Sermons

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A Prayer From the Knees
August 3 , 2003
Pastor Dan Baumgartner
Series on Ephesians
Ephesians 3:14-21

We want to look again into the New Testament book of Ephesians this morning.

I’ve been struck this week by how much this letter emphasizes “the church.” God’s new humanity. The apostle Paul writes about the make-up of the church community (one), about the gifts given to the church for ministry, about the church’s growth towards maturity, about how God wants to use the church to carry out his plan for the world. But Paul knows that if the church is going to resemble anything like what is needed in the world…then God is going to have to help it in a big way. And so what Paul does…is get down on his knees.

If anyone ever set out to invent the most uncomfortable position to pray in…I think they would come up with something like kneeling! Knees are not necessarily the most attractive part of the human anatomy to begin with. Angular, creased, often-injured, scarred. Cartilage and bone sticking out in strange places, with almost no cushion. Knees are not well suited to holding one’s entire body weight. To me, this becomes more apparent with every passing year!

Maybe that’s why…the Jews of Paul’s day, and the early Christian church…prayed mostly standing up. HOWEVER…there ARE several times in the Bible when people get on their knees to pray. Usually they are moments of great significance. In those days, to get down on your knees was to demonstrate visibly that you were in the presence of someone far greater than yourself. It is an act of humility. If you showed great reverence, you went to your knees. If you desired to confess, to submit yourself to God, you went to your knees like Ezra did in the passage that Rachel read. If you were moved with great emotion or praying with great passion, you went to your knees. In the book of Acts, the martyr Stephen, in the very act of being stoned, fell to his knees and prayed, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” When Jesus prayed in the garden asking God to take the cup from him yet submitting to God’s will…he prayed from the ground.

Praying on one’s knees is an act of reverence. And though it is not a common way today of honoring someone, it still holds something of its original meaning. Passion, submission, brokenness, reverence before God. It is a different frame of reference from praying as we go about daily tasks. It is very different than praying casually to “Jesus, my buddy.” It is prayer that holds God in awe. Almost always in the Bible, prayer from the knees is at very significant times.

Paul drops to his knees to pray for the church. It is significant. He is asking a lot.

Now, you know there are many kinds of prayer…confession, adoration, petition…but, here, Paul is in the posture of interceding, of asking. Charles Spurgeon once said, “Whether we like it or not, asking is the rule of the Kingdom.” So Paul asks.

Remember that he is praying for the church. For those who have already had some sort of encounter with God in Christ. He asks for more. He is daring. Paul asks for everything.

It reminds me of the Old Testament story of Abraham, beseeching God NOT to destroy the evil city. “God, if 50 good people are found, will you spare it? Thank you, Lord. What about 45? Will you hold back your hand? 40? 30? 20? Yes. Oh, Lord, don’t be mad, but if 10 good people are found, will you save the city? Yes.” Abraham keeps asking and asking for more. So does Paul. Now notice: This is NOT a plea for people to love Christ more…it is a prayer that they will understand more of Christ’s love FOR THEM. And Paul’s requests stack one on top of the other.

“I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love.”

This first request is a mouthful, isn’t it? And of course, like Paul…it’s all one sentence! He prays for YOU, the one already following Christ…

• that you may be strengthened in the deepest parts by God’s Spirit,
• that Christ may dwell in your heart,
• that you be rooted and grounded in love.

What Paul is praying for is STRENGTH THAT WILL LAST, AND PROPEL US INTO THE FUTURE. Not a temporary Band-Aid. Not enough to get through until next week. But that YOU, who are in the church, already a Christian, have already received the Holy Spirit, have had a few or many experiences with God…and may even find yourself bored or thinking “does God have anything else for me?” Sometimes we feel that faithwise, we’ve plateaued, that we’ve arrived.

Arthur Burns was a chairman of the Federal Reserve, ambassador to West Germany, economic counselor to various presidents, and Jewish. Somehow in the 1970’s he started to attend a White House group of Christians who met for prayer, and the group welcomed him…and weren’t sure how to involve him. When the meetings ended in prayer, no one ever asked Arthur Burns to close. But one week, a newcomer was there to lead, and at the end of the time asked Burns to close the meeting in prayer. The regulars were taken by surprise and wondered what he would do. Without missing a beat, he grabbed the hands of others in the circle and prayed this:

“Lord, I pray that you would bring Jews to know Jesus Christ. I pray that you would bring Muslims to know Jesus Christ. Finally, Lord, I pray that you would bring Christians to know Jesus Christ. Amen.”

It was a great reminder for that group…that they needed more of Jesus too. Following Christ does not mean arriving…it means walking on a journey.

