The Riches of God's Glory - Part 1

Ephesians 3 Last week probably, not because it was so hard, but probably the longest, perceptibly longest week I've had in a long time.

And you know, go to Houston and back and Fairfield Bay and back all in one week. And I kept thinking about Houston being the week before, but it all happened in that week. And so I, you know, whenever it was, we were together on Wednesday night and looking at Ephesians.

And so now we're going to get back to that. And we looked at Ephesians chapter 3. And the first part of it deals with the preaching of the Apostle Paul.

And then this last half of the chapter deals with his prayers, his prayer or prayers, his petitions. Some very specific, very spiritual petitions that he offered up to the Lord on behalf of the people there in Ephesus.

And so that's what we're going to look at tonight. We'll finish up, not finish up this chapter, but really just kind of introduce this very amazing and awesome prayer.

And then we'll look at the first petition. Now this is ground we've covered before here. A couple of years ago, I dealt with this text and under the title of the riches of God's glory.

And so this will be a repeat, but that's okay because maybe you have forgotten. Probably not, right?

You remember, no. So anyway, it's good to go back over this material again. I've chosen to kind of introduce this passage with a text from the Old Testament.

In fact, it's a prayer in the Old Testament. And you have that in your notes, Exodus chapter 34 and verse 9. And this too, just like our passage here in Ephesians 3, it is a famous prayer.

Now it's not as lengthy as the one that's given to us here in Ephesians 3. And yet it covers some of the same ground as Paul's prayer.

And it's a prayer of Moses, of course, and he's praying for God's people. He's praying for the children of Israel. And here is what the Bible says. Then he said, or we could insert pray because he's speaking to God.

If now I have found grace in your sight, O Lord, let my Lord, I pray, go among us. That's petition number one in this prayer.

Even though we are a stiff-necked people, and that's another implication of a petition. And pardon our iniquity and our sin.

There's another petition. And take us as your inheritance. So there's several petitions just in this one short verse. And this is the prayer of Moses for the people of God. So Moses met with God here in Exodus chapter 34, as he did many, many times in his life.

And Moses prayed in behalf of his people, God's people, God's chosen people. So this is an intercessory prayer, isn't it? It's clearly an intercessory prayer.

Moses is not praying for himself. He's praying for God's people, on behalf of God's people. And he prays several petitions. And really he prays three things.

We can identify three things in this prayer. He prayed, number one, for the presence of God to be with them. That's very clear from the verse.

Go among us. That's the prayer for God's presence. Go among us. We don't want to go without you. And, in fact, he made the case in other parts of the passage that Moses was actually saying to God, if you don't go with us, we're not going.

So he prayed for God's presence with the people. And then he prayed for pardon. All right. So the presence of God, the pardon of God because of their sin. Pardon our iniquity could be any plainer than that, could it?

Pardon our iniquity, our sin. And then he prayed for privileges, the privileges of God. He said, take us as your inheritance.

All right. So you can remember those three Ps. Presence, pardon, privilege. And you're going to see some of these same things here in the prayer that Paul is issuing up in behalf of the Ephesian believers.

All right. So grant us all the rights and privileges of belonging to you. We could sum it up that way. The close of Moses' prayer. Now, we need to understand that there is a sense, and this is very important for us to understand, there is a sense in which he's praying for something Israel already had.

They already had these things. They did have his presence. God had not forsaken them. He was with them. Is it hot in here to you? Man, it is hot up here.

All right. Maybe I'll just take this sweater off here. All right. So they did have his presence. They did have his pardon. I mean, God pardoned them over and over.

Every time they sinned, God was gracious and forgave them. They had his pardon. They also had his privileges. His privileges as the special, unique people of God.

Israel had all of these things. And so the prayer is not for God's provision. The prayer is for Israel's comprehension. That's what we need to understand about a number of the prayers that appear in Scripture, praying for certain very decidedly spiritual things.

It's not necessarily that God would grant these things as much as it is that the people would understand that this is what God has already given them, granted them.

And that's important for us to understand and know the realities. All right. So he's praying that these things would become real to them. God's presence, God's pardon, God's privileges.

