians 3.13-21

Sermon Title: Paul's Prayer for the Readers

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INTRODUCTION

Wireless (1)

After having dug to a depth of 10 feet last year, New York scientists found traces of copper wire dating back 100 years and came to the conclusion that their ancestors already had a telephone network more than 100 years ago.

Not to be outdone by the New Yorkers, in the weeks that followed, a California archaeologist dug to a depth of 20 feet, and shortly after, a story in the LA Times read: "California archaeologists, finding traces of 200 year old copper wire, have concluded that their ancestors already had an advanced high-tech communications network a hundred years earlier than the New Yorkers."

One week later, The Coon Valley Journal, a local newspaper in Wisconsin, reported the following: After digging as deep as 30 feet in his pasture near Coon Valley, Wis., Ole Olson, a self-taught archaeologist, reported that he found absolutely nothing. Ole has therefore concluded that 300 years ago, Wisconsin had already gone wireless.

  1. We have gone wireless, but are we prayer-less?

  2. Paul was converted to serving Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus.

    1. He dedicated his life to the service of the gospel.

      1. 7Of this gospel I have become a servant according to the gift of God's grace that was given me by the working of his power, (Ephesians 3:7 (NRSVA)

    2. He made spiritual mysteries clear.

      1. 9and to make everyone see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things; (Ephesians 3:9, NRSVA)

    3. He suffered to make Christ Known to the Ephesians and to all who would read this letter.

      1. 13I pray therefore that you may not lose heart over my sufferings for you; they are your glory, (Ephesians 3:13, NRSVA).

    4. For these reasons Paul can and does pray for the Ephesians specifically and passionately.

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MAIN BODY:

  1. Paul offers one of the most beautiful and powerful prayers in the scriptures.

    1. He prays for what every Christian needs, but doesn't know to want.

    2. Paul writes in Romans 8.26-27

26Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. 27And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God, (Romans 8:26-27, NRSVA).

    1. Here is simple form is the mind of the Spirit.

      1. We ought to take seriously Paul's prayer.

      2. We ought to study it for form and content.

      3. So for what does he pray?

  1. Paul prays that we, the Ephesians and all of us, will have a strengthening spiritual experience.

    1. You may be strengthened in your inner being through his spirit.

      1. His is the Father.

      2. The Spirit is the Holy Spirit.

    2. Announce any "hymn sing," and one of the songs someone will inevitably raise their hands and ask to sing is "Are You Able?" It appears on most "Top Ten" lists of favorite hymns. We especially love to sing its chorus: "Lord, we are able ...."

      1. "Are ye able," said the Master,
        "To be crucified with Me?"
        "Yea," the sturdy dreamers answered,
        "To the death we follow Thee."

Refrain
Lord, we are able. Our spirits are Thine.
Remold them, make us, like Thee, divine.
Thy guiding radiance above us shall be
A beacon to God, to love and loyalty.

Are you able to relinquish
Purple dreams of power and fame,
To go down into the Garden,
Or to die a death of shame?

Refrain

Are ye able, when the anguish
Racks your mind and heart with pain,
To forgive the souls who wrong you,
Who would make your striving vain?

Refrain

Are ye able to remember,
When a thief lifts up his eyes,
That his pardoned soul is worthy
Of a place in paradise?

Refrain

Are ye able when the shadows
Close around you with the sod,
To believe that spirit triumphs,
To commend your soul to God?

Refrain

Are ye able? Still the Master
Whispers down eternity,
And heroic spirits answer,
Now as then in Galilee.

Refrain

      1. Are we really? Are we really able?

        1. Might our belief in the great American myth of the "self-made man or woman" contribute to our love affair with this hymn?

        2. Americans take pride in their pioneer heritage -- a history filled with rags-to-riches stories.

        3. We praise and admire those who have been able to "pull themselves up by their own bootstraps."

        4. We preach to our children that independence is always good and dependence is always bad.

        5. Because of this we are better understood as individuals who live in communities than as communities of individuals.

        6. But as admirable and self-motivating as all this rhetoric is, it denies a basic Christian assertion.

        7. The God-breathed, Christ-centered, Spirit-driven believer knows that all our strength and power comes first and foremost from God.

        8. When Christians work together to accomplish good in the world, there can be no sense of "I am able," or "We are able," but only the realization that "God is able."

      2. "You have a right to make commands in the name of Jesus," Kenneth Copeland argues.

        1. "Each time you stand on the Word, you are commanding God."

        2. So don't be bashful, he urges: Say, "Lord, I want this, I name this, and I claim this in your name; Lord, I want that, I name that, and I claim that in your name ..."

        3. Again, here's Kenneth Copeland and his wife Gloria: "You don't have a god in you. You are one." Here's Kenneth Hagin: "Dogs have puppies; cats have kittens; God has little gods -- claim your godhood."

      3. This is the most fundamental fact of life. Get this wrong and we get everything else wrong: God is God and we are not! Period!

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  1. Paul prays that the Ephesians and you and I have the tangible presence of God.

    1. Tangible (2)

      1. real or actual, rather than imaginary or visionary: the tangible benefits of sunshine.

      2. definite; not vague or elusive: no tangible grounds for suspicion.

    2. Tangibility is seen in the experience of a cab driver and his passenger.

      1. Friendly Cab Driver (3)

    As the Passenger tells the story:

    "One day I hopped in a taxi and we took off for the airport. We were driving in the right lane when suddenly a black car jumped out of a parking space right in front of us.

