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God's Grace in the Heart of a Believer By Murray Capill

Well, please turn back to the passage that was read, Ephesians 1, we're looking at verses 15 to 23.
We saw this morning that God is unfolding a great plan of redemption.
He's forming a people for Himself, chosen by the Father, redeemed by the Son, sealed by the Spirit.
But how do you know that you're in?
It's nice to talk about a people chosen by the Father, redeemed by the Son, sealed by the Spirit.
But how do you know that you are one of that number?
Well, verse 15 gives us an answer.
Paul is thankful for the Ephesians because of two things.
Their faith in the Lord Jesus and their love for all the saints.
He looks at those people. He's heard about them.
He had an initial ministry with them. Since then, others have come into the church and been saved.
And as he thinks about those believers, he says,
For this reason ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints,
I've not stopped giving thanks for you.
Those two things are wonderful evidences that you're in.
Faith in the Lord Jesus. That is, you've come to see that Jesus is the Redeemer.
That He's the one through whom blessings are mediated from God to us.
That He's the only way to the Father. That He's the one who shed His blood that we might have the forgiveness of sins.
And not only have you come to see that and you've come to believe that, but you've come to trust in Him.
You've come to lean completely on Him. You've come to the point of placing your full weight on Christ.
You know how it is if you're stepping up, you're climbing up onto the top of a structure and you wonder whether the structure will support you.
Certainly if I construct anything, that's always the issue.
So you step on very tentatively. You take that first step where you test, will this hold me?
And you take another step. And if it holds you and if it seems to be strong and it doesn't wobble and it doesn't waver,
then you can have increased confidence. As soon as you walk around on that structure, you could flip on it.
You could cartwheel. You could do anything. You jump up and down. You know that it will hold you.
And the believer is a person who has come to know Christ as someone who can support their weight fully.
You lean on Him totally. You rely on Him.
You can rest the full weight of your life and your worries, your sin, your burden, everything on Christ.
And you've come to love deeply all the other people who are doing that as well.
You've found that there's this whole new comradery. There's this whole new family, brothers and sisters all over the place,
other people who lean all their weight on Christ.
So it's not just love for people that's a good evidence that we're in.
It's not just that you're just one of those really lovely, kind people who sort of likes people.
No, it's more than that. It's you're someone who has a special love for the brethren,
a special love for other saints, a special love for all those who've been chosen by the Father,
redeemed by the Son, sealed by the Spirit.
Those were two things that Paul evidently saw amongst the Ephesian believers.
There are good evidences that God has been at work and there are good evidences for you and for me as well.
And if this afternoon as you sit here, you have faith in Christ and you lean on Him
and you have a special love and regard, time and concern for believers,
then I think that is evidence that God's been at work in you.
And for that, I give thanks.
I can't congratulate you because it's not your work. I can only give thanks.
And that's what Paul does. That's why he says,
For this reason, ever since I heard about these two things, I have not stopped giving thanks for you,
remembering you in my prayer.
And isn't that the only fitting response when you hear of someone who's come to faith?
You don't congratulate them. You don't shake their hand. What a marvelous decision you made.
You thank the Lord that He's done this wonderful work in their lives and there's evidence of it.
So Paul's thankful, but he's not content. Thankful, but not content.
He's not going to rest back satisfied that they're saved. He wants more.
He's thankful for God's rich grace in their lives, but he doesn't want them to stay there.
It's like when you have a new baby in a family. It's lovely to have a baby. Babies are cute.
Babies melt hard hearts. You see big men go goo goo goo. It's just delightful to have a baby in the home.
But, much as you love babies, you don't want your baby to stay a baby.
You'd be worried if your baby stayed a baby. It's normal. It's natural. It's right that babies grow and become bigger.
Sometimes we say we want them to stay little. I said to my daughter just the other day,
I said, I think you should stop growing now. I want you to stay six. You're cute.
And if you keep growing, you're not going to be so cute.
Well, it's reality. I mean, I've got older kids too. And she could see the point.
But she also knows that I don't really mean it. But yeah, OK, she's cute at six.
But there would be something desperately wrong if she stayed six forever and ever.
And there's something wrong if people stay where they were when they first believed.
We've got to go on. We've got to grow. And that's what Paul now prays for.
Paul is a man of deep spiritual longings.
I just wanted you to ponder that concept for a moment. Spiritual longings.
All of us have longings in our lives. I wonder what some of the longings of your life are.
Maybe long to be healthier. Younger. Bigger. Fitter. Smaller.
