Bow the Knee

[McNeely] Good afternoon, everyone. Good to be with you in the afternoon service, and welcome to all of you that are online watching here. I hope you’re having a good Sabbath wherever you may be. Thank you very much, Ayla and Matthew, for that very nice music. We truly are always blessed with the quality and frequency of special music here in Cincinnati. I know we don’t take that for granted with all the talent that we have here. I appreciate both of them. Austin, you did a really good job turning the pages, so we appreciate that. Good job. I didn’t know Matthew was a cellist. You’re just full of surprises, Matthew. That’s good. I think that’s the first time I’ve seen, on a professional stage, a male cellist here in the church environment. That’s good.

Well, brethren, this coming week, the Council of Elders and Administration will be having a retreat in Atlanta for the beginning stages of our planning for the strategic planning of the Church—all the different operations of the Church—something that we do every three years to reset the plan. We’ve been working on this pretty straight for several weeks before the Feast, and especially turning it up into high gear since the end of the Feast of Tabernacles to get a lot of material ready and plans in place for this particular meeting.

And then there’ll be a lot of hours after that when we come up with a draft, and December Council meetings, and then the timeline calls for the Council to approve that along with budget and other matters in February, and then the General Conference at its meeting in May will ratify, as it always does, the budget and the strategic plan. But we are putting a lot of extra work into this one for a number of reasons. It’s obviously important to the Church.

I can tell you that with all this preparation, we have accepted and solicited and catalogued into a briefing book that’s over 300 pages input from members, from elders, from employees, surveys, and other material that we have gathered to gain what could be the most comprehensive snapshot picture of the United Church of God, probably in our 30-year history. And so we think we have a pretty good understanding of at least where the Church is and our strengths and our weaknesses, and so much of this is all part of this plan.

But, you know, we know that ultimately we have a book that is a very ancient and effective management guide for us that goes far beyond anything that we might humanly produce—and it’s this. Appreciate it, Mr. Japhets, a message, his sermonette, as he was talking about Bible study—obviously just a continual subject that all of us examine ourselves on, do, and seek to find better ways, more consistent ways to study the Bible and to be taught by God.

But in terms of the operation of the Church, this is an ancient and pretty effective guide, and everything ultimately should be—we pray—will be based on that because we seek God’s blessing. And the plan—the ultimate strategic plan—comes from God and His purpose. And we certainly want to make sure that all of our plans at our level are in alignment with God and according to His will, and your prayers for that certainly are appreciated.

We in the Church, we continue to pray, “Thy Kingdom come.” We have just come from the Feast of Tabernacles, and I’ve noticed it seems that we—maybe this year more than ever, I don’t know, but maybe I’m just tuned into it a little bit more—we were wanting to stretch that Feast fever, that feast spirit, a little bit further and longer and into the days and weeks after the Feast that we possibly can. And that’s good—to remember the experience, messages we heard, fellowship that we had.

And we hope and pray, and some of many of the comments that I’ve heard seem to indicate that this year for many of us things were—it wasn’t truly indeed a very special Feast of Tabernacles. That’s anecdotal evidence. I, you know, nothing more on my part than just talking with people and hearing everyone’s experience—and the one that Debbie and I had when we were where we were up in Kelowna in British Columbia. But we’ve come back and we are certainly focused on the coming Kingdom of God on this earth with Christ’s appearance and the full power of the universe—as we focused on in that particular experience, as we do every year.

We come back, of course, to our jobs and to the news of the world and conditions that we live in—of a world that is far different than the one we went to picture at the Feast of Tabernacles. We come back and we are reminded of a world divided by ideologies that support, that don’t support human freedom, equality, and justice that are derived from God’s spiritual laws, and the conflict that is there between perhaps some of the better governments that we have. And I think the one we live under is one of the better ones. I’m thankful that we do have the blessings of America.

But we are in a world where there are other ideologies and other governmental forms that don’t seek the same freedoms and equality and justice, and that creates conflict. And even in America, we understand, know our divisions that are there—both politically and culturally—and that’s the contrast into the world that we live in. And while there may be steps to peace in parts of the world, we think we are appreciative and thankful for that, we also know that there is not a permanent solution in sight.

