A Peculiar Prayer For Power - D.A. Carson

the following message is made available by truth for life for more information visit us online at truthfortheworld.org how did you learn to pray well I was brought up in a Christian home and enough decades ago that when we spoke English we use the King James Bible and pray prayed in Elizabethan English and when we were in French we used the Loess ago my bowl which was not quite as archaic as the King James Version but trying hard and so we used Louis Segal French so if I prayed in family devotions when I was five years old it sounded a bit like this we beseech the Almighty father that in the magnificence of thy grace I which felt safe to us thy mercies through thy blessed son our Redeemer I mean inevitably that what did make me spiritual I learned Elizabethan English you know but if you got converted in Campus Crusade for Christ out of an entirely secular background you listen to people pray and the first time you ventured to pray in public at the age of 21 you sounded like this we just want to thank you Jesus for being here we pray that you'll bless us really good and and and and I I'm not prepared to say that when prayer is more sanctified than the other one it's it's just different modes of English which is merely a brute way of indicating that at the end of the day we have learned to pray by imitation all of us that's how we learn to pray that means of course that we do well to choose what we imitate and the best public praying remembers that part of the function of public praying is pedagogical that's why those who pray in public ought to think through their prayers because they're teaching others to pray by how they pray and the best pedagogical models for how to pray are inevitably found in Scripture which means if we want to learn well how to pray we should study the prayers of David and the prayers of Moses and the prayers of Nehemiah the prayers of Daniel and not least the prayers of Paul so my mandate was to say something about the praying of Paul and we looked first at his praising yesterday and now we're going to look at one of his prayers where the emphasis is on certain petitions now there are a lot of prayers and Paul on which we could focus but since we started in Ephesians will continue with Ephesians and focus this time on Ephesians chapter 3 verses 14 to 21 Ephesians 3:14 to 21 I shall begin by reading this passage here then what holy scripture says for this reason I kneel before the father from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his spirit in your inner being so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith and I pray that you being rooted and established in love 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 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God 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 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 now this prayer has two central petitions on which will focus most of our attention then it has a certain kind of grounding at the front end and at the back end it has a doxology begin with the petitions there are two of them number 1 Paul prays that God might strengthen us with power through his spirit in our inner being now that sounds complicated but in fact I got it right from the text verse 16 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his spirit in your inner being now already in this letter Paul has for power back in Chapter one especially verse 18 I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people and his incomparably great power for us who believe so Paul prays for power that power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms far above all rule and authority power and Dominion and every name that is invoked Paul prays for power and here as elsewhere the agent who mediates this power to us is the Holy Spirit I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his spirit and the sphere of operation of this power is our inner being for some translations have our inner man or our inner self the expressions vary I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his spirit in your inner being so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith this expression inner being or an older versions inner man is not very common in Paul but its most striking when it occurs in 2nd Corinthians chapter 4 verses 16 to 18 there Paul says though outwardly the outer man the outer being the outer self though outwardly we are wasting away yet inwardly same expression is here in our inner being in our inner self inwardly we are being renewed day by day for our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all so we fix our eyes not on what is seen but on what is unseen for what is seen is temporal temporal but what is unseen is eternal the inner self is the sharpest focus of our existence it is what still remains when we are laid to rest in a grave if this is strengthened with God's power then we are well equipped to handle the merely external vicissitudes of life I stepped in the shower this morning at the hotel where the conference has put me up and a few more holes when a few more hairs went down the plughole never to be seen again I sometimes have arthritis in my joints or maybe it's rheumatism I don't know I don't really care all I know is it slows me down I can't I can't hike as I used to we're a walking family we've we've walked countless trails in Britain and elsewhere and there was a time when I I let the pace and then eventually my son beat me now my daughter beats me the only one left to beat me as my wife I've still got her beat I'm quite proud of it now I have to worry about skin cancer and then I have a younger brother he's got Parkinson's disease he's had a stroke he's got macular degeneration I'm no better than he is why don't I have any of those three I don't know but I'm not complaining but inevitably sooner or later the outer man wastes away Paul doesn't say I pray that the Lord will keep you strong in your outer man I pray that he may strengthen you with power in your inner being you do find the other once in a while but it's rare in the joenie pistils III pray that your health may be strong in line with your spiritual health but that preserves the same priority is here doesn't