Well, this is it. This is our last week.
We come to the end of Ephesians and we began this back in August
and went back and looked, which means it's been just over seven
months. We've been studying this letter
that Paul wrote not to just to Ephesus, but to all the churches
that were in that region. And we say by extension, he's
writing even to us today. There's a liturgy and every
moment holy. They wrote a liturgy for
lamenting the completion of a beloved book.
I thought this might be appropriate to to help us along,
the author writes. My heart aches each time I
received these beautiful, distant rumors of that far
country. Of course, I do not want such a
story to end, for it's wedged open for me away, like a window
through which I've glimpsed a vision of things more as they
one day will be than as they are now, in these hard and sorrowing
lands of exile. Thank you, Oh my God, for loving
me enough that you would rouse my deepest desires again,
appointing these longings as true signposts planted in a
war-torn and cratered landscape, reminding me that all history is
leading at last to a king and a Kingdom and pointing me ever
onward toward his righteous and eternal city.
Amen. So we're left in this war-torn
Kingdom, but we, we look, there's excitement.
We're we get to start Deuteronomy next week.
There's a joy in getting to submit to a new author and a new
book, but there's also a lament and having to say goodbye to
Paul and to these churches in Ephesus.
And as we finish the story, I want to go back and just recap
for a minute everything that we've learned so far in this
series. Ephesians is the queen of the
Epistles. That's not the Tour de force of
Romans. It's not first and priority and
prominence like Romans, but it's more beautiful and lovely than
all the others epistles. It's what we call it, the queen
of the Epistles. And there's really little in
this book that you can't find somewhere else in the Bible.
But the uniqueness of this book comes from the beauty that Paul
writes with and the rhetorical flourish that he adds.
And it comes with with beauty and with power.
We we've seen Paul focus on our new identity and defining us as
being in Christ for from him and through him and to him are all
things that's from Romans, but it's true here in Ephesians.
You see Paul's focus on Jesus and his exaltation as Lord.
You get that overwhelming impression.
We see God's cosmic vision for his church in these six
chapters. We saw back in chapter 1 just
how incredibly involved your salvation really is.
And he goes back to the love that God had for you before he
created you. And we saw that our salvation is
from God the Father and through the Son and by the Spirit as
you've been predestined unto adoption, that he had a plan
that you would become a child of God even before the foundation
of the earth. And then your redemption was
blood bought by the love of Jesus Christ and that redemption
was applied to your heart by his Holy Spirit.
The moment you believe by faith. The beauty of chapter 1, chapter
2 said how we can be saved. Justification by faith alone
came through the the legendary passage.
For it is by grace that you have been saved through what faith.
And this is not your own doing. It's the gift of God, not of
work, so that no one can boast. And then he adds beautifully,
for you are God's handiwork. You are God's masterpiece that
he's created in Christ Jesus for good works.
And he prepared them beforehand that you should walk in them.
Then came the great prayer of Paul for power in Ephesians 3,
that according to the riches of His glory, He might grant you to
be strengthened with power through His Spirit in your inner
beings, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.
To Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout
all generations, forever and ever.
Amen. We saw He gives you the power to
know what you have no capacity or power to know, namely the
love of God. Chapter 4 Paul talks about the
incredible unity of the church. As he says, there's one body and
one spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that
belongs to your call. 1 Lord, 1 faith, one baptism, one God and
Father over all, who is through all and in all.
And then came chapter 5. As we've moved into this really
practical section, He shows you that this is not just
theoretical and theological. This is not just something that
we know that's distinct and compartmentalized from our life.
We see just how practical the implications of this theology is
extends to how we interact with one another, how we joke with
one another how we order our marriages and our households and
our families. Chapter 5 verse 22 wives
submitting to your own husbands as to the Lord verse 25 husbands
loving your wives as Christ loved the church and your
children. Chapter 6 verse one and two
obeying your parents and the Lord for this is right.