We know where that permanent solution lies, and it’s with God’s way, God’s Kingdom. But in the meantime, the world goes on, our work goes on, and we understand, as we do, that it is going to take Christ’s coming to begin the restoration of all things—to unite and to create that spirit of true unity and reconciliation that the world yearns for and the world needs.

And so as we think about those broken places in our world, and look to the time when the kingdoms of this world will be absorbed into the Kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, when He will be crowned King, we know that at that time the walls of division will be ripped down, and the mending and the healing will take place. God’s festivals show us that—and the reality of the world to come and the fullness of the Kingdom of God.

In the meantime, we live on in our lives today, and we in the Church have a mission to accomplish, which gets me back to what I started with in terms of our mission that we have in the United Church of God—to preach the gospel, to make disciples, to care for disciples, to seek the lead of God’s Holy Spirit to draw us together so that within our fellowship, within the Church, we have the unity.

We have the oneness. We have the spirit that is God’s Spirit drawing us all together, bringing out our gifts and our talents that we all may contribute together for the completion of God’s purpose and plan as He’s given to us in our part to play within the body of Christ. But we want to be focused upon that unity and that oneness that we should have, because we are a part of the body of Christ. And to do so and to focus on that, we understand that it is a full-time job. Working at peace.

“Blessed are the peacemakers,” Jesus said.

Well, it is a blessing to have peace, but it is a great deal of work to have peace and to achieve it—whether it’s on the individual level, on the congregational level, within the wide body of the Church, peace between people in our time because of our nature, because of conflicts and all that—we have to work at it. We have to be aware of that. We have to seek peace and pursue it, as one of our hymns say, and it is indeed a full-time job.

Where do we get the ability to do that? Well, there is a prayer in the Bible that can help us to focus on that unity and on that source of the strength that can help us to achieve that if we do the things that the prayer points us to. I’d like to look at that brief prayer today in my sermon and go through it and help us to look at what we can learn.

If you will, please turn over to the third chapter of the book of Ephesians. This is— the entire book is one of Paul’s epistles, and we’re just going to focus on a few verses here in my message to gain an understanding about this through this prayer of the unity and of the source of our strength to have that peace that we need to model within the church as we seek to do our part in accomplishing the mission that Christ has laid down for the church.

That mission is also found within the larger purpose that the Father has for all of creation and all of the plan.

Ephesians chapter 3 begins in verse 1. I’m not going to read all these verses here to get to where I want to go, but Paul opens by saying at this point in his message to the church at Ephesus that, “I am Paul.” “I, Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ for you Gentiles.” (Ephesians 3:1)

“If indeed you have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God, which was given to me for you.” (Ephesians 3:2)

Paul wrote this from prison. He was imprisoned in Rome. But note that what he says here is, I am not the prisoner of Nero, who was the Roman emperor at the time of his arrest and his appeal. He says, I am the prisoner of Jesus—of Christ Jesus. Now that is something to stop and think about.

Paul didn’t look at himself as a political prisoner, persecuted for his religious views, even though he was. He looked at himself as a prisoner of Christ because he was preaching the gospel and he knew when he set his mind to that, that that’s what the road was going to lead to. And so he knew he was in these chains. It was Roman, you know, the prison or the arrest that he was under. There was kind of like a house arrest. The conditions are somewhat different from any type of a modern penitentiary type setting. But he was probably under a house arrest at Rome and he had to pay his own expenses. That’s the way it was done at that time.

Rome didn’t have the whole system where they incarcerated you and paid for all of that. You, in the type of jail or prison or incarceration Paul was under, he had to pay for it. But he knew he was there as a prisoner of Christ because he was bound to the gospel. And he— that just set a whole different frame and perspective for him to be able to understand that there was a purpose for his suffering, for the lack of liberty that he had, and for the potential… the end could have been death. Ultimately it was.