They would become real to them if they would comprehend the reality of these things as people who are graciously chosen of God. Now, all that is in reference to Moses' prayer for Israel.

And yet we can say the same thing for God's people today, you and me. Same kind of prayer or same kind of comprehension of the spiritual realities of our position in Christ.

We should know and understand. So now, I would make this another application here, and this is the one that I'll make a number of times as we look through this prayer of Paul's, is that we should pray this way for each other.

Now, Moses clearly is not praying for himself, but the implication is he's included in that. He's part of God's people. So we need to pray.

We can pray this way for ourselves. But we're talking about intercessory prayer. We ought to pray for one another that we would comprehend these things that we have in Christ.

All right, so what should we pray for each other? That each of us would comprehend, comprehend rather fully the reality of his presence. What did Jesus say?

Adam, we'll never leave you nor forsake you. If you belong to him, you're a blood-bought child of God. By his grace saved, then there's not a thing you can do that will remove his presence from you.

I will never leave you nor forsake you. So we ought to comprehend that. You say, well, I already know that. There's sometimes you don't. Or rather, sometimes you doubt that or sometimes behave as if it were not true.

But God's presence is always with us. We ought to pray for one another that every moment of our lives, and this is the point we'll make as we get on into this first petition, that every moment of our lives, regardless of what happens, we should know without any doubt in our hearts and minds that God is with us.

He's with us. He's present with us. We ought to pray for one another that we would understand fully, comprehend fully his pardon, complete pardon of all our sin.

Now, I guarantee you that we don't always remember that. And we sometimes even behave as if it were not so sometimes, that God is still holding us accountable for our sins.

But we have his complete pardon through the blood of Jesus Christ. We ought to pray that every one of us would fully comprehend his privileges, that he has graciously bestowed upon us, the full privileges of being a child of his kingdom.

And all that that entails. And the Bible describes all those things. And we could spend a long time just kind of detailing all of our privileges regarding our inheritance in Christ.

All right, so these are ours right now. That's the point. And so we must comprehend that this is our standing as blood-bought children of God.

All right, now with that said then, our text in Ephesians is a New Testament example of the prayer in Exodus chapter 34. Now this time, who's the prayer?

It's the Apostle Paul. He's the one praying, of course. He wrote the letter. And so he's describing or detailing his own personal prayers for the people of Ephesus, the believers there in Ephesus.

And so I want to go ahead and read then the passage. And even though we're not going to be able to work through all of it tonight, we'll get the whole thing here, whole scope of it in our minds.

All right, so starting with verse 14 of chapter 3. For this reason, I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named.

All right, so for this reason points back to what he has said just before this. All right, so he's detailing this. For this reason, I pray for you.

I pray for you that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might through his spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height, to know the love of Christ, which passes knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Now to him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to him be glory in the church, by Christ Jesus, to all generations forever and ever.

Amen. Now you would agree with me, this is a marvelous part of the book of Ephesians. It's one of my favorite parts of this book, one of my favorite prayers that is detailed for us.

And we don't have a whole lot of it in the New Testament. One of my favorite prayers that we have detailed for us or described in the New Testament. Marvelous passage. Now, let's understand or remember a few things, and I've mentioned this a number of times in our study since we started the study of Ephesians, that the primary readers of this letter were Gentiles.

They're Gentiles, not Jews. That's important. Why is that important? Because then we can better understand the meaning of what Paul is writing and why he wrote what he wrote.

He's writing to a primarily Gentile audience. And so, that being said, many of them were ignorant of the privileges that were theirs as the redeemed children of God.

They were ignorant of their privileges. I mean, they didn't have a lifetime of understanding the Scriptures and having the Scriptures like the Jews did. They weren't brought up with it when they were children, and they didn't memorize the Scripture, you know, from children as a child all the way up.

They had very little foundation, no real framework already established in their minds and thinking and understanding of Scripture. All of this was very new to them.

They were new converts, new believers. But, you know, it's like, perhaps like someone being gloriously saved who had never set foot in church before and was raised in a family that never mentioned God, never studied Scripture, never went to Sunday school when they were little children.

And there are people like that. And so, you can imagine going from an absolutely godless, Christless, Scriptureless upbringing to suddenly being gloriously saved.

