Great Themes No.7 The Power of God

Ephesians chapter 1, sonnung of verse 1. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to the saints in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus, grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Praise be to the God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.

In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ in accordance with his pleasure and will. To the praise of his glorious grace which he has freely given us in the one he loves. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished on us with all the wisdom and understanding.

And he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure which he purposed in Christ to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ. In him we were also chosen having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will in order that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be for the praise of his glory. And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, having believed you are marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession.

To the praise of his glory. For this reason ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the Saints I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation so that you may know him better.

I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the Saints and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at the right hand of the heavenly realms. Far above the rule, all rule and authority, power and dominion and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.

And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church which is the body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way. Now I'd be glad if you had your Bible open at Ephesians 1 or if you're not with a copy of the New Testament this evening then maybe you'd share with the folk alongside you. Ephesians in chapter 1, just have a couple of verses and then another prayer.

Pick up the reading from the 17th verse, I keep asking, I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms.

Father, we ask for a special sense of your spirit right now. We pray that he might minister the things of our Lord Jesus to us and as a result we shall go away not only with our understanding enlarged but our minds and our wills quickened, stimulated and may we be more receptive to the power of God in our lives. Amen.

I remember some years ago reading in the color supplement of the Observer about certain places where a tourist or a visitor to London could go without any cost at all. The wares and services of the large stores were reviewed and then later on the reporter who was not without a touch of cynicism gave us a conducted tour around a variety of churches in the center of our metropolis bringing out their major characteristic for obviously it's free, thank God, to go to church. He made some comment about Westminster Chapel when the preacher at that time was Dr. Lloyd Jones and said that he was very strong on hell and judgment.

Then he nipped across from the nonconformist fold to the Anglicans and took us to All Souls and he had this to say of that evangelical Anglican Church. It was a low church with a high voltage. A low church with a high voltage and he was referring to the sense of power when John Stott, that gifted Anglican evangelical preacher ministers the gospel.

Indeed I remember when I was courting the lady who was to become my wife in London. She was staying in a flat under the hospitality of a very kindly somewhat upper-class lady who happened to be in the particular area, the parish of All Souls, and I remember how Rowena used to tell me that her friend would complain that every time she went to All Souls and heard John Stott she thought that the preacher felt he was in the Salvation Army and not really in a proper Anglican Church. Low church, high voltage, and that term of course is plucked out of the area of electricity and power and current.

Just a month or so ago when in Israel our good missionary friends Geraldine and Catherine took me one day outside of Jerusalem onto the desert area of Judea and there we went to visit a place that I'd often longed to go to. A place called Masada which is a very high hill or the plateau on the top of a high hill where was enacted the last battle between the Jews and the Romans in the first century. Remarkable account of how a handful, relatively speaking, of Jewish soldiers with their women folk held out against the Romans for one year and then Masada was taken, the walls were breached, and the Romans discovered that the Jews, rather than offering their women folk and themselves up to them and the bestial treatment that they would receive, they had killed one another.

Now to get to the top of Masada you either climbed, and the slope is somewhat precipitous, it's very steep, you either climbed on a hot afternoon or you took the cable car. The girls were all for climbing, however we went in the cable car and it was as a result of the tremendous power, the generator which produced the current, that we were lifted with something like 25 German tourists from below sea level for the Judean wildernesses by the by the Dead Sea to the heights of Masada. Why do I say that? Because our being elevated directly corresponded to the amount of current that was available in the cable car to lift us from below sea level to the heights of the Judean hills.

Now why am I leading off with this sort of illustration? Well I do so for this reason. It seems to me that the one term with which you can describe Christian people, at least ideally, is this. They are power-filled people.

Oh let me express that another way. They are powerful people. I say ideally.

I recognize that there is often a yawning gap between what is actual and what is ideal, but nonetheless according to Scripture, as I shall demonstrate in a moment or two, the word which should describe the Christian community is that it is peopled by those who are powerful, filled with the power of the Spirit. If you were to read, for example, the fifth book of the New Testament, which is called the Acts of the Apostles, and you have sensitive hearing, you can detect the hum of the generating force of the Holy Spirit. You read of men and women who are able to do remarkable exploits.

It is absolutely illogical on the human level that these people could make such an impact upon their society. They pray and they see answers to prayer. They speak and though they're untaught, their words penetrate the hearts of their listeners.

Ere long they gather together more adherents in Jerusalem. Ultimately they spread their wings, so to speak, and they start to move throughout Palestine and indeed to various parts of the Roman world. And by the time you get to the end of the Acts of the Apostles, those who are their opponents say, these are men who've turned the world upside down.

