Ephesians 3:14-21 Glory to God!

Eph 3:14-21

The noise of the mob is growing louder. You can hear them coming down the street. The chants are loud: “death to Christians”. There is no point calling the police – the police are leading the mob. They are coming to arrest you, your wife, your children, for rebellion against the state. What will you do? Will you stand firm for Christ no matter the cost? Do you really believe that his love his wide enough, deep enough, even in the darkness of persecution? Do you believe that he could empower you with inner strength from his Spirit from his glorious unlimited resources?

The mob bangs on the door – “stop believing in Christ, or die”. You call your wife and your children over to you. You look into their eyes, and realise how deeply you love them. The bangs grow louder as the police start to batter the door down. It begins to splinter. You stand together with your family, holding hands. The door bursts open, the police rush in – to find you in prayer. “Glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think. 21 Glory to him in the church and in Christ Jesus through all generations forever and ever! Amen.”

This was the situation in Ephesus in AD81, a mere 20 years after Paul wrote this letter to the Ephesians. This could be Norway in 2033, a mere 20 years from today. Are we ready to stand for Christ? Are we, today, taking upon us the armour of God, clothing ourselves in Christ, standing firm for him in our workplace? In our family? With our friends? At the movies? In front of the TV? The computer? We belong to him. We were dead, but now we are alive! Let us live for him!

Because, as we see throughout Ephesians, and in today’s passage, our God is great! His is great in power, in love.

God is great in power

14 When I think of all this, I fall to my knees and pray to the Father, 15 the Creator of everything in heaven and on earth. 16 I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. 17 Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him.

The Creator of Heaven and earth – the one who spoke a word – and the universe existed. Awesome, unlimited power!
And through Christ we have access to that power. If you are a Christian you have already experienced that power. The moment you believed, the Holy Spirit breathed new life into you. You were dead, a spiritual corpse – and suddenly you were alive! New breath coursed through your lungs. Alive! And each day you remain a Christian is by the power of the Spirit.
It may not feel like it, but each day you wake up a Christian is a miracle, empowered by 1:19 the same mighty power 20 that raised Christ from the dead and seated him in the place of honour at God’s right hand in the heavenly realms. The power of God within us. Christ himself 17 makes his home in our hearts as we trust in him.

Let’s have a look at the context of this amazing prayer. I don’t know if you noticed that Chapter 3 begins with When I think of all this. This is repeated in v14, the beginning of today’s passage When I think of all this, I fall to my knees and pray.
When I think of all what? Well, all that we’ve read so far in Ephesians! That we have every spiritual blessing in Christ. We lack nothing. That we are chosen in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. This choice is his sovereign grace, and has nothing to do with us – he has chosen us, weak, dead in our sins, on order to show the wonders of his grace. He has made us alive, raised us up with Christ, joined us into his family, his one new man, the church, the Holy Temple of praise to Him. His purpose is to show his wisdom through the church – we who believe in Christ are on display, trophies of grace. When I think of all this. Wow! Praise God!

But there is a second part to verse 1 When I think of all this, I, Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus for the benefit of you Gentiles – then Paul interrupts himself and doesn’t finish the thought until 4:1 Therefore I, a prisoner for serving the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of your calling. In light of God’s greatness, we respond in praise with our lives, no matter the cost. Chapter 3 is Paul showing what it means to live a life worthy of your calling. He is in jail because he was chosen to proclaim the Gospel (v9). What does it mean for us to lead a life worthy of our calling? Chapter 4 to 6 will help us understand that: love our church (church is not the building, not the organisation, but our brothers and sisters in), love our wives, love our children, work hard, pray, obey the Word, live the Gospel. The Gospel that we believe affects how we live our lives. That’s why we will do whatever it takes, pay whatever the cost, to serve Christ.

That’s why we need to pray for inner strength through his Spirit. Why we need to understand the love of Christ. Why we need to know God is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think.

Because when we look at the powers around us – the state, our culture, other people’s hard hearts. Well, it often seems hopeless, doesn’t it? We’ve heard how closed the Eritreans are, the Philippinos, the Norwegians, to the gospel. People have no need for Christ, they think. Blessed with God’s good common grace, all their needs met – and instead of praising God they reject him. Is it worth living for Christ? Paul is in prison for the sake of the gospel, for the sake of the church. Is it worth it?

Because the powers against the Gospel are huge. Augustus, the Emperor of Rome until AD14, had declared the day of his birth be known throughout the Empire as “the day of Good News to the world of salvation”. People had to address him as Saviour. This began the cult of Emperor worship, often combined with worship of the city of Rome herself.
At the time Paul wrote, in AD61, Nero was on the throne. Nero, who would soon blame Christians for the great fire in Rome, which would start a massive persecution against Christians across the Empire. Ephesus was the second largest city in the Empire. The Empire had massive power against the seemingly weak “power” of the tiny church in Ephesus.

What chance did they have?

Well, tell me: where is the Church of Augustus? The “saviour” Augustus, he, with all his earthly power, did not do what a simple backwater carpenter did. There is no church of Augustus.
See, in earthly terms, the church should not exist. But it does, because it is powered by the very power of God. The church is the display of God’s power, God’s wisdom.

