Knowing the President vs. Meeting Him
When I was in the eleventh grade, my history class took a trip up to Washington, D.C. — I’ve actually been four times now, and I love it up there. But that particular trip was special, because that year the White House was doing a garden tour they only do every so many years, and we just so happened to be going on our trip when that tour was happening. So we saw a bunch of cool stuff in D.C., but the neatest thing we got to do was walk through those gates and step onto the lawn of the White House. I was so close to the building I could have reached out and touched it — of course, a security guard probably would have grabbed me. But nonetheless, I got to be there, in the place where the president lives. The Navy band was playing, there were beautiful flowers everywhere, it was a big deal, everybody was excited.
And I was waiting around, because, well, we were at somebody’s house, and I was thinking it would be kind of neat if they came out and made an appearance. They never did. And at that point, they had been president for a while. I had heard their speeches on TV. I knew what their platform was. I knew what they believed in. I knew what leadership direction they were taking the country. I didn’t have any questions about any of that, and I had even experienced the influence of this president’s leadership. But despite the fact that I had been to the man’s house, I had heard him on TV, I could quote his lines, I knew his platform — I had never met the president. I’d been that close, but I never met him.
There’s a vast difference between knowing something — having knowledge of something — and experiencing the reality of that something. It’s one thing to know the president, and know about the president. It’s an entirely different thing to sit down and have lunch with him. And it’s one thing to know who God is. It’s one thing to know his word. It’s one thing to be able to quote his word. But it’s something entirely different to know God, and to experience the God of the Bible that we read.
Layer Upon Layer of Truth
Paul, in the first three chapters of Ephesians, has been layering truth upon truth, providing all of these wonderful realities to the Christians in Asia Minor. He’s telling them about their identity in Christ: you have been chosen by an Almighty God. He chose to love you. He chose to send his Son to die for you. He’s telling them the realities about the church, and how God has gloriously brought Jew and Gentile together — how he has broken down the dividing lines and created out of every nation, tribe, and tongue one family that gets to experience the fullness of God’s love and grace and power. He is giving us truth after truth after truth.
If you have not been here for the study, I encourage you to go home this week and read Ephesians 1 through 3. It’ll give you a lot of context for what Paul has been sharing. But he’s given us so much to chew on — so much reality and truth — that it sounds good on the surface. Paul, though, realizes what I’ve already told you this morning: it’s one thing to know these truths, and it’s something entirely different to experience these truths.
When the Doctrine Doesn’t Stay on the Page
As Paul brings this section to a close in chapter four and on through the rest of the book, he’s going to give instructions about how to live in light of these truths, as he brings the doctrinal section of this letter to a close. But he ends it with a prayer — and not a half-hearted one. He doesn’t just throw up a few words and hope God hears it. This is a heartfelt prayer. In fact, I’m not going to have time to cover all of it, but Paul is breaking all kinds of grammatical rules in this section because he wants the church to understand what he’s saying. This is not about doctrine, this is not about being grammatically correct — it is about you experiencing the realities of what he has just described.
And Paul doesn’t go on giving us more truth. He doesn’t try to double down and give more illustrations, more applications. Paul stops and he prays. He prays that God would take these truths they have learned and make them come alive in their hearts, because he understood — he knew very well — that the only way doctrine was ever going to transform lives is if the Holy Spirit took the doctrines and actually did something with them.
Paul is the perfect example of this. He spent his entire life studying the Word of God. He studied under the greatest teacher in Israel. He knew probably more about the Old Testament Scriptures than the average Israelite could ever hope to learn. He knew the doctrines, he knew the truths, he had it memorized, he could even teach it to somebody else. But it was not until he encountered the living Christ on the road to Damascus that those doctrines and those Scriptures came alive to him and started to transform his life. And Paul, being transformed by the doctrines he taught, had a burden for the church to not only know the truth, but to be changed by the truth.
