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Friends, that half past one in the afternoon after a beautiful lunch is a deadly time to have to listen to a lecture. I have no objection, therefore, if you find it easier to listen with your eyes shut. It conserves the energy that otherwise would be spent on keeping the eyes open and allows you to concentrate more of the energy on listening to what is being said. If, however, you are afraid to listen with your eyes shut, in case should you fall off to sleep, pray arrange with your next neighbor that when you begin to snore, he or she pokes you in the ribs.
It is disturbing when people snore aloud, particularly if they snore in different keys. Now let us begin to read from the gospel by Luke in chapter eleven, And we start to read there in verse five. And he said of them, said unto them, which of you shall have a friend, and shall go unto him at midnight and say to him, Friend, lend me three loaves, for a friend of mine is come to me from a journey, and I have nothing to set before him.
And he from within shall answer and say, Trouble me not, the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed. I cannot rise and give thee. I say unto you, though he will not rise and give him because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity, he will arise and give him as many as he needeth. And I say unto you, ask and it shall be given you, seek and you shall find. Knock and it shall be opened unto you. And everyone that asketh receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth, and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.
And of which of you that is a father shall his son ask a loaf, and he give him a stone, or a fish, and he for a fish give him a serpent. If then, or if he shall ask an egg, will he give him a scorpion? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give you, or rather give Holy Spirit to them that ask him. And along with that, we put two scriptures from the Epistle to the Ephesians.
Ephesians chapter one in the first place. For this cause I also, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus which is among you, and which you show toward all the saints, cease not 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 you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your heart enlightened, that you may know what is the hope of his calling, what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, and what the exceeding greatness of his power towards us who believe, according to that working of the strength of his might.
And further, in Ephesians chapter three and verse 14. For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that he would grant you according to the riches of his glory, that you may be strengthened with power through his spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. This morning we laid the foundation as we thought together from the epistle to the Romans and chapter five of the foundational work of the Holy Spirit in the heart of every believer.
And there we praise God for that delightful ministry that the Holy Spirit goes about as he takes God's love for us and pulls it out in the heart of a believer, thus forming in each individual believer's heart a firm and secure foundation that will give each believer the courage and the grace to face God's ongoing work in the life of that believer. Now, this afternoon, in this first session, I wish to go forward and to consider some parts of the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit in the believer.
Once more, I fear I may disappoint you in my particular choice of topic. Perhaps some of you would have said, now we endured the first session, and we're entitled to be rewarded by, in this session, if only the preacher would get round to describing and discussing the gracious gifts of the Holy Spirit that the Holy Spirit imparts to his people. I shall not, however, be discussing that particular topic because, as I imagine, in your next session, God willing, the preacher on that occasion is to talk of the Holy Spirit's work in the church, and that will involve him in talking, I presume, about the gracious gifts of the Holy Spirit.
Or it may be that you'll be disappointed in this session because you are very anxious to get on to what people regard as the particular characteristic of the Holy Spirit's work in the believer, that is the production of ever increasing holiness. Well, that lack, I hope, God willing, to make up in the third session. I want rather this afternoon to talk about, literally, the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit in the heart of each individual, in the heart and in the mind. You will notice in the two passages that we read from the Epistle to the Ephesians, that Paul tells us twice over of the prayers that he prayed for his Christian friends.
He prayed in the first instance that God would give them, and therefore by implication to us too, a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of God. And in the second of those prayers, he said he prayed to the Father, from whom every family on earth and in heaven is named, that he would grant you to be strengthened by his spirit in the inner man. Two ongoing ministries of the Holy Spirit in the heart of each believer. Neither of them mentions gifts.
Neither of them particularly mentions holiness. It is the work of the Spirit in the mind and the heart of the believer. And for that ongoing work of the Holy Spirit, the apostle prays, and prays constantly and regularly. Now, when we talk of praying for the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit, we should recognize that, frankly, it disturbs some believers. And the reason that it disturbs them is this. They say, perhaps they will say to me after this session, my good Mr.
Lecturer, sir, you have made a grievous mistake. Once you are a believer in Christ, you never have to ask for the Holy Spirit again. Surely it is Christian truth that when we first trust the Lord Jesus Christ, we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. And that, of course, is perfectly true. In the very context from which I have read you these two prayers in Ephesians, Paul tells us in chapter one verses thirteen and fourteen about these people.