And so, just think of the things you would not know that God has said in His Word until you discovered them as you started reading and studying God's Word.

Now, that's difficult for us to place ourselves in that kind of a setting for most of us. You know, I was brought up in a Christian home. I was introduced to the Scripture, you know, the moment from the very beginning, even before I was even much conscious of it.

And so, you know, I've had a lifetime of foundation laid. And that would be the testimony of most of us in this room. But that was not the case for these that Paul was writing to.

The Gentiles, they were ignorant of these privileges. And for many of them, they even doubted that they had any right to claim these privileges simply because they were Gentiles.

All right, so it's not just simply because of their ignorance, but also because of what had been ingrained in them from the very beginning, that they were not God's chosen people.

And so maybe they even doubted that they had any right to claim these things. And so Paul is correcting their thinking and has already been working on that back here in those verses prior to our text.

Verse 6, for example, he assured them that Gentiles are fellow heirs of the same body and partakers of his promise in Christ through the gospel.

That's what he said back in verse 6. And so he was already making the case that they had every right to expect these privileges and claim these privileges, not because they deserved them, but because they had been granted to them through Christ.

And then in verse 8, and these are verses that we've already covered, he says, He says, South Haven Boulevard Baptist Church.

And I thought about this the other day. My dad came and did an interim, music interim at our church. And I remember the very first Sunday I was preaching, and I don't remember the text.

It might have been this passage in Ephesians, I don't remember. But I had as one of my points, unfathomable was part of it. And I got up there and I was preaching, and I could not say that word for the life of me.

I could not say it. I just fumbled all over that thing. So I've already said it three times here tonight. I'm not going to try it again. All right. So this is what he was preaching to them.

Remember, we covered this the last time. But Paul does more than just preach these things to them. And we all need to do more than just preach the truths and teach the truths.

We need to pray that God's people would get it, that they would comprehend it. And that's what we have here, starting here with verse 14.

For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Translation, I'm praying for you. This is why I'm praying for you.

I have taught you these things. These things are true of you. This is who you are in Christ. And so now I'm praying that you'd understand that and understand the implication of all those things.

All right. That he would grant. This is what he's praying, verse 16. That he would grant you according to the riches of his glory. And he would grant you certain things.

Certain things. And there are four of them. Here in this prayer. Four things that God has bestowed out of his, we could call it his heavenly treasure house.

And that's what I think he means when he says the riches of his glory. These are the things he has granted you. And what are they? Well, verse 16 is where it begins.

And name them now. And then we'll focus on the first one tonight. To be strengthened with might. That's the first petition. We can sum it up with that one phrase right out of the passage.

Though there's more attached to that, as we shall see in a moment. Second one is to be rooted and grounded in love. That's a tremendous petition for God's people.

Third, to know the love of Christ. And then fourth, to be filled with all the fullness of God. Those are some powerhouse petitions in prayer.

And, you know, by the way, it's not just enough simply to recite those when you pray. We need to understand what they mean. But we do need to pray for one another. These same petitions.

All right, now, before we look at the first one tonight, let me, first of all, clip my microphone because it came loose back here. Let me make just a couple of observations.

If we're going to involve ourselves in this kind of intercessory praying, and we should, then we need to consider just a few things. About this prayer, Paul's prayer, kind of general things.

First of all, this prayer is exclusively spiritual. I mean, certainly you notice that. These are spiritual things. Paul's not taking the occasion here to mention how he prays for their physical needs.

He's not, that's not what this is about. Now, surely they had physical needs. Don't make any mistake about that. I mean, they, you know, most of these people were very poor, if not all of them.

Some of them were slaves. All of them were under the oppression of a Roman, the Roman government. All of them were under the, you know, the unscriptural rigors of Pharisaicalism and so forth.

So they had a lot of physical needs. Certainly he prayed for those. Don't you think? Don't you think he prayed for their specific physical needs? I mean, not spiritual, but physical.

Because they had many. And so should we pray for one another's physical needs? Well, absolutely. Absolutely we should. But these petitions are not physical, pertaining to physical needs.

They are exclusively spiritual. And, you know, really, I think it causes us to maybe think about our own prayer life, our own personal prayer life, as well as our prayer life corporately.

