Far More Abundantly (Ephesians 3:14-21)

Introduction: The Power of Prayer

Preliminaries

Welcome: Please turn with me in your Bibles to the third Chapter of Ephesians, beginning in verse 14. You can find it in the navy blue Bibles in your pew, at the bottom of page 1160, carrying on to page 1161.

Ephesians 3:14–21 (ESV)

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

This is the Word of the Lord

Thanks be to God.

A. A Rewind

This Sunday, we return to our series on the Book of Ephesians, but we are “moving backward” in the text as part of our observance of Trinity Sunday.

Christians are Trinitarians. That means we are monotheists. We believe there is one God. And we believe that God exists in three persons (and has always existed in three persons). So he is one in one way, and three in another. This is set forward most beautifully in the Westminster Shorter Catechism, Questions 5 and 6:

Q. 5. Are there more Gods than one?

A. There is but one only, the living and true God.

Q. 6. How many persons are there in the Godhead?

A. There are three persons in the Godhead; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one God, the same in substance, equal in power and glory.

(Modernized Version of the Shorter Catechism. Quoted from Be Thou My Vision: A Liturgy for Daily Worship by Jonathan Gibson, Crossway Publishers (2021), page number needed)

So our God is one, and yet he is three.

B. A Refresher

As you might recall, there is a split in Ephesians. There is a clear movement in the letter from doctrine to application. Chapters 1-3 and then 4-6.

There is nothing to do in Chapters 1-3 except to believe and rejoice. Chapters 4-6 is all application.

And for that reason, you might see this concluding section of Chapter 3 as the hinge on which it all turns. Paul makes a transition at this point between the doctrine and the application, and he does so with worship.

He lays out praying to the Father, empowered by the Spirit, that the saints in Ephesus might comprehend the love of Jesus the Son, and it makes him worship.

And so it has always been the case for God’s people that the revelation of God’s work as Father, Son, and Spirit leaves us in awe and causes us to worship.

C. A Review (of Philosophy)

But before we tackle that, I want to do something I don’t often do in sermons—I want to review some philosophy with you.

Now this is important, because a lot of religious people who object to the doctrine of the Trinity (Muslims for example) accuse us of being captive to Greek philosophy, and that the Trinity is an invention from pagan conceptions of God. What’s funny is that the Christian understanding of the Trinity was actually an answer to paganism.

You see, one of the great historic philosophical debates in the West (and a debate that has not been silenced in our present day) is the question of The One and the Many.

The question goes like this: Is it more important that there be unity, or is it more important that there be diversity? And the larger philosophical problem was which one dominates all reality? Is all reality best described as a unified whole, or by many kinds of different pieces?

You see, in the ancient pagan worldview, reality simply “was.” The creation story (for the ancient pagan) was that the universe was total chaos, total disorder, and one day, that chaos and disorder gave birth to the gods. The idea was not that chaos was brought under control by order. But rather chaos produced order.

This is why evolution, or the idea that “Thing A” morphs into “Thing B” is very natural to the pagan mind. In ancient paganism, matter is just there, stuff is just there, and stuff rearranges itself over time.

And so one school of thought led by a fellow called Parmenides, and he taught that the whole universe was One. It was one unit, and one unity. One Big Thing. You can probably figure out that this line of thinking ran into trouble quickly. Because when you look around the world, you recognize there is so much diversity.

8.7 million different species of animals.

200 Billion Trillion stars in the universe.

2,000 different species of jellyfish. Just Jellyfish!

So then you have Heraclitus. Who taught (more or less) the opposite. That the world was all diversity. There’s no unity, no order, everything was just chaos and chance. As one thinker has put it, Heraclitus’s universe is seventy tons of confetti dumped into a tornado.

But that’s not satisfying either, is it? Because you look around and…well, there’s a lot of order this place. Sure the world can be chaotic, but at the same time the simple fact that we can test hypotheses in science, and keep repeating those tests to get results, that requires a lot of unity and order.

So which is it? Is reality—ultimately—a unity or a diversity?

And along came the Christians, and the Christians said “Yes.”

You see the Christians knew that chaos does not produce order. They knew that because first of all, in the beginning God created. Not in the beginning chaos made. But in the beginning God created. He didn’t just create one thing, he created many different kinds of things over the course of seven days. And the Christians also knew that God is One. He is a unity. And yet He is also three—there is a diversity. And so ultimate reality must reflect its Creator.

What does this mean for us? What does this affect or change? In one sense, everything (we are the only people that believe this), but my goal at this time every year is to help us see how it changes and shapes just a few things. And this morning I want to talk about our confession of the Holy Trinity, and how it shapes some things.

First, how it shapes our Prayer

Second, how it shapes our Church

And third, how it shapes our Children

I. The Trinity and Prayer

A. The “Threefold Life”

Paul begins our passage this morning with his knees bowed in prayer. And he says

Ephesians 3:14–15 (ESV)

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named,

What is his prayer? It is that

Ephesians 3:16 (ESV)

that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being,

Ephesians 3:17–19 (ESV)

...so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

We pray to the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit. To the Father by command and invitation. Through the Son’s mediation. And we pray by the Spirit, that is, through the Holy Spirit’s indwelling.