On believing, he says, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit. That is to say, they believed, and upon their believing there and then, they were sealed by God, who gave them his Holy Spirit there and then. It's a delightful metaphor, isn't it, that is used of the gracious person of the Holy Spirit, the sealing by God. In the ancient world, a seal was used, a seal was used to indicate identity. This book seal was an indication of its ownership.
You sealed it with your seal. Or it was a, a, a question of security. You were sealing it as your property and therefore defying anybody to, uh, misappropriate it. And this metaphor is used of the gift of the Holy Spirit. You have to make a man or a woman's heart bubble over with joy, isn't it? Just you imagine it. Upon believing, God says, that woman, that woman is mine. Let all the universe know it. I have given her the Holy Spirit, and in so doing have sealed her as my own property, and defy anybody to rob me of that property.
You're allowed to shout hallelujah in your heart, if not allowed, you see, for the glorious wonder of the sealing of the Holy Spirit in the heart. And secondly, uh, the apostle says, you are sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, which is an earnest of our inheritance. To me, that is an old English word. We no longer use it in our part of the world anyway. It means, in modern terms, a deposit or a part payment. You know, ma'am, you hadn't thought of buying a gown this, uh, November. You're waiting to the sales in February, and, uh, you go down the city, and there is, oh, such a chic model of a thing that you cannot possibly say no to it, you see.
It's costing a hundred and fifty guineas, maybe, and you just haven't got the spare cash in your purse, but you want it, and it's the only model they have in the whole shop, you see. So in you go, and it fits you all to a T, a- a- a- and you want to make sure that nobody comes in, uh, and gets it before you have time to go home to get the whole amount. So you say to the assistant, would they be prepared to take a deposit? And you pay the deposit, and it secures it as yours against the day you pay the whole sum into the shop. And is it glorious, isn't it? God gives us the Holy Spirit. He is God's deposit.
One day God will give us the whole of the glorious inheritance he has promised to them that love him. In the meanwhile, the deposit, the earnest, or to change the metaphor, as Paul has it in Romans chapter eight, the first fruits of the Spirit in our hearts. We have the first fruit of the very joys of eternity. Oh, what will it be to dwell above and with the Lord of glory reign? Our wildest imaginations can scarce cope with it, but already, already in the believer's heart is the Holy Spirit as the part payment, the deposit of what one day we shall enjoy.
Glorious. We've got that straight? It's given the moment a person believes in the Lord Jesus. You don't have to pray for the sealing of the Holy Spirit. You don't have to pray for the earnest of the Holy Spirit. They're given as a gift this moment we believe on the Lord Jesus, in whom, having believed, you were sealed and you received the earnest. And yet it is precisely for these people that have received the Holy Spirit that Paul prays in these two prayers for the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit.
That is to say, he doesn't take it for granted. He is cooperating with God. He's praying that God will give them a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him. And he's praying because he needs to pray for it. And he prays in the second prayer that God will grant them to be strengthened in their hearts by his spirit, so that certain progressive results will progressively take place in the hearts of the believer. This is an exceedingly important. We mustn't let either of those truths cancel out the other.
There are some so concerned about the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit in the heart that they come almost to deny that all believers receive the Holy Spirit when they first believe. That is a mistake, of course. There are others at the other extreme that so emphasize that all believers receive the Holy Spirit when they believe, that they forget to emphasize the need for the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit. It is in that connection, the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit, that I like to read the parable that our Lord preached and recorded for us in Luke chapter eleven, Where he says, you'll see, he's talking about prayer.
I wish man of you, he says, having an unexpected visitor come to you in the middle of the night. And of course, talking to Easterners, he would know that for an Easterner, if a visitor came, never mind how late at night and at what inconvenient hour, the host must offer him a meal. Not to offer him a meal is an outrage on the standards of hospitality current among them. So a visitor comes at this unearthly hour, and the man, to his, uh, embarrassment, has no food to put before him. So he goes to his next door neighbor and knocks upon the door, and the man mumbles out of his bedclothes, and, uh, the chap outside says, hi, get up, I've got a visitor to come, and I've nothing to put before me.
Get up and give me a couple of loaves so I can entertain my visitor. And the muffled voice, voice from the blanket says, no, go away, do I'm in bed, my children are in bed with me, go away, I can't get up. But the man won't take no for an answer. He keeps on knocking on the door. Outrageous fellow, you'll see. So the man in bed, in the end, there's nothing for it. He gets up and gives him what he needs, not because he's his friend, but because of what our Old English calls his importunity, his absolute shamelessness. Won't go away. Of course, that would be an embarrassing thing, goes to somebody's house two o'clock in the morning, wouldn't he?