This particular imprisonment didn’t end in that, but Paul knew that that was hanging over his head. But you read his prison epistles and they’re some of the most positive, especially the book of Philippians.

And so he knew that he was there, verse 4 says, “that you may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ.” (Ephesians 3:4)

Paul had had a revelation, beginning with a Road to Damascus experience, whatever other teaching that he may have had from Christ. We have some vague references that point to further during the early time of his ministry. But he had an understanding of what Christ was and this mystery of Christ that he’s talking about, and that it was revealed by the Spirit to the holy apostles and prophets.

In this case, he says in verse 6 that, “The Gentiles would be fellow heirs of the same body, partakers of the promise of Christ through the gospel.” (Ephesians 3:6) And he’s writing to a Gentile church, but that was part of that mystery—that the Gentiles would be grafted in, that they would have their part in salvation at that time.

Going down further, he said— he calls himself the least of all saints in verse 8, “But that grace was given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ.” (Ephesians 3:8)

Unsearchable riches of Christ. Again, he was the prisoner of Christ, and he had a deeper insight into those riches than anyone.

You know, and that goes to why we study the Bible and why we must, in whatever form and fashion we find that works for our schedule, for our learning abilities, but pour ourselves into the Word of God, that we too are understanding these deep riches of the gospel of Christ, of the Father, of salvation. And to know the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the ages has been hidden in God, who created all things through Jesus Christ.

Verse 10: “To the intent that now the manifold wisdom of God might be made known by the church to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places.” (Ephesians 3:10)

That statement in verse 10 is one that is profound. You have to be careful with it, in that we don’t read it in such a way that we get our position in the church a little bit, you know, or too much out of the way. But the manifold wisdom of God is made known by the church. Now that puts a responsibility on the church to faithfully teach truth and to make known the wisdom of God, to live the wisdom of God, to be examples, to be lights of the wisdom of God.

That’s where it gets down to the responsibility upon us to walk as lights and to demonstrate a unity—a unity of mind, a unity of purpose, a unity of fellowship—in a world that’s divided. This is one of the themes here that Paul is talking about, but that the wisdom of God would be made known by the church in its preaching of the gospel and its faithfulness to the gospel. It’s not that, you know, God is the one who holds the wisdom. God holds the mystery. God’s plan is sure.

And when we start to begin to talk here about the church in the book of Ephesians especially, it is important to keep the contextual statements that carry through the book of Ephesians. It is in this book that we understand that the church is a spiritual body, that we are all members of that body, that Christ is the head, and that it is a spiritual organism—that the church is built upon the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, and that Christ is the cornerstone. And so with those statements, the church is elevated to far more than a physical organization. It is a spiritual body. It is a spiritual organism. Christ is the head. It is the body of Christ.

And beyond Ephesians, there’s Corinthians and Revelation and much more to show us the definition—biblical definition—of the church, one of our fundamentals that we understand well detailed there. But also the church is important in that it has a responsibility to carry the gospel to the world.

Hence, our plans, strategic or otherwise, are in alignment with God and the will of God, the principles, the values, the laws, the teachings of the Bible. Otherwise, the house we build is built in vain. And we know what Scripture tells us about that. But the church endures. The church is spiritual. Paul asks a rhetorical question in 1 Corinthians 1, “Is Christ divided?” Of course, the answer is no. The spiritual body is not divided. And that has tremendous implications for consideration as well.

But the church is the instrument through which Christ continues His work on the earth. And Paul shows that there is a key role that the church has as the spiritual body of Christ with Christ as the head. Christ said, “I will build my church. The gates of the grave will not prevail against it.” He commissioned His disciples to go to the world to preach the gospel. And though we do have to, in a modern setting, operate as a corporate body—again, it’s a spiritual work. And it is a spiritual organism body that the church is.

But Paul here writes of the key role played by the church in God’s plan to unify all things together in Christ. And that is a serious matter for us to consider. We cannot escape that truth. We cannot escape that—the effectiveness of the church. And I would say the effectiveness of what we do in the United Church of God, it lies in being in alignment with the eternal purpose that the Father has accomplished in Christ, which is what verse 11 here tells us: that there is an eternal purpose which He accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord, which involves His life, death, and resurrection, and His life today as our High Priest.