it but we may ask two further questions about this petition what purpose does it have so many people want power but to what end Simon Magus wanted power and Peter eventually turned on him and said quite literally you want a literal translation here it is to hell with you and your money that's exactly what the text says others want pun of power in order to be thought powerful in the context of the church but Paul has was a specific purpose for this power I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his spirit in your inner being so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith now that initially strikes us as a bit strange I thought if this is written to Christians that Christ already dwells in our hearts through faith so why does Paul pray that he may dwell in our hearts through faith the particular word for dwell is a stronger one than Paul normally uses at the risk of over translating that God may take up residence and establish himself in your heart through faith that's the idea when my wife and I were first married we lived in a small flat in Vancouver and eventually somebody helped us out by loaning us some money for a down payment on what is nowadays called a fixer-upper it was a cheap house and was definitely a fixer-upper we moved in and plumbing needed tackling the electrical work needed doing was 2-bedroom 900 square feet it was a bit of a mess to be quite frank they had black and silver wallpaper in the bedroom they had had two dogs that they didn't always let out with the result that the carpet stank and we found dog poo in our bedroom closet but you know it was ours at least at least through the mortgage it was ours and I like working with my hands and we knocked down a wall here and did some replaster I'll never forget that the day I I got up early in the morning after I had plastered the night before and had an industrial power sander took that thing down smoothing it out ready for primer I left my wife in tears as I went off to teach at 8 o'clock in the morning at Northwest Baptist Theological Seminary she was in tears with plaster dust all over the whole house but it was ours gradually it became presentable now we didn't stay there long enough for us to finish what would have happened but if we had stayed there long enough I would have built a room out the back and pretty soon we would have changed everything we wanted to change window by window door by door room by room so that after 20 years you can look back and there's nothing that you see in the the room in the house that that that you have not had a hand in changing it you've made it your house with your style and in your handiwork and your sweat equity now when Christ moves into us he discovers that we're the people of the black and silver wallpaper we're the people of the dog poo we're the people of the urine and the lousy plumbing and the obsolete electrical work but he takes up residence and he's going to make it his so I pray Paul says that God may strengthen you with power in your inner being through the spirit so that Christ may take up residence within you and stab you now there are a lot of ways of thinking about how that works the Puritans loved to cite Galatians 4:19 so that Christ might be formed in you that's the language of Galatians 4:19 the best commentary is a passage like Romans 8:9 215 or Colossians 3:1 to 11 all of these passages which speak of how God by his power the power the same power by which he raised Jesus from the dead works powerfully within us to transform us in other words a tissue is not only forensic justification but transformation by his power to make us holy there is always at least some danger of a merely creedal Christianity whereas in point of fact there are many texts that are in line with what Jesus himself teaches by their fruit you shall know them 2nd question with what measure of resources is this prayer to be answered it is one thing to ask but what of the supply go back to verse 16 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his spirit in your inner being so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith that expression according to his glorious riches is tied to other passages in Paul and in every case they mean the same thing the glorious riches that are secured by Christ and his cross work and resurrection on our behalf in a well-known text writing to the Philippians Paul says and my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus so anything good that comes to us in Redemption justification I renewed and awakened conscience regeneration sanctification his nurturing us as his children in rebuke and instruction and correction and righteousness the fellowship of the saints the oneness we have in the spirit glorification all of it all of it all of it without exception has been secured by Christ and His Cross work on our behalf otherwise what God would owe us his simple condemnation Hell itself we're reminded what Romans 8 says he was not withheld his son shall he not also with him freely also give us all things that's the measure of the glorious riches in Christ Jesus so I pray Paul says that out of his glorious riches the glorious riches secured by Christ he may strengthen you with power by his spirit in your inner being so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith that's the first prayer second petition this is again a petition for power but now it's power focused in a slightly different direction the petition is this Paul prays that we may have power to grasp the limitless dimensions of the love of God 17b and I pray that you being rooted and established in love 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 now Paul again makes allusion to his earlier treatment of the subject in the book in the first petition we saw that the prayer for power took us back to chapter 1 verse 18 now this prayer for power that we might grasp the love of God takes us back to what Paul means by being rooted and established in love so we go back to chapter 1 beginning at verse 4 for he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight in love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ in accordance with his pleasure and will so no wonder Paul says we have been rooted and established in love this rooting and establishing