Meditations

Ephesians 3

²⁰ Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, ²¹ Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen.  -kjv

²⁰ Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, ²¹ to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.  -niv

²⁰ Now to Him who is able to do above and beyond all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us— ²¹ to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.  -hcsb

Exposition from Dr Michael Rydelnik on February 6, 2016:

Do you have a need that is so big, so seemingly impossible that it is hard to even pray about it? I mean, why bother? God can’t answer that one! Honestly, most of us won’t admit to feelings like that but we have them. For praying that a broken marriage be restored or  a wayward child to return to the Lord or a broken heart to be healed or maybe an addiction that needs breaking, whatever it is, it seems that prayer has no possibility of helping. For the last few weeks, we have been looking at the principles of prayer from Ephesians 3:14-21 and we’ve seen that first of all we need to have a humble attitude in prayer and also that we need to pray for specific spiritual benefits but today we are going to look at Ephesians 3:20-21: the doxology at the end of Paul’s prayer, actually the doxology to the first half of Ephesians. Paul’s doxology reminds us that  we are not only to petition God with what we want but we are to praise Him for who He is. In particular, we need to praise God because God’s ability to answer our prayers has no limits. In verse 20, Paul piles adjectives upon adjectives, it’s a compound word with super superlatives, maybe paraphrased something like this: Now to Him who is able to do vastly more or maybe immeasurably and infinitely more than we can even ask or think. Think about this, the sun is 93 million miles away from the earth. If we were any nearer, it could burn up every planet on its path, God’s power burn more brighter than that sun. Compared to the oceans that covered two thirds of the earth, God’s power is far more abundant. Compared to the vastness of the universe, God’s power is infinitely more limitless. This is the power that works in us, so there are no limits. We are confident that He can answer our prayers. This infinite power demands that we give all glory to God as in verse 21. How will that glory be seen? For God’s glory is demonstrated through His people, the Church, when we obey Him and live for Him. Even more significantly, God’s glory is demonstrated through our Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ forever, who always glorifies the Father in all that He does. Afraid to ask God for something? No worries, I can’t guarantee that God will automatically say yes, He’s not a genie. He’s the sovereign of the universe. He may have a different plan that in His sovereignty and infinite wisdom will bring Him more glory some other way.  Whether He answers them as we wish or gives us something different, He will be glorified in our lives as we faithfully trust Him.

The passage for today’s teaching comes from Ephesians 3:16-19

Ephesians 3

¹⁶ That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; ¹⁷ That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, ¹⁸ May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; ¹⁹ And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.  -kjv

¹⁶ I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, ¹⁷ so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, ¹⁸ may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, ¹⁹ and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.  -niv

¹⁶ I pray that He may grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power in the inner man through His Spirit, ¹⁷ and that the Messiah may dwell in your hearts through faith. I pray that you, being rooted and firmly established in love, ¹⁸ may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the length and width, height and depth of God’s love, ¹⁹ and to know the Messiah’s love that surpasses knowledge, so you may be filled with all the fullness of God.  -hcsb

Michael Rydelnik on open line moody radio January 30, 2016:

We all recognize that we should pray for our spiritual lives, the problem is too often we do not know what to pray for about our spiritual lives. What should we pray for specifically when praying for our own growth? We will take a look at Ephesians about what to pray for about our spiritual lives. Last week, we talk about our proper attitude in prayer. This week we will look at Ephesians 3 starting at verse 16. Paul gives four specific areas that he was praying for the Ephesians. It also gives four specific areas that we can pray for ourselves as we pray for our spiritual growth from Ephesians 3: 16-19. Well, here’s the first of four specific request we can make. First, we should pray for the strengthening of our spiritual lives. He says that in verse 16 that he prays that we would be strengthened with power, that means God would powerfully strengthen the inner man, that’s referring to the spiritual aspect that we have, the non material, the part that lives forever. That we would be strengthened in the inner man by His Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the instrument that God uses to strengthen us. The question is how would God answer that prayer? If you look at a parallel passage in Romans 8:4-5, this is what Paul says: That we walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit for those whose lives are according to the flesh think about the things that are of the flesh but those whose lives are according to the Spirit about the things of the Spirit. It seems to me the way to be strengthened in our spiritual lives in answer to this prayer, what God would use to answer this prayer is that we need to feed the spiritual life and that’s what God does to answer that prayer. So, how do we feed it? We keep our minds on spiritual things, we feed ourselves with the word, we feed ourselves with worship, we feed ourselves spiritually with witness, to share our faith, we feed ourselves with washings, with constant confession for the things that we are doing that displease God and He restores us to fellowship. So, if we focus on things of the Spirit, God will answer this prayer by the power of His Spirit. So, first of all, we should pray for the strengthening of our spiritual lives, second of all, we should pray for the Messiah’s control of our lives. Verse 17 says that the Messiah may dwell in your hearts through faith. Every believer has the Messiah living within them. In Romans, it says if we don’t have the Spirit, we don’t belong to Him. It says in Ephesians 1 that every believer is sealed with the Spirit until the day of redemption. What is it talking about? Well, there’s two greek words that mean dwell. In Greek, one refers to a temporary residence, the one that’s used here means a permanent, deep rooted residence. Of course when the Holy Spirit comes to live within us when we become believers in Jesus, he indwells us. But, this is talking about the Holy Spirit taking up space in every room in our lives to really control every aspect of us. When the Holy Spirit comes into our lives, he never will leave and he needs to take over. We need to pray not only for strengthening of our spiritual lives but that the Messiah will come and take control of our lives. Thirdly, we need to pray to comprehend God’s love in verse 17. The reason that God’s love is so crucial that we need to know it and pray that we comprehend it is that’s the basis of our relationship with Him. We need to be rooted as this passage says in the soil of His love, we need to be grounded and founded in the building as the building is in the ground of His love like a foundation. Those are both perfect tenses we talk about, being rooted as in verse 17, and also firmly established, that means bounded. They are perfect tenses in greek, that means they are past events with continuing effects, so we became rooted, we became grounded but we need to continue to stay in that knowledge and deepen that knowledge of God’s love. How much can we know? God’s love is immeasurable, it says. He prays that we would know the length, which is stretched from eternity to eternity, the width, which is wide enough to reach the whole world, especially Ephesians, Jews and Gentiles alike, the height, high enough to raise us up to the heavenly places, in Ephesians 1 and the depth, which is deep enough to rescue us from all sins and humiliations and bondage. That’s God’s love. It is immeasurable. The importance of knowing this is crucial to our spiritual lives because if we just have a growing knowledge of God’s love, it motivates our obedience because we always want to please the one we love, it encourages our worship because we want to praise the one we love and it enables our fellowship, we want to spend time with God, we want to spend time with the one who loves us. So, we need to comprehend God’s love, that’s what we are praying for, we need to pray for Messiah’s control of our lives as well as we need to pray for God’s strengthening of our spiritual lives, verse 19 says we should pray to experience God’s fullness, that means allowing God to fill every part of our being. How can we have the full measure of God, well the whole ocean can’t be put in an 8 ounce glass. But for those of us who are likening ourselves to an 8 ounce glass, we can put an 8 ounce of ocean water into an 8 ounce glass even though the ocean is so large . What this is saying is that everything that God has for us, the full measure of His power and strength and encouragement and hope and love, all He has for us that we will have the full measure of it. I think too often we don’t want all that God has for us. I think sometimes we have low expectations. Sometimes we say I like 2 ounces of God please, that’s all we want. That’s not what we want, we want the full measure of all that He has for us and that’s what we are praying for.

Teachings from Dr Michael Rydelnik on January 23, 2016 on open line moody radio:

Ephesians 3

¹⁴ For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, ¹⁵ Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, ¹⁶ That he would grant you, …  -kjv

¹⁴ For this reason I kneel before the Father, ¹⁵ from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. ¹⁶ I pray …  -niv

¹⁴ For this reason I kneel before the Father ¹⁵ from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named. ¹⁶ I pray  … -hcsb

In Ephesians 3:14-21,  Paul is actually praying for the Ephesians and he is praying that they will live according to their spiritual wealth. In Ephesians 1 to 3, Paul reveals all the spiritual riches, all the spiritual wealth we have as believers and then he transitions in Ephesians 3:14-21 as to how we should live as believers, how we are to live in light of that spiritual wealth. At the end of the entire discussion about the wealth of a believer, the riches that we have in the Messiah Jesus, Paul in Ephesians 3:14, says for this reason I bow my knees to the Father, from whom every family in heaven and earth is named and I pray and he begins his prayer. In Ephesians 4, he picks up and talks about what our responsibilities are in light of our riches.

For the next week few weeks, we are going to go through Ephesians 3:14-21 and learn some principles of prayer because Paul’s prayer is the model for our prayers. If we are to pray for ourselves and for others and to experience all that God  has for us and to live in light of  the wealth that God has for us, this would be a great model for our prayers.

Paul is declaring  in Ephesians 3:14 that for this reason, in light of the spiritual riches that we have, and describes the way that we should pray, basically to have a needy attitude when praying. The first part of a needy attitude is a humble attitude as in I bow my knees in Ephesians 3:14. The typical Jew in the first century do not bow their knees to pray. Generally the Jewish way to pray was to have their heads up, eyes open and arms lifted up and so bowing became quite rare. The reason is bowing was sometimes taken to mean bowing before an idol and people did not want to reflect that idea. However, the idea of bowing is really a reflection of a humble attitude and is a picture of someone bowing before a king. So, Paul is not literally bowing but is saying that he is praying from a position of need, a position of humility and that he is coming as a humble person before the king of the universe. Besides having a humble attitude, if we are to pray with a needy attitude, we also need to have a dependent attitude. Paul calls God as Father in Ephesians 3:14. So often we think we call God our Father because that’s what we do in our families and we get the idea of God our father from families. Actually, what Paul is saying here is that it is the opposite, because there is a heavenly father, our families have fathers, that is it is a reflection of who God is, that we have a tangible earthly reflection of what that relationship ought to be. Every family on earth gets their name from their father. The idea is we come before God as our father because we are needy children, we are dependent children. So we have to have a dependent attitude on Him. Jesus talked about having that kind of attitude with our Father when we pray when he talked about it in Matthew 7:9-11. God wants us to be dependent on him, He want us to turn to Him and then He can help us.

Matthew 7

⁹ Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? ¹⁰ Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent?¹¹ If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?  -kjv