But there is an eternal purpose that is being worked out.

And so we must ask ourselves if we have that confidence through faith in Him, which is what verse 12 points us to—“that we would have a boldness and access with confidence through faith in Him.” (Ephesians 3:12)

All things will be accomplished by Him. And that is the crux. And I’ve said that the Council and the Administration now, I think, has a very good picture and analysis of our fellowship—perhaps more than at any other time. And that is encouraging. It’s also daunting because it begs the question, what then will we do.

I can tell you what my inbox and my email account tells me what we should do, but I won’t go there. I could tell you from conversations with many members what I’m told we should do, but I won’t go there.bBut the input is valuable and it is appreciated.bAny of us on the Council and the Administration well know what is on the mind of all the segments of the church at this point in time. I can tell you that.bAnd I can tell you also that as we go into this particular period, there is no private interpretation among us of the state of the United Church of God.

So what will we do? What should we do?bNothing more difficult, brethren, than to get on our knees. All of us—Council, Administration, member. There’s nothing more difficult, more complicated than that: to get on our knees.bIt all begins there. It all begins with prayer on our knees, and it all ends with prayer on our knees.bThat’s what we will do. That’s what we should do. As we read on in this passage—in this section—we come down to verse 14.bNow again, before reading what begins here in this prayer—a very short prayer, but a very important and instructive prayer—I want to go back again to the first verse and remind us of what Paul described himself as.

He said, “I am the prisoner of Jesus Christ.” (Ephesians 3:1)

Now, he felt that was so important and so vital to put down in this letter that he repeats it in chapter 4, verse 1. Look ahead in your Bible to chapter 4 and verse 1.

He repeats it with a little difference. He says, “I… the prisoner of the Lord.” (Ephesians 4:1)

Again, he was not a political prisoner. He knew he was there because Christ put him there in jail. And yes, there was suffering, but he suffered for Christ. That’s a whole other topic there, but that’s his mindset. And that’s why he can write this with the humility and with just a clarity and focus of mind. Let’s begin at verse 14 because this is where the prayer begins.

He said, “For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Ephesians 3:14)

Just as Christ said in the model prayer, pray this way: “Our Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 6:9)

“The Father of our Lord Jesus Christ from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named.” (Ephesians 3:15)

It all starts with the Father. Paul knew that. I was telling the students in class this year, when we were going through the fundamental belief about the nature of God and Christ and the Holy Spirit—one of our key fundamentals—and I told them as we go through this and we study about Christ and the Father and the oneness, the unity, and how God is one, we don’t need to worry about whether we overemphasize Christ to the exclusion of the Father or the Father to the exclusion of Christ.

That’s a false argument. That’s a false way to think, as sometimes people have thought. Because when you really look at Scripture from the beginning to end, when you read about the Father, Christ is not too far away. When you read what Christ is saying, He’s not too far away in His words from talking about the Father. They’re pretty close.

And if you read about one, you know the other is not too far away. That’s the way it is written. And Paul begins here by bowing the knee to the Father because it all starts with Him. It is the Father’s purpose to bring together all things in heaven and earth in Christ. And that is the direct message. God’s the Father of all mankind. And because of that, when we focus on that—as we bow our knee to the Father—it tells us that we are to love and respect one another, created in that image. But we all have that one Father. There is one Father.

You’ll see that in chapter 4: “There is one God and Father of all who is above all, and through all, and in you all.” (Ephesians 4:6)

But because of that, we then have to really model that love and mutual respect for one another, even at times when there are tensions and frictions that can cause us to be divided, estranged, not fellowshipping one with another. The love of God has to be there. And if we do keep that, we can have hope and reconciliation. We don’t always know the timetable for that, but it is what we are told to do.