So be encouraged! The church was weak, tiny, scattered, without political power, without military might, without any earthly power. It had no way of safely gathering together – just tiny little pockets of people meeting in the name of Jesus across a vast Empire. All earthly wisdom said that it would soon be dead.
There is no earthly reason, no explanation why the church survived – especially after Nero’s proclamation to arrest all Christians and sentence them to death.
Yet, it survived because the power behind it is no earthly power – it is the power of God. As we read in Eph 1:19–23 (NLT) I also pray that you will understand the incredible greatness of God’s power for us who believe him. This is the same mighty power 20 that raised Christ from the dead and seated him in the place of honour at God’s right hand in the heavenly realms. 21 Now he is far above any ruler or authority or power or leader or anything else—not only in this world but also in the world to come. 22 God has put all things under the authority of Christ and has made him head over all things for the benefit of the church. 23 And the church is his body; it is made full and complete by Christ, who fills all things everywhere with himself.

So when you look at the church in Norway and despair – don’t. For the Lord has his people, and though the church seems to be dying or dead – there are signs of growth all around. New shoots springing up – little pockets of Christians faithfully proclaiming the gospel, willing to serve and obey Christ no matter the cost.

When you look back at your home country and despair – don’t. I told you last week that in the Sudan the government are actively deporting Christians. This week I met a nurse who had been working in the Sudan as a medical nurse doing mission work on the side. They had a team of Christians spreading the gospel for 7 years in the Darfur region. Last month they were deported, a Korean family the last to go after being arrested and interrogated. But she was not saddened. She said “we leave behind many Christians in Darfur, who will carry on the work of spreading the gospel”.

Christians in Norway, Christians in Sudan, Christians in Iraq, Iran, Eritrea, India, Pakistan, China, Myanmar - all over the world - including our little church, all of us a fulfilment of 20 Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think. And what is it that he will accomplish, more than we might as or think? The answer is in the next verse: God will glorifying his name through the church. 21 Glory to him in the church and in Christ Jesus through all generations forever and ever! Amen.

God is great in power.

2. God is great in love

18 And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. 19 May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.

Back to the Ephesians – on one side they had the Emperor demanding they worship him – their refusal would soon lead to Christians being outlawed across the Empire, arrested and thrown to the lions for treachery against the state. And on the other side they had the Temple of Artemis, a huge religious cult which affected all of Asia Minor – and Ephesus was the centre. The Temple was gigantic, housing 25,000 people each week for worship: 10% of the population of 250,000. You can imagine the huge influence this had on the city. No-one was unaffected by the cult of Artemis. In addition, there was massive amounts of money to be made from the worship of Artemis – statues, icons, magic books, relics, and the tourist trade – perhaps a bit like Saudia Arabia and Mecca. When the church in Ephesus burned their magic books to show they had broken with Artemis and belonged to Christ the value of the books they burned was 20 MILLION kroner! This was a big deal.

How would you feel as a new Christian in Ephesus? That perhaps the devil himself was against you? Would you still be here this morning if the Norwegian government had banned Christianity and stated that Christians could be arrested and all their property confiscated? Would you still be here if people spat at you in the streets and if the shops refused to serve you because they all felt like you were destroying their livelihood? Where is the line that you would not cross for Jesus? How far is too far? Because if there is a line, I wonder if I could be so bold as to suggest that perhaps you have not met with the living God. To be a Christian is to call Christ saviour, yes, but also Lord. Our lives belong to him, not to us. He is our Master.

Tough? Yes! So Paul reminds us of the glorious riches we have in Christ, the incredible love shown to us. Give up everything? No problem, for he has given me everything. Throw me in jail – no problem, because Christ’s love reaches me even there, covers me even in the darkest dungeon or the highest tower. How wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is!

If Christ is at home in us, like it says in v17 – then we are rooted in God’s love, and we are strong. We are strong, to serve in church. We are strong to be faithful to our wives. We are strong to work hard at work, not to lie or cheat or be lazy, but work as for the Lord. We are strong not to worry, or be discontented, but to trust our Heavenly Father who loves us with such a HUGE love. Trust him. Where you are now is where you need to be – and if it is hard, then learn from it. Learn to draw your strength from Him. God often puts us in situations that are beyond what we can bear – so that we turn to Him, and depend on His strength. His unlimited, glorious strength. We are strong to change nappies without grumbling, to clean our house, to endure sickness and hardship, to go through dark times unbowed, whatever it is - because we know our Saviour and Lord.

Do you get the picture of what it means to be a Christian? What it means to know Christ? This is not some Sunday School now-be-a-good-boy nonsense. “Being good” is not the gospel. The gospel is this: I was DEAD. I was apart from God, without hope in this world. God was my enemy, opposed to me because of my sin. God is HOLY, perfect, sinless. He is perfect light, and no darkness is found in Him. By his nature he cannot tolerate sin – he obliterates, destroys it. And we, we are sinners by nature, rebels from the moment we are conceived (thanks Adam!). But God – God whose very nature is LOVE does the impossible. He takes a loathsome creature like me, made in his image but twisted and marred by sin – he takes me and lifts me up and says “LIVE!”

And my body untwists, my eyes open, his breath (Spirit) enters me and I am ALIVE! By the grace of God, I am ALIVE! The breath of God, the Spirit of power is in me. Christ lives within me. I am his Holy Temple. I am alive, created anew in Christ Jesus to do the good works he planned for me to do before time began (2:10).

Isn’t it glorious? Isn’t this so much better than “be a bit better, then maybe God will like you”. No, the truth is that we are much worse than we think we are – and that we are much more loved than we think we are. God’s love is overwhelming. When we realise that we deserve hell. When we realise that we have spat in his face and shaken our fist at him and said NO! And yet, yet he still came to this earth, made himself nothing, a man like us, in order to die a sinners death on a cross he did not deserve.

God is great in love. God is great in power. Glory to God!