And, you know, I hesitate to say this because we just had our prayer time. And for maybe one exception in the list of things we prayed or led you in prayer for at night, they were all physical.

And that's typically, it's just because those are so pressing and so burdensome. And we think about those things. And we pray for, you know, God's mercy for someone physically.

And we pray for surgeries that are coming up and recovery. We pray for all those things. And it's right to pray for those things. But most of our prayers, personally and corporately, are for physical needs.

Right? I mean, aren't they? I mean, just take a look at your own prayer list. If you write out a prayer list. I have a little book that I use. And just kind of scan over those things and see how many of those things are physical.

And then maybe even see how many physical things, physical prayer petitions you have. And compare that to how many spiritual petitions that you pray for on a regular basis.

And, you know, it's just natural. There's no, you know, we're all that way. And it's just natural for us to have at the forefront of our minds the physical needs of people.

And we ought to pray for them. But what about the spiritual? What about spiritual things? And these petitions that Paul is kind of listing here, these four petitions, are deeply spiritual.

Even deeper than maybe we even understand at the outset. And if you've studied this passage, you no doubt understand just how deep these spiritual petitions are.

But we need to pray for spiritual needs. Matthew 6, 37. Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. And all these things will be added to you.

And so the point is, the priority in prayer ought to be spiritual. All right. But do we pray?

Let me say this. When we're praying for someone who is sick, like your prayers for me. And I so appreciate that.

Do you at the same time, and I'm not trying to find fault in anybody here, because I need to face the same thing.

But do you pray? When you're praying for someone's sake, do you also pray that that person will be strengthened with might in the inner person? Now, I guarantee you, and the absolute full truth of this, we'll not even understand until we get to heaven, but I guarantee you that the most important thing you could pray for me is that I would be strengthened with might in the inner person.

Long before God would ever have mercy and put my cancer into remission or just outright heal me. Hey, I'd love to have that happen.

But the most important thing you could ever pray for me, and the most important thing that could ever happen to me, to any of us, is that we'd be ever strengthened, always strengthened, with might in the inner person.

That is such a powerful point of prayer. It's a powerhouse petition. It really is, and especially when we understand the depth of its meaning. So we're just kind of observing, considering some kind of general observations here.

And the first one is that this prayer is exclusively spiritual. Second, though, this prayer is obviously progressive. It's progressive.

And maybe it's difficult to notice that, you know, just as you read it. But with each petition, and I hope I can bring this out as we step our way through this prayer.

With each petition, we climb higher and higher. And, I mean, all the way to the knowledge of the fullness of God. And I don't know that you could go beyond that.

The knowledge of the fullness of God. Now, you know, that's a short little phrase, five words in the English. I don't recall what it is in the Greek.

But short little blurb. Knowledge of the fullness of God. And what does that mean? But think of how high we're getting in this kind of spiritual petition, this spiritual reality, the knowledge of the fullness of God.

All right. So these prayers, his prayers, reach all the way to glory. The riches of his glory. All right. So let's look at the first petition real quickly.

I'll make it really quick here. So here's the first petition. Paul said, and this is kind of the whole petition. Verse 17, and then on into the first part, verse 18.

I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. That's how he begins this. And that's how we know this is the substance of his praying. That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory.

And here's the petition. To be strengthened with might through his spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.

That's the petition. Now, we need to understand what it means, what he means, by the inner man. So this won't be confusing to us.

For the believer, there is a sense in which there is an outward man, or we could call it the old man, and the inner man.

The outward man, the inner man, the old man, the new man. Or we could put it this way. We all have the flesh. The flesh. Now, we're not split personalities, so don't think that there's kind of two yous in there somewhere inside of you.

You know, you say, well, now I know why it's so crowded in here. They just want you. But, you have, you're made up of the flesh, which is the seat of sin.

It's what is polluted by sin. We got it from Adam, and we've contributed since then. And it's polluted with sin. It's the unredeemed part of us.

You could jot that down. I don't think I put that in your notes. You can think of it as the unredeemed part of us that one day will be redeemed. All right? But it's the flesh. It's the seat of sin.