Honor your father and mother and all of this tied together was
teaching you above all your identity is found in Christ
Jesus and in his local church. So 35 times you are reminded
that you are now united with Christ.
Your identity is in Christ. And the culture tells you your
identity comes in in many places.
It's from your biology, it's from your intersectionality,
it's from your sexual orientation.
And these things may play some role in your identity.
They'll add to it that your identity is found in what you
produce and what you accomplish. And that may be true in part,
but Paul tells you this, Ephesians tells you this, that
your identity is found for first and foremost, and being a child
of God and belonging to the household of God by faith, this
is your family. This is where you belong.
This is the most important thing about you.
And we reflect back on everything that we've learned
and everywhere we've been. Now we have to ask the question,
how shall we then live in light of these six chapters?
How shall we then live? And Paul ends the book with
three calls. You saw the first one last week.
There's a call to war. There's a call to watchfulness
and there's a call to prayer. I'll go back and recap.
First the call to war and then this week looking at verses 18
to 24, the call to watchfulness and the call to prayer.
Read with me these final verses. Turn in your Bibles to Ephesians
618 to 24. Important to note, it's a comma
leading us into verse 18. Praying at all times in the
Spirit with all prayer and supplication.
To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making
supplication for all the Saints and also for me, that words may
be given to me, and opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the
mystery of the gospel for which I am an ambassador in chains,
that I may declare it boldly as I ought to speak, so that you
also may know how I am and what I'm doing.
Tikicus, the beloved brother and faithful minister, and the Lord
will tell you everything. I have sent him to you for this
very purpose that you may know how we are and that He may
encourage your hearts. Peace be to the brothers and
love with faith from God the Father and the Lord Jesus
Christ. Grace be with all who love our
Lord Jesus Christ with love. Incorruptible.
First call came last week. We were called to war.
Number one, we're called to war. It was in verses 10 to 17.
The call to war was also a call to strength.
If you remember, he says be strong in the Lord and in the
strength of his might or literally be strong in the Lord
and the strength of his strength because you're in a battle and
the war is not won by your own strength.
It's his strength. So we're praying in our in our
verses today in the spirit and we're called not just to
strength, but we're called to to take up arms, as he says, take
up the armor of God and then put on the armor of God because
we're in a spiritual you consider what it means to live
the Christian life. Paul says this is the metaphor
he gives. When you consider your life,
your calling, I want you to think of it as spiritual
warfare. You are taking part in a war.
And when we think of the Christian life, we often think
of the Christian life in in terms of simplicity, right?
Meaning I need to just leverage all that I have.
I need to give everything that I have to the Lord.
I need to sell what I have, live this simple life.
It's all about getting as much money as possible to the church.
Many people take vows of poverty, maximizing what we give
away. And the Bible corrects our
thinking and it says, no, look at your Christian life instead
as one of strategy, not necessarily simplicity, living
like the Nordic countries, but it's strategy, leveraging
everything that God has given you for this war and for his
Kingdom for the sake of the gospel.
I was thinking on this. If everybody lived like George
Mueller, we all sold all we had, took vows of poverty, His story
wouldn't even make sense there. It took a whole host of other
people that were leveraging their their resources and their
education and their occupation that made all of that possible.
And so each has been given resources and gifts to leverage.
And we have to be strategic. It's a wartime mindset, not
necessarily living first and foremost simply, but living
strategically. Our minds are impressed with
winning the war. So he says, take up the armor of
God. He says, put on the armor of
God. It's a metaphor for virtue.
Put on righteousness and arm yourself with theology and the
truth and with doctrine and carry along with it the
assurance of your salvation. He says Christ has bound the
strongman. We plunder his goods.
It's war, it's strategic. It means the time for comfort
and relaxation and entertainment is is gone and now is the time
for wartime strategy. We tried to hit on this in our
in our budget meeting. The elders came and it was it
was really a strategy meeting. How are we going to leverage our
resources in this conflict? And we said in that meeting that
our, our church has been blessed with a measure of health, a
measure of talent, and a measure of, of resource.