Bash on the door, ask to be, uh, loaned a tin of sardines or something. You'd be ashamed of it. Ah, but this man isn't ashamed. He senses the need. You'll see, ma'am, if at, uh, two, half past two one morning, your child of two or three uh, uh, has got stomach ache or something, and a bit of a fever, and you think to yourself now, oh no, this could be serious, perhaps. I better ring the doctor. What, at half past two in the morning? If you say, but what happens if the child has got, uh, uh, appendicitis or something, it could be dangerous. Suppose you rang the doctor and made him come out, and it turned out that all that was wrong with the child, he'd eaten too many gooseberries at dinner.
You would be embarrassed, wouldn't you? So you hesitate to ask the doctor to come out. But suppose it's granddad, and in the middle of a night he suffers a severe heart attack. You ring the doctor. It's no good the doctor saying, I can't come out, wait till tomorrow morning. No, no, you say, doctor, and without any shame. Because of the pressing s- situation, who keep hammering and shouting down the telephone, he must come right now, and you feel justified. Yes. How much more shall God give Holy Spirit to them that ask him? And here something will depend on our prayers, won't it?
The apostle didn't pray for nothing. He saw the need of the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of the believers. And importunately, refusing to take no for the answer, he prayed. Oh, my dear Christian friend, if you can get on in life and be happy and content without the ongoing work of the Spirit in your heart, perhaps you'll manage to do it. Here God gives to them that ask as a loving father, but he reads what we think the necessity is for it.
Blessed are they that constantly take these two prayers to their heavenly father and let the heavenly father know, you promised it, Lord. You have become my father. I cannot get on without it. Please give me what your servant Paul prayed. A spirit of wisdom ever increasing in the knowledge of you, and the strengthening in my heart by your Holy Spirit. What will this ongoing work of the Spirit in our heart do for us? We can take some examples. I've listed some of them for you on the sheet, and you will be able to remember or discover many more.
One Corinthians two, for instance. Paul has just reminded them in the early part of that chapter that, uh, when he came amongst them, he didn't try to get them by well-honed oratory in the manner of the Greek rhetoricians, who were so obsessed with presentation. No, no. Paul didn't talk gibberish. He watched what he said. But his words were not in man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith, he says, should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.
When people were converted, and they on- were on their way to becoming mature, I speak of wisdom among them that are perfect. Then he did go on to talk to them of the further riches of God. We speak God's wisdom in a mystery, even the wisdom that hath been hidden, which God foreordained before the worlds unto our glory, which none of the rulers of this world know, for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. So there is a wisdom beyond what you may call the ABC of a gospel.
How would you describe it? Look at verse, uh, nine of chapter two of 1 Corinthians. But as it is written, things which eye saw not and ear heard not, and which entered not into the heart of man, whatsoever things God prepared for them that love him. Oh, you say, lovely, and when we get home to heaven, we shall enjoy it all, looking forward to it. Of course, uh, we can't know it now. Oh, you've got it the wrong way round. Of course you can know it now. What it's saying. Things that haven't entered into the heart of men, that is unconverted men and women. They don't know, but you can.
Oh, start getting excited. The things that have not entered into the heart of man, nor eye has seen, nor ear heard. And these things God is wanting to pour into our hearts and minds, by his spirit that he gives us. Oh, lovely things, things that God has prepared for them that love him. Oh, your ma'am, your husband's going to get a lovely Christmas present this year, isn't he? Well, perhaps not, but if you were, the present would be such, even if it only be the screwdriver he was looking for this last year and couldn't find, you'll say, aha, it would be so that when he unwrapped the paper and took the ribbon off and saw this very wonderful screwdriver that ever was made.
Because you want it to show that this is a present prepared by somebody who loves him, and you just think of it. For them that, uh, God loves, and they love him. And in the joy of their mutual love, he has prepared these things for us. You say, but they're deep things, and I'm not a scholar. Okay. Scholarship is helpful if you've got it, and sometimes a hindrance. It, you see, uh, scholars can make difficulties where none exist, but that isn't the key to it, you see. I do remember my school teacher who tried to teach me Greek philosophy, and uh, he said to me at one stage, knowing I was a Christian, well, he said, I think I understand Plato, but Saint Paul can't make hidden a tale of him.
