Paul at Prayer No.2 The Inner Man

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 all the fullness of God.

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever, amen. Now may God add his blessing to that reading from his holy word. And we'll be looking into the 14th and 15th and particularly the 16th verses.

You can learn a great deal about a man if you study his prayers and his prayer life. And what we are about this morning is to continue our introductory approach to this great prayer of the Apostle Paul. You remember the situation in which he found himself.

I reminded you of that last time. He is in no mountain retreat. He has not been to some conference of evangelical leaders.

Rather, he is located, he is discovered in a damp dungeon, probably in Rome. Manacled to some soldier. And he is given permission to write a letter.

One of the several letters that we refer to as the prison epistles. And in the course of penning this address, he twice engages in prayer. And this is the second time that you find him offering a piece of intercession to the Heavenly Father.

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 man, 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 all the fullness of God. Here's a man in jail. And he's praying.

And in one sense, what he doesn't say becomes almost as important as what he does say. Why do I make that comment? Well, for this reason. If I were in some dank, damp prison, I reckon the furthest thought away from my mind would be the condition of other people.

I would prostrate myself before the Father, assuming that I had liberty so to do. And I would be asking for my release, for the improvement of my personal circumstances. And maybe when I had done that, I would be thinking about my mother, my wife, my relatives, friends here in the tabernacle who are beloved.

Thinking about their condition and assuming that they're going through a period of persecution, that they have in some way been deprived of liberty. I would be asking for the improving of their circumstances. But neither of these two things do you discover within this prayer of the illustrious Paul.

He prays not for himself. Nor does he pray for the material, physical well-being of that congregation in Ephesus who have a large representation of slaves amongst their constituency. You see, Paul has come to realize what our Savior made very, very clear.

We are to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. Our concerns are not primarily with the material, with the physical. But they are always to be taken up exclusively at the beginning with the spiritual.

Because as I shall go on to show you, if you are right in your spiritual nature, in your relationship to God, you can cope with any environment, however severe, whether it be the dank, dark dungeon at Rome or whether it be an arthritic condition that binds you and causes you great pain here in this seaside resort of Worthing. What Paul has to say to us this morning by the power of the Holy Spirit is a great and fundamental lesson for you and for me to realize. Says Lloyd-Jones in words that I quoted the other week, however long you may live in this world, whatever orator may arise, you will never hear anything equal to this, the prayer of the Apostle Paul, for eloquence of thought and of concept.

Paul has just one thing that's in his mind as he prostrates himself before the Father at the beginning of his prayer. What is it? Look at verse 16. I pray that out of his glorious riches, he may strengthen you with power through his spirit in your inner being.

Or if you're following the authorized version of the Bible, in your inner man. And I argue using words I repeated a moment or so ago, there is nothing more important that you can take from the tabernacle this morning than a clear understanding of what Paul means, what the whole of Scripture means by the inner man. Are you aware my friend that you have such a quality, such a part within your personality as the inner man and that it is far more important that your inner man is healthy and rightly related to God than what it is that you have retained your physical health and you have a degree of freedom and well-being here in Worthing? This you see is what is at the heart of the Apostle Paul as he's there in his dungeon prostrate before the Father, having a theophany, knowing God's presence and the Ephesians come into his mind and he says, Father I want them to be strengthened.

How Paul? In the inner man. What is the inner man? Why is it so important? How can it be strengthened? These are three questions I'll at least endeavor to answer in some degree. What is the inner man? Well it's obviously by way of contrast the opposite to the outer man.

What do we mean by the outer man? I have a sort of long-standing humorous conversation that's gone on for years now with Derek Cook, the editor and leader of the Bianto ministry, and it's the paper. And every morning I say to him, good morning young man. Now there's humor in that term, young man, immediately.

But it helps him as he responds in a similar vein and helps me. Here we are, once young, now middle-aged. And I say, how are you, young man? We're thinking in terms of the outward.

We're thinking in terms of our body, our physique, the way that we relate to immediate circumstances. All this the Bible enshrines in that terminology, the inner man or the inner, or rather the outer man or the outer being. Let's make this very, very clear.

It's quite easy so to do. Turn with me to Corinthians and the second epistle and the fourth chapter. Here is the mighty Paul.

He's a man old in one sense before he was ever young, a man who is referred to later on in the epistles as Paul the Aged. The lines have fallen across his forehead. He gives the impression of years that he has never attained to.

And the reason for this is his lifestyle. He's hunted from pillar to post. He knows what it is to be hounded, to be persecuted.

And as a result of this, there are great limitations imposed upon him and liabilities that impose upon his physical frame. And so he makes reference to this in this fourth chapter and particularly from the sixteenth verse when he goes on to say this, Therefore we do not lose heart, though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. Outwardly over against inwardly.

