Today’s message is from Ephesians 1:15-19. It’s about prayer and God’s power. In last week’s passage (Ephesians 1:1-15, right before today’s passage) the apostle Paul talked about the greatness of God’s blessings through Jesus Christ, his glorious grace and mercy and his forgiveness of our sins—the gospel of our salvation. (Paul wrote this to the Ephesians, but it is to us, also, and to all the church.) God’s purpose is to redeem us and make us blameless. He has given us every spiritual blessing through Christ (and has means it has already happened when we accepted Christ)! He has given us every spiritual blessing through Christ. His purpose is to bring everything together, both things in heaven and things on earth, through Christ, to bring praise to his glory.

I mentioned last week that Paul talked about spiritual blessings “in the heavens”—“every spiritual blessing in the heavens” (look back at verse 2). Literally he says “in the heavenlies”—“every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies” or “in the heavenly places”. It’s a special way of way of speaking, a special terminology that Paul uses a number of times in Ephesians to refer to the place where spiritual things (both blessings and battles) take place. It’s where the spiritual action is. And it’s not a place that’s far off up in the sky. It’s all around us, and I believe, even inside us—the heavens, the heavenly places—both blessings and battles. (We’ll see about the spiritual battles later in Ephesians.)

Now let’s read today’s passage. Remember as always, as we read the passage, that we are reading the word of God. I speak of what the apostle Paul wrote, but it’s actually what God’s Holy Spirit led him to write. It’s God speaking to the Ephesians (and to us) through the apostle Paul. It’s the word of God!

¹⁵This is why, since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, ¹⁶I never stop giving thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers. ¹⁷I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, would give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him. ¹⁸I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened so you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the glorious riches of His inheritance among the saints, ¹⁹and what is the immeasurable greatness of His power to us who believe, according to the working of His vast strength. (Ephesians~1:15-19)

All the things Paul talked about in last week’s passage, all the blessings, redemption, salvation, the seal of the Holy Spirit... Of all these things Paul says, “This is why, since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I never stop giving thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers.” (Verse 15) Paul was in prison at the time he wrote Ephesians, but he was praying for all of the churches. He was giving thanks to God for them because of their faith—because he had heard of their faith in the Lord Jesus and because he knew that all the things he said about them—about every spiritual blessing, about their salvation, about the seal of the Holy Spirit—were true.

And what was the evidence of their faith? What convinced Paul of their faith? What do you think? It was their love for all the saints—and not just for some of the saints, but for all of the saints (some of us are less lovable than others). Jesus says, “By this all people will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John~13:35)

And, by the way, Jesus says for us not to just love those who will love us back. It’s natural to love your family members and your friends (at least it was when Jesus said it—maybe not so much now). But Jesus said that we must love those who we don’t expect to love us back. And Paul, remember, talked about love for all the saints.

Now here’s a warning to us. This is from a different part of the Bible. Do you think we are living in the last days? The disciples asked Jesus what would be the sign of his coming back and the sign of the end of the age. Jesus told them that there would be wars and rumors of war, famines and earthquakes—that there would be persecutions of Christians—and that these things would be just the beginning—the beginning of birth pains. You can say that those things have always happened, there have always been famines and earthquakes an wars. But people who have studied these things say that the frequency has greatly increased even during our lifetimes. And think about the weapons of mass destruction that we have now. People fought each other with swords and arrows—then they fought each other with guns. Now there are weapons that can destroy entire cities in a moment and wipe out whole populations with biological warfare. Don’t you think it’s getting close? Here’s Jesus’s warning to us: “At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved. (Matt.~24:10-13~NIV)

The love of most will grow cold. This is absolutely a spiritual battle in the heavenly places. Our enemy the devil wants to destroy us. The apostle Peter says, “Be sober! Be on the alert! Your adversary the Devil is prowling around like a roaring lion, looking for anyone he can devour.” (1 Pet.~5:8) The apostle Paul’s going to tell us more about how to fight the spiritual battle in chapter 6. But for now, the answer is to pray, to pray with thanksgiving. He says that he never stops giving thanks as he prays for the Ephesians. He’s going to tell us how he prays for them.

First, what about our love? What about our love for all of the saints? We’ve been talking about what love is on Wednesday. “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.” (1 Cor.~13:4-8a~NIV) Here are the question we can ask:

Are you patient and kind? Or are you impatient and unkind. Do you envy anyone else’s possessions or success? Or do you rejoice in God’s blessing for that person (assuming that he or she is a believer)? Do you boast or are you proud? Do you think you have to promote yourself or somehow make yourself look good? Do you secretly hope that others will envy you? Do you boast or are you proud? Or do you really believe that God that has given you all that you need—that he loves you as a son or daughter—and that that is what matters, not what men think of you or what possessions you have?

How do you relate to others? Are you rude and self-seeking? Or are you humble and considerate, considering the needs of other before your own needs? And how about anger? Are you easily angered at what others do or don’t do? Or do you think, “I do similar things myself—maybe in a little different situation—maybe even worse? Are you patient with others who don’t do things exactly the way you would like.

Do you keep records of wrongs? We tend to add up every wrong that one person may do against us. The bigger the list, the more offended we are by the next occurrence. Isn’t that true? That the nature of the flesh. But Jesus came in the flesh and that was definitely not his nature. Jesus says, “For if you forgive people their wrongdoing, your heavenly Father will forgive you as well. But if you don't forgive people, your Father will not forgive your wrongdoing.” (Matt.~6:14, 15) If we forgive, then there won’t be a list of wrongdoings to add up. There won’t be one more wrong doing to forgive. There’ll be just one, the one that just happened. (And if our adversary the devil reminds you of the list, praise the Lord and tell him to forget it—that the whole list has already been wiped clean.)

Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. Do you rejoice when someone else fails so that you can feel better about yourself? Does it build up your self-esteem when someone else fails? Or do you sympathize with that person? Do you encourage and pray for that person and know that you have weaknesses, too.

Love always protects: There doesn’t seem to be complete agreement over what the word translated “protects” exactly means. Most of the translations say things like “endures”, “bears”, “never gives up”. What I quoted was the NIV translation, “Love always protects.” I quoted the NIV translation partly because this is a familiar passage and I’m more used to the NIV. The word in question has exactly the same root as the word for roof, so that may be why the NIV translators chose “Love always protects” rather that love endures or bears. Anyway, “love always protects,” brings to my mind the problem of gossip. How careful are we to keep confidential things that other have told us in confidence and trusted us not to pass on? Think about it.

Love always hopes: Do we love people with the hope that we have in Christ? Some among us may appear to be hopeless, but there is always hope in Christ for all of us. (And “hope” is not that kind of hope that says that you would like something to happen, but it probably won’t.) Our hope is in Christ! Love doesn’t give up. It always perseveres. It never fails. God’s love never fails.

Now here’s how Paul says he was praying for the Ephesians: “I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, would give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him.” (Verse 17) Paul could have prayed for their good health. He could have prayed for their physical needs. He could have prayed for God to protect them from persecution. But he chose to pray for their spiritual needs above those other things. Above all other things, we need to know God more and more every day, God who gave his Son to rescue us from sin and death and hell—we need to know him. He reveals himself to us by his word and by his Holy Spirit. That’s how we know him.

Now Paul is going to give some more details on how he has been praying—what he wants the Ephesians to know about God. He says (in verses 18 and 19), “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened so you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the glorious riches of His inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of His power to us who believe, according to the working of His vast strength.” These are the things we need to know in our hearts in order to know God. We have to ask God for these things and he has to give them to us. Let’s look at them.

...what is the hope of God’s calling: The hope of God’s calling is eternal life and righteousness with no more dying or death or crying or pain—to be in his presence forever. It’s the hope of salvation. It’s the hope of being like Jesus. Do you want to be like Jesus? We will be like him with bodies like his. And we will be without sin.

...what are the glorious riches of His inheritance among the saints: Do we, as God’s saints, as his holy people, have an inheritance? We certainly do: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ (the apostle Peter says in 1 Peter 1:3-5). According to His great mercy, He has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, uncorrupted, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who are being protected by God's power through faith for a salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.” We do have an inheritance! But we are also God’s inheritance. If you look back at verse 11, Paul says, “In him (in Christ) we were also made His inheritance...” God is in the process of preparing an inheritance for himself through Jesus Christ—and we, the church, are God’s inheritance!

...what is the immeasurable greatness of His power to us who believe, according to the working of His vast strength: God has power. His power is immeasurable. He has power for us. That means ability for us. He can enable us to do what we can’t do for ourselves (which is to say, everything). (The reality is that we can’t really do anything for ourselves. We can’t even keep on breathing. But God enables us to do some things whether we ask him to or not. Some people who are rejecting God are able to do quite a lot. But it’s still God’s power that enables them. Jesus says that there will be people who will cast out demons and do many miraculous signs. But when the judgment day comes, he will say that he never knew them and send them away. But for us who believe, he wants us to recognize that we are dependent on him moment by moment. Do you know that? Do you remember it moment by moment? Blessed are the poor in spirit because the kingdom of heaven is theirs. (Matt. 5:3)

What’s the conclusion in all these things? Paul prayed for the Ephesians to be able to know God and know his power. And God wants us to pray for all these things, too. He wants us to ask for them. And he wants us to ask in behalf of one another just as Paul was asking in behalf of the Ephesians. And he wants us to ask with thanksgiving for what he has done—what he has done through Jesus and in and through all those who are around us just as Paul did.

You know, we all want to rejoice in the Lord. We want to rejoice, not despair. Paul says, “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!” (Philip. 4:4) If we pray seriously for each other as Paul prayed for the Ephesians, we will rejoice. According church history, all revivals have started with people praying seriously and not giving up.

How have we been praying? Well, we do pray for human situations—for each other and for others. We pray for healing for those who are sick and for jobs for those who need them and for conflicts to be resolved. Donna (I mentioned last week) usually thanks God that he’s blessed us with each other, for our fellowship together and our love for each other. (But I have to confess that when I give thanks, it’s more of a formality: “Thank you for Jesus. Amen.”) But, as for us, when we pray, we don’t pray nearly as much for God’s spiritual power as we do for our human situations. We don’t pray much for strength to stand against Satan’s temptations. We don’t pray much for the fruit of the Spirit. We don’t pray much for the salvation of those who have not accepted Christ.

If you look at verse 20, you will see that the power that Paul was praying for for the Ephesians was the same power that raised Jesus from the dead. (Verse 20 says, “He demonstrated this power in the Messiah by raising Him from the dead and seating Him at His right hand in the heavens.” Do you think we need to be raised from the dead (figuratively speaking, that is)? God has immeasurably great power for us who believe, according to the working of His vast strength, but he wants us to pray for it. (All revivals have started with serious and persistent prayer.)