No, of course he couldn't. Man wasn't a believer. And says of all the apostle, you see, what who knows the things of a man, save the spirit of a man that's in him? Yeah? If you want to know characteristically human things, you'll have to have a human spirit. You may love Fido, your dog. It's no good you're expecting him to sit down with you and enjoy Shakespeare, nor to admire particularly, uh, the modern art that you have on your dining room wall. The thing just looks there like a simple imbecile, can't make head and a tail of the stuff, and never will.
It understands if you're eating a beef steak, because a dog has a stomach like you have, and he knows all those gorgeous feelings as the beef steak trickles down the palate and into the receptacle designed for it, you'll see. So if he sees you eating a beef steak, it will come round wagging its tail because it understands that bit of you. But your lo- love of art, it doesn't understand. Your love of music, it's liable to howl to the accompaniment, you'll see. Is it dog? No good sending it to the musician's school. To understand that side of you, it would need to have a human spirit. And you can understand God's love for color.
Look at creation out there. You can understand something of God's mighty engineering. The heart of God, that you'll never know, unless God gives you his Holy Spirit. But we have received, oh, it came with our new birth, we have received the Spirit of God, we, that we might know the things that are freely given us of God. That does not overlook differences of, uh, uh, mental ability, but this is true, you see. Suppose you have a Rolls-Royce, uh, car, and you'll get to Dublin in much more comfort than I in my Mini Minor, or on my scooter.
You'll probably get there faster, with greater ease. I shall get there in the end. And what is more, if your Rolls-Royce runs out of petrol and my scooter is full of petrol, I shall get there before you. Isn't that so? That is the situation. Rolls-Royce or scooter. If we have God's Holy Spirit, genius that he is in communicating the lovely things of God, he will make known to us as we go on these things such as eyes never saw, nor ear heard, nor entered into the heart of man, the wonderful things that God has prepared for them that love him. Or let's take another example of the work of the Holy Spirit for the believer.
You'll find it in John's Gospel chapter, uh, fourteen, Where our Lord Jesus says, verse sixteen, John m fourteen sixteen: and I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another comforter, that he may be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, for it beholdeth him not, neither knoweth him. You know him, for he abides with you and shall be in you. The context of that promise is, as you know, the lovely words of our Lord Jesus, when first of all he says, I'm going away to prepare a place for you, for in my Father's house are many dwellings, and if I go away, I will come again and receive you to myself, that where I am, there also you may be.
But in addition to talking to them about the Father's house, he fell to talking to them about the Father. And there's a difference, isn't there, between coming to the Father's house and coming to the Father. As a little en- uh, relaxation in holiday times, I've had the habit of visiting stately homes, you see, to witness the treasures of my betters. And I admire the stately homes with their many mansions and dwelling places and rubens and all the rest of it, you see.
But you know what? Never once has the lord of the house come and met me. Can be in his house, not anywhere near him. All he's interested in is your money, actually. And going to heaven is one thing, that's glorious, isn't it? But all what would be the sense of going to heaven if we couldn't come to the Father? I am the way, says Christ, the truth and the life. No one comes to, and he didn't just say my father's house, but no one comes to the Father except by me.
You know, coming to the Father is not just getting close, is it, physically, so to speak. You can sit on the same settee, uh, with somebody and in your heart be miles away from them. Coming to the Father means getting near to his very heart, feeling the heartthrob of the Father, knowing his mind and character, and getting really near to him. And we have difficulties, don't we? Well, some of us do. When life shines upon us and the sun is bright and strong, we feel very near to the Lord. Let days of sorrow come.
Thwarting, pain, reason. And then, sometimes big questions arise in our hearts, don't they? Why does God allow this? And dark thoughts arise about the Father. Isn't it true? You imagine a little child brought up by some drunken bully of a father who's been beaten, and you take that little child and try and tell them that God is his Father. What would he imagine God to be?
The fact is that Satan has sown slanders in our hearts about God. If we're to come ever nearer to the Father, the slanders must be removed, and we need to know the truth about the Father. How often religion has misrepresented God. How shall I know the truth about what he's really like? We have it through the objective word of God, the revelation through Jesus Christ our Lord. But listen to this, I will give you another comforter. He shall be not only with you, but in you.
