Sermon Tone Analysis

Pre-sermon Comments

Good morning, before we begin in the text this morning, I wanted to remind you that tonight at 6:00, we will be here in the sanctuary to sing together.

Bring along a dessert to share, and after we’re done singing, we’ll head over to the Fellowship Hall for a time of fellowship.

Letter to the Ephesians

Today, we will be continuing our series through the book of Ephesians, and today we will be in the second half of chapter 3.

For those that don’t know, my undergraduate degree is in music education.

My senior year of college I was able to take part in a wonderful opportunity, the Southeast Iowa Symphony Orchestra, the community chorale, and the Iowa Wesleyan Choir joined together to perform Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.

Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is one of the absolute masterpieces in Western music.

They are starting to disappear, but you all hopefully remember CDs.

The original compact disc could hold 74 minutes of music on it.

This wasn’t an arbitrary length, but specifically engineered long enough so that an entire recording of Herbert von Karajan directing Beethoven’s ninth symphony could fit on one CD.

For first 57 minutes of music, the orchestra establishes and develops the musical themes through four movements, until halfway through the fourth movement, solo voices enter the picture, reviewing the themes and motifs from the last hour as Beethoven starts to crescendo to the introduction of a grand theme.

In the final 10 minutes, the orchestra, the soloists and the choir burst forth in a grand Ode to Joy.

It leaves quite an impression, twenty years later, my poor kids will still hear me walking around the house belting out the German Fruede shone gute funken.

The Grand Crescendo

So far in the book, Paul has been building this grand theological picture of our spiritual family and the church, developing the themes and motifs of our great salvation, and today comes the grand crescendo in the form of this prayer Paul offers up for the church.

Join me in Ephesians 3, starting in verse 14.

Ephesians 3:14–21 (CSB)

For this reason I kneel before the Father from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named.

I pray that he may grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with power in your inner being through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.

I pray that you, being rooted and firmly established in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the length and width, height and depth of God’s love, and to know Christ’s love that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

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

Amen.

For this reason...

So, here we have this grand prayer from Paul, in many ways echoing Jesus’s prayer in John 17.

But what is the reason for this prayer?

Paul starts by saying, “for this reason.”

For what reason?

Well, to find that we’ll need to go back to the end of chapter 2. So, Paul teaches at the end of chapter 2:

Paul then begins chapter 3 with the phrase, “for this reason,” talking through the section we talked about last week, and then he repeats “for this reason,” which rhetorically, Paul is essentially saying, but I digress, and then gets back to his original point.

So, the background, the reason for Paul’s prayer today is because all believers have been built together as a holy temple for the Lord.

So, passage we’re talking through today is all in the context of the church being built together.

Paul begins, Ephesians 3:14-15

Right off the bat, the Ephesians would perk up.

The common stance for prayer in this time was standing.

Think of examples like the two men Jesus talked about in Luke 18, both the self-righteous guy and the humble guy were standing.

Kneeling in prayer communicated urgency.

Some examples of knelt prayer are Stephen at his martyrdom, Peter at the deathbed of Dorcas, or the greatest example is Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane.

So Paul isn’t just praying for the church, he’s urgently praying for the church.

He prays to the Father.

Your translation might differ a bit here, but Paul uses a play on words, praying to “Pater pas patria.”

A more literal translation might read something like the Father of every fatherhood.

This is also in the context of Ephesians where Paul has explained that we have been adopted as sons and daughters into His family.

This family is of course those here on earth, sometimes called the church militant, and those who are in heaven, sometimes called the church triumphant.

In this family, there is no Jew nor Gentile, God is Father over all.

So Paul begins this prayer, layering on truth upon truth.

John Stott called it Paul’s prayer staircase, ascending higher and higher, but keeping with the music analogy from earlier, let’s think this morning of this prayer as layering on more and more elements in a grand crescendo until all of eternity is echoing with praise.

First Paul prays,

Ephesians 3:16 (CSB)

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

Strengthened

So, Paul begins by praying that the Father would grant the churches strength through the Holy Spirit.

More this power is to strengthen the inner being.

Paul talks with this same kind of imagery in 2 Corinthians 3:18

Paul goes on further in his letter to the Corinthians, saying:

We live in a fallen world, and the outer being is being destroyed, yet Paul’s focus is not on that destruction, but rather on the work of the Spirit in the inner being to strengthen with power.

Indeed, Paul is praying that the Spirit would strengthen the church.

Paul doesn’t call us to do this work ourselves, but instead look to the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives and in the life of the church.

Without the Holy Spirit, we are powerless.

So, Paul prays that we would be strengthened by the Holy Spirit.

Paul continues his prayer:

Ephesians 3:17a (CSB)

and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith...

Indwelt

This idea of Christ dwelling in the hearts of His church is not a new one.

As you remember, the context here is that Paul has been explaining that the church has been built together into a new temple.

In the Old Testament, the tabernacle and later temple was fundamentally important to the Israelites as the dwelling place of God.

Here is the tabernacle in Exodus:

In 1 Kings, God promises Solomon of the new temple,

In Ezekiel 10, God becomes fed up with the people of Judah and His glory leaves the temple.

In Zechariah, as the people rebuild the temple, He comes once again to dwell.

This picture of dwelling continues with the incarnation.

So, here in Ephesians, Paul is praying that Christ will literally “take up his dwelling” in the hearts of his people, the new, spiritual, temple that is being built together.

This dwelling is complete through faith, and not through any effort of our own.

Paul expounds this in Colossians when he says:

I want to pause here and ask, “Is Christ is dwelling in your heart today?”

Are you part of this temple that is being built up, the church?

What are you trusting in today?

Are you looking to Christ as the author and finisher of your salvation.

Are you living with a burden today?

Are you trying to brute force your way into heaven?

Have you picked up somewhere that you just need to try harder.

The rest of the book of Ephesians is going to talk about the implications of the Gospel.

How is the church going to look different from the world because of these glorious truths?

Don’t get the order confused.

If you try to live out a moralistic, almost-Christian life, it will all come crashing down on you eventually.

No, Christ doesn’t wait for us to clean up our lives before he saves us,

If that describes you this morning, if you are exhausted trying to make it on your own, Jesus has this to say to you,

That is His word to you, “Come to me.”

If you want to know more about what that looks like, or you make that step of faith this morning, I would just invite you to come and talk to one of the elders or pastors this morning.

Eric Carter is our elder this week who will be up front by the organ.

I’ll be over at the piano, and Pastors Clint and Dennis (and Bill) are around this morning.

Don’t carry that burden one more day.

So, having prayed that Christ would dwell in the hearts of the church, Paul continues his prayer,

Ephesians 3:17–18 (CSB)

I pray that you, being rooted and firmly established in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the length and width, height and depth of God’s love,

Love

So, strengthened by the Holy Spirit, and indwelt by Christ, Paul calls us to love.

Paul uses two pictures here, one botanical and one architectural.

For the biologists in the room, we know that roots are essential to the health of any plant.