An Epidemic in the American Church
I believe we have an epidemic in the American church. We have become very good at having church. We’ve become very good at teaching our children how to memorize Bible verses. We’ve become very good at saying the right religious things at the right times. We sing the right songs, we read the right Bibles — we’ve got it down to a science. But I’m afraid there are thousands, if not millions, of people sitting on church pews across this nation who could quote you Bible verses from memory and yet have never experienced the power of the truths they affirm. I’m afraid that far too many Christians are claiming the title and doing the routines, but we’re not living in the Holy Spirit power that Paul is talking about in these verses. We know there’s got to be more to it. We’ve heard about God doing great things in the past — miraculously saving people, healing people, changing lives — and yet we wonder where that power is in our own lives. Paul had such a burden that the church would not spend their lives learning about these things without ever being transformed by them.
Folks, I share that burden with Paul this morning. I thank God — I think it was yesterday — made five years since you all voted to make me the interim pastor of Temple Baptist Church. Five years I’ve been in this church, and I thank God for every day I’ve had the opportunity to be your pastor, and for the people we have gotten to meet — the people we have welcomed into this family, visitors that have come, longtime members who have sat on these pews. I’m thankful to be a part of what God is doing at Temple Baptist Church, and I love everything we do here. But one of my greatest burdens is that we would not go through the motions of having church. I don’t want to just get more people on the pews. I don’t want to preach more sermons, or better sermons. I want us to be a people who are moved by the realities we claim to believe. I want us to be a church where every Sunday we come in and share with somebody something incredible that God has done within us or outside of us. Because that’s what we see happening in the church throughout history. The church has seen God do amazing things. And don’t you think it’s time we see God do some amazing things again?
Paul’s Response: He Fell to His Knees
So what did Paul do? How did he approach this issue of doctrinal knowledge without a depth of experience?
He says in verse 14, “For this cause” — that is, for everything he’s just said up to this point, because these things are true —
For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
When Paul was burdened and moved for God’s people to be transformed, he did not write longer or speak louder. He went to his knees and approached God, and he begged God to give the people something that would help them and transform their lives.
It’s important to note here — we’re used to this posture in prayer. When most people picture prayer, they think of someone down on their knees next to their bed, arms crossed, fingers folded, eyes closed, bowing down. But in that day, the regular posture of prayer for Jews was actually to stand and look up to God, eyes open, hands out. That was the normal posture of prayer for the Jewish community. They stood before the Lord with arms outstretched, showing “I have nothing in my hands, but I am seeking from you.” It was a request for God to provide what they did not have, and looking up was a symbol of dependence — looking up to the Father.
Now, when someone was deeply moved, deeply burdened, and wanted to express an extra level of dependence upon the Lord, they would break the regular posture of prayer and get down on their knees, bowing before the Lord. So when Paul says, “I bow my knees unto the Father,” this is not a normal prayer — this is a fervent prayer. He’s saying, “I am going to the next level of prayer, so that you might know the realities I have shared with you, that you would be moved by these realities.” Paul wants this desperately. He’s not satisfied to give them good doctrinal knowledge. He wants their lives to be changed. He wants their hearts filled with the realities he has just shared.
Paul doesn’t stop with a normal pattern of prayer. He falls to his knees “unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named.” He throws that in because he’s just finished describing how the church is made up of every people group, every nation, tribe, and tongue — Jews and Gentiles. He’s saying: everybody belongs to the Lord. Every family gets their name from the Lord. Every people group and tribe finds their stability in the Lord. Nobody exists, nobody has life, without him. So he’s saying, if I’m going to go to someone to pray for you, who better to go to than the one who called you Father before anybody else did?
He does not look for methods. He does not look for the next best speaker to come into town and stir everybody’s emotions. He falls before the holy God of heaven, who names every man, woman, boy, and girl and gives them their place in this world. Not only does he give us our life and our place, but he loves us like a father loves a child — he loves us deeply, beyond what words can describe. And so Paul, when he has this great burden, goes to God in prayer.
Folks, I thank God for the opportunity to stand up here and preach to you Sunday after Sunday. I thank God for the countless resources we have at our disposal — I can go home and listen to hundreds of sermons, read hundreds of articles, read books, listen to podcasts. I thank God for all of it. But nothing can take the place of bowing before God in prayer and asking him to do what we cannot do. God alone has the ability to do what I’m talking about this morning.
What Paul Prayed For
So Paul prays — but what does he pray for?
