The Power Behind a Christian's Life

There's a story in the Trump family folklore, which I'm sure if you've been in our church, you've heard a few times. The Trump family story, and it's brought out every once in a while, provides a little bit of a chuckle and also a little wise bit of teaching to reflect on. It is when I was six years old. I have a younger brother, the youngest brother, called Gerard, who's four years younger than I am. So he was two at the time. And Jerry and myself, we were in the pool.

Now Jerry, with two older brothers, was always trying to keep up, you know, with the older brothers, as you can imagine. And this was seen most clearly on the day when he tried to swim in the deep end with his brothers without his floaties on. Like the two of us, Gerard had learned how to swim with these floaties. But on this particular day, he felt like he had become old enough to graduate from the floaties and to swim on his own. Now stealthily and without warning, Jerry slipped out of his floaties and before we could blink, he was at the end of the pool.

He was ready to jump in. And I remember the image as clear as day of looking over and seeing his little toes curled around the edge of the pool, and he was in a low squat about to jump in. This epic jump, heroic jump into the water. And as he jumped, I yelled out, don't do it. You can't swim.

And before he knew it, he was in the water and sure enough, he was flailing around and he couldn't get his head above the water. It felt like an eternity, but my brother and I swam to him, grabbed him, and my mum who had been watching from the side of the pool plucked him out of the water. Now his older brother, as the responsible one in the family, I was livid with my mum who is here today. Sorry. I shouldn't say it too loud.

Livid with my mum for allowing him to have jumped into the pool without his floaties. She'd been sitting around watching him do that, to attempt to swim without his floaties. But then I found out that my mum was livid with me. Why? Because she had known all along he was going to attempt that swim without his floaties, but I was the spanner in the works.

As older brother, my doubt in his ability took away his confidence in being able to swim. Me yelling out, don't do it. You can't swim made him think that he couldn't swim, and he lost all hope of being able to. Sure enough, it was only a matter of days. I don't even think it was a week, mum.

And he was swimming with his two brothers like an otter without his floaties. And I had been thoroughly corrected by a far more insightful mum than I thought. This is the funny thing about power. The funny thing about ability. It is so dependent on confidence.

Or I think if you were to use the Christian word, hope. To put it maybe another way, hope is the real power behind power. It's a central teaching of the Christian faith, but this power that we have as Christians is not hope in the sense of some wishful thinking like I hope it will be a sunny day tomorrow. It is hope in the sense of confidence. If there's been a time in our lives, in your life, where you have felt the numbing effect of anxiety, of worry, if you've ever felt powerless, there is something amazing that I want to share with you today from which we can draw strength.

And we find it this morning from Ephesians 1:15-23. If you want to turn with me there, it'll be on the screen as well. Ephesians chapter one, verses 15 through to the end of that chapter, which is verse 23. Paul the Apostle writes this to the church in Ephesus. For this reason, and so we're sort of entering in the middle of a train of thought.

But he says, for this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him. Having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which He has called you. What are the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of His power toward us who believe according to the working of His great might that He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places. Far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come.

And He put all things under His feet and gave Him as head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all. Now there's a lot of theology in there. There's a lot of teaching in there which we'll have to unpack. But let's just explain quickly what is sort of happening here in this passage. Firstly, we see the Apostle Paul writing to new Christians.

These are new Christians in Ephesus. And he's writing to them about what it is to be a Christian, the miracle of Christianity. And in the opening statements we haven't read in the letter, he talks about the mysterious and powerful working of God who in love, he says, predestined us, chose us as Christians before the foundations of the earth were laid. Before the first bit of dust and carbon was created, He knew His people. And He says Paul says, He predestined all of them and adopted them into His family.

We were adopted before we were born. God chose them, these Christians, before the foundations of the earth, and this was done for a purpose. What is that purpose? Paul says it was according to the pleasure and the goodwill of God. In other words, God was pleased to do it.

