The Blessings of Christ - Prayer (Part 3)

Ephesians chapter 1 And we are making our way through chapter 1 And for the last couple of weeks Been looking at that part of chapter 1 That starts with verse 15 And runs all the way through to the end of the chapter And the good news is we'll finish chapter 1 tonight I know you're utterly amazed As I am But we'll do that tonight That is if I get going with it And so I want to go ahead and read the passage again And then kind of give somewhat of an introduction Kind of a set up again So that we can continue to keep What we've been teaching tied together So we see the flow of Paul's thought here As he's teaching some amazing things

So let me go ahead and read the passage again Starting with verse 15 Therefore I also After I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus And your love for all the saints Do not cease to give thanks for you Making mention of you in my prayers That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ The Father of glory May give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation In the knowledge of him The eyes of your understanding Being enlightened That you may know what is the hope of his calling What are the riches of his glory Of his inheritance in the saints And what is the exceeding greatness Of his power toward us Who believe According to the working of his mighty power Which he worked in Christ When he raised him from the dead And seated him at his right hand In the heavenly places Far above all principality And power And might And dominion

And every name That is named Not only in this age But also in that which is to come And he put all things under his feet And gave him to be head Over all things To the church Which is his body The fullness of him Who fills All in all So it's a marvelous Passage Now you already know Because I've mentioned this Now I don't know how many times Probably since we started Really way back there Chapter 1 verse 3 We've been looking at Paul's prayer Now he's not actually praying here But he is giving us The substance of his prayers For the Ephesian believers And I've said this Also a number of times Because the Holy Spirit Is the author Of what Paul is writing here That we know Is written to us as well And so This is the substance Of prayers for us And then With that as an example

Ought to be the substance Of our prayers For ourselves As well as for One another But before we can do that We need to understand The meaning of The various elements Of Paul's prayer Because it's Deep stuff Somewhat complicated And so this is An important thing For us to study So Paul is praying That there The Ephesians And ours Again by extension That there Our eyes Would be open To the fullness Of God's blessings In Christ Jesus That is those blessings That we've already studied That Paul laid out for us Here in chapter 1 So This is what he's praying That we would know The full truth Concerning These blessings We would know The full truth of them We could even put it this way That we would Comprehend them Not just simply Read them

And maybe understand The meanings Of the various words That make up The sentences And paragraphs But That we would Fully comprehend A deep understanding Of the meaning Of these blessings That we have in Christ And so this is What Paul Is praying for The substance Of his prayer And so Paul prayed that Verse 18 The eyes of your understanding Would be enlightened That's what he said In verse 18 The eyes of your understanding Some versions again Have the word heart The eyes of your heart Would be enlightened Would be illuminated And then he also said In verse 18 That you may know Know certain truths We can add And then those truths Are what we Are going to find Leading us all the way To the end of this chapter So it's from there Verse 18 That Paul launches out Into several specific

Petitions Or prayers Now before he does that And this is just A bit of review We're not even To your notes yet So don't be concerned We're You know I've got a blank here I don't know If I'm supposed To fill that in yet We'll get to it Here in a minute But before he gets To these specific prayers He prays a general prayer Remember we talked About this last week And it is Kind of in a sense An overarching prayer Under which come All of these Very specific prayers Well all of these Are not very many About three But they're specific prayers And he has this One overarching prayer We might even call it An all encompassing Prayer That really can Be applied To many many areas And in fact In a very real sense To every area Of the knowledge We need of Christ But this is a general prayer And so we looked At this last week

And let me just name it This is the general prayer Verse 17 That the God Of our Lord Jesus Christ The Father of glory That just identifies To whom he's praying That he may give to you The spirit of wisdom And revelation In the knowledge of him And now we already Studied this passage And it's a very specific request I mean I'm calling it A general petition It's a specific request But it's application The application Or the direction Of that prayer Is very general It can mean anything In all things And so in the next few verses Then Paul is going To get very specific And that is He's going to apply The request Of verse 17 To three specific petitions And we looked At the first one last week And but first of all What is the meaning Of this petition This general Or overarching petition