He says in verse 16 that God would grant “according to the riches of his glory.” Paul is reminding the church here that what he’s getting ready to ask God to do, God is fully equipped, prepared, and capable of accomplishing. That’s good news for us this morning, because you may be in that place where you’re longing for more of God — where you want something more than the average, everyday Christianity you’ve been living your whole life, but you think, “Maybe that’s beyond me. Maybe other people get to have that, but maybe I don’t.” Paul is reminding the church that the one he’s praying to has riches in glory that we cannot begin to imagine. He’s asking, not in a hopeful kind of way, but knowing that God has the ability to make it a reality — the ability to provide this life-changing experiential knowledge of him.
Strengthened in the Inner Man
He prays that God would grant, according to the riches of his glory, “to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man.”
I wonder how many of us have needed strength this past week. I wonder how many of us have faced a temptation this week that seemed bigger than we were. I wonder how many of us have experienced pain, or an illness, or a hurt this week, and we didn’t feel strong enough to deal with it. What you’re needing in that moment is not another memory verse. Christians, we’re real good at that — when we see somebody suffering, somebody going through something, we think, “If I can just throw the right verse at them, give them the right Scripture, say the right Christianese word, it’s going to fix all their problems and make it all go away.” I’ll tell you a secret this morning: there’s a strength required for the Christian life that you cannot give to someone else. We can be present, we can encourage, we can be kind — but if you’re looking for just the right thing to fix all of somebody’s problems, you don’t have it. He does.
He has the strength you need to face what you’re going through, and he provides that by his Spirit. Notice he says “in the inner man” — this is not a promise that God is going to change what you’re going through. This is not a promise that all your problems are going to go away, or that you’re suddenly going to have the answer to fix every issue in your life. He’s saying, “I’m praying that God will let his Spirit become so big in you that it strengthens you to face what you’re going through — with grace and peace and comfort.” Paul is praying that they would experience a nearness of God and a strength of God that goes beyond what they’re facing externally. And by the way, he says, my God can grant that, according to his riches in glory.
Folks, you may be burdened, you may be tired, you may be longing for rest and reprieve from the things you’re going through. I can’t promise you that God is going to make those problems go away. But what I can promise you is that he has every ounce of strength you need. And how are you going to get it? The same way Paul got it — by bowing your knees unto the Father, and asking him to do what your pastor cannot do, what your spouse cannot do, what your friends cannot do.
Christ Dwelling in Your Heart by Faith
Paul goes on, praying “that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith.” That word dwell means to set up permanent residence. He’s praying that Christ would dwell in their hearts by faith.
Now, we know that when we are born again, the Bible tells us God imparts his Spirit to us, and he is already in us when we receive him by faith — that’s a reality Paul has already confirmed earlier in this letter. But he’s not just wanting us to have knowledge that Christ is in there. He’s wanting us to experience the faith and the trust and the blessing of Christ dwelling in us. Folks, you can tell yourself all day long, “I’ve got the Holy Spirit in me, I’ve got the Holy Spirit in me.” But until you feel the blessing of that Holy Spirit in you, those words are only going to do you so much. Paul is praying, “I don’t just want you to know that God is there — I want you to feel God there. I want your faith to experience the nearness and the indwelling of Jesus Christ.”
Rooted and Grounded in Love
Then Paul says, “being rooted and grounded in love, that ye … may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.”
Once again, Paul is breaking all kinds of rules here. These sentences aren’t structured the way proper Greek grammar would call for. He says, “I pray that you may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height” — the breadth and length and depth and height of what? He gives us the modifiers but withholds the noun. He builds on it before he ever gives you the next part. You say, “The breadth, the length, the depth, the height — of what?” And then he says, “and to know” — and you think, “Hold on, you didn’t finish that.” He’s stacking things on top of each other, building up the effect. And to know what? “The love of Christ.” But then he says — “which passeth knowledge.”
Do you see the problem here? He says he wants us to know what cannot be known. He wants us to know the love of Christ, which is beyond knowledge. That’s contradictory, even in English. He’s saying, “I want you to know what cannot be known.” And you say, “That’s not possible.” He says, “You’re right — it’s not possible, according to man. But you’re not just a man. You’re not just a woman. You’re a being who has another Being living inside of you, who can do things you cannot do on your own.”