Out of joy and love, God saves. Not of obligation or anything else. With the result, Paul says, that it will praise His glorious grace for all eternity. Why, why are like, why did God allow the fall to happen? Why did God allow His Son to go to the cross to die?

Ultimately, because it reveals His character so much more, His grace so much more, so that His people may revel in that for all eternity. In other words, God's radical, absolutely unconditional love has no parameters. No human being has ever earned God's love. And these Christians' faith that Paul is talking to has come about because God is gracious, and He has lavished His love onto these people that could never have earned it. And so that's how Paul begins.

That's how Paul begins. It's an incredible passage. But now Paul moves on. He says, now that you know what your identity is, now that you know who you are and what you've received, Paul moves on to our passage this morning, and the Ephesian church especially, and he says that he's been praying something specifically for them. He's been praying for them, and he says he is so thankful.

He thanks God for what God has done for them. But he says, have not stopped. In verse 16, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I am so thankful. I am so grateful for what God has done for you. That's the heart of a pastor right there. I would say that's the heart of any mature Christian, really, who longs to see God transform the lives of people with a deeper understanding of His grace.

Paul says he pours out thanksgiving to God for them, but that's not all. He prays for something. He petitions God for something. He intercedes for them. And what does he ask for?

Verse 17, have a look. That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him. That God may give wisdom and revelation of knowledge. That is what Paul asked for these Christians, that their hearts may be enlightened. Why?

Why is that important for these Christians? He says, so that you may know the hope to which you have been called. So that you may understand with this revelation. Why? So that you may know the hope to which you have been called, the riches of His glorious inheritance, and the incomparable great power for those who believe.

Now, so Paul is writing to these new Christians, modern day Turkey today. And after pouring out praise and thanksgiving to God for what he has done for these Christians, his very first thing is to request two things. He says, to know God better. That's what he wants these people to do, to have. To know God better and to know the hope to which they've been called.

Friends, as we start, if there is nothing else you get out of this sermon this morning, this is the one thing we have to understand. What is the goal of life? What is the goal of the Christian life? It is to know God and to know the hope to which He has called you. To know the confidence that you have.

If I was to try and change the heart of the most broken person in the world, I would want them to know the hope which is available to them in Jesus Christ. Why? Because verse 19 says it holds an incomparably great power. Paul says, from there, this is what the power is. This is how this confidence is built that gives us power to live.

Paul says, let me tell you about this power. This is a power available to all who believe, but you may be surprised by where this power comes from or how we receive it. Paul says in verse 20, this power was seen in Jesus Christ who was raised from the dead. It was evidenced when Jesus was made to sit at the right hand of God the Father who was given then all rule and all authority, all power and dominion. Why does Paul use that illustration of Christ reigning in that way?

After all, why didn't he just say, this is the great power God used to put the planets into orbit. Put your trust in the Creator God. It's pretty powerful, isn't it, to imagine a God can create a star, you know, a thousand times bigger than our sun? That's a pretty powerful God. Why doesn't he use that analogy?

This is the same power God used to scatter the stars across the heavens. Pretty powerful. Paul goes to the resurrection of Jesus to prove power. And here's why. Of all the power you can imagine, there is no power like death.

Think of it. Why does a cyclone have power? Why are we afraid of it? Because it causes death. Why do we say an earthquake is powerful?

Because it has some power of death in it. And that is why we fear it. It can kill. There are so many aspects of mankind that we are improving and developing. Mankind can harness some of the power of creation itself.

We can split the atom. We can all do that, but guess what? We all still die. We all still die. Don't you realise therefore that death is the main power against us?

The Bible calls it the last enemy. If you could break that power, the power of death, do you realise that there would be no other power that could be a match for you? If you could overcome the power of death, do you want a sunny vacation? You could go to the sun and camp out on the sun's surface if there was no death. In First Corinthians 15, after explaining the reality of the resurrection, Paul explains the eyewitnesses account.