in love goes back to eternity past God's love for us and eternity past to make us his own people but now he says you've already been rooted and established in love now my prayer for you is that you will have the power to grasp the limitless dimensions of God's love for us a note carefully this is not a prayer that we should love God more notice that's a good prayer but that's not this prayer this is a prayer that we should better grasp his love for us more specifically it's a prayer that we should have the power better to grasp his love for us I pray that you may have the power you who were already rooted and established in love to grasp his love for us and then the text uses different ways of talking to get it across how do you measure love three acres worth four tons a bucketful a mile well Paul begins with linear magic measure yet you 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 and then he uses paradox to know this love that surpasses knowledge to know what mere knowledge isn't going to teach you it it outstrips mere cognitive content it it's it's bound up with your experience of of God's love that outstrips cognitive content moreover it is not a lone ranger experience that you may have power together with all the Lord's holy people almost as if really deeply to experience the love of God that outstrips knowledge you must be in concert with God's holy people Paul is not really keen on lone ranger spirituality and when Reformation and revival really break through you find a church where people say as they did in the days of Tertullian in the second century look how they love one another because they have themselves become intoxicated by the love of God in their lives we sometimes sing this better than we explain it the love of God is greater far than tongue or pen can ever tell it goes beyond the highest star and reaches to the deepest hell could we with ink the ocean fill and where the sky of parchment made where every stalk on earth a quill and every man a scribe by trade to write the love of God above would drain the ocean dry Norka the scroll contained the whole those stretched from Sky to sky sometimes this is experienced best in suffering we begin to discover that God's love is a shoreless and his endless as eternity one of my retired colleagues at Trinity is called Perry downs his wife is now far along in dementia he himself has just had a knee replaced they are at the end of life's journey but for the years that he taught at Trinity in addition to their own two girls whom they brought up they were foster parents to about 30 others some they had for a few weeks some for a few months the last one they adopted she has just graduated a couple of years ago from college yourself though she was a crack cocaine baby and had cognitive challenges herself nevertheless eventually they saw her through college once when they were in the midst of this they had their own two girls still at home and they had another child or two in the house at that time their agency rang them up and said we've got an emergency we've got a pair of twin boys three and a half years old they've been thrown around from house to house they've been in eight foster home so far we need you to take him just for six weeks or so until we get a permanent placement Perry and Sandy began by saying look we got a house full already it's a small house we got four kids here two of our own we can't take any more right now but the agency begged and pleaded and prodded and and so on eventually they said okay six weeks six weeks that's it these two boys were brought into the house scared witless Perry and Sandy put them down to bed that night then here peep out of them not a whisper after half an hour Perry went into their bedroom and discovered that both of their pillows were soaked with tears they've been crying quietly for half an hour and three of the eight homes as they tracked back later they've been beaten again and again they had them tested psychologically and the experts deemed them irremediably emotionally damaged well it turns out that they didn't have him for six weeks they had him for a little over three and a half years until they were adopted by a Christian couple so at the age of seven Darrell and Darnell were adopted by a Christian family and before they went they were tested again by this time they were mainstreamed in the school and they were judged within the normal range of emotional strength one went on to become a high school teacher another became an Olympian in his particular sport what made the difference you and I both know that apart from the intervention of the grace of God a child to become mature must be brought up in the context of disciplined generous love oh I know that God can break in and save you from any background I know that I know that sometimes people brought up in the best of backgrounds sometimes Rebell self-consciously I know that there's not a simple cause and effect that's that argues that you get the right home you get the right kid you get the right kid you get the right home it's more complex than that but all things being equal and they never are but all things being equal children do not grow up to become mature human beings unless they experience somewhere along the line generous disciplined love just doesn't happen apart from the intervention of the grace of God so what does Paul say here is the purpose of this petition I pray that you being rooted and established in love 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 to know this love that surpasses knowledge to what end that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God that's a Pauline locution four real deep Christian maturity being filled the measure of all the fullness of God you have an analysis analysis expression in the next chapter 4:13 until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ Paul wants these people to experience such power in their lives that they are able along with the rest of God's people in their local church to grasp the limitless dimensions of God's love for them in Christ Jesus in order that they will become mature because otherwise they won't to grasp how wide and long and high and deep the love of Christ experienced at when mere knowledge bursts its categories then