Well it is this That the God Of our Lord Jesus The Father of glory Might give to you The spirit of wisdom And revelation In the knowledge of him That's the overarching prayer What does it mean Essentially Paul Is praying And again We discussed this last week He's praying God grant them These believers At Ephesus Grant them The full knowledge Of what they possess In your son The full knowledge Of what they possess See we possess A lot of things Many things That we don't Yet even know about And we don't know About them Because we've not Really studied The scriptures As we should And so Paul Is praying Grant them The full knowledge Of what they Possess in your son Not what they Need to possess But what they Already possess In your son The Lord Jesus Christ And also Give them the wisdom To apply Practically Apply that knowledge That full knowledge

To their daily lives And so that's Basically what This very general Prayer is all about And then after this This general prayer For wisdom In revelation In the knowledge Of Christ Paul then includes Three specific petitions Very specific petition We looked at the first one Last week First specific prayer Or petition I'm calling it A prayer of application That is it's applying That general prayer To three specific areas So the first specific Prayer of application Is this That Paul Prayed that they And we Might understand The mysteries of God That's what we looked at Last week Verse 18 The eyes of your understanding Being enlightened So that you may know What is the hope Of his calling Which are the riches What are the riches Of the glory Of his inheritance In the saints That's the first petition To understand The mysteries of God Now we're ready For the second petition Or prayer

I think a specific Prayer of application And it's this Paul prayed That they We Might Understand The might Of God The might of God Or the power Of God That's the second Specific prayer Of application Verse 19 That you may know Of course that comes From verse 18 That you may know What is the exceeding Greatness of his power Toward us who believe According to the working Of his mighty power I'm glad Sherry's in here Because She's going to remember And when I was writing My dissertation One of my What Yeah Well that's not part Of my story I was writing That dissertation I Yeah Let's just skip this Go on I would You know

I was writing And I had a number Of proofreaders You know You have to have Proofreaders And Sherry was My first one Alright She's my first Line of defense And before I Passed it on To the second My second Proofreader It had to pass Through her gate First Alright And she's pretty good Actually very good And so then It would go To Dr. Bickers Dr. Bickers Is a retired Professor At Mid-America And he offered His service To me As a proofreader Free of charge Which is Really was quite A blessing Because usually A proofreader Costs something And so It would go To Dr. Bickers And then finally To Dr. Seal Who was the head Of my department And also my advisor My PhD advisor And I'm telling you This because If I had submitted A sentence Like verse 19 There would have Been a big red Circle around That sentence And with it The words Wordy

And redundant I think Matter of fact I have had Some words Like that I don't think Sherry put that In there She might have But if anything Describes Your pastor Is wordy And redundant!

But anyway What I'm saying Is you look At this Verse And maybe It's not As apparent Just at A casual glance But I think You're going To agree With me When we start To look At each Word That this Is very Wordy And May I say Even Somewhat Redundant But now Before lightning Strikes me Because God is the One who wrote This Alright You know When it comes To God's word We're not It's proofreaders We're really Not We're not Doing that And we may Have a tendency To do that But So We do not Proof God's word It's God's word That proves us And that's how We ought to Always approach God's word But nevertheless The fact remains That verse 19 Is extremely Wordy It's wordy That's the word That goes in Your little blank There okay It's extremely Wordy And

And It's on purpose Because Paul Purposefully Over Emphasized The supreme Nature Of God's Might God's Power And And so He begins With a Superlative It's a Superlative It's a That's the Form of Of These These words Grammatically Speaking Superlative That means It's something Something of The highest Quality Or the highest Degree It's a Superlative There are a number Of ways in the Greek language That they have To convey That All the way From a Certain way A word Is spelled To just Simply the Combination Of words And we have Here the Combination Of words So he begins With a Superlative And here it Is Exceeding Greatness That's a Superlative He's talking About and Making reference To something Of the Highest Quality Something Of the Highest Degree And some

Other Versions Of the Bible And I Know some Of you Have something Other than The New King James For example The New American Standard Uses the Word Surpassing And I Like that Word Surpassing Greatness That means It's way Beyond Any greatness We know About Or think We know About ESV Some of you Might have ESV Jonathan's Always the One to Have the ESV Anybody Else Have ESV In Here Nobody Forget What It Has It Has The Word Immeasurable Immeasurable Greatness I mean You can Jot Those Down If You Want Because It's Good By The Way And if You Have A Parallel Bible Or Maybe A Computer Program It's Always Good To Look At Other Versions English Versions Of The Bible And See Some Of The Different English Words That Are Used!