The Bible says that we groan for the coming of Christ. Philippians 3.21. And what are we groaning for? To transform, for the coming of Christ, to transform our vile body.

That's a reference to the flesh. Our vile, sin-polluted flesh. That it may be conformed to his glorious body. You see, it's not yet conformed to his glorious body.

That's why we have so much trouble. And one day it will be. But, only when he comes. Transform our vile body, that it may be conformed to his glorious body, according to the working by which he is able even to subdue all things to himself.

And that would include our unredeemed flesh. To subdue it all all to himself. All right, so you have the flesh, and then you also have the spirit. The spirit, or the seat of righteousness.

righteousness. It's the redeemed part of us. This is what we gained through regeneration.

When you were saved. The new birth. And this is where the Holy Spirit dwells and reigns. It's the spirit. Flesh and spirit. And so, the two are, in a sense, are at war against one another.

They're contrary to one another. All right? Now, want to be very careful. Want to be careful not to use this as some excuse to sin.

You say, I just can't help myself. You know, well, you know, I'm a sinner because, you know, I've got the flesh in there. And, I just, you know, I just do, do things because I can't help it.

The devil maybe do. You can't split yourself apart and say, well, this is the good part of me and this is the bad part of me. you know, and we struggle and sometimes the bad part wins.

Sometimes the good part wins. you know, and it's kind of a twisted kind of way. It's, it's a way that some people excuse themselves. You know, and, I'm just a sinner saved by grace.

Well, I am, but that sounds more like an excuse than, than a pronouncement of, of the spiritual reality. All right, but the two are contrary to one another and the Bible bears that out in Galatians chapter 5, 16, 17, I say then, Paul says, I say then, walk in the spirit and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.

So, he's giving, giving a, you know, the, where you find victory. But, he goes on to say, for the flesh lusts against, or that is, its desire, his desires are against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish.

And, I, I don't know, did I put J.B. Phillips' translation in your notes? I may have left that out. I kind of like J.B. Phillips' version, translation. I don't agree with it always.

It is a paraphrase, but listen to how he, how he rendered that verse in Galatians 5. He said, here's my advice. It's kind of, kind of colloquial, you know, Paul speaking, here's my advice.

Live your whole life in the spirit, and you will not satisfy the desires of your lower nature. Or, we could say inner man. For the whole energy of the lower nature is set against the spirit, while the whole power of the spirit is contrary to the lower nature.

And so, here is the conflict, and that is why you are not free to do what you want to do. Alright, so, you have the flesh, you have the spirit.

There is the outer man, there is the inner man, and they conflict, they're contrary to one another. They conflict and contradict one another day in and day out. But here's the good news.

There's good news here. And that is that there's a third party, so to speak. And it's, what? The Holy Spirit. Spirit with a capital S.

It's the Holy Spirit. Now, it is a warfare. And who could deny it? I mean, it is a warfare going on.

But victory is always possible because of the Holy Spirit indwelling in you. And that's very much the point of this petition as we go on a little bit further.

Philippians 2.13, I think one of my favorite verses in all the Bible. It is God who works in you. That's the Holy Spirit.

It's God that works in you both. All right, so, what is God working in you to do? Two things. Both to will and to do for his good pleasure.

Well, if you've never memorized that verse, that would be a good one. It is God that worketh in you. I'm memorizing the King James.

Both to will and to do of his good pleasure. To will and to do. So, it's God that works in you. That's the inner man. And that's the same point that Paul's making here in Ephesians.

Strengthen with might in the inner man. It's God that works in you. The inner man both to will that is to give you the desire to do what pleases him but not just the desire but also the power to do it.

The will to do and to do of his good pleasure. It's a tremendous verse. In fact, this is a good definition of the grace of God in the life of the believer.

Paul didn't mention the word grace there but this is a description of it. The grace of God in our lives is this. God working in you both to will and to do his good pleasure.

We need that every day. Now, we can't be saved apart from the grace of God but we can't do a single holy thing apart from the grace of God. We can't even please God without it.

Alright, so with that in mind we can understand why Paul was praying this for the Ephesian believers, can't we? and if Paul was praying this way for them then we should pray this way for one another.