And so now we ask, what are we going to build?
Now is the time to build and how are we going to be strategic?
And it began for our church with what God has already revealed.
It's it's training counsellors in the expansion of a
counselling ministry. As we, as we realize we are not
beginning a counselling ministry, we are a counselling
ministry. And now we're equipping
ourselves to be prepared. There's plans for church plants
in the work. We're going to be strategic with
new gospel witness. There's partnerships in North
Africa, the expansion of our theological library, new city
partnerships through the Justice and Mercy team, where we love on
families with children and are serving children through
deepened relationships with DHS and safe families.
This is our church's wartime strategy.
This is our strategy. And the greatest innovations in
history come during wartime because urgency breeds
innovation. I think of Isaiah and the the
piece of armor that's missing in the New Testament that it had,
that it described the Messiah. It said he wrapped himself in
zeal like a cloak. There's an urgency when you're
in a war. And so there's an article that
was published a few months ago by the US Department of War
where they look back on all the innovation that World War 2
brought. It's really interesting to to to
see and think through this. It said.
If you enjoy a microwave oven or radar or your computer or duct
tape or penicillin or GPS or the Internet, you have the fruit of
these of this conflict that we enjoy everyday, but we forget
they came from wartime innovation.
Paul says you're called to war now, live with wartime mindset.
And like the metaphor of a soldier, Paul brings up now the
metaphor of a sentry. SENTRY.
As you look at the second call, it's not just a call to war, but
because we are in a war, he says.
I now call you to watchfulness. Second call is a call to
watchfulness. And the call comes in verse 18
where he says keep alert. That's the imperative.
Stay awake, keep alert, and do it with all perseverance.
Interestingly, probably only interestingly for me is the word
vigilante. If you study that word,
vigilante is an individual who takes law enforcement into their
own hands without legal authority, which is why it
becomes the stuff of legend and comic books.
But these vigilantes, they, they see the legitimate agencies as
inadequate, and so they operate outside of them.
And what's most interesting about this word is that the word
vigilante comes from the Latin vigilare, which means to stay
awake. They're saying somebody's got to
stay awake and keep watch. And the word vigil means awake
or alert and vigilance means watchful.
And the word entered our American vocabulary in the 1850s
when they they had men who had to keep watch on the frontier
when there was no one to keep watch.
And it were it originally meant neutrally A watchman.
And this is what called Paul's calling us to be.
This is what Paul is calling you to be.
You are a century. You are a, a soldier standing
guard and keeping guard. You are vigilant.
And this theme of watchfulness, this call to watchfulness is a
theme throughout the the New Testament.
So it's actually a major theme of the New Testament.
You go to Matthew 24 to 25 that the parables there are called
parables of vigilance because Jesus keeps commanding his
church to stay awake and to keep watching, to be prepared for
that day. And what does it mean to be
awake? Theologians see several layers
or levels of wakefulness. I want to introduce you to the
the three levels. The first one is Christological.
There's a Christological wakefulness, which means this is
our call to be alert and awake. And it's rooted in Jesus's
alertness and awakeness and vigilance.
We're following after our Master and our Savior who was awake.
He, he applies to himself the metaphor of a shepherd, in part
because the shepherd is vigilant in watching over the sheep when
they can't watch over themselves.
He says I am the Good Shepherd. He, he puts it as and John 10 as
opposed to these careless hirelings that really don't care
about the sheep. And so he sees them and he
guards them. The, the hirelings see the wolf
coming and they leave. He says I am the Good Shepherd.
The Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
He was a hired hand and not a shepherd sees the wolf coming
and leaves the sheep and flees and the wolf snatches and
scatters them. I am the Good Shepherd.
And so Paul takes that language, that imagery of the shepherd,
and he actually applies it to the shepherds of local churches.
And most important for Ephesians is he, he actually applies it in
Acts 20 to the shepherds of the Ephesian church, which is
presumably who he's writing to the shepherds and their sheep.