Outwardly, the outer man, his bodily physique, his ability to relate to his circumstances. He says, I'm wasting away. And yet Paul is not worried at the fact that the years seem to have gone by so quickly and notwithstanding that, his own life is in no way as long as it seems.

His age, if you look at him, facially seems to indicate. He is able to say that though he wastes away physically, yet nonetheless outwardly, he's not concerned because inwardly he is being renewed day by day. That is what is referred to in scripture.

That is what is meant by the by the outer man. But you remember coming back to Ephesians and chapter three, the apostle is praying not about the outer man of the Ephesians, but rather he is praying in regard to their inner being. And he is asking that the great God might ensure that inwardly they are being strengthened day by day.

Now, the unregenerate person, he knows very, very little, if anything at all, about this inner man. He's concerned about the outer man. That's the reason for his cosmetics or her cosmetics.

That's the reason for trying to pretend sometimes that you are younger than you actually are. The concern is for the outer, not for the inner. And yet the apostle Paul makes it very clear here that he has a prior concern about the inner man, the inner disposition.

We have been holding open airs during these past two or three weeks, perhaps more open airs than I care to remember. And it's been interesting to see the people as they've moved down Montague Street or down the promenade, as soon as one starts to speak about their soul, about their spiritual well-being, they don't want to know. They're interested about their physical well-being, the outer man, but they have no concerns whatsoever.

The majority of them about the inner man. Not so the Ephesians. The apostle makes it very clear in Ephesians chapter 2 that these people have been converted.

Will you turn to the second chapter? And he tells us in the sixth verse that God has raised up the Ephesians with Christ and seated them with him in heavenly realms in Christ Jesus. What is he referring to? What does he mean? Well, they have gone through the process of spiritual recovery. In a word, they have been born again.

Now, let's try and concentrate with the noise of that drill, that saw across the way. It's not going to be so easy. But move to the fourth chapter and he makes it even more plain.

Come down to the 18th verse of the fourth chapter. He's speaking about men and women who don't know the Lord Jesus Christ as Saviour. What does he say of them? Well, they are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God.

There is no soulish quality about them. They have no concern, no realization of a spiritual nature. But says the apostle, though you used to be like that, you're not like that anymore.

What has happened to you? Well, drop down to the 27th verse. You were taught, or rather the 22nd verse, you were taught with regard to your former way of life to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires to be made new in the attitude of your minds and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. Did you hear that? The true self, created to be like God.

You didn't used to be like that. When you were ignorant of the gospel, your concerns were with the outer man, the fact that you were a slave, the fact that your circumstances were not very good, the fact that some of you were suffering from ill health. You were just taken up with the outer man.

But when you became a Christian, you were made anew. Something entered into your life, the spirit of the living God, and that soulish quality became dominant. Now, says the apostle, it's for that that I pray.

I pray that out of the glorious riches of the heavenly father, he may strengthen you with power through his spirit in the inner man. Have you seen the distinction? I tell you again, in case you missed the point, the unregenerate man knows nothing about the inner man. He's not concerned about the soul.

He's not concerned about the spirit. But the Christian is. For him, it is the most important thing in life.

And so when Paul prays, he makes the first priority a prayer for the spiritual well-being of the Ephesian Christians. He prays for the inner man. What is it? It is that soulish quality.

It is the spirit. It is that which links us to the heavenly father. Why? My second question.

Why is it so important? Well my answer to this is threefold. First of all, it's important because it enables us to cope with the strains of life. It enables us to cope with the strains of life.

Do you know what it is, my older friend, and I'll come on to young people in a moment. Do you know what it is to withdraw into your inner man? I've been long enough here as a pastor on the south coast to have ministered to people in their seventies, eighties and nineties. I've seen some who've been lively in earlier years become almost crippled, almost paralyzed, not able to move at all.

And yet their circumstances have in no way destroyed the joy and the peace that they have in their personality. Why is this? Well you see, it has a great deal to do about the inner man. We have one brother up in Leicester now who used to minister here at the tabernacle in the last stages of Parkinson's disease, a man who held congregations 800, 900 in the palm of his hand through the power of the Holy Spirit, and now he can't even move.

They have to bring food and push it into his lips, push it into his mouth and encourage him to swallow hour by hour. Now how does a man like that cope? If he's just concerned about the outward circumstances then, well it's just a question of utter despondency. But you see, the Christian can withdraw back into the inner man.

He recognizes that what is important is not the body that has the seeds of decay. What is important is the spirit, because it is the spirit that is immortal. It is the spirit that will transcend through life and be present before the Father in heaven.

So to place all your eggs, so to speak, in the basket of the outer man is to engage in crass foolishness, but to be concerned for the inner man is the essence of wisdom. Why is that? Because when difficulty comes, you go back into your inner man and you're not conditioned by outward circumstances. Do you know what the word happiness means? Let me just for a moment or so give you a brief historical review of that word happiness.