And Though It's Not Conclusive You Dig Deeper Than That Perhaps A Bible Dictionary Or Encyclopedia Or Some Of The Word Study Book To Get A Little Deeper But When You Put The Various Versions Together You Begin To See The Idea Behind The Particular Words And Phrases And Such NIV Some Of Have NIV Any NIV In Here Okay At Home Well I've Got One Back Here It Uses The Word Incomparable!

And That's A Good One Too I'm Usually A Big Fan Of The NIV They Don't They're Not Wrong All The Time Incomparable Incomparable Greatness And So You Put All These Words Together It Really Kind Of Helps You Understand The Superlative Here See The Word Exceeding It's A Particular Combination Greek Combination Word It Has A Preposition And Word It's A Hupere Bolo By the way I'll tell you a little story I had to learn a lot of Greek words And My best method was to use association You know Whatever the word sounded like Now Bolo What did that sound like It sounded like ball Doesn't it What it did to me And The word Bolo Means To Throw Alright So I've taught you a Greek word That maybe you'll never forget Bolo Bolo Bolo Means To Throw Ball Throw Okay Now

The preposition Is Hooper Hooper We get our word Hyper From that And it means Above It means Above Or beyond It can also mean beyond So The word Exceeding Is A word That means To throw Beyond Or to throw Over If you watch College football Or NFL You see that happen a lot Quarterback throws that big bomb And it goes Ten feet beyond The The The receiver Through the ball Beyond But But When it comes to God's greatness It's not just Ten yards beyond It's It's Exceedingly Beyond It's It's In fact It's not even Measurable His exceeding Greatness And so That's the idea The idea is God's greatness Is over And beyond All Other Persons Or personages Of greatness His greatness Is above all

His greatness Transends All He's Transcendent And But now Understand And I want to make this point Pretty clear We're not talking about Degrees of greatness That God's just the highest degree Because to say that Or to say that God's greatness Is by measure By measure Greater than all To say that means that There is some kind of Hierarchy of greatness That You know There's great And then there's greater And there's Even greater Than that And then Ultimately to the greatest And maybe there's some Who are just A notch or two Below the greatness Of God But that's not the idea It's not greatness By measure His greatness Is incomparable It's Immeasurable It is so Beyond Any Any other Greatness Alright So that's the idea That Paul is wanting To Convey Now

The superlative Here Is Connected to A specific Aspect Or nature Of God And that is His greatness Alright So Even though His exceeding Greatness This really applies To every Every Part of God's Nature And Character But here Specifically Paul is Connecting it To his Power His power And The exceeding Greatness Of his Power And here's Where Paul Gets really Wordy And he He really Just kind of Piles on the Words And it's Really amazing Paul uses Four Synonyms They really Are synonyms To describe The nature Of God's Power You know What a Synonym Is It's a Word Various Words That mean The same Thing It basically Have the Same Definition They're Different Words But they're Talking about The same Thing It's a Synonym And so It uses Four of

Them Here In fact In some English Translations You have A repetition Of some English Words Like for Example In the New King James We have The word Power Appearing Twice In relation To the Exceeding Greatness Of God's Power And so They're Different Words But in English They can Be translated With the Same English Word And so These are Four synonyms So let's Look at These First Of all The word Power All right That is I'm going To go By the New King James Version Word Power Is the First First Word Or Descriptive Word For the Nature Of God's Power And It's The Greek Word I didn't Give you The Greek In Here In Your Notes Sorry About That Ralph Probably The Only One Who Understand Any Of Them Right You Remember Don't You Okay Well The Word Power This Particular

Time The Power Appears Is The Word Dunamis Dunamis From Which We Get Our Word Dynamo Dynamite Dynamic And so You've Probably Heard That Before Haven't You And The Word Power Appears Quite Often In Scripture And Not Every Time We Have The Word Power Is It This Greek Word Dunamis But Many Times It Is It's Dunamis And Though I Hesitate Really To Say That We Get The Word Dynamite From It Because It's Not That Kind Of Power Dynamite Is A Destructive Power And The Kind Of Power That Well Actually God Can Destroy Things Too So I Guess Maybe It Applies There As Well But Especially When The Word Dunamis Is Used In Relation To The Power That God Has Given Us We Don't Think Of It In The Sense Of Destructive Power And So I Really Kind Of Prefer The Word

Dynamic Or Dynamo And It's But It Speaks Of Power And So Specifically It Refers To An Inherent Power And What I Mean Is A Power That Resides In A Thing Or Person By Virtue Of Its Nature Now That Certainly Applies To God It's Not A Power That Grows A Power That Is Developed A Power That You Exercise And Become More Powerful We're Talking About Something Inherent It's Not Even With God Not Even Power That Is Obtained From Some Place Outside!