He says to them in Acts 20, Pay careful attention to yourselves
and to all the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you
overseers to care for the Church of God, which He obtained with
His own blood. I know that after my departure
fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock, and
from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted
things to draw away the disciples after them.
Therefore he uses this word, Gregory oh.
Therefore keep alert. Be alert.
And Gregory, Oh, if you know anyone named Gregory, their name
means alert or watchful, vigilant.
As an interesting aside, that's why 16 popes have taken that
name for themselves, Pope Gregory, because they want to be
alert and vigilant. This is what pastors and leaders
of local churches are called to. And Jesus takes that.
Paul, you know, Paul applies it to to shepherds and teachers and
leaders. Jesus applies it to all of us.
He says in Mark 13, as Joshua read for us, he commands his
whole church to stay awake and to be watchful for the coming
day of Jesus Christ. And so we've said theologians
see multiple levels of watchfulness.
Well, this is the second. This is what Jesus commands you
to. It's an eschatological or an end
time watchfulness. We're watching for the end.
And as we watch for the end, we're living in light of the
end. This is your wartime mindset.
We're not living as if time's going to go on forever because
we know Jesus says these are the last days.
And because of that, the third level of watchfulness is
ethical. Watchfulness has a moral demand
of you. It demands a response of you.
We are to live holy lives because the end is near.
We're to live holy lives because this is it said in the language
of Ephesians, Our armor doesn't come off until Christ comes and
he's not here yet. And so we leave it on.
We keep our righteousness going before us.
And so helpful to understand this, I'm going to put another
word on you. We taught this word to our
Wednesday night tips for teaching class.
You have to be awake because of this word, soporific.
Anybody know the definition of soporific tending to produce
sleepiness? This was Paul's sermon when he
preaches. And there's the guy in the
window, poor little, what was his name?
Eudicus. He preaches and he, he wasn't
interesting enough. So Uticus falls asleep and he
falls out the window and dies. So that's my warning to my
preaching tips for teaching Class B.
Don't be boring. People could die soporific.
Stay awake, keep awake, morally charged readiness.
The world will lull you into a kind of sleep.
Scripture picks up on this metaphor of sleepiness.
Jesus warns Luke 814. He says, As for the seed that
fell among the thorns, they are those who hear, but as they go
on their way, they are choked by the cares and the riches and the
pleasures of this world. Be on guard for these very
things. You're choked by the cares and
riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature.
The rich fool in Luke 1219 to 20 says, soul, you have ample goods
laid up for many years, so therefore relax, eat, drink and
be merry. And that's not the wartime
mindset that Jesus had in mind. He actually says to him, You
fool, tonight your soul will be required of you.
Take care of him. Going all the way back to the
beginning. Moses says, stealing time from
our next message, Take care lest you forget your God.
This is his way of saying, stay awake.
He says, lest you have eaten and are full, and you've built good
houses and you live in them, and your silver and your gold is
multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied.
And he says, then your heart will be lifted up and you will
forget your God. So as you, how did you get the
house you want, as you get the raise, as you get the salary, as
your money increases, and as God blesses you, by the way, as he
says he will when you live according to the principles of
the word, take care, stay awake lest you forget Him.
He says to the Church of Laodicea.
John does in Revelation. You say, I am rich, I have
prospered, I need nothing. Those are the words of a sleepy
church. So comfort and prosperity lead
to pride. Pride leads to forgetfulness and
forget. Forgetfulness is is a damnable
estate. It's a dangerous, dangerous
place to be. The command of the church is
this stay awake, Paul that the Thessalonians says it in these
words. Let us not sleep as other people
do, but let us keep awake and be sober.
What is he talking about? He's talking about
entertainment. Entertainment is everywhere.
Pleasure is everywhere. To be had, comfort, distraction.
There's a momentum of your life along the path that you've
already set it on. And is is is that momentum there
because it's easy and it's the path of least resistance or are
on you? Are you on this path because
you're in a wartime mindset and this is where you can produce
the greatest fruitfulness for the Kingdom in this war?