In verse 16, he goes on: “That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man.” (Ephesians 3:16)

Now, this is the first of four references that you can glean from this very short prayer of the work of the Spirit in the inner person. And he says that we are to be strengthened with might and power through His Spirit in the inner person. Now, think about the inner person for a moment—our inner life—which is a fascinating study, fascinating to think about. We all have an inner life that God knows. We all have an inner life that maybe our best friend doesn’t even know about. I mean—or even our mate at times. Every one of us has an inner life: the thoughts, sometimes the secrets.

My wife and I have lived together over 52 years. I told a story recently, and she told a story. Neither one of us had told each other. We found out something new about each other after 50-plus years—of things that had happened at another part in our life before we were married. And I thought, boy, 50 years is enough to give you—to exhaust everything. Well, it doesn’t. And we all know that if you really carry it to one angle or possibly an extreme, that that inner person can hold secrets that reveal really a different person.

That should not be what happens with us in terms of our relationships. And the inner person—and it’s not what is really being referred to here—what Paul is saying is that we do have an inner man. We have a consciousness. This is what it’s really referring to. We have reason. We are able to—we have free will. We can think things out. We have a mind. We have a will. We know that we are beings. This is what makes us human. We have conscious thought. The Bible talks about this as the spirit in man. And it is a wonderful revelation. It is a wonderful understanding about the nature of man—what we are—and what elevates us above the animal realm.

We just finished—I just finished going through the two teachings, fundamentals of the human nature: what is the nature of man, and the purpose of human life. I like to teach those in tandem because they really do work together. I read a book in preparation for this year’s class and teaching those classes, a recent book that came out this year by a neuroscientist. The title of the book is called The Immortal Mind. The author is Dr. Daniel Egnor. I’ve seen him lecture at a conference on intelligent design. He is a many-decade esteemed neuroscientist, a surgeon.

But he describes what he calls the immortal mind. Now, he believes in the idea of an immortal soul. But as you read the book, you understand that he’s talking about the mind that is empowered by what the Bible says is a spirit in man and not an immortal soul.

And his research, his findings, his observations are profound and enlightening. They’re not new to us in one sense. In the 1960s in the church, we too had a neuroscientist that came and was a part of the faculty and the church and wrote and helped the church to bring this out and the idea that there is a human mind and what it is. And decades later, this book—which I had heard was coming out and I read it and wanted to read it—I found it to be fascinating.

And he explains the power of the human brain and in a very basic way to where I could understand it without—you know—I’m not a scientist and a doctor. But he shows that people have gone through brain surgery, have lost segments of their brain because of injury, because of operations that had to be done for various maladies, and even being born without essentially 80% of the brain matter—and still they have a productive life. And that even through surgery, they split the two halves of the brain in two and everything still works.

And what he shows is there is a mind. There is a spiritual component. And that life can go on. And where one person had a significant portion of a cerebellum removed because of an injury—as a young man, he fell off the couch, hit his head and neck in a way that it severed an artery to the brain. And the brain began to die, could not be regenerated. And through emergency surgery, they took out a major section of the cerebellum. He lived. He thought the doctor thought that he would be a vegetable. The young man continued with a normal life, went on to become and play basketball at the NCAA Division I level, and have a normal life.

And through other clinical stories, he tells these stories of people born with only 20% of the brain matter there and still the functional lives. And he attributes it to the fact that there is this spiritual component, and we would understand it as the mind or the spirit in man that is there from God at birth in every human. It doesn’t live beyond the cessation of life, but is what then joins with God’s Spirit and makes us children of God, as Romans 8 tells us, and actualizes us at that point fully to be made into the purpose of God.

Reading this book, after I laid it down, I realized God loves His creation. God loves human creation, especially because we are created in His image. And that even for some—and for many—perhaps not for all, I recognize that, that even with the loss of brain matter, a life can be lived. And we indeed are fearfully and wonderfully made in God’s image. God’s purpose is well thought out. God’s plan down to each individual is there. And it’s an amazing thing to consider—to appreciate—how fearfully and wonderfully God has made man in His image.