He pushes the evidence for the resurrection. He says, after all of that, oh death, where is your sting? Grave, where is your victory? He bursts into this hymn after explaining the power of the resurrection. Paul taunts death in the face of the resurrection.

It's an outrageous level of confidence. Why? Because there are all kinds of things which are very, very powerful. A cyclone is a powerful thing, but do you know that it's only one thousandth of the power of a nuclear weapon? And a nuclear warhead is only one millionth of the power of an explosion on the surface of the sun.

And do you know that the sun again is only one billionth of the power of an exploding supernova in the next galaxy next to us? And yet Paul here talks about power that makes all of those combined powers look like a toy gun shooting blanks. Because a supernova is nothing if it does not kill. A supernova is nothing like the power of death. After a supernova kills you, what do you care if another one hundred supernovas went off?

You're dead. A supernova doesn't hold any more power over you, but death is final and death is inevitable. And so what kind of teaching, what kind of understanding does Paul have to enable him, a mortal man, to laugh in the face of death and say, where is your power? Where is your sting? It's in the power of the resurrection of a life that never ends.

What power does a supernova have against eternal life? What power does a rascal in Papua New Guinea who has a gun have over life that never ends? What Paul is saying is that this is real power. Not the power to kill, but the power to give life. The resurrection is the unit by which you measure what real power is.

And verse 19 says that power, that power is working in every Christian. And that means the things of death in our life, the things that cause destruction, the things that tear down, the things that are tied to death, broken relationships, the consequences of bad choices, destructive habits and emotions, the addictions, the confusions, the brokenness, those things have power. The power of death is real, but the resurrection that Christ has won gives a power that conquers all those things because it gives hope. It gives hope. And now the consequences of bad decisions can be restored forever in the resurrection.

My addictions, my illnesses are forever taken away. Broken relationships will be mended forever on the other side because we will live in a kingdom which is perfect, where love and service and humility exist perfectly. Bad relationships cannot exist there. You just have to go and read the stories of the great Christian martyrs. Those who have died for the faith, who on their way to the final, you know, the gallows, stepping up to the gallows to be hanged, or to walk up to the stake to be burnt, or to put their head on the chopping block.

They knew that they were only minutes from seeing the full power of the gospel of Christ, and they laughed in the face of death. And so Paul holds the resurrection as the evidence of the power that is present in the heart of every Christian because it produces hope which can never be taken away. And so in that power lies hope. And then we come to the third point, our final point, which is the power of Christ's headship or His kingship over all. He, Paul, isn't finished with his prayer that people may know this.

So that the Christians may know the power of the resurrection in their lives, but now also the power of Jesus as King. In verse 22, he says, God put all things under His feet, under Jesus' feet, and gave Him as head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all. Now if you look carefully, you'll see something very interesting. Jesus is said to be the head over the whole world. Everything falls under His authority.

Everything has been placed under His feet. God the Father then gives this Jesus who rules everything to the church. Christ reigns over all, and now he says, Christ who reigns will serve the church. That's an incredible statement. God placed all things under Christ's feet and appointed Him to be head over everything, and He is head over everything for the church.

Now this is nothing less than the promise of Romans 8:28, isn't it? Which says that in all things, God works for the good of those who love Him. In all things, God works for the good of those who love Him who have been called according to His purposes. That is saying that if you belong to Him, everything that happens to us, everything that happens to this world is for the good of His church. And we can recognise from history and we see it in Scripture that God operates according to a plan that is staggering in its complexity and scope.

God will work out everything for our good if we belong to Him. At the same time, working everything out to further His glory so that we may praise Him more for eternity. And this is how powerful Christ is as head over everything. He takes even our worst choices. He takes even our worst decision-making processes, and He works out His plan perfectly despite that.

You have to just open your Bible to the Old Testament. Anywhere in the Old Testament, you can see that happening. Remember the story of Joseph with the multicoloured coat, the dream coat? Remember how he, as a young man, was spoiled by his father Jacob? He was the apple of his father's eye.