Maybe long for more time off. More rest. More personal space. More holidays.
Maybe just want more peace and quiet. More fun. More happiness.
More company. Maybe you're lonely. You long for more friends.
More financial security. More money. More success in study or at work.
In family life. In marriage. More independence.
I'm sure we could make a long list of longings if we were really honest with each other.
But Paul seldom talks about longings like that. He speaks of spiritual longings.
Longings that have to do with where our heart is at in relation to God.
And so he kind of summarizes in verse 17 his longings for them.
He says, not only does he not stop giving thanks for them, but I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ,
the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation so that you may know him better.
I pray also that the eyes of your heart might be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he's called you,
the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints and his incomparably great power for us who believe.
This is big, isn't it? He's praying that there will be a deep inward spiritual work in the core of their beings,
in their heart, that the eyes of their heart would be enlightened.
That right in the centre and soul of their being they would come to know God better.
God has saved them. God's chosen them. God's redeemed them and his Son. God's sealed them with his Spirit.
And now he wants them to just know more and more of this God about whom it is all about.
More of Christ and more by way of the Holy Spirit's deep work within them.
That is what is high on his spiritual hit list. Notice what he's asking for when he tells them what he's praying for.
He's not praying that they will have more spectacular gifts and that there will be more miracles and more tongues and prophecies amongst them.
He's not praying for excitement and buzz. He's praying for a deep inward heart work in which they'll know God better.
And so then he opens that up with three phrases that give us something of the content of what he's continually praying for.
Firstly, he prays that they'll grasp the hope of their calling.
Actually it says the hope of his calling because it's God who calls.
And this is a prayer that believers will understand what it means that God has called them.
At the heart of the Christian life is this concept that God has called us.
He's called us to himself. He's called us to be one of his people.
He's called us to be part of his family. He's called us to be holy.
He's called us to belong to the Lord Jesus Christ and to have faith in him and to follow him.
He's called us to future grace, to the hope of glory, to the hope of heaven.
That's our calling in Christ. And it's a calling full of hope.
Not in the sense of hope as in a wish, a desire that possibly it might come about.
But in the Bible, hope is something certain. Hope is something sure.
Just as faith is being sure now of things we can't see, hope is the future dimension of faith
in which we hope with the absolute certainty of faith in things not yet seen.
We've been called to a life that is a life of great hope.
We're people of hope. And Paul's praying that we'll grasp that more deeply.
That in our inner beings deep down in our hearts we'll have a more profound sense of our calling
and of how full that calling is of hope.
Now that requires indeed a deep work of the Holy Spirit.
It must be an ongoing and an inward work of the Spirit in us to constantly remind us of our calling
and remind us of the hope of our calling.
I think it's important that there's that deep work of the Holy Spirit
because there's so much in the world to water down our sense of calling.
For one thing, we just get busy.
Life's full of demands and appointments and work pressure.
So often life feels like a rat race.
And then we get caught up in mundane things, just the very ordinary things of life.
Washing, ironing, meals, putting out the rubbish, changing nappies, mowing lawns.
There's just an awful lot of mundane things in life.
And then we get distracted.
I think TV is one of the most wonderful distractions of our era.
So that you can just blob and watch rubbish every night if you want to.
The statistics for how much rubbish people watch is absolutely phenomenal.
It doesn't help you know the hope of your calling very well.
And then there are setbacks, just niggles and problems.
Short of real suffering, as John was speaking about this morning,
there are just the niggly things of life.
How miserable I can feel if I get a head cold.
And it's not going to kill me.
Well, I can feel grumpy, blah, not really feel half as motivated as usual.
And there are the struggles of life, the struggles to make ends meet,
struggle to live up to other people's expectations.
All these things eat away at our sense of calling.
And we start to feel that we're just existing.
We're just busy and just going through the motions.
And we start to think, what's life really about?
Well, Christians of all people shouldn't be asking, what's life really about?
We know what life is about. It's about Christ.
It's about God's great plan of redemption.
And we have been called to Christ.
And we have this wonderful calling in Him to live for Him and to enjoy Him and to serve Him.
We have a calling full of hope, full of purpose.
But all these other things can eat away at us.
And we find that we're just going along life's road without really thinking about where we're going.
I remember very keenly a day when I just drove along the road without thinking at all about where I was going.
I'd gone back to Christchurch, which is the city where I was brought up.
And I'd been preaching there one Sunday night.