And it’s that—when we understand that—and then with the addition of God’s Holy Spirit to that spirit man at conversion through faith, through baptism, the laying on of hands, and the receipt of God’s Spirit, then we have the potential to reach our ultimate potential—to take on the divine nature of God and begin that growth and process to the resurrection. And this is all what the Bible describes as our very purpose in life—why we were born—the most exciting thing that we could actually ever come to. I commented on this briefly last week in the morning sermon that I gave on another topic, and someone came up and wanted to engage me on the fact of, what do you mean? Take on the divine nature. I was quoting “that you may be partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). And I said, can you tell me more about that? And I rattled off a few more scriptures. And I realized the individual was new to our fellowship—only been here two or three weeks.

And to see the excitement of that and a person coming to learn the truth mirrors the excitement that we have, as we have lived with this in our years of our calling: to know why we were born, to know why we should get up out of bed each morning and go about our life Because we are being made into the image of God spiritually. We are fully actualized, if you want to use one of those terms. And the purpose of our life truly begins with the receipt of God’s Spirit and the power that is there in the inner man. And this is where Paul mentions this here in this prayer and brings it to really the most basic of answers as to how then we accomplish our purpose—the work each of us has been given—the collective work that we have as a body in the mission that has been given to us by God. It’s why he mentions this multiple times.

In verse 17, he says. “That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.” (Ephesians 3:17)

Peter Eddington gave a very good sermon at the Feast up in Kelowna this year about the heart and the aspects of what the Bible talks about that and how the new covenant is God’s law written on our hearts by His Spirit and certain connections that are there and things that are known even between the heart and the mind and the brain. You know, to get back to this concept of the spirit in man and God’s Spirit, you know, sometimes the question will come up, where is the spirit in man? Or where does God’s Spirit—is it placed? And that’s the wrong question because it’s spirit. And it’s not physical.

So we don’t look for it in our thumb. We don’t look for it in some region of the brain. However, you know, that works—and it’s spirit and it’s spirit essence—it actuates, it empowers, it is throughout our body. It is us. God knows. And I don’t think we need to try to localize it in some physical time-and-spot way. We can’t do that. And yet, it makes us human. And it takes that little gray cells up there and all the other aspects of our life to really give more meaning to what Paul said in his letter to the Thessalonians about your whole body, mind, and spirit being found in God.

It is what makes us complete and whole—enabled then to know God, study His Word, be impacted by that study, by that living Word through the Spirit, pray to God, know that He hears, know that we have a relationship with Him, that He is our Father. And we know that because we experience that in our life. And yes, it is faith. And yes, it is a very practical experience that is lived out in our Christian lives every single day.

God dwells in—Christ dwells in our hearts through faith.

It actuates, it empowers the inner person to character, righteous character. And we take on that divine nature.

That word dwell here in verse 17—in the Greek, it really is saying there’s a permanent dwelling going on there. When through the Spirit, Christ—the Father—abide with us and come to us, there’s a permanency there that is intended. It’s not taken away. It’s not—you know—that by sin. Oh, you know, we can commit the sin of blasphemy against the Spirit. That’s one thing that Christ did warn against. And can it—you know—just completely die out? Well, yes, it can. We are told to stir up the Spirit.

But our focus, our attention—which gives us confidence and hope—is to realize that when God gives the gift of His Spirit to us, He does not intend that we fail. He is going to encourage. He’s going to be with us and abide with us. He’s going to dwell with us. He’s going to forgive us. But He is going to dwell in our hearts through faith. And it will be lasting. And He will not leave us nor forsake us. John 14, we might just turn briefly there to what Jesus did say as a prelude to this very key thing. John 14, beginning in verse 15. 

He said to His disciples, “If you love Me, keep My commandments, and I will pray the Father, and He will give you another help, or that He may abide with you forever. For the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him, but you know Him, for He dwells with you, and He will be in you. I will not leave you orphans. I will come to you.” (John 14:15-18)

And there’s a—that indwelling has a sense of permanence here by this word in verse 17 of Ephesians 3. God is not going to give up on us. We might give up on Him. And we shouldn’t, and we hope, we make every effort not to do that, but He’s not going to give up on us once He has started and given us that—that earnest of our inheritance.