You have to stop and ask critically in, in a moment of a
personal awareness and alertness, say, am I on the path
that I'm on because it's right and good and beautiful and true?
Or am I on the path because it's easy?
You have to be awake. You have to ask yourself, and
you can't ask yourself this at a restaurant.
The world distracts you. You step into a restaurant and
there's the sports channel and there's fails going on on this
TV and here's trivia and everything else and they're
trying to distract you so you don't even understand how long
it's taking to get your food. You can't think with all these
distractions. You have to get alert and get
away and pray there was a time. Years ago I this was very aware
to me. I had a day.
You've had days like this. You wake up late, hit the snooze
bar one too many times. You Sprint to work, no shower.
Worked hard all day, worked through lunch, very short lunch.
Had plans with my friends when I got off of work.
So got off of work, had a podcast all the way to their
house, stepped into that room with board games and pizza and
flashing lights and music and left his house at 11:00 PM.
And I remember leaving the house and it was dark outside and I
was like, when did this happen? When did it turn dark?
It was dark when I left. And just remember, he has a very
long driveway and I'm walking down this driveway and I hear
tinnitus and ringing in my own ear.
And it was my wake up call to realize I've been awake.
I've been asleep all day. I was asleep until 11:00 PM.
And if God wanted to tell me anything, if you wanted to
whisper anything to me, if I was going to be sensitive to
anything of the Lord, he would have had to wait until this
moment apart from the car crash. Or the Lord has a way of getting
your attention. But I was not alert to the
things of God until 11:00 PM. And this is in part what he's
talking about. He's saying keep alert, stay
awake, be watchful, don't get distracted, don't get involved
in the flow of life. Don't question whether what
you're doing is good and beautiful and true.
But look at ask the question, what may the Lord be demanding
of me? What, what may he be asking me
to leverage on behalf of this spiritual war?
Am I awake or have I fallen asleep?
Call to arms, a call to war, a call to wakefulness.
And the third call is a call to prayer.
And I want you to think, if you've ever gone to two or a
castle, if you've ever gone to the Tower of London, if you ever
go to a museum, what do they put out front right there when you
walk in the premier places? What do people want to see?
We want to see the swords. We want to see the cannons.
We want to see the Shields. We want to see all the cool,
manly old stuff that they had at the weapons, the armaments in
Warcraft. Because that it's saying that
this defensive structure, this nation did some pretty cool
things. It just tells us something
interesting happened here. They they weathered conflict.
The people here accomplished great things.
Everything about swords and Shields communicates action, and
in the same way, everything in Ephesians 6 orients us.
It screams action, communicates action, and it gears us toward
it. The armor is on.
We put on the armor the sword truth, the breastplate of
righteousness, the shield of faith.
We've taken the helmet of salvation in the shoes of
readiness. We've wrapped ourselves in zeal
as a cloak, and by this we can withstand all the flaming darts
of the evil 1. And then he finally says, And
we, we've been given our swords. And Paul says, now that your
armor's on, now that I have your attention, now that you're
listening, now that you're awake, now that you understand
that you're in a war, now that you're vigilant, here's what I
want you to. Here's what I want you to do.
Go in your inner room, close the door, get on your knees, close
your eyes and pray. This is Jesus recommendation for
spiritual warfare. I hope you feel the contrast
there of you're in a battle and here's your armor and now go to
your inner room and close the door.
Have your having your armor on. I want you to take the most
humble and vulnerable position possible.
It's the same position as one who's being executed and turn
the lights off and and pray and prayer is a wonderful tool
because it has great power and it's working.
It's how spiritual progress is made.
And this is just a reminder. It's his strength.
He's going to say here in verse 18 that you're praying in the
Spirit. You can't move mountains, but
when you pray, God can. It's just a reminder that this
is a humbling and utterly humiliating thing.
It's showing in our natural way of thinking.