C.S. Lewis is especially helpful here. In the last section of Mere Christianity, Lewis attempts to explain some aspects of the Trinity, and he makes a pretty good attempt. At one point in the chapter, after trying to make a Trinitarian analogy using dimensions, he applies the concept to prayer, and he says,

What I mean is this. An ordinary simple Christian kneels down to say his prayers. He is trying to get into touch with God. But if he is a Christian he knows that what is prompting him to pray is also God: God, so to speak, inside him. But he also knows that all his real knowledge of God comes through Christ, the Man who was God – that Christ is standing beside him, helping him to pray, praying for him. You see what is happening. God is the thing to which he is praying – the goal he is trying to reach. God is also the thing inside him which is pushing him on – the motive power. God is also the road or bridge along which he is being pushed to that goal. So that the whole threefold life of the three-personal Being is actually going on in that ordinary little bedroom where an ordinary man is saying his prayers. C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (“Complete Signature Classics” Edition, HarperOne (2002), page 134.)

What Lewis is getting at is that prayer itself is a Trinitarian activity. Prayer is always prayer to the Father. I would not say it’s a sin to pray to the Son or to the Spirit, but the biblical evidence is so strongly weighted to prayer being to the Father. The only time in Scripture (that I can think of) where someone prays to the Son is Stephen, in the Book of Acts, just before he is stoned to death, and we also know that at the time, he was looking right at Jesus. And there aren’t really any prayers to the Spirit per se in Scripture, even though I think it’s appropriate to pray and sing “Come Oh Holy Spirit, Come.” The Church has been praying that since at least the second century.

But broadly speaking, Christian prayer is prayer to the Father.

Jesus said

Matthew 6:9 (ESV)

Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name...

But that’s not to say that our prayers only involve the Father. Jesus Christ, the Son of God is our mediator. That means he is the bridge between us and the Father.

Paul asks the Father (verse 14) that they might be strengthened through the Spirit (verse 16) So that Christ (verse 17) may dwell in their hearts through faith.

We can't pray to the Father without the mediation of the Son. He is our mediator both ways. Without him we have no access to the Father and know nothing of the Father’s activity to us. And the Holy Spirit dwelling within us prompts us to pray, urges us to pray, oftentimes gives us words to pray, and while we are praying confirms to our heart, testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, talking to our Father.

So the Father is the One to whom we pray.

We are able to pray by the shed blood of Jesus the Son. We come to the Father through the Son.

And we are empowered and urged and commanded to pray by the words of God in Scripture, illuminated to us by the Spirit.

And this is why we pray to the Father, through the Son, by the Holy Spirit. We ask the Father, with the Spirit’s prompting and help that Christ may dwell in our hearts through faith.

And so what does Paul pray for? He prays for strength. Look at verse 18:

Ephesians 3:17–18 (ESV)

so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth,

That’s pretty common, right? To pray for strength. We pray for strength quite often, don’t we? Strength to endure. Strength to be patient. Strength to remain faithful. Strength to trust God.

So why do the Ephesians need strength? Paul says they need strength…to comprehend.

Ephesians 3:18–19 (ESV)

may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Paul is praying that they would have the knowledge to know the thing that surpasses knowledge. That is, the love of Christ.

Now this is—to me—no small encouragement. If you’ve ever felt the weight of the glory of the love of Christ and you’ve thought “Man, I feel like I only understand the tiniest bit of this. I feel like I don’t really get it, like I’m not all the way on the inside of this”…Well take heart. Paul says that knowing the love of Christ is the work of knowing something that is beyond knowledge.

So how can you know something beyond knowledge?

Well, if Paul’s example is any indication, you pray for it. And since it’s beyond knowledge, you content yourself with the reality that you will be praying for it until you die. That’s to be expected when we’re being sanctified over the whole course of life.

Have you ever prayed that for someone? That they would know the love of Christ which is beyond knowledge. Have you ever prayed it for yourself? For our church? It’s a wonderful thing to pray. Father, by the words of your Son, and by the power of your Holy Spirit, give us proper comprehension of the love of Christ for us, which is so far beyond our comprehending.

It’s like when you’ve been in a dark room for a long time and then you step out into the sunlight. And your eyes squint and shut because they can’t bear the light and it takes some time to adjust. Well. Stepping out into the light of the love of Jesus Christ for you, in the scriptures, will cause your eyes to squint and adjust for decades.

So why are we Trinitarian?

Because we pray.

Ephesians 3:14–17 (ESV)

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith...

He prays before the Father, strengthened by the Spirit, so that Christ may dwell in the hearts of his hearers.

II. The Trinity and Our Church

Let’s go back to the start of our text, again.

Ephesians 3:14–15 (ESV)

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named,

So all the families of the earth find their origin in the Fatherhood of God. In this sense we are all related—not only that we are all sons of Adam and daughters of Eve, but that we are also all image bearers.