How do you understand their achievements? What is it that has caused these somewhat weak people at the natural level to become so vital, so vibrant, so dynamic? Well, it's all to do with the title of that fifth book of the New Testament, the Holy Spirit, the Acts of the Holy Spirit. What is a Christian? He is basically a man who has been filled with the Holy Spirit. Unless he knows or she knows that filling, then there is no possibility at all as to their claims being true, that they are Christian.

The Christian community is peopled with those who ideally are powerful, filled with the power of God. Now, when you come to this particular chapter that Kevin read so well for us this evening, you discover towards the end a prayer on the part of the Apostle Paul. He is interceding for the Christians at Corinth, at Ephesus rather, and he has some things to say specifically as he brings his heart's desires for them to the Lord.

He says in verse 17, I keep asking that the Lord God, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation so that you might know him better. He wants them to know Christ more dearly. And then he goes on and says, I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints.

He wants them to comprehend him more clearly. And then finally, he asks that they might be introduced to his incomparably great power for us who believe. He wants them to experience the power of God more really.

Now, why do I pause and bring this statement to your attention? Because it seems to me that here is not only Paul's desire for the Christians at Ephesus, but here is God's desire for Christian people and for those who at this moment are uncommitted to the Lord Jesus in the tabernacle tonight. There is a theology which is understandable and yet inaccurate that seems to suggest a Christian is a person who picks up power as he continues on his Christian journey, as though he starts off somewhat weak and then the current is intensified and ultimately he finds the power of God available to him and flowing through him. I argue that that's an understandable thought, but I also disassociate myself entirely from that viewpoint.

A Christian is someone who is born in power. He is kept in power. He completes his Christian journey in power.

There's power in his initiation, there's power in his continuation, and there will be power in his consummation when he goes to be with the Lord. It is a theology that devalues the miracle of salvation that suggests you do not need to know the dynamic of the Spirit of God right at the beginning of our Christian experience. So Paul prays for these Christians.

He prays that they might know the outworking, the realization of what is already there in their lives, the incomparably great power of God. Now let me pause for a moment. What were you before you became a Christian? Or if you're in that latter condition this evening, you're not committed to Jesus Christ.

What is a description of your state? Well, let me remind you as the Apostle will do in the first verse of the second chapter, you were or are a dead man or woman. You were dead in your trespasses and sins. There is a failure today on the part of many people to understand just what happened in the Garden of Eden when Adam fell.

You know the account in Genesis. Here was Adam, here was Eve in this paradise that God had prepared for them. They rebelled against God and as a result not only they were affected but all their descendants.

For as the oak tree is in the acorn, so humanity is in Adam. And as a result Adam died spiritually. And because you and I are sinners, we are dead outside of the gospel of Christ.

And the possibility of us coming to a living experience of God is as remote at the human level, said the Prophet Jeremiah, as the concept of a black Ethiopian changing his skin or as the spotted leopard as he makes his way through the jungle suddenly dropping his spots off. When a man is outside God, as you at least at one time was in your life, he's dead. Absolutely dead.

Spiritually as dead as Lazarus in Bethany was dead physically. Now what caused Lazarus to maintain that illustration for a moment to come back to life physically? Power. The authoritative Word of Christ spoken to one who was dead.

Come forth Lazarus. And he came. The generating power of God was released on the Word of Christ and entered the body of Lazarus and this man who physically was dead came back to life.

A remarkable miracle. They heard about it throughout Bethany on into Jerusalem. He became a legend in his own time.

This great man made great because of the power of God physically operating in his life. Now in exactly the same case the Christian has received the power of God. It's that that's brought him back to life.

One says Paul, I repeat Ephesians 2.1, once you were dead in your trespasses and sins, once you had no hope in this world and then the message of the gospel came along and you responded. There are those who who seem to think that a man or a woman can respond to the gospel of Christ at will. You know I make a decision.

It's all me that does it. There is some soothing singing in an evangelistic campaign. I walk down to the front.

I do God a turn. Jesus is waiting and so I decide to satisfy Jesus. I, I, I. Not a bit my friend.

Salvation starts first of all by God making a move. A move towards your heart. He enlightens your mind which is beclouded says the Apostle Paul.

You're like a dunce at school. You had no possibility of acquiring information at all. There was no spiritual truth which would reside in you until that moment when God lifted your eyes and you beheld his truth and you responded.

That took power. So the Apostle when he preaches in Thessalonica and looks back upon the event he says the gospel that I proclaimed was proclaimed to you not in word only but in the power and the demonstration of the Spirit. It takes power to convert a man.