It's Inherent But It's That Same Power That He Has Given To Us It Is His Power Is What Paul Says Here In This Verse His Power Given To Us Who Believe So First Of All We Have The Word Power Dynamic Power The Second Word Is The Word Working Working And This Is Another Word A Greek Word That From Which We Get Have A Familiar Word And It's Ener Gase Ener Gase We Get Our Energy From It Energy Or Or Energize And Specifically Refers Here To The Power Of God Or The Working Of God Or The Spirit Of God Activating His Power In Us That's The Idea It's Working It's God Working His

Power In Us And We Know It's The Person Of The Holy Spirit That Is Involved With This The Spirit Then Energizes Ener Gase Energizes Us To Live According To God's Word According To The Third Word And I'm Going To Give This One To You In The Order In Which It Appears In The Greek Text So We'll Get Out Of The Order Here According To How It Any English Word That Comes From That But It's Kratos Is The Word And It's Translated Can Be Translated Strength I Don't Know If I Put This In Your Note You Can Jot This Down

It Can Be Translated Strength Or Quite Often It's Translated Dominion Dominion And And So Paul Is Referring To God's Unique Dominion Power His Dominion Power So Exceedingly Great Power That's The Dominion Of God Or The Sphere Of God So See You Can See Just Piling Word On Top Of Word Here To Emphasize Greatly Emphasize Even Exaggerate But To Well Emphasize We'll Just Stick With That Emphasize The Exceeding Greatness Of God's Power And Then We Have The Fourth Word And In The New King James And King James Is The Word Mighty Mighty And Those Two Versions Of The Bible King James New King James They Change

The Word Order That's Why I Put It Gave It To You In The Order In Which It Appears In The Greek Text They Change The Word Order And They Translate This Particular Word As An Mighty Is Used In The Form Of An Adjutant But It Doesn't Appear That Way In The Greek Text It's A Noun In The Text And So More Literal Translation If You Have A New American Standard You Can See It There More Literal Translation Would Be The Strength Of His Might So The Word Might Comes At The Strength Of His Might Now Again Remember Paul Close Synonyms And So You Have Some Of These English Words It's Interchangeable In Some Of The Versions Of The Bible But It's Important That We Understand The Meaning Of The Words As They Appear And We Put All That Together Then

What Is Paul's Point Paul Is First Of Wanting To Emphasize Of Course The Exceeding Greatness Of God's Power So He Uses These!

Sentiments And Just Piles All This On Here But Paul's Point Is He's Not Praying That God Would Give His Power To The Ephesian Believers And We Might Think That And What Paul Is Doing When He's In His Prayer Closet And He's Got His Prayer List Out And He Sees The Ephesian Church And He's Saying God Give Them Power He's Not!

Praying That And Why? Because They Already Have It They Already Have It He's Not Praying For Something For Them To Have Something Because They Already Have It Paul Prayed Remember There In Verse 18 That You May Know This Is Key That You May Know What Is The Exceeding Greatness Of His Power Toward Us Who Believe Verse 19 That You May Know Not That You May Have That You Would Have This Power But That You Would Know You Already Have It You Already Have It And We Could Add To That That You Would Know The Nature Of It Have A Full Knowledge Of What This Power Is All About And So You Know That You Have It And You Know What It Is And It Kind Of Identifies I Think A Problem Most Of Us Have As Believers All Of Us Have And That Is We Are Always Praying For Something We Already Have We

Already Have We Just Don't Realize And Don't Know It Like For Example How Many Times Have We All Prayed For Power To Witness The Gospel But We Already Have It The Power Is In The Gospel But The Power To Share It That Is In Us Already We Already Have!