We must pray for ourselves and for one another that the inner person would grow and grow and grow in spiritual strength.

God's strength. And how will it grow? How will it grow? Verse 16, through his spirit spirit in the inner man. That's spirit with a capital S.

Where is the spirit? The Holy Spirit in the inner man. In you. And then Paul completes this petition in the next verse that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.

Now, where is Jesus Christ? In your hearts through faith. In fact, really, these are parallel thoughts. You can't separate God in all of his three persons.

God is everywhere unified in his three persons. Father, Son, and Spirit. And so, to say that the Holy Spirit is in you is the same as saying that Jesus Christ is in you, dwells in your hearts through faith.

And so, those are parallel thoughts. Now, Paul, of course, is speaking to born-again believers, right? Let's remember that. He's not speaking of non-believers.

This petition does not apply to unbelievers. The Holy Spirit does not indwell unbelievers. Jesus Christ does not dwell in unbelievers.

Now, he can, but apart from the new birth, he does not. Now, in the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit would come upon certain people for his own purposes to accomplish certain things.

He would come and he would go. But it's different in the New Testament and it's unique to the believer that the Holy Spirit comes to dwell in us. All right, so Paul is speaking to born-again believers.

And so, here's the point of the prayer. And you ask yourself this question, do you know that God lives in you? He lives in you. Do you know that?

I mean, I don't mean do you know that intellectually. I mean, do you know that? Do you comprehend that, apprehend that? Do you know that you have in you the power of God to conquer anything and everything that you might face?

And that's something good to know. this is not a promise of something that you can receive if you do such and such and you can pray for it or if you have some second blessing.

It's not some subsequent thing that may happen one day and hope will happen one day. This is what you have day one when you become a child of God through, by the grace of God through faith in Jesus.

You have in you the power of God to conquer anything that you might face no matter what it is. And we're talking about anything the devil might throw at you, anything this world might throw at you, anything this sinful flesh might in a sense throw at you.

And this is not something we hope to have. Again, it's not something that we must look for and find. It's something that we have right now. The power of God in the inner man and all we have to do is yield to it.

All we have to do is not grieve it through unrepentant of sin. And by the way, there's one other word here that I could point out before we get finished and that's the word dwell.

The word translated dwell, dwell in the English text is a specific word in Greek. There are actually two Greek words that could be translated dwell in the English.

One means to inhabit a place as a temporary lodger. And we can do that. We can dwell in a certain place for a temporary time and then we move on. You know, go on a trip, stay in a hotel, maybe you have an extended vacation, maybe you spend a couple of weeks in a hotel or a cabin or lodge or something like that, but you're just a temporary resident, temporary lodger.

Now, there is a word in the Greek text that speaks of that kind of dwelling or there is this other one that means to settle down as a permanent resident. Now, if you were guessing which word would you suppose Paul would use?

Obviously, the second. Otherwise, I wouldn't have much of a point to make here. But Paul's making the point, I'm just relating it. See, through regeneration, the Holy Spirit has made your heart, my heart, his permanent residence, residence, his permanent address.

And so, Paul's prayer is that Christ, through our yieldedness to him, would not be considered just kind of a wayfaring stranger in our lives who comes and goes, he's there and then not there.

And not someone who we think is there just when we need him. That's kind of our thinking. We think he's there because we're calling out to him.

Oh, I wish he would be here. He's there all the time. He's not someone you acknowledge only when you're in dire need. But he's someone who is there on a permanent basis.

Who lives and sits on the throne of your life. And who is there to rule in your life. Do you know that?

And to reign in your life. And thereby to strengthen you with might in your inner man, the inner person. So that you're able to stand against the devil.

So that you're able to say no to temptation. So that you're able to serve God faithfully and effectively. So that the difficulties of life, some of them big, hard, so that they will not defeat you totally.

And many other things. So that we can be all that we can be for Christ. That's the real potential power that is there. And I'm not talking about power in the sense that the charismatics talk about.

I'm not talking about something that is just simply purely emotional. And so, I don't know about you, but I need people to pray for me that way. Especially now.

My family needs you to pray that way. Your family's need for you to pray that way. and the church. This church needs to pray.

That kind of petition.