I told you I think some year or two ago about some Malaysian students who responded after some meetings that I had at one of our universities. They came to me at the end of the series of meetings and they said we believe in all that you have said. We acknowledge that what you have set out to prove that Jesus is the Son of God is indeed the case.

And I said to them well why do you not confess him as your Savior? And they responded we won't do it because if we did we'd have to change our lifestyle and they were dead right. My word got through. Logically.

The argument they admitted but you see there wasn't the power to save them to open their hearts. You require power to become a Christian and it's that power says the Apostle Paul which is like the working of the mighty strength and energy of God which verse 20 he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms. Oh my friend my young Christian friend I trust you're giving me your concentration and by God's grace I'm able to explain this statement of Scripture to you.

Do you realize what Paul is saying here? It's mind-blowing. What was the greatest demonstration of God's power on this earth? Right at the beginning when he brought it into being when the flood came down and God judged the world in Noah's day? At Sodom and Gomorrah when destruction hit those two sin-sick cities? When the Jordan or the Red Sea rather was opened up and the Israelites walked through dry shard? No. The greatest demonstration of the power of Almighty God that this world has ever known was that day when after Jesus had been encapsuled in a hewn-out tomb in a cave at the bottom of a skull-shaped hill God spoke and Jesus came forth in the power of an endless life.

Now it's that power says the incomparable energy of God that caused you to be a Christian and outside of the display of God's power at that level you can't be a believer. You're needed the power of God in initiation but furthermore you'll need the power of God as you continue. The Apostle Peter refers in the epistle that bears his name to the fact that he is kept by the power of God.

When Paul writes to the Philippians he makes reference to their salvation and the fact that God is working in them as they work alongside God. When he discloses in the same letter his desire for his own life he says that I might know him, Jesus, and the power of his resurrection. I think I've got trouble with the battery of my car.

Some may say well that serves you right for getting a Ford but in all honesty it's done me good service for some while and it would probably have been the case even if I'd got a Datsun. You see it's the weather and the sort of job that I do stopping and starting, visiting, extracting power current from the battery. I haven't been on a very long run as a friend loaned her car when I went to Portsmouth on Friday and so the charge in my battery is low.

It needs a boost. And that also applies to Christians you see. There's a continual loss of power and a replenishment of power and it's this that the Apostle Paul is concerned about that you might know in fullness in all its flow in all its high voltage the incomparable great power of the living God that same power as flushed down from heaven when Christ was raised from the dead.

I ask you my young friend, my older friend, do you know this sort of power not just in initiation but also in continuation. I've long since lost the desire to argue the theology of the Spirit in the area of experience. I'm not concerned about words.

I sometimes get sick of them. I've read the books. I've read both sides of the major argument in evangelicalism on the controversy of the baptism of the Spirit.

It leaves me moved not by one degree. It's not words that I want. It's the power.

The overflowing overwhelming overwhelmings of the Spirit of God in my life and without that then I'm weak. I'm like my battery. I go down.

I turn the ignition when I've got into my car in the garage and it won't fire because I don't have that power that is necessary or it doesn't have it. Similarly it's possible for Christian people not to know that continuation of the intense power of God going from one voltage to a higher voltage to an even higher voltage being used for the dissemination of the gospel of Christ. I'll say a little bit more about that in a moment or two when I come to make some concluding observations.

But the point that I'm emphasizing, the point that the Apostle is bringing out in the third part of this triple prayer is that having begun in power he wants the Ephesians to continue in power and ultimately of course they'll go out in power. The consummation of our lives at death is when we are taken from this scene of time to the next, from earth to heaven. Says the Apostle in Philippians the end of the second or third chapter, one day our vile body shall be like the glorious body of our Lord Jesus.

We shall receive it, our new body, as a result of the exercise of the power of God. The Apostle Paul says exactly the same when he's writing to the Christians at Rome in the eighth chapter. He says we're awaiting the manifestation of the sons of God.

We're waiting the time when Jesus Christ shall return, when he shall institute his government, when there shall be a new heaven and a new earth. All this will require the power of God. But my point, my point is simply this, that the power that Paul is referring to is not the power at the end.

That's going to be great, remarkable, recreative power of God as he sets up the eternal age. It's going to be a magnificent display of all the velocity and of all the kinetic energy that God has, a remarkable display that beggars human description or anticipation. But the power of God is not kept to the end.