And So If We Have It And We're Not Using It Then Who's To Blame It's Not That We Need To Redouble Our Efforts In Praying God You Know I Just Am So Weak I Can't Share My Faith But It's Not Power You Lack There Are Other Problems Like Obedience And And You Know Maybe Being Overcome By Fear And Some Other!

We Pray For Power To Endure Suffering You Ever Prayed That Prayer God Give Me The Strength Give Me The Power To Endure This Suffering In My Life And That Sound Like A Valid Prayer And In All All Innocence God Is Not Faulting Us For Praying That Prayer But The Fact Is We Already Have That Power We Already Have It Rather Than Praying For Power We Ought To Be Praising God That We Have It In Us Already To Be Strong When We Face Adversity When We Face Suffering It's Already There In Fact You Can Tell Someone Close To You That Suffering Struggling You Can Say You Have It In You To Do This Not In And Of Yourself You Have It In You Because God Has Given This To You If You Are Born Again Believer Remember

He Said The Power Toward Those Who Believe This Is A Power That Has Been Given! To All! Believer! And So If That Power Is Not Active And Elusive To You It's Not Because You Don't Have It And Need To Pray For It If There's Something Else Wrong And That's What You Need To Search In Pray We Pray For Power To Do God's Will God Reveals What He Wants And We Say God Give Me Power To Do It But We Already Have!

Power We Already Have We Pray For Power To Say No To Sin Don't We But We Already Have That Power And We Just Need To Say No To Sin Alright So Now What Kind Of Power Is It That God Has Placed In Us Well He Goes On To Give Us An Example Of This Power Kind Of An Illustration Of It Let Me Let It's Like Paul Is Saying Let Me Just!

How Great This Power Is The Extent Of God's Power The Nature And Extent Of His Power And He Gives That To Us In Verses 19 And 20 The Exceeding Greatness Of His Power Toward Us Who Believe According To The Working Of His Mighty Power Which He Worked In Christ When He Raised Him From The Dead And Seated Him At His Right Hand In The Places That That Is The Ultimate Illustration Of The Power Of God You Say Well The Ultimate Would Be The Creation Of The Universe I Be To Differ It Would Be To Raise Jesus From The Dead And To Seat Him At The Right Hand In The Heaven This Is A Display An Illustration Of The Greatness Of God's Power And So This Is Paul's Point The Resurrection And The Ascension That's What We Have Here In This Verse Raised Him Seated Him Resurrection Ascension This Resurrection Ascension Power Is

The Power That Resides And Works In Us In Every One Of Us And It Will One Day Take Us All The Way To Glory And That May Be Sooner Than We Think For Some Of So This Is The Substance Of Paul's Prayers For The Ephesians He Prayed!

They Might Understand The Mystery Of God He Prayed That They Might Understand The Might Of God And Then Third Third Specific Prayer Of Application Paul Prayed That They And We Might Understand The Majesty Of God Of Christ Rather The Majesty Of Christ And So To Help Them To Aid In Their Full Knowledge Of What They Have As Believers Which Is What Paul Has Been Talking About Almost From The Very Beginning Of The Chapter To Aid Them Help Them To Have The Full Knowledge Of What They Have What They Possess In Christ As Believers Paul Provides A Threefold Description Of Christ's Majesty And The First One Is His Exaltation His Exaltation Verses 20 And 21 He Was Raised From The Dead And Seated I'm Just Kind of Putting

Parts Of The Verse Together Here Is Raised From The Dead Seated At The Right Hand In The Heavenly Places That Means The Right Hand Of The Throne Of God In Heavenly Places Far Above All Principality And Power And Might And Dominion And Every Name That Is Named Not Only In This Age But Also In That Which Is To Come!

Refer To His Resurrection From The Dead And His Ascension Into Heaven All Raised Seated Resurrection Ascension The phrase Right hand In The Heavenly Places He Was Raised Seated At The Right Hand In The Heavenly Places This Is Figurative Figurative Language And It's Figurative Of The Of The Place Or The The The Place Of Highest Honor And Highest Authority Remember The Disciples A couple Of The Disciples In Fact It Was Their Mud Put The Mud To It They Want To Know You Jesus Can My Sons One Seat Sit On The Left And One Sit On The Right And When You Come Into Glory And But It's The Right Side That Is The Supreme Seat It Is The Place Of Honor And So So This Is