escaped the fragile frame of language reap the richest crop salvation brings and heap up memories of a sea of love again and yet again cascading or us men can know no other bliss so rich and deep Lord God and love you have established us and rooted us in soil no less fine not single plants exposed to every gust of wind but all the saints drink love sublime make me to know a creature hewn from sawed the measure of all fullness not found in God no one is going to underline the importance of mature biblically faithful studied cognitive theology more than I am but haven't you met some people are know an awful lot of theology or really immature because knowing a lot of theology doesn't guarantee maturity it'll guarantee immaturity but it doesn't guarantee not having it guerra not having it will guarantee immaturity but having it doesn't guarantee maturity for that you need you need to get drunk on the love of God and there are so many many many biblical passages that stress this experiential dimension to Christianity Ephesians 5 do not get drunk on wine which leads to debauchery instead be filled with a spirit you're gonna get high on something make sure it's not alcohol make sure it's a different spirit whom of I in heaven but you and being with you I desire nothing on earth my flesh and my heart may fail but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever Psalm 73 Paul mentions the Son of God and feels constrained to add who loved me and gave himself for me Galatians two we have tasted that the Lord is good first Peter 2:4 the kingdom of heaven is not a matter of food and drink it's a matter of righteousness peace and joy in the Holy Spirit Romans 14 God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit Romans 5:5 you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy first Peter 1 and on and on and on brothers and sisters we Christians cannot be mature unless God gives us the power to grasp how long and wide and high and deep is the love of Christ to know this love that surpasses knowledge to the end that we may be filled with all the measure of the fullness of God so the obvious question to ask is this when was the last time you prayed that like that we pray for so many things and that we have the right to pray for everything cast all your cares on him before he cares for us for you that's right but if we're to learn to pray in line with Scripture if we're to reform our praying by the things that Paul thinks are most important to pray for then we need to incorporate these prayers into the life of the church into our lives into our families learning to pray in line with Holy Scripture you know how it is when you go and speak somewhere somebody says to you let me pray for your brother what would you like me to pray for I don't know how many people across the decades have asked me what would you like me to pray for it's taken me a while to figure out how to answer that one because you can always mention the next conference er the next project your honor whatever and that's what they're expecting to hear I have learned when people ask me that question what do you want me to pray for always to answer please pray for the basics pray that I may be holy pray that Christ may take up residence within me pray that I might have power to grasp the limitless dimensions of his love pray that I might be mature so those are the petitions there two of them now then there are two basis for these petitions the first is bound up with a little connective phrase and verse 14 for this reason I kneel before the Father and pray so that's the basis for the prayer he's gonna give the petitions and he says before he gives the petitions for this reason I pray and this is what I pray for what reason well obviously you have to look at the preceding verses but when you look at the preceding verses you discover this little phrase for this reason fills out a kind of parenthesis in Paul's thinking because in 3:1 there's another for this reason in verse 1 we read for this reason I Paul the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles and then the sort of sentence fades office as Paul is dictating the letter he says excuse me before I get to that point there are some other things I want to mention and so he writes chapter 3 verses 2 to 13 so the for this reason in verse 14 is resumed t'v of the fourth this reason back in chapter 3 verse 1 that means if you want to find out what the reason is that grounds Paul's praying in 3 14 to 21 you got to look back to chapters 1 and 2 now relax I'm not going to expound all of chapters 1 & 2 but I am going to give you a survey part of a survey you got yesterday this great overflowing Thanksgiving to God in 1:3 2:14 for the glory of the Son of God and out of that then Paul moves into an explication of how the power that God used to raise Christ from the dead is at work today in the church drawing men and women from diverse backgrounds to make a new humanity so 211 for example remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called uncircumcised by those who call themselves the circumcision remember that at that time you were separate from Christ excluded from citizenship in Israel foreigners to the covenants of the promise without hope without God in the world but now now now in Christ in Christ Jesus who you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ for he himself is our peace he's made the two one and as a result there is now one you Humanity verse 15 1 you humanity created out of the two thus making peace and in this one body God's purposes to reconcile both of them to God and then to each other by the cross he came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near for through him we both have access to the Father by one spirit that sets us up for the last paragraph in chapter 2 consequently you are no longer foreigners and strangers but fellow citizens with God's people and also members of his household built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Christ Jesus himself as the chief Cornerstone in him this whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord and in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit for this reason I bow my knees and I pray and then he gives the petitions what reason the reason is the