This was on a visit back many years after I was no longer living in Christchurch.
And after I'd preached that evening, I hopped in the car to drive home.
And my mind was full of things I'd been speaking about and conversations and stuff that had happened there.
So all that was buzzing around and my mind was just in mental overdrive as I drove home.
I got to the street and I got to the house.
I pulled up and I suddenly realized I'd gone to the wrong place.
I no longer lived there. That's where I used to live.
I suddenly realized my parents don't live here. I don't live here. My wife doesn't live here.
And if I go into this house, I'm going to feel very, very stupid.
And so I sheepishly turned the car around and drove off out of that neighborhood to where I actually live now.
And I think our lives can be like that, where we've got all these things on our mind and we forget where we're going.
We forget what it's really all about.
And Paul is praying, may that never happen to you.
May you never forget your calling and may you never forget the hope of your calling.
What a difference in life if I wake every morning and remind myself that I am now a child of God.
And today I live for my Father in heaven by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.
If I remind myself at the beginning of the day that nothing can rip me from the grip of His hand,
and if I remind myself that by His grace today I can live for God's glory,
and so I'm not going to live for the things around me.
I'm not going to be captivated by the box.
I'm not going to be captivated by other people's expectations of me or by materialism or things in the world.
I want to live today worthy of the calling that I have in Christ.
What a difference that will make to the way I live if by the Spirit's enabling I grasp the hope of my calling.
And what a difference it will make to the way you live if each day you think about your high calling in Christ.
That's the first thing Paul prays for.
The second is not only that we may know the hope of our calling, but that we may know the richness of our inheritance.
Or again, literally, the richness of His inheritance in the saints.
And it's an interesting phrase which I think cuts two ways.
There is both an inheritance for the saints, but there's also a sense in which the saints are God's inheritance,
the inheritance that He will receive when the work of redemption is complete.
And Paul is praying that we will know the richness of that inheritance,
that we'll not only have a sense now of how good it is to have been called of Christ,
but we'll have a sense of what is in store for the saints.
Have you ever dreamt about a really great inheritance?
I bet lots of you have.
In those little quiet, dreamy moments, you've dreamt of some relative that you didn't even know existed,
dying and leaving you a massive inheritance.
By some remarkable twist of events, you happen to be related to this person,
and they have left you this humongous sum of money,
and you've toyed in your mind what you would do if you had a million dollars.
Two million you once dreamt about.
You got even bigger than that in your little daydream,
and then you cut it back and thought, well, what about 50,000 anyway?
We don't want to have materialistic dreams, but God invites us to have spiritual dreams,
to dream of our spiritual inheritance.
For I can tell you that by a remarkable twist of events, we have become heirs of God Most High.
The remarkable twist of events is this.
God's own Son, the heir of all things, came into this world and became our substitute,
laid down His life for us as one of us,
and won for us the right to become the children of God so that we now share in His inheritance.
So we have become heirs of God and will inherit with Christ all the riches of glory that belong to Him.
Our new inheritance is rich and glorious.
Those are the words that use us here, the riches of His glorious inheritance.
And Paul, of course, is speaking of the world to come, the new heaven and the new earth.
And I don't know what you think of when you think of the new heaven and the new earth,
but please, whatever you think of, don't think of some ethereal realm where you'll float around on clouds forever,
strumming a harp and wearing white and gold on your head.
I think that puts a lot of people off heaven because it sounds so wussy.
I mean, what Australian bloke wants to wear a white gown and strum a harp floating around on a cloud forever and ever?
It just sounds wussy, doesn't it?
God does not have something wussy in store for us.
The God who created this world is creating another world, recreating out of this world,
a world that is just as physical, just as tangible, just as real as this world.
And I do not anticipate floating around somewhere up there forever.
I anticipate a world that is as real as this one and more beautiful.
Think of the most beautiful places you've been.
Think of the things that you have most enjoyed doing.
Think of the best relationships that you've had with people on this earth.
Think of the most wonderful things that you've done.
And then subtract from those dreams, subtract from those thoughts all sin that has tainted them,
all impurity that's wrecked them, all sadness that has tinged them with sorrow.
Subtract everything ugly. Subtract the curse under which this world exists.
And you start to have something of the reality of a perfect new heaven and earth where God dwells in our midst.
And therefore there can be no sadness and no tears and no sorrow, a place of absolute beauty.
A place where everything we do will be worthwhile and everything will work out and it will be good.
And we will work, but it will be satisfying work.
And we will worship and it will be glorious worship.