Figurative To Speak Of That To Highlight That The Exaltation Of Christ To Be Placed Seated In The Place Of Highest Honor And Highest Authority Is Exaltation And How High Is This Honor And Authority Well Christ Exaltation According to Paul here Is above All Other Authorities Here's Here's Another Superlative All Other Authorities Specifically Far Above All Principality And Power And Might And Dominion In Every Name That Is Name Not Only In This Age But Also In That Which Is To Come All Now This Includes All Authorities I Mean In Every Realm In The First Place It Includes The Heavenly Authorities Who Would That Be Well That Would Be The Angels Right The Hierarchy Of Angelic Authority And

There Is A Hierarchy Of Authority In The With The Angels And So There's Kind Of A Governance Of Angels There's A Pecking Order Of Angels Or However You Want To Put It And So He's Saying That He Is Seated At The Right Hand In The Heavenly Places Far Above All Of The Hierarchy Of The Angels Principalities Power Might Dominion But Also Hellish Authorities Who Would That Be That Be Satan And His Demons Satan And His Demons And There Is Also A Hierarchy Of Demonic Authority Paul Speaks Of It Powers Principalities I Mean There Is A There Is A Organized Hierarchy Of Authority And Christ Is Far Above All All Authority

Hellish Authorities And Also Human Authorities Human Authorities So That Would Be Every Form Of Earthly Government Past Present Future Whoever They Are Whether They're Benevolent Or Malevolent Governments Governments And Government Leaders He's Far Above All That's That's What He's Talking About So He's Not Trying To Highlight Any Particular Area Of Authority He's Just Simply Saying That Christ Is Above All All Authorities That Have Ever Existed Or Ever Will Exist In Heaven In Hell On This Earth Second His Subjugation Subjugation Sorry For The The Just Have To Have My Alliteration That

Just Means To Bring Under Control And So Verse 22 First Part Of Verse 22 Says And He Put All Things Under His Feet He Subjugated All Things Under Him So It Is In A Sense A Parallel Thought One Positive One Negative But It Is Talking About The Same Thing Above All And All Are Under Him So He Put All Things Under His Feet Which Again Is Figurative Language The Picture Of Someone Underneath The Feet Or Foot Of Someone Is A Picture Of Someone Who Is Subjugated Is Subservient Who Is Under The Authority Of The One Who Is On Top!

So When Paul Says! All Things Under His Feet He Is Referring Then To The Absolute Here's A String Of Words For You Absolute Universal Sovereign Subjugation Or Control Of All Creation All Creation And Now The Words All Things Then Obviously Points To The Universal Scope Or The Universal Extent Of His Dominion So He's Not Just Over Those Who Follow Him He's Going To Talk About That Next He's Not Just Over Those Who Follow Him But He's Also Over Those Who Oppose Him Though They Don't Know It And Would Deny It And Fight Against It Rebel Against It And That Describes The Better Part Of Our World Today Including!

Our Country And Even Those Who Are In Authority Over Us They Don't Know It But He Is Above Them They're Under His Feet All Things He's Sovereign Over All Things All All Created Things Are Under Christ's Sovereign Control Now That Is True It's A Reality Though It's Not Yet Seen It's Still A Mystery To Many People One Day It Will Be Revealed Openly When Christ Comes Again Now Finally Though Third His Jurisdiction And This Speaks Specifically Where He Is Ruling Right Now Where He's Manifesting His Rule His Jurisdiction Verses 22 And 23 Are The Last Part Of Verse 22 And He Gave Him To Behead Over All Things To The Church Which Is His Body Fullness

Of Him Who Fills All In All So As Far As Believers Are Concerned As Far As We're Concerned His Jurisdiction Is The Church Which Is The Visible Representation Of His Kingdom And The designation Then Head Over All Things To The Church Suggest A Number Of Important Realities I Mean That Is What I'm Saying Is When He Speaks Of Christ As The Head And Then He Mentions The Church Then The Implication Is Head And Body Head Body And When You Put That Together You Have Several Realities That Are Suggested Here First Of Number One Christ Is The Supreme Authority Over The Church He Is He Has Supreme Authority Over The Church So Head In That Sense Speaks That Truth That Reality Christ Is The Head And So He Has Supreme Authority Over