Ephesians 3:17–19 (ESV)

so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

A. The Mystery of God Requires a Church

Look at the text, Paul says that this magnificent love of Christ is comprehended how? With all the saints! One of the most foolish things that you’ll ever hear—and you hear it a lot in Christian circles, I am afraid—is that the way to really know God is to get yourself isolated in a room and download into your brain about 3 tons worth of theological data. There’s too much sin in your life, your household is a wreck, your marriage is struggling, your work life is a mess—the solution must be that you simply haven’t done enough research about the ancient world or about demonic powers or about the real meaning of the word tabernacle.

But listen to Paul’s words. Paul is praying that they would know the love of Christ. You need to know the love of Christ. You need to know the love of Christ. You need to know the love of Christ. And if you want to know the love of Christ, you’re going to need a Church for that. Paul doesn’t say “That you may comprehend this alone in your room.” He says that you may comprehend this “with all the saints.”

If you want to know the love of Christ, you’re going to need a church for that. You’re going to need names and faces for that. You’re going to need vulnerability and accountability for that. You’re going to need visitation and meals and phone calls and sitting in each other’s living room for that.

God's glory in the church cannot be separated from his glory in Christ Jesus. —Peter T. O’Brien (New Testament Scholar) The Letter to the Ephesians (From the Pillar New Testament Commentary Series, Published by Eerdmans (1999), pg. 268)

If you want to know this God, you’re going to need a church for that. You cannot do this alone.

And this makes sense—do you know why? Because even God himself—in Himself!—is not without fellowship. God has never been alone. The fact that the one God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit means that God has never been alone. And perhaps then it makes sense that one of the first revelations we get about man after he is created in the image of God is that it is not good for this image bearer…to be alone.

And so the mystery of God requires a church, and...

B. The Church is where God Desires to be Worshiped

At the end of our our text this morning, and to mark the split between the doctrine portion of the letter, and the application portion of the letter, Paul appropriately closes with a doxology. A word of worship. And he says...

Ephesians 3:20–21 (ESV)

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

The Church is where God is glorified. The Church is where God is worshipped. The Church is where the glory of the Triune God is exalted, insofar as redeemed sinners are capable of such exaltation.

III. The Trinity and Our Children

You probably caught this earlier, I didn’t want to leave it unaddressed...

Ephesians 3:21 (ESV)

to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

Worship of God (doxology) and generations have always been connected. Since a man killed his brother over worship. Since God made the second commandment.

Q. 49. Which is the second commandment?

A. The second commandment is, You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. Westminster Shorter Catechism (Modernized Version of the Shorter Catechism. Quoted from Be Thou My Vision: A Liturgy for Daily Worship by Jonathan Gibson, Crossway Publishers (2021), page 283)

Notice the connection between proper worship and the generations.

God says that carved idols will not be made.

He will not receive worship mediated through an idol, he will not permit his people to bow down to images or statues or serve them, and his reasoning is that he is a jealous God (this is not a sinful jealousy—it means that he loves us and will not share us with other false gods) and the other reason is because the idolatry patterns of fathers get carried on to their sons.

He says the iniquity of the fathers is visited on children to the third and fourth generation. Notice he does not say the punishment for the father’s sins is visited on the children. Each man bears his own sin.

Rather, the iniquity itself is visited on the children. To the third or even the fourth generation of them that hate me. What does that mean? Well, in context it means “Those who reject this command and chase after their idols.” That despising of God’s command, that resisting of his word, that preservation of arrogance, that protection of idolatry—these things tend to repeat in family lines.

We call that generational curses, although we do not call it generational hopelessness, because Jesus Christ, the son of God comes to break curses.

Galatians 3:13–14 (ESV)

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”— so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.

Jesus Christ comes that no curse will have the last word over you or your children. In fact, look at the rest of that verse from Exodus on the second commandment:

Exodus 20:5–6 (ESV)

You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.

As below, so above. Just as there can be generational curses, so there can be generational blessings. And I do think that Hebrew word there for “thousands” (since it is without a modifier) is meant to modify the word “generation” in the same sentence. So iniquity lasts for 3 or 4 generations, but faithfulness that results in blessing can still be seen and felt and enjoyed for thousands of generations.

Does God care about our children? Our answer is God has a Son and God is a Son, so what do you think?

World without end

Conclusion: God is For You…Far More Abundantly than you Comprehend

There has been perfect eternal love and fellowship and delight between the Father, Son, and Spirit before there were trees or air. And this love has been extended to us. We have been invited into the love of God, to know the love of the Son, for us. Our God love us far beyond our knowing and,

Ephesians 3:20 (ESV)

[He is] able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us...

We Know our Father is For Us: He has sent forth his Son to die, and to rise again, and by that death and resurrection all our sins are forgiven. Such a God is not waiting for us to understand him perfectly. He simply calls us to bow our knees to him, and to press on to know Him with joy.

We Know the Spirit is With Us: The Holy Spirit, dwelling in us, the power at work within us is the promise Jesus Christ delivered of an Emmanuel that no one can ever take from us. The same Spirit illuminates the words of Christ to us, that they will ever be sweet to our hearts.

We Know Christ Loves Us: Even as that love is incomprehensible. It might blow our minds, but it still fills our spirits and reassures our hearts.

In the Name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.