Oh, that the eyes of our hearts will be opened to the richness of our inheritance.
If we knew that deep down in our hearts, it would change us, wouldn't it?
We'd worry less about hardship now because we would realize that it is for but a few years.
We'd worry less about not having all the material goodies now because the meek will inherit the earth.
We worry less about sickness now because for all eternity there will be hell.
We worry less about hard work for the Lord now, struggle and opposition and difficulty.
Paul wrote this letter from prison for the sake of the gospel, but he had his eyes on something far better.
He says it so beautifully in 2 Corinthians 4.
Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we're being renewed day by day for our light and momentary troubles,
like floggings and shipwrecks and persecution and imprisonment, everything else he went through,
our light and momentary troubles, remarkable perspective, are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.
So we fix our eyes not on what is seen but on what is unseen, for what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
Suppose I was going to get a million dollars in just a week or two.
I knew for sure that I was going to come into a million dollars in a very short period of time.
Would that change how I live now? You bet it would. I'd splash out a little bit more.
I might have eaten somewhere different at Sydney Airport yesterday instead of McDonald's.
I wouldn't delay orthodontic treatment for my kids. They're on a schedule.
We can only do one at a time. So some of them are queuing up. It's going to be years until the last one gets it.
There's stuff that would change if I knew for sure that I was going to come into a large amount of money.
How will your life change when you know for sure that this life is just short and fleeting and after it,
there's a glorious inheritance in the saints?
It should change our priorities, our values, what we're living for, what we're thinking about.
So Paul prays that we'll know the hope of our calling and he prays that we'll know the richness of our inheritance.
And then thirdly, he prays that we'll know the vastness of our power.
Well, again, of course, it's the vastness of His power for the saints.
Look at verse 19 and this is what he's asking for.
That the eyes of our hearts will be opened, enlightened to know His incomparably great power for us who believe.
That power is like the working of His mighty strength which He exerted in Christ when He raised Him from the dead
and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly realms far above all rule and authority, power and dominion
and every title that can be given not only in the present age but also in the one to come.
And God placed all things under His feet and appointed Him to be head over everything for the church
which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills everything in every way.
This is a magnificent statement.
Paul starts off saying, I want you to know the vastness of the power of God available to you.
How vast is it? Well, he tells us.
He says that power is the same power that raised Christ from the dead.
The power of God that ripped Christ from the grave and raised Him up.
The power of God that lifted Him up into the heavens.
The power of God that has enthroned Christ as Lord of lords and King of kings.
The power of God that makes Christ sovereign over all people and all kingdoms and all powers.
The power of God that makes Christ supreme over the church and over everything else.
That power is the power that he wants to know we have.
But you notice what's happened in the course of the sentence.
If I can put this reverently, Paul has lost the plot.
Paul has lost his way. He started off talking about his power in us
and he says it's the power that works in Christ and then he never returns to us again really.
He's off.
He thinks of Christ and he thinks of the power of Christ and he just launches.
And I think that's a magnificent thing about the way that Paul writes.
You see it a number of times in his letters.
He gets to some thought about Christ and off he goes.
Because to him there's just nothing more wonderful to ponder,
nothing more glorious than the absolute majesty and sovereignty of Jesus Christ.
But we must register that the power of Christ and us are connected.
For one way they're connected like this.
His power is for us.
Look at verse 22.
And if that doesn't give the church a high enough place in the scheme of things,
how about the next phrase, the church which is his body,
the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.
The church, he says, is the fullness of Christ.
Christ fills everything.
Christ is supreme, Christ is sovereign, but the church is the body of Christ.
And therefore in and through the church God is manifesting the fullness of Christ in this world.
What a high calling that is.
You can't hear that and have a low view of the church.
You can't hear that and despise and belittle the importance of the church in this world.
The church may look weak, the church may look frail,
but it's hugely significant because of its great position in Christ.
There's a lady who lives in London, Betty Windsor.
She's an elderly lady, she's over 80, she's somewhat frail, and yet she has great position.
And we know her as Queen Elizabeth II.
Something can be frail and yet have great position.
That's how it is for the church.
The world looks on and sees the church as weak, saw it as even weaker in Paul's day,
a small band of persecuted people oftentimes struggling, and yet in Christ.
The fullness of Him who fills everything.
The one for whom Christ is ruling.
And back in verse 19 Paul says,
That power of Christ is for us who believe.
Our power is not in numbers, our power is not in programs, our power is not in positive thinking.