All Things In The Church Number Two A Second Reality There Is And This We Get From This Image Of A Head And Body There Is A Vital Or Living Relationship Between Christ The Head And His Church The Body There Is A Vital Relationship And What I Mean Is You Know If You God Forbid Someone Were To Sever Your Head From Your Body Then There Be No Life After That That That Is Not Suggest That Christ Could Suddenly Have No Life But We Have No Life If We Severed From The Head Our Head That Is Christ And So That Very Image Head Over All Things There Is This Living This Vital Relationship Between Christ And His Church The Body Three The Church Is A Living Organism We

Really Think Of It In That Sense Do We That This Church By Definition Is An Organism It Is A Living Organism It Has Hands And Legs And Heart And You Know Fingers And Mouth And Ears And It's A Living Organism As Opposed To Simply An Ecclesiastical Organization You Know Which Is You Know It May Be Very Organized It May By Definition Be Very Detailed And But And We Do Have A Hierarchy Of Leadership But It's Much More Than Just Simply An Organization It Is An Organism We Are A Body The Body Of Christ And He's Our Head And The Fourth Thing That It Clearly Designates For Us That The Church Is The Medium Through

Which Christ Accomplishes His Work In This World Chosen Choсят Choсят Choсят Choсят Choсят Choсят God could, if he wanted to, he could, you know, have written across the sky the gospel.

People could look and they could be saved. Some have suggested that the stars, somehow you can interpret the gospel from the stars, that God has it written up there in the stars. I don't really subscribe to that.

Maybe God could use other methods, and he certainly could have, but he chose to limit himself in a sense, limit himself to this, to the church.

And he has chosen that the church would be his avenue or medium to the world, to accomplish his work in this world.

We have a lot of, in our world today, and especially in our country, and really all around the world, because though they may be located, many of them may be located in our country, they do ministry all around the world, and we call them para-church organizations.

Para meaning alongside of the church. It's not the church doing the ministry, it's a para-church organization. I'm not against those.

I have a lot of very good ones, and some of you might even help support some of those. Nothing wrong with that, but the para-church organization is never going to win the world for Christ.

It's the church that is to do that. And so when they come alongside with the church, and we are joined together, but God's plan, God's medium, his avenue to win this world, to accomplish his work, is the church.

It's the church. And, you know, it's not missions organizations. It's the mission of the church. All right, so, then the phrase, and we're about finished here, the phrase, the fullness of him who fills all in all, that's the last part of that, points really to several spiritual truths about Christ and his church.

The church is, first of all, permeated by his presence. That truth is contained in that phrase, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

The church is permeated by his presence. If it's not, then it's not the true church, or it's an apostate church. But the true church is permeated by the very presence of Christ.

Second, the church is animated by his life. By his life. It's not animated in a sense, and I want to be very careful when I say this, it's not animated by doctrine.

Though, no church can exist or accomplish anything for the Lord without sound doctrine. It's not animated by his doctrine, it's animated by his very life.

His life in each individual believer, and there, then collectively, his life in the church. And, now, sound doctrine must be there also, as a secondary part of this, but, it's his life that animates, makes us alive, as a church.

And then, third, filled with his gifts. The church is filled with his gifts. He is giving gifts to the church. And not just certain offices in the church, like pastors and teachers, deacons, elders, elders, but also, those who have been given spiritual gifts to use in the church, to accomplish various functions of the church.

And God has given those gifts. And every one of you has one. I mean, I'll be using it, but you have it. And, and you didn't learn it.

It wasn't passed on to you by your father or mother. It's not something that you got from a Bible study course. It's something God gave you from the very beginning. And, you may not have discovered it yet.

And if you have, you might not be using it. But, God has gifted you. and that's what makes a church healthy. when all of God's people in that local body of believers uses the gift that God has given him or her.

And then finally, energized by His grace. And we have to have the grace of God. We are energized. That's, you know, what Paul said, that it's God working in you, and you, and you, and all of you.

Both to will and to do with His good pleasure. And, that, that's, about the best definition of grace you could ever want to find. I'm talking about the active working of God's grace in the life of the believer.

Best definition you'll ever find in the scripture. And the word grace doesn't even appear in the passage. But, that's what it is. It's that power of God, the dynamic of God that's working in you to do two things.

To will, or to desire, and also to do. That is the power to do what pleases Him. Thank you.