It has to do with the externals. Happiness comes from the verb to happen. To happen.

If you were a gambling man and it was your favor to come up on the pools and 75,000 pounds or more was credited to your account, then presumably you would be reasonably happy. If as a result of hard labor you're able to put aside your money and to purchase a car, then that might make you happy. If there's a sudden improvement in your health, that might make you happy.

But happiness classically has to do with external circumstances. Take away the 75,000 or imagine he invested it in a business and the business went bankrupt and now he's no money left whatsoever. Is he still happy? Or the man who had a sudden recovery in health and now he discovers he's got cancer.

Is he still happy? You see, happiness is based on external circumstances. Whereas the joy of the Lord, which is our strength, has to do with the spirit, has to do with the soul. I was with a young fellow in Argentina by the name of Jonathan McCroskey and his dear wife.

We were aboard the Dulles and Jonathan was to fly off to Japan that following day and I spent some time later on just trying to counsel and help his wife who was going through a period of difficulty and trial in her Christian life. The last time I saw Jonathan able to walk around was on the Dulles. The next time I heard of him, he'd been in a motor accident in Spain and as a result his spinal nerve, his spinal cord had been severed and he became a paraplegic, meaning that he cannot walk at all.

What a terrible situation to find yourself in. A relatively young man cut down in the prime of life. What do you do as a Christian if you're like that? And heaven knows we might all be tested in this or other areas.

So let the preacher examine himself as he brings this test to you. What do you do in a circumstance like that? Well, if you have no faith, the probability is that you will panic. But if you are a McCluskey, you retreat into your inner man.

You recognize that even the fact you cannot move around as you used to move around, you cannot run in the morning as you used to run in the morning, you cannot swim, all these things have been taken from you. There's something that lasts, something that cannot be taken from your grasp and that is your health in the inner man. And so I say that it's important that Paul prays for the Ephesians as we pray for one another because the inner man, if preserved, enables us to cope with the strains of life.

And what is more, the inner man is important because it is always constantly under the attack of the devil. It is constantly under the attack of the devil. When you are born again, your problems don't finish.

In many senses, they start. The devil has far more concern about you when you've confessed Jesus as Lord than he had when you were just going around life carelessly. The Lord Jesus Christ says, don't be concerned about those who have the power to destroy the body, rather fear him who has the power to deliver both body and soul to hell.

What does the devil try to do to the Christian? He endeavours to attack the inner man. That's why Paul, writing to the Ephesians later on, speaks about the wiles, authorised version or NIV, speaks about the schemes of the devil. He plots in his diabolical fashion, let us cause such an utter depression to fall upon that young Christian, that older Christian that the inner man collapses.

Let's attack it. The Bible tells us, quoting the words of Peter, that the devil is as a roaring lion, who goes around seeking whom he might devour. So when Paul writes to these Ephesians, he says, I'm praying brothers, I'm praying sisters, that your inner man, that it might remain intact so that you can cope with whatever persecutions Nero brings in upon you, so that whether it's life or death, whether it's poverty or riches, whether it's freedom or slavery, you in your inner man will be indestructible.

This is why the apostle is praying so. And what is more, the inner man has tremendous potential. It has tremendous potential, says Paul, 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 he goes on, so that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. How do you know about God in my life? You don't know about God through my bodily physique. You can only know about God in my personality and I know about God in yours through your inner man.

It's there that Jesus Christ takes up lodging by the power of his spirit. It's there that the fullness of God, as I shall seek to show you, can overflow us in such wonderful ways, they beg a description. The inner man has tremendous potential.

It was said of the good and godly Henry Venn, a great preacher of yesteryear, of this good man, let this be written, heaven was in him before he was in heaven. Heaven was in him, in the inner man, Christ rooted in his heart, knowing the dimensions of the love of God before he ever entered heaven himself. That's the reason why the inner man is important.

It's important, I say, so you can cope with the strains of life. When you're ill and when you're on your own, your inner man is strong and therefore you can cope. It's important because it's there that the devil will attack you, because there the image of God has been restored.

It's important, I say, because it has such tremendous potential. But finally and briefly, how can it be developed? You see, this is the astonishing thing that the apostle brings to our attention. This inner man can be strengthened and the word there is very, very powerful indeed.

It can go from strength to strength. This is the thing about the inner man. It can deteriorate or it can be strengthened.

As for the former, do you remember Samson, this great physically strong man in the Old Testament? You come across one occasion in his life when we are told that the spirit went from him and he didn't know it. There he was, physically, outwardly strong and also inwardly strong. But the Holy Spirit of God left him because of the way that Samson had been conducting his own personal affairs.

And the man was broken. He was without strength. And that is one of the possibilities of the inner man.