There's really nothing less that we can do in the eyes of the
world than to go in our closet and close our eyes.
It's foolishness in the eyes of the world.
But Jesus says, Paul says from the perspective of God, there's
nothing more powerful. There's no more powerful weapon
than prayer. It's at the heart of spiritual
warfare. So Paul says we're praying and
we're praying in the Spirit. This is what it means to be
strong in his strength. We're not strong only in our
spiritual gifts and we're not strong only in our natural
affinities that he's given us, but we're strong in the Lord.
And so he sets prayer off here as distinct from this, the
spiritual weapons and the armor. It's not attached to a piece of
armor, but it's very important, as we've already said, that
verse 17 ends, at least in my translation, with a comma.
And the commentators make much of this because he's saying it's
still connected. It's the same, the grammar
continues, it's the same thought.
Along with the armor of God is prayer.
And it answers, How are we supposed to be watchful?
You're to put on the armor of God and you're to pray.
You're the sentry on the wall. You're looking out as you see
things in the world, as you see the things that are happening in
the war, You pray. That's how you're putting on
this armor. And it's actually given more
attention than any individual piece of armor is, which is why
Charles and his song Soldiers of the Soldiers of Christ arise.
He calls the church to put their armor on.
And he says, pray without ceasing pray.
Your captain gives the word he summons cheerfully obey and call
upon the Lord to God. Your every want an instant
prayer display. Pray, always pray and never
faint. Pray without ceasing.
Pray another song by Duffields in the same thinking.
He says stand up, stand up for Jesus.
Put on the gospel armor. Each piece put on with prayer.
When Jesus is in the Garden of Gethsemane and he needs strength
for the task that was ahead of him, what does he ask the
disciples to do? 2 things, watch and pray.
And he rebukes them, saying, could you not stay awake?
Could you not be alert with me for even an hour?
And he says, my betrayer is at hand.
And so the watchful life is a prayerful life.
We're called to watch and pray. Read with me again.
Ephesians 618 to 20, you'll see this theme.
He says praying at all times in the Spirit with all prayer and
supplication to that end, keep alert with all perseverance,
making supplication for all the Saints and also for me, that
words may be given to me and opening my mouth bold to
proclaim the mystery of the gospel for which I am an
ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly as I ought.
And so prayer and and being awake and being alert is, is a
dangerous thing because it makes you face yourself right.
You've got the distractions away and now it's just you and God
and it's very vulnerable time. It's why I think husbands
praying with their wives is, is such a difficult thing to do
because you're, you're burying yourself before God, you're
being completely vulnerable and you're doing it with somebody
else. So it's, it takes effort.
And as Paul calls you to pray, he gives instructions here on
how you're supposed to pray. There's four kind of
instructions that he he ties to this.
This is the first thing. How are we to pray?
Number 1, he says you pray at all times.
You could say praying with every opportunity.
You're the century, you're looking out.
What you see you bring to God in prayer.
And this is the overflow of what we say in the Christian life is
koram deo. We live our lives.
Koram deo. We're before the face of God in
constant communion with God. And it may be sappy, it may be
lame, but when I personally think of prayer, the image that
comes to my mind is the image of a mountain lake.
Some of, you know, if there's a kind of a mountain valley and
there's a lake there, it's the stuff of puzzles where the you
can't tell where the lake ends and the sky begins because the
water reflects the lake. And I think of that because you
don't know where heaven stops and the earth begins.
And I think that is a, a wonderful picture of the
communion that comes with, with God and men and prayer, right,
that there's a, a meeting point between heaven and earth.
It's this open channel of communion and communication with
God. We say pray at all times, pray
with every circumstance, at every opportunity, pray without
ceasing. This is why we say prayer is
like breathing. We pray at all times.
Second, he says we pray with all prayer and supplication with
that prayer and supplication. Prayer is just the general word
for prayer. Supplication is or are the
specific requests that you bring before God.
So you've got the general and the specific.