In its display, it is for the Christian Church right now. And I ask you, do you know, do you know the power of God? That power that caused you or causes you to acknowledge that Jesus is Lord and to put your trust in the finished work of Jesus at Calvary, that requires the power of God to open your heart and to bring you into a relationship with the Father. But more than that, do you, my Christian friend, know the constant replenishings of the power of God in your life? There's no easy way to acquire that day by day.

I'm old enough to tell you, I've tried every one that's been taught by evangelical preachers and theologians. There's no easy pattern that somehow or other, by the snapping of the fingers, will bring me into that condition where I shall constantly know the power of God. Rather, as the Apostle Paul tells us later on in the Epistle to the Ephesians, we are to put on the full armor of God.

We are to be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might. There are certain things that we need to do day by day and week by week. I don't find it hard to go to convention meetings.

I don't find it hard to feel a little bit emotional and sentimental when we're singing some of the great historic hymns or some of these beautiful scripture choruses. But I know the deception of my own heart that I might take that emotional experience as being necessarily an indication of God's power in my life, when it's as superficial and as cosmetic as something that I just apply to my face or I apply to my hair. What is required on the part of those who would know the power of God in their lives is to come before the Word of God day by day and to read it, to feed upon it.

It's easier to attend meetings than to spend an hour with your Bible. It's easier to attend a prayer session with other folk than to spend time on your own in intercessory prayer before Almighty God. But it's these twin means of grace, to use an expression of the Puritans, which are for the building up of the saints, for the release of the power of God.

As I absorb the Word, as I spend time in his presence, so I am able to overcome the hostile power, the second most mighty force in this world, the power of the devil, who like a roaring lion goes around seeking whom he might devour. I desperately need the power of God in my soul, in my life. You might think that after 11 years in this pulpit and years helping in London, in a pulpit there, and courses at two theological colleges, that if anyone might be able to dispense with these spiritual disciplines of keeping close to the Word of God, relying upon the Spirit of God, it might be someone like myself.

I tell you my young friend, I am as weak as the most immature Christian at the beginning of their spiritual pilgrimage, unless I keep close to this book, unless I keep close to my Lord in prayer. This, and this alone, is how one maintains and increasingly knows the power of God. I'm sick at pseudo attempts to suggest that there are other means that will dispense with these basic disciplines.

They do not work. They're a bubble that's handed to the evangelical church that seems to shine and be attractive, but a pin will prick it and its substance will be seen as being nothing at all. What God requires of the tabernacle young people and older friends, in knowing his power and in knowing his presence, to quote dear John Stutt again, who I referred to at the beginning of my address, are those three D's, the daily dogged disciplines that enable a man and a woman to live cleanly and honorably, to enjoy pure relationships, one with another, to stay close to the Word and uncontaminated by the things, the harmful things of this world.

I remember in India some years ago listening to a dear Christian brother and evangelist preach a message from the 14th verse of the third chapter, where the Apostle Paul in Ephesians offers another prayer. For this reason, I kneel before the Father from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.

And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled to the measure of the fullness of God. And that Indian evangelist said, I haven't received that experience. I don't even know the beginnings of it.

But each day I pray that my life might approximate more and more to an answer to the prayer of the Apostle Paul, that I might be filled with the power, with the fullness of God. John said in the gospel that bears his name of Jesus Christ, he came to his own, but his own received him not. But to as many as received Jesus, to them gave he power to become the sons of God.

Power in initiation, born in power, is a Christian. Power in continuation, kept in power, is a Christian. Power at consummation, presented before Almighty God by the power of Christ, power of the Spirit.

Brothers and sisters, we were people made for power. Let us demonstrate and acquire by God's grace more and more that dynamic that lifts us from sin and makes us eloquent testimonies for Jesus Christ as we live out our lives here on this earth. To his praise and to his glory.

Amen. And for the way that you fulfill that, our blessed Lord, through Jesus Christ, we give you our thanks. The vast majority of us here are not at the beginning.

We've gone beyond initiation. We want to continue. We want to know more and more of the fullness of your Spirit.

We want to know more and more of the stepping up of the voltage. Lead us on paths that will help us to become spiritually powerful. Help us to get off paths that lead to a dead end.

Father, enable us to be open to all that you would do for us as individuals and all that you would do for us as a church. We've seen the blueprint. We've seen something of what we should be.

We know what we are. Bridge the gap. Step up the voltage and enable us, blessed God, before the consummation, the end of the journey, to know increasing overwhelmings of your power that will affect this neighborhood and be a means of bringing broken hearts to the foot of the cross as you use us evangelistically.

Write this message upon our hearts and may we know more of the dynamic of the great God of glory. Amen.