very salvific purposes of God you pray in line with the revealed purposes of God in the gospel this bringing together of men and women into one you humanity or to change the metaphor into one body or to change the metaphor again into one temple one whole temple with is rising to be the great meeting place between God and human beings the church the temple of God built on the foundation to the end that that we so be built together we become a dwelling in which God lives by his spirit to this and I pray that you might have power power from God in your inner being so that God would so strengthen you that that he would take up residence within you that you would experience his transforming love in your lives power together with all the saints the whole church of God that you might be filled to all the measure of the fullness of God do you see what Paul is praying for he is praying for the ends of the gospel he knows what the gospel is and he wants to see gospel fruit gospel ends gospel goals Gospels tell us and that's where he focuses his praying but there's a second ground the first is bound up with a for this reason expression chapters 1 & 2 the second is who God is for this reason I kneel before the Father the next expression is hard to translate but probably this is right from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name in other words the ultimate father the archetypal father the the father of all fathers from whom all fatherhood all genuine fatherhood derives its very definition we pray to the ultimate Father our God father and this father knows what is best for us he loves us we are his family do you not think that he will listen to the prayers that are put to him doesn't Jesus remind us that if you ask your father for a fish he's not gonna slip in a snake and they say fool the little blighter so don't you think your heavenly father knows how to give good gifts do you see we're praying to God the Father so the first ground is all the purposes of God and redemption for this reason the second ground is the very character of God himself and that brings us to the doxology at the end it's addressed to him who is able to do immeasurably more than what we can imagine that's a remarkable passage to him as a who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine according to his power that it has work within us are you sometimes falling into the trap as I am myself far too often of praying through the prayers of Paul praying through things we ought to pray for and hearing the sonorous overtones of revival and Reformation and experience but thinking deep down in our own souls in the unconfessed sins of our dark hearts well we can pray like that but God's not really gonna do it I pray this a lot of times in the past nothing's ever changed and thus we approach our Heavenly Father with a certain kind of insult you're either not big enough or you're not generous enough to give us these things Paul ends with with the doxology that fastens attention on the smallness of our imagination we're praying to a God who can do immeasurably more than all we ask or even imagine you see for omnipotence there cannot be degrees of difficulty I know that some in this room are thinking our culture has slit so far down the ramp to hell that it can't be brought back we're heading for judgment and it may be that we are heading for judgment may be in the sovereign purses a purposes of God we are heading for massive judgment we certainly deserve it but do not think not for one moment that God is limited by the cultural slide he's a specialist in the impossible you know that in 1740 and st. Paul's Cathedral in London precisely six people showed up for Holy Communion six people that was the state of religion in England at the time there were 280 crimes on the books for which you could be hanged including stealing a loaf of bread children at the age of five were sent down on the mines and were frequently killed slavery was rising in the empire the rich were getting richer the poor were getting poorer in the sweeping power of the Industrial Revolution when God raised up Howell Harris George Whitfield and John Wesley and across 60 years British life was transformed the slave trade was abolished prison reform was introduced trade unions were invented in order to serve as a foil to the maximal greed of some of the capitalists of the day who were not constrained by anything but greed initially any power center in a damned world can become a focal point of greed whether its unions or capitalist owners the only thing that's gonna really constrain anything is the gospel if God could turn that culture around he could turn our culture around he may not but if he does not it must not for a moment cross our minds that he is unable to do so so we turn to him who is able to do far more than what we think what we could imagine imagine imagine Reformation and revival taking place in this country imagine it that biffle God can do much more than that did you see that that's the way he ends this prayer we are coming to a wise and gracious Heavenly Father and then he ends with an ultimate purpose in all of this to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever Lord teach us to pray let us pray I pray that out of God's glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his spirit in your inner being so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith and I pray that you being rooted and established in love 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 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God 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 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever amen this message was brought to you from truth for life where the learning is for living learn more about truth for life with alistair beg visit us online at truthfortheworld.org

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Keywords: D.A. Carson, Alistair Begg, The Apostle Paul, Prayer, Pray, Expository Preaching, Jesus Christ, God, The Holy Bible, Ephesians, Ephesians 3, Ephesians 3:14-21, Expository Sermon, Christian, Christianity, Power, The Love of God, The Love of Jesus Christ

Id: Y9wmYh7urO4

Length: 48min 48sec (2928 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 07 2017