Going on, “That you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height—to know the love of God, which passes knowledge—that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:17-19)

The width, the length, the depth, and the height—the only way I know to even begin to grasp that is just to go outside in the backyard on a starry, starry night and look up. Did you see the beaver moon this week? They called it—the bright, full moon—they call it a beaver moon. I didn’t know there was a beaver moon, but I do now. But it was bright. And when I went out where I was in my part of Clarmont County, I looked up and the fluffy cloud formations were just splotched there like big cotton ball puffs up in the sky with the full moon. And I went and got Debbie and said, get out on the back porch and look up and see that. I’d never seen it quite like that, with a moon like a ghostly galleon tossed along stormy skies and going out through all of that. And it was beautiful.

But look at the stars. Think about the expanse of space and the galaxies and our place within it. And to know that what is being said here—that the width, the length, the depth, and the height speaks to the full breadth of God’s compassion and embrace of us—of mankind ultimately through His purpose—of His church—for a very special purpose in that plan right now. To the end, that you would know the love of Christ which passes knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

The church, the body of Christ, is rooted in the love that the Father has for His Son, and the purpose that the Father is working through Christ to bring together all things in Him—all things in heaven and in earth. And it is that message that roots us in love that we take to the world. We must show that love by loving each other. Christ says that the world will know that we are His disciples. It all starts with love, and it’s broad indeed with God, with our Father. It all starts with love. It continues in love, and it ends in love in God’s purpose—that the fullness would be there. The fullness of God.

You know, some of these things—again—breadth and depth—what does it mean to be filled with all the fullness of God? I don’t know. I know in a few days I’m going to be filled with all the fullness of Thanksgiving dinner. And you will be, too. And you know, you’re going to turn on that football game afterwards, and you’re going to go right to sleep, because we’re going to be filled with the fullness of turkey and dressing and pumpkin and whatever else.

And I guess that’s about as close as I can come to understanding the fullness that I need to have for God spiritually. I don’t know that I have—I come to that point where I just feel completely satiated with the knowledge of God, the study of His Word, the thinking about God’s purpose, and letting that shape and mold my mind more toward love rather than some other work of the flesh. I don’t know that I’ve got to that fullness of, “I’m filled with the fullness of God.” I don’t know that I can say that on the degree that I’m filled with food on the occasions that come up.

What would it look like to you to be filled with all the fullness of God? All I can do is leave it there for any of us to think about as we look at everything—all of the creation around us—God’s purpose that we find in Scripture—God’s grace—God’s kindness—God’s mercy for us—and know that we are a part of that.

Verse 20 goes on, “Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly, abundantly above all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us” (Ephesians 3:20). And there’s the final reference to that power that works in us. It’s through this very short prayer that begins by Paul saying, “I bow the knee to our Father.” That’s where it all starts. That’s where any plan starts.

Whether there’s a plan for the church and what we in the United Church of God would endeavor to do to fulfill our role in the hands of Christ and His mission given to the church—or for you to fulfill your purpose as a father, a mother, a disciple—it starts on our knees. It starts there.

And then the plan drawn from the Bible—put together, perhaps in our own words, with our own modern methods of doing it—aligned with God. But if we start with our knees bent in humility, and we come back to that as we seek to implement it—for the church, for your family, for you individually—we can expect to have that power working within us to bring us to love, respect, unity, effectiveness, and the power of God.

Verse 20: “Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly, abundantly above all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us”—we seek, ask, and knock, we will find the answer.

He concludes in verse 21, “To Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.” (Ephesians 3:21)

And then Paul goes into more detail in chapters 4 and 5 about what the church really should be like. But it begins with this prayer on his knees. And any plan that we would endeavor to make as a church—and anything that we do individually—can have a measure of success. And we would pray the fullness of success by God because it’s aligned with Him as we begin it and do it on our knees.

This prayer sets the stage for all of that teaching later—for all of the purpose and plan that God is bringing to pass. It’s a short but a very powerful prayer. Let us be praying that for ourselves and for the work that God has given to us to do in His church.