And so he's saying literally through every prayer and
petition at every opportunity or occasion, we're praying without
ceasing every conceivable form of prayer.
So all prayer means all kinds of prayer.
And so when things aren't going according to the plan or how you
thought your life should go, then you come to God with a
lament. And remember, even the biblical
model that lament always ends with a declaration of trust in
God. And so you use this formula.
You're praying lament when God delays and answering your
prayers. You're praying through praise in
every circumstance, praising God for who he is, praising God for
what he's done, looking for opportunities to praise him.
You're you're confessing, confessing where you've fallen
short, confessing sin, repenting of sin.
You're giving Thanksgiving for everything that he's done.
We're, we're, we come with a thankful heart.
We bring supplications and petitions, which means our
specific prayer requests saying, Lord, save the souls of my
children. Lord, heal my broken heart.
And then there's intercession where we're praying the same
things, but on behalf of other people.
Lord save his children, heal her broken heart.
We're praying for other people. And you can look and say, where
am I lacking in my praying? Where do I need to diversify and
to to take all kinds of prayers? So there's a comprehensiveness
to prayer, which is why he says he adds all occasions, bringing
all kinds of prayers on all occasions for all things to God.
It's like breathing. So you see watchfulness and
prayer go together, watching and praying.
And as you're watching, you're praying.
And so he adds, you do this with perseverance.
The third we're praying with perseverance and perseverance
implies hardship. Otherwise he would have just
said, hey, be really disciplined as you try and do this every
day. You know you're saying, no,
it's, it's going to be hard and there's going to be delayed
answers to your prayer. And so you need to persevere in
prayer. It's why you have to pray
through delayed answers and pray through weariness and, and
sleepless nights. That's your opportunity.
When God wakes you up at 3:00 AM, you can say, Lord, this is
my opportunity to come before you.
We're praying through discouragement.
We're praying through heartache and humiliation, and it gets us
through our periods of spiritual stagnation, an experience of
guilt and shame. And so we pray and persevere
because this is how we persevere, in the strength of
the strength of Him. Remembering that Christ is on
His throne right now, interceding for us.
Remembering that His Holy Spirit is praying for us even now,
interceding for us with groanings too deep for words.
We pray as he prays, and then he adds finally forth for all the
Saints. Paul's already said, you see
that again, the comprehensive nature of prayer.
Paul says, take up the whole armor of God twice.
He says the whole armor of God, and having done all that is all
that you can, all things, then you will be able to withstand
all things. Verse 16, he says in all
circumstances you can extinguish all the flaming arrows.
Verse 18, praying at all times with all prayer and
supplication, with all perseverance, making
supplication for all the Saints. And so here, all the Saints
means everyone in your church. And we've made that easy for
you. If you open up your app and you
go down to the the very bottom, there's a directory you can pray
for everyone. Open up your directory.
It's a tool in your hands and pray for your church.
And he says in verse 19, Oh, and also for me with, with all this
power, all this praying that you're doing, please don't
neglect to pray for me. Paul says, I heard a pastor this
week, He said a guy asked him to.
He said, I'm committed to praying for you, pastor, I'm
going to pray for you for six months.
And he said, he said my my gut reaction was why not a year?
What do I got to do to get a year?
But he says, OK, I'm praying for you for six months.
He said, amazingly, I committed to praying for him because if
he's committed to praying for me, I don't want anything to
happen to him because then no one's praying for me.
So he said I started praying for him.
You see the reciprocal nature. We pray for the Saints.
He says, pray for me. Spurgeon was asked, what's the
secret of your ministry? His answer, My people pray for
me. And look at what Paul doesn't
ask them to pray for success, a protection from harm or danger,
no travel, mercy, prayers from Paul, deliverance from suffering
to be spared from opposition. He didn't say remove the thorn,
pray that this thorn would be removed.
He didn't pray to get out of jail.
Instead he prays verse 19 that the right words would be given
him while he proclaims the mystery of the gospel.
He says, I want to get this right.