He is the spirit of truth. Truth about the Father, of course. Getting underneath our difficulties, underneath our neuroses, underneath all our misunderstandings, and little by little bringing us ever near the Father. Marvelous, isn't it? For ongoing progress in the life of the believer could be summed up in one thing, eh, getting to know the Father ever more intimately and truly. So we come to the first of those two prayers, where in Ephesians one Paul prays that God would give us a spirit of wisdom and revelation.
Wisdom is a thing that accumulates over the centuries, isn't it? And if, as believers, we wish to progress in wisdom, we should remember that, uh, we ourselves are not the founts of all wisdom exactly. There've been believers before us, centuries of them, and going back to the Old Testament days. And in the inspired record, we have the wisdom of the age. Give us a spirit to value that wisdom and to inquire about it. And we have our blessed Lord. For though Solomon was wise, a greater than Solomon is here.
But the spirit of revelation, some people, once more, are afraid of that term because it conjures up in their mind the claims of some that they get revelations of new doctrine never heard before. Revelation, they think, is import- more important than scripture. Scripture outlines doctrines, you'll see, but they claim that you will have revelations from God that go beyond scripture and introduce new doctrines that scripture never heard of. That is quite false, of course. When Paul prays for them the spirit of revelation, he's not asking for the revelation of further doctrine. Our New Testaments are complete. But there's a lot in the New Testament, you know.
And we don't yet see it. Yes? It happened to Peter. He walked for some, uh, a year and a half, nearly two years, along the roads of Nazareth with a man they called Jesus, and listened to him preach, and rowed with him in the boat, and sometimes went fishing with him, and helped in his miracles. But, you know, hadn't, hadn't yet grasped who this was. His eyes weren't yet open to the significance of what he was looking at. And there came a moment when God opened the man's eyes to see the significance of what was there already.
And, uh, when our Lord asked Peter, whom do you say that I am? He said, thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And there is so much in scripture that we read, don't always grasp even with our imagination, let with our, let alone with our spirit. For this Paul prays, that God would give us progressively a spirit of wisdom and a revelation in the knowledge of him, so that we come progressively to know and understand three things. What is the hope of his calling? What is the exceeding greatness or the exceeding riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints?
And what the exceeding greatness of his power toward us who believe. Let us think of those three things, that we might know what is the hope of his calling. But what is it anyway? Oh, I wish I had the time to ask each one of you, uh, in turn to get up on your hind legs and tell me what is the hope of God's calling according to you. He's called you to s- you to, what for? What's the hope and the purpose and intention behind it? You say, God called me so that I could get forgiveness and go to heaven. Oh yes, very good. Uh-huh.
Is that all? Why go to heaven? What is the point of it? What is the hope of his calling? But what is it anyway? Forgiven sins so that we don't go to hell, taken to heaven at last, but what's the point of going? You say, well, relief to my arthritis, wouldn't it be lovely to get home to heaven and not have the bother of daily work and going to Dublin in the rush hour, uh, being able to sit back on the heavenly sofa and put your feet up on a footrest. This is some kind of old people's home or something.
What is the hope and the purpose of getting saved? Oh, how we need to have our eyes opened and the eyes of our heart and our imagination to get hold of what God is saying is his hope, what he has in mind, what his intention is. And some of the secret comes out, you'll see, uh, in when he tells us in verse twenty one of what he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead and made him to sit at his right hand in heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come, and 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 that filleth all in all.
This is part of the hope, at least, isn't it? What has God intended? Well, God here is talking about how God is going to administer the new heavens and the new earth. God, I might say, is not hard up for ideas, is he? We only have to look at our own universe to see that. One tiny little planet going around a, a sort of a medium-sized star, and that star one amongst multi-millions of stars in one galaxy, and there are billions of galaxies. An immeasurably vast universe. What does God have it for?
I don't know exactly. I know this, he doesn't have to work for a living. He has all this because, well, I don't know, excuse my irreverence, he enjoys it. Marvelous. You say, I hope he doesn't make me work when I get home to heaven. But you like to work when you get home to heaven. You'll never feel tired out there, will you? And to sit around in heaven doing nothing all the time, that might even be boring. Work? Oh, the schemes God has. You say, how does he run this universe? Well, he's got what he calls here, uh, do you see, rules and authority and power and dominion and every name that is named.