Not only can it be developed, it can deteriorate. So the apostle, knowing this full well, prays for the Ephesians that they may be strong in the inner man. How do you strengthen a person in their inner man? Well, you pray for them.

Thank God for scores of older friends who were praying during these last three weeks for young people during the student outreach. Do you ever pray for other people that they may be strong in their inner man? Thank God for those of you who are praying for Nora Nash. There's an improvement, incidentally, in her physical circumstances, or so it would seem.

But thank God more for those of you who are intelligent enough to pray for this dear lady, three weeks almost without regaining consciousness, in her inner spirit, that God would keep her strong at any level where she might have consciousness. You can develop your inner man through prayer, says the apostle Paul. And what's more, you develop your inner man by doing nothing to frustrate the work of the Spirit.

Nothing to frustrate the work of the Spirit. When Paul writes to the Corinthians in the first letter, is it the third chapter? He says, I couldn't feed you as grown men with meat. I treated you as babes with milk.

They were Christians, but there is an enormous difference between one Christian and another Christian in terms of this. One may have a very weak inner man and not be prepared to cooperate with the ministry of the Spirit to get strong, whereas the other Christian desires inward strength. I, says the apostle Paul, I treated you as infantile people because you wouldn't allow me to treat you as those who are mature.

The inner man is capable, I say, of being strengthened as we seek not to frustrate the work of the Spirit. Now, this inner man, in one sense, it's an invisible thing. After all, you can't really deduce much about my spirituality or lack of it simply by looking at me, and neither can I of yours.

But I pray God that there may be an inner strengthening that's being built into the fabric of your soul by the Holy Spirit. Have you had a peep in the church hall recently? Most amazing things that are happening there. They've got all the girder work up now for this capacious new lounge that we will have and this new area that will be available halfway up what was our existing church hall.

That steel structure is quite incredible. And if you're going to have a look then you'd better make it very quick. Why? Well, because they're covering up the structure bit by bit and probably by next week there will be no structure visible to the eye at all.

It will all be covered and then the cosmetic work will start. They'll put in the new flooring, they'll put in the curtaining, they'll bring in the chairs and so on and so forth. And you'll come in and you'll say, my, what a transformation, what a lovely place this is.

But the thing that will command your admiration unless you happen to be a builder or an architect is simply this, the cosmetics. You won't have seen the great steel work, the girder work, the depth of concrete eight feet down holding those steel pylons in rigid position. Now can you imagine if Ian Landers, our administrator, had decided that all he was really concerned about was the cosmetics of the church hall.

Instead of chairs, let's have armchairs. Instead of curtains, let's have velvet curtains. Instead of some carpet tiles, let's get a massive Chinese carpet of 80 feet long or what have you.

Let's spend all the money in that. And as for the structure, well, isn't bamboo cheaper than iron or steel? And isn't papier-mâché cheaper than concrete? Let's make this structure out of these materials. Now you would think he'd taken leave of his senses.

In one sense, his reasoning could be good in as much as he wants the hall to look nice. He's concerned about the outer appearance, but he's even more fundamentally concerned as any builder, any architect is with the inner. Because without the inner being strong, then you can have the best carpets and the best furniture and you've got a dangerous, jerry-built edifice.

And so it is with a Christian life. And that's why the Apostle Paul, my friend, when he's down on his knees in that dank, dark prison in Rome, as he intercedes for the Ephesians, he says, Father, it's not for their freedom of slaves, I'm praying, although that's not a dishonorable intercession. It's not for an improvement in their financial well-being, although in its right context that might be a good thing for which to pray.

But Father, I'm praying that out of your riches, those eternal attributes, your holiness, your might, your majesty, out of those attributes that are yours in glory, Lord, through the power of the Spirit, strengthen them. And that verb strengthen is one of the most powerful verbs that you can find in the Greek language. Make them strong with an endowed strength that comes from yourself.

So that, Heavenly Father, they might be able to cope at Ephesus. Now I ask you, do you know anything about this yourself, my friend? Are you strong in the inner man? I cannot strengthen your inner man. Only God the Spirit in cooperation with you can do this.

Do you know that you have an inner man? Have you been to the cross of Calvary? Have you confessed Jesus as your Lord and Savior? Have you known something of the indwelling of the Spirit within your personality? That's basic to becoming strong in the inner man, but it's a development, it's a growth that lasts as long as life here on this earth lasts, until that great and glorious moment when the outer man has decayed utterly, leaving just the inner man to take the wings of the Spirit and to fly into Emmanuel's land, into the presence of the great God and Father, before whom Paul bowed his knee. May God equip all of us, not only in the outer man, but in the inner man, for His glory. Amen.

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. Therefore, put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.

Father, for that inner strengthening, we pray, that can come by the power of your Spirit and His mighty operations within us, for the sake of the Savior. Amen.