I want to say the right thing at the right time.
And verse 20, that I may proclaim the gospel boldly.
So his prayer request is for utterance and bold speech.
And then he says, as I ought to speak, help me to speak, as I
must speak, as I should speak. And then we come to these last
four verses, the final greeting and the final benediction.
And you, when you read these 4 verses, you're, you're really
getting the sense more than the rest of the letter that you're
reading somebody else's mail. You can read with me verses 21
to 24. We'll see the final words of
Paul, he says, so that you may know how I am and what I'm
doing. Take a kiss, the beloved brother
and faithful minister, and the Lord will tell you everything.
I've sent him to you for this very purpose, that you may know
how we are and that he may encourage your hearts.
Peace be to the brothers and love with faith from God the
Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
Grace be with all who love our Lord Jesus with love
incorruptible. He brings up this man Tychicus,
who's probably, as we are not known names in Scripture, we're
probably not going to be remembered for all of our work.
But Tychicus is an unsung hero. He was the one who carried the
Ephesian letter. He's the one who carried the
Colossian letter. He's named in the book of
Philemon, who probably carried that letter to Onyismus.
And so he was the one that carried the word of God.
He's Paul's scribe, which means that he may have been discussing
these scriptures with Paul even as he's writing them.
And so we don't know what kind of role that he has.
But Paul says of Tikakis, he's going to tell you everything,
and he's going to encourage your heart.
He was Paul's ministry partner. And you move even past him.
Alan says of this, this final greeting, that the epistle began
with such a lengthy, unrelenting word of blessing, talking about
verses 3 to 14. And he says, and he returns to
the posture of benediction at the close.
The enveloping nature of blessing is perhaps a lens for
how the entire epistle Canon should be read.
We're reading this as a blessed church with our identity in
Christ. He says it began with blessing.
It ends in blessing. It began with grace and peace.
It ends with grace and peace. And these, this closing comes in
the form of a benediction. And Paul's showing us with what
he's doing with the words that he's saying is that we can be
joyful in every circumstance. Remember where he is, He's under
house arrest, arrested, chained to a prayatorian guard, and he's
writing these beautiful things. He's showing you that God's
presence can be known and trusted truly in every
circumstance. We read this and we forget he's
in jail and he he prays 4 things here at the end, 4 things are
given over and blessing, peace, love, faith and grace.
And again, the epistle began with grace and peace.
Peace, love, grace and faith are woven throughout the whole
epistle. And now he kind of binds them
all together at the end. And he ends with these words.
Grace be with all who love our Lord Jesus with love
incorruptible, and that means incorruptible by death.
So the epistle begins with the love of God and eternity past,
and it ends with the love of God and turning into eternity
future. So how do we end our study of
Ephesians? How do we end the queen of the
Epistles? Look at Paul's final application
one more time. He says in light of everything
that you've learned, remember your new identity.
And in light of everything that you've learned, he says there's
a call to war. Be strong in the Lord and in the
strength of his strength. And he says, put on the whole
armor of God that you may stand. And his final application is be
vigilant and pray. And I want to end with the
Lord's Supper, and I want to end again by praying with you.
Would you bow your head as we go before the throne of grace?
O Lord God, thank you for Paul. Thank you for his words.
Lord, may we be changed and may we take these things we've
learned and press them on our memories and in our hearts and
our conscience, our will and our affections, so that we can live
out the ideal that you've put before us.
These are the fundamentals of the faith.
Lord, You've taken us all the way back to the beginning, to
the basics, teaching us that we've been adopted.
We've been predestined for adoption.
We're loved, grace and peace and love and faith have been
multiplied to us through the Lord Jesus Christ.
And there's no earth identity out there that we have to earn
or maintain or keep up. We are children of God.
Impress on us all of these things.
Lord, be with us as we move on and we look toward Deuteronomy.
Bless our time there, God. Keep us awake and vigilant until
that last day. We pray this in Christ's name,
Amen. Thanks for listening.
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