The serried ranks of mighty spirit intelligence. For this present world, says scripture, has been put unto angels, in subjection to angels, these vast powers that run the place. But God isn't content with it. The universe to be is going to be run in a far better way. And the glory of it is that head of it all is not going to be an angel, but a man. Oh, marvelous. Poor Martha is going to get a bit of surprise, isn't she? Oh, dear old Martha. She's had the Lord in her home, sitting at her table, then she cooked him up, whatever it was, a chicken or something, and did the best she could, and he graciously indicated he needed that and was much helped by it.
Oh, what shall she say when she sees Jesus of Nazareth, her blessed Lord, head over all principality, power, might, dominion, the chief Lord of it all under God? And in that day, instead of having angelic executives, principalities, powers, mights, and dominions. They're going to be put aside, and Christ is going to have as executives. Now tell me who? Well, you, ma'am, if you're a believer, and you, sir.
This is astonishing. How shall I find a vocabulary fit to describe it? You, redeemed of Christ, seated already in God's plan in the heavenlies in Christ, who's head over all the principalities and powers. You say, but where on earth did you get the notion from he's going to use us as executives? Listen how he describes you and the church of which you're a member. The church which is his body. Vastly superior as executives of the great world to come, because you see the principalities and powers, mighty as they are, were just creatures.
You're not just a creature, are you? Well, that's how you began. But now you've been born again. Baptized in the Holy Spirit, made to drink of one's spirit, and formed into the very body of Christ. So you are part of the glorified Lord. Part of his very body. When the head wants to have things done in that day, he shall not call just upon creatures. He shall call on those that have been made by his stupendous spiritual grace, members of his very body. You said you begin to frighten me.
What all those... Ah, well, we better start praying, haven't we? For if that's the hope of his calling, then we ought to have the hope of his calling in mind, did we not? As Ephesians chapter four says, because that is the tremendous goal that God has in view for Christ. He is the head, and our need is to grow up unto him, that the body might com- be commensurate with the powers of the head. Grow we must.
We cannot afford to may remain spiritual infants. Grow we must. Paul prays, therefore, that we might be given a spirit of wisdom and revelation, that God would open our eyes. Which I can't imagine at what he's trying to say. Well, to some, to some extent, I can't either. We need opened eyes to grasp and see the reality of it. It would put this present world in its place for us, wouldn't it? Grow unto him who is the head, his way of thinking, his mind, his way of action, growing up to adult spirituality.
Ha. It would change our view of our fellow believers. What is the hope of his calling? And what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints. All the wonder of it, that we mean anything to God. And here God, in talking of you and me, uses terms like wealth and inheritance. God's inheritance in you. He's got you. He paid a big enough price for you. He paid the blood of Christ to get you as his, the Lord's portion, the Lord's inheritance, is his people.
We have to be careful how we speak of them and how we treat them. The riches of the glory. C. S. Lewis used to say, that good woman sitting beside you, sir, she's a believer in Christ, redeemed with the blood of Christ. If you could see her as she will be one day, that you'd be liable to fall down and start worshiping her. When John saw an angel, you remember that, he fell down at the angel's feet. No, no, no, no, no, you don't do that, says the angel, pulled him up. I'm only a servant. That dear believing woman beside you, sir, and you yourself, if you be a believer, you're going to be above angels one day.
The fullness of him that filleth all in all. An idea of what God means when he talks about these riches of inheritance in you. And where is the power for it? All this ongoing work of God in our hearts. I would want you to know, says Paul, the exceeding greatness of the power towards us that he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead. You'll see it's not that we have, in that sense, to pray God to set the power loose. In raising Christ from the dead, God exerted that power.
What a colossal input of divine energy it was when God brought the body of our blessed Lord back out of the tomb and set him at his own right hand. And that great power that then was exerted has not been recalled. Like the ripples of a mighty ocean, it has spread down the centuries, and please God, it has come to us as well. We need enlightened eyes to see it, what the potential is of the power that makes possible the goal that God has in mind for us as his people. The ongoing work of the Holy Spirit to open the eyes of our hearts that we might know these things.
Shall we pray. Our Father, now we pray that thou wilt grant even to us today who sit here and have trusted the Savior and received the Holy Spirit and have been sealed by him. Yet do we pray that thou wilt grant us a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of thee, so that these glorious things that thou hast devised for us, we may see them ever more clearly and recognize them as not fanciful, but real.
And therefore, by thy grace, allow thy Holy Spirit within, by the power that thou hast set loose in raising Christ from the dead, to bring us along the road to that glorious goal that thou has prepared for those that love thee. Bless us now and in the interval, we pray, through Jesus Christ our Lord.