What Paul is telling us is that this thing he’s wanting us to have is something we cannot naturally obtain on our own. You can study the Bible as long as you want. You can go to church as long as you want. You can sit under the sermons, sing the songs, go through the motions, do everything by the book — and you will never obtain what Paul is describing here. But before you get discouraged: he’s praying that God, by his Holy Spirit and according to his riches in glory, would let you know what cannot be known.
This is the blessed reality of life in Christ — that we get to experience things that cannot be experienced. We get to know things that cannot be known. We get to see a God who cannot be seen. Human words can’t fully describe this thing Paul is describing. It goes beyond what proper grammar, proper words, proper definitions can put into a box. There is something to this that goes beyond anything you’ve ever known before — and Paul wants you to have it. It starts with the knowledge, but it’s that knowledge becoming experience.
Filled With All the Fullness of God
And Paul wraps this part of the prayer up by saying “that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.” You may be listening to what I’m saying and thinking, “Justin, that sounds great. I would love to be stronger than I am. I would love to have more peace, more comfort. I would love to experience the real presence of God, to watch him do miracles in my life, to see the unimaginable take place. But somebody told me that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” You may be thinking, “I have been sitting on church pews my entire life, and I have never experienced what you’re talking about right now. I don’t know if it’s possible.” It’s okay to be honest if that’s where you’re at.
A God Who Is Able
But Paul has one more thing to say. He says:
Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen.
Did you catch that? “Now unto him that is able.” Paul says, “You have doubts about whether this can actually happen in your life — and I have an answer for that. My God is able, capable, powerful enough to do.”
Now here’s a key part: “exceeding abundantly above all.” This is the biggest rule Paul breaks in this whole passage, because he actually creates his own word. Paul takes three Greek words that each mean “far beyond” something, and mashes them together into one word — I’m not even going to try to say it this morning, because one Greek word is hard enough by itself, and he takes three and joins them together into one long word on the page. Exceeding is one. Abundantly is another. Above all is another. That’s why you won’t find an English translation that quite captures it, because it doesn’t translate cleanly — he made up his own word so we would understand that what he’s talking about goes way beyond anything we can imagine.
He’s saying: I am praying to a God who is able to do everything I just described. He can strengthen you to face what you’re going through. He can let you know things that cannot be known. He can fill you up with the very fullness of God, so you can live a life that transcends your ability to understand. He can do all of that — and more. More than I can ask, more than I can even think with my mind.
Folks, we worship a God who is able. We worship a God bigger than your mind can comprehend. And whatever depth of love you need right now, whatever ounce of strength you’re looking for but don’t have in your life — whatever hope, whatever peace, whatever power — he’s already got it. And then some. God never breaks the bank when he extends grace. He lavishes us in gifts of grace and mercy and joy and hope and peace, and then he counts up what he’s got left, and it’s beyond the ability to count.
Have You Experienced This?
As we bring things to a close this morning, I want to ask you this: have you experienced what I’m describing this morning? I pray you will one day. As a seasoned believer, can you look back and say, “What you’ve described this morning — I know exactly what you’re talking about”? Maybe you’ve had a taste of it before, but right now you want more. Maybe your life is spiritually dry right now, and you’re just thirsty for living water. Maybe you’re early on in your faith journey, and you’ve heard about what God can do, but you’re wanting to see it. Maybe you’re here this morning, and you’ve been around this church stuff your whole life, but you have never actually experienced the reality of it. Maybe you can say, “I have made church part of my life, but Christ has never made me part of his church.”
What’s the message? Our God is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we could ever ask or think. What is it you need from the Lord today? He’s got it — and he’s got more than you could ever imagine. So my call to you today is to follow Paul, and bow your knees before the God of heaven, and say, “Lord, I know the memory verses. Lord, I’ve been to church. I’ve sung the songs. I’ve given my tithes. I’ve served. I’ve done all these things. But Lord, today I need something real. I need something that is going to change my life.”
I’ve got good news for you. He can do it, and he will do it, for those who call upon his name.
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