    My taxi driver slammed on his brakes, skidded, and missed the other car by just inches! The driver of the other car whipped his head around and started yelling at us. My taxi driver just smiled and waved at the guy. And I mean, he was really friendly.

    So I asked, "Why did you just do that? That guy almost ruined your car and sent us to the hospital!"

    This is when my taxi driver taught me what I now call, "The Law of the Garbage Truck."

    He explained that many people are like garbage trucks. They run around full of garbage -- frustration, anger, disappointment. As their garbage piles up, they need a place to dump it and sometimes they'll dump it on you.

    Don't take it personally. Just smile, wave, wish them well, and move on.

    Don't take their garbage and spread it to other people at work, at home, or on the streets.

    The bottom line is that successful people do not let garbage trucks take over their day. Love the people who treat you right. Pray for the ones who don't.

    Life is ten percent what you make it and ninety percent how you take it!"

      1. Paul's life is another marvelous example of this deeply Christian philosophy.

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  1. Paul desires that the Ephesians and all who follow them will know how wildly God loves is.

    1. Read again verses 18-19.

      1. 18I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge...,

      2. Think of yourself as standing in space.

        1. You are in the center of the Milky Way Galaxies.

          1. How high is high?

          2. How deep is deep?

          3. How wide is wide.

          4. How long is length.

        2. For us it appears to be infinity.

    2. Thomas Merton -- child of a wealthy family, the product of the finest education money can buy -- stepped right out of a life of achievement to become a monk.

    2. He joined the Carthusians, better known as the Trappists -- a cloistered, contemplative order that practices a discipline of silence.

    To Merton's friends, his decision made no sense. "Look at what he's giving up!" they exclaimed, shaking their heads. Yet, to Merton, the opportunity to spend his days open, receptive, always on the lookout for hints of God's nearness was a liberation. Here's how he describes his journey from city life to the simple, austere world of the Abbey of Gethsemani, in Kentucky:

    "Everything in modern city life is calculated to keep man from entering into himself and thinking about spiritual things. Even with the best of intentions a spiritual man finds himself exhausted and deadened and debased by the constant noise of machines and loudspeakers, the dead air and the glaring lights of offices and shops, the everlasting suggestions of advertising and propaganda."

    Merton wrote those words in the 1950s. We can only imagine what he would make of our modern world of cell phones, Blackberrys and iPods -- the constant, 24/7 stream of information and entertainment. His 1940s gray-flannel-suit life in Manhattan, punctuated by the occasional car horn, would have seemed bucolic by contrast.

    For Thomas Merton, it was only from behind the high walls of a cloistered monastery that he was able to see the world most clearly.

    1. We do not need to go behind the cloistered walls of a monastery.

      1. We take time outs.

      2. This hour that we spend together can be a time out.

      3. We leave our cares, concerns, worries, fears, doubts, and selfishness at the door.

      4. We enter this space to contemplate, to sing, to pray, to listen, to agree or disagree, but also to grow.

      5. We find here is this smaller space the help we need to deal with the larger space of the world out there.

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  1. Paul desires that we have a life filled with all the fullness of God.

    2. 19and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge..., so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

    1. "Where is the dwelling of God?"

    This was the question with which the rabbi of Kotzk surprised a number of learned men who happened to be visiting him.

    They laughed at him: "What a thing to ask! Is not the whole world full of his glory?"

    Then he answered his own question: "God dwells wherever man lets him in."

    1. Mom and her daughter are leaving worship and daughter has a question.

    Mom the preacher said that God lives in us.

    Yes that's true.

    The preacher said that God is bigger than we are.

    Yes.

    Well if God is bigger than we are and lives in us wouldn't he show through?

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CONCLUSION:

  1. The prayer concludes with a statement and a exclamation of praise.

    2. 20Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, 21to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen, (Ephesians 3:20-21, NRSVA).

    1. God can accomplish abundantly more than we can ask.

    2. God can accomplish abundantly more that we can imagine.

  2. To know this God think of yourself as a musical instrument.

    1. You need to be tuned to the right pitch, which is God's pitch.

      1. But we all get out of tune very easily.

      2. And to get out of tune with God is to get out of tune with everything inside and outside you.

    2. Prayer is tuning one's life to God's Spirit.

      1. Prayer is lifting your life toward God.

      2. Prayer is getting in tune with the eternal.

      3. Prayer is turning off and turning down alien frequencies, and tuning in and turning on to God's frequencies.

      4. In prayer we find those rich, new registers where mysterious things happen, even where sympathetic vibration can take place until we resonate with the divine and our beings vibrate until it's as if they have wings.

    3. That's what a God who is able ... to do ... not just all ... not just above all ... but abundantly above all ... means.

      1. God is the God of no limits.

      2. God is the God of no limitations.

    3. 14For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. 16I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, 17and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. 18I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. 20Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, 21to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen, (Ephesians 3:13-21, NRSVA).

  3. If you pray this prayer of Paul, then you can sing the song, Are you able," and you will be able.

Amen!

    1. Mikey's Funnies [funnies-owner@lists.MikeysFunnies.com]

    2. tangible. (n.d.). Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Retrieved June 06, 2009, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.classic.reference.com/browse/tangible

    3. Mikey's Funnies [funnies-owner@lists.MikeysFunnies.com]

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