Paul is praying for MORE. More strength, in fact DIVINE strength for the church. Strength that will last. When Paul prays that Christ may DWELL in people’s hearts, he chooses his words very carefully. There are two words in Greek that may be translated as “dwell” like this. One has to do with inhabiting a place…as a stranger…a temporary shelter…a hotel. The other has to do with “settling down,” permanence…a home. It is this second word Paul chooses. He’s not praying for strength for a moment, but for a lifetime, not praying to get them through something but that they might be changed.

“Rooted and grounded in love.”

Here are the pictures of permanence: the roots of a large tree that go deep, deep into the ground, so deep and intricate that a tree hundreds of feet tall might survive the strongest of wind because it is so well rooted. Or the foundation of a building. If the foundation is strong and straight, the building will be built true, and as it gets higher it will be strong and sure.

Paul does not quit praying once people are encountered by God…that’s when he starts. Praying for strength that is greater, and longer-lasting than what we have. Can God do that? “According to the riches of his glory.” God has the resources.

“I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.”

Another “power” prayer…but this time, for understanding. That you might understand (along with all of the church) the unbelievable breadth…the incredible length…the towering heights, plumbing the depths…of Christ’s love. One author says Christ’s love is wide enough to include all the world in the length it would go (even to the cross), in the depth it would descend (through death itself), in the height by making provision in the highest heaven. Christ’s love is so amazing. “Oh, I long for these people to know this love,” Paul says.

In my most profound encounter with God maybe EVER in my life I wept when I caught just a glimpse that God’s love is provided for everyone around me, for the whole world…AND for me too!

And, Paul prays…after you know all that is quantifiable…

“I pray that you will know the love of Christ…that surpasses knowledge.”

Paul wants you to know the unknowable, to have the power to grasp the unfathomable. Wherever you are…there is a deeper level of Christ’s love. There is nowhere you can go that you will be outside of it. There is nothing that would stop God from drawing you in,

“Neither life nor death, angels or rulers, things present or future, not height nor depth nor anything else…will be able to separate us from God’s love in Christ.” (Romans 8)

When you are a pastor, you get everybody’s toughest, most technical, most personal questions…everything. “If a tree falls in a forest…” But they get tougher. Why is my friend sick? What about my Muslim friend? Can a person find God in the last second of life? Can a person come to Christ after they leave the earth? I used to feel like I needed to have the perfect answer to every one of those questions. The problem was…every time I thought I knew just how gracious, how loving God was…God was actually bigger than I thought. Every time I had measured the height, depth, width, length…there was more. Now I find myself a little more cautious: “This is what I believe the Bible clearly teaches…and that is as far as I can KNOW. If you are asking me what I think is possible…I will avoid limiting how God might work.” Paul is not praying that they will love Jesus more, but that they will understand how much they are loved.

I pray that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. That there will be no area in you that is untouched. That you will be like a glass filled and then overflowed with God’s goodness. Have you ever put a jar under running water that has some juice or something dried down in the bottom of it? And you just keep running the water? Pretty soon all the yecchy stuff begins to slowly float up and up and then run out…and the water turns from murky to clear. That dried substance was just overwhelmed by the sheer volume and abundance of the clean water. Paul prays that the FULLNESS OF GOD would just overwhelm the things in our life that shouldn’t be there, that don’t belong, that we would be maturing and transformed. Paul wants more for us, he wants everything. He wants everything that God has to BREAK OUT into a crumbling world…and he says that God will use the church as His vehicle.

The three are all connected. If we receive strength through the Spirit, we are equipped to understand more of God’s love, and in knowing that love we are more and more filled with God’s fullness.

When Paul is done with this chapter…he is finally ready to move on. In the rest of the book, he will talk much more specifically about the church living out its role in the world. But it CANNOT…WE CANNOT do that without sitting first here in these three chapters. It is as though Paul wants you to have chapters 1, 2 and 3 to continually go back to.

And so, as Paul looks at the topics ahead…it is as though he says,
When it is hard to love, When it is hard to forgive, hard to be part of the church, to exercise self-control, to speak the truth, to control your anger, to love, to be a good wife, to be a caring husband, to be an obedient child, when it is hard to walk in life, GO BACK AND READ THE FIRST THREE CHAPTERS…and be reminded of how deep God’s love is. And knowing that love…will change who we are…and how we act. Andrew Lincoln says that our deep understanding of God’s love, responded to in worship… “will be far more effective in helping us to be what we were meant to be than merely piling on moral exhortations.”

Now, just in case we have missed it, or haven’t been here a couple Sundays…Paul provides his benediction, which summarizes these chapters, and especially this prayer. I want to read it twice for you, first from the pew Bible, and then from The Message:

NRSV: “Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”

The Message: “God can do anything, you know -- far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us.

“Glory to God in the church! Glory to God in the Messiah, in Jesus! Glory down all the generations! Glory through all the millennia! Oh, yes!”

Oh, yes. Paul prays it…from his knees. Let’s pray.