Our power is in Christ, the Sovereign One.
And I think we need to register that deeply in our hearts.
That's what Paul is praying for, that their eyes would be enlightened and that they would see that
Because it's very easy, I think, especially for those of us who are sort of Reformed type Christians,
it's very easy for us to have a kind of woozily view of the church.
Well, we're just saved sinners and we're very ordinary people and we're small and don't despise the day of small things.
And we can't really do much.
We can have this very down kind of mindset.
Well, it's true we're sinners and it's true we're weak in and of ourselves.
But what are we in Christ?
And what power is available to us in Christ?
And when we approach issues in life, in our lives or in the life of the church or in this world,
we're to approach them not in terms of who we are in and of ourselves, but in terms of who Christ is and where He is.
So you're struggling with sin.
But there is power to overcome sin.
We sang it in a hymn earlier today.
He breaks the power of cancelled sin. Isn't that a great line?
He's cancelled the sin, we're redeemed, and He breaks the power of cancelled sin.
So don't go around talking about your sin as if it's an inevitability and you'll never break free
and you're just doomed to live in the grip of sin until you're consummated.
No, He breaks the power of cancelled sin.
You're feeling fearful, inadequate.
Well, you are inadequate, maybe much more adequate than you realize.
But Christ is in you.
And in Christ, there's no limit to what He may achieve even through your weakness.
Your church is small.
But your church is also the temple of the Holy Spirit.
And Christ is in heaven ruling all things for the church.
Your gifts are limited.
You feel like you're not that much good at anything really.
Maybe you're not.
But God is a God of mighty power.
And Paul could say in Philippians 4-13,
I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
Surely this knowledge of the power of God for us is meant to change the way that we think and operate.
Shouldn't this make us pray more boldly?
Pray for revival.
Pray for many conversions.
Pray for churches in northwestern New South Wales to be filled with people who have a fresh hunger for the grace of God.
God is in heaven. He can do it, can't He?
He's a God of power. I don't know whether He will.
I don't know His timetable.
But pray boldly because of the power of God.
Surely this should make us witness much more courageously.
It should make us step out in faith more readily.
It should make us say no to sin more decisively.
I came across a wonderful statement a while ago and it's stuck with me ever since.
This writer said, attempt something so great that it is doomed to failure unless God be in it.
I love that.
Attempt something so great that it is doomed to failure unless God be in it.
We're not to be operating and thinking and working out of a knowledge of our own resources and our own capacities,
but rather out of a knowledge of God's incomparably great power for us who believe.
Paul speaks of his own ministry this way at the end of Colossians 1.
He says, we proclaim Him, Christ, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom
so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ.
To this end I labor, struggling with all His energy which works so powerfully in me.
That's a great phrase.
You think he's going to say, struggling with all my energy, but it's not.
It's struggling with all His energy that works so powerfully in me.
Well, I hope you see in these verses that Paul is not content with us staying in spiritual lowlands.
He wants us to go higher.
He wants churches to be communities of people who grasp the hope of their calling,
who know the riches of their eternal inheritance,
and who operate out of a sense of their incomparably great power in Christ.
I don't think you can easily go away from these verses and say, yep, got that.
These are verses that again open vaster horizons for every one of us.
They make us think about what is going on in our own hands.
Is there an ever deepening spiritual work within you?
Paul should wet our appetite for a richer experience of God's grace.
And so if he has, the very least that we should do in response to this message
is join Paul in praying for these things.
Pray that God would give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation.
Pray that He'd open the eyes of your heart.
Pray that He'd give you a greater sense of the hope of your calling.
Pray that He'd impress on your heart the riches of your eternal inheritance.
Pray that He'd enable you to operate out of a true understanding
of His incomparably great power for the saints.
And let me finish with these words from just a little further through Ephesians.
Now to Him who's 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.
Let's pray.
Lord God, by the power of Your Spirit we pray that You'd open the eyes of our hearts
to see the very wonderful riches that You give us in Christ.
We pray that You'd sit within our hearts yearning to become deeper spiritually,
to know You better and to know more fully what You've unfolded for us.
Help us not to be content with a shallow Christian experience.
Deepen our sense of calling.
Increase our sense of expectancy when we think of the new heaven and the new earth.
And cause us to be so confident in Your power for the week
that we might dare to do things that can only be done by faith.
Dare to do things that of ourselves we'd never even look at twice.
And may we learn to live this way for the praise of Your glorious grace in Christ.
Amen.