And Joseph had a blessing over his life. God had a plan for Joseph. But Joseph, as the favourite boy, was a spoiled brat. And he would tell his brothers, his eleven brothers, about the dreams that God had given him about how they would be serving him or how they would be lower than him in the hierarchy, and the brothers hated it. They hated it so much that they decide to kill him.

And at the eleventh hour, they decide against it, and they sell him into slavery to Egypt. And Joseph is sent very, very far away. He winds up in prison. Do you remember that? And for years, unfairly, he's in prison.

Eventually, he winds up as the second most powerful man in Egypt, the prime minister under the Pharaoh. And in that time, there's a great famine in the Middle East that causes these brothers, these eleven brothers to go to Egypt where they hear there's food, and they come up to Joseph. And the dream, the prophecy is fulfilled, they bow down. They don't recognise the brother. They bow down to him and say, please help us.

Please help us. In an incredible story, Joseph reveals himself to his brothers that he is the Joseph that they thought was dead. And this is what he says. Genesis 50:20, what you intended for evil, God worked out for good. That through all that I have gone through, many people will be kept alive.

Do you see even through the brokenness of jealousy, of murderous anger, God's plan cannot be hindered? We think our sin, we think our brokenness can frustrate the plans of God. We think that, don't we? Our theology may say no. We shouldn't think that, but we think that.

And yet by God's grace, we hear today that His plans and His love is far greater. God is far greater than our stupid choices. God has placed all things under Christ's feet and has appointed Him as head over everything for the church. And friends, as we finish up, this is seen most wonderfully in the gospel of Jesus Christ. In Acts 2:23, remember that scene, the Apostle Peter at the Pentecost event gets up to a crowd that's sort of drawn in to see all these crazy men speaking in these sort of spiritual languages, these tongues.

And he preaches only a few days after the resurrection and the ascension of Jesus. He preaches to a crowd and he says, Jesus Christ was handed over to you by God's set purpose and foreknowledge. And you, with the help of wicked men, put Him to death. There it is. The wickedness of sin, the evil intent of the human heart, the power of death even, to kill and destroy.

And the pinnacle of rebellion, the Son of God sent to save the world is rejected and killed. And yet, Peter goes on and he points out, Christ was handed to you guys according to God's set purpose. And he continues at verse 24 and he says, God raised Him, Christ, from the dead and freed Him from the agony of death because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on Him. Christ's resurrection proves that His death was sufficient to pay for the consequences of sin, which is death. That is where it comes from.

Romans 3:23, the wages of sin is death. And so death finds it impossible to keep its hold on Christ because the real power behind death is sin. But now with sin being conquered at the cross, death has lost its power. The resurrection of Jesus is the first sign that victory has been won. And so of all the furious power that wicked humanity could throw against God seen in this unfair execution of God's own Son, God turns the fury into the saving moment that saves humanity.

It is the ultimate twist. And friends, this is the Son we are called to receive again today. So I want to tell you this morning, don't wait and say I have to stop sinning before I receive Him. Or say, I have to get my life right first. I have to clean myself up a little bit more because the greatest liberation you will ever hear is that despite your rebellion and your brokenness, your destiny and your future has been won by the power of Jesus Christ.

And not only that, but right now, He is working for your good to present you blameless at the coming of God. And so to not receive Him today would be saying that you still believe that you have the power to change your life. And that would be to live the delusion that you actually have power in your own strength. But living that way, we know and we've been there, will mean that you are crushed by the anxiety of being out of control. And so I have to stress this this morning again, friends, because it is glorious news.

You are out of control because you never had control. And the invitation is to come and place your confidence, this hope which is more than wishful thinking, this confidence in Jesus Christ to receive Him who is your life. To come and bind yourself to the only one who has power, who offers you power in the resurrection, and the one we receive with great hope. And you will have power to face anything this world can give you. Let's pray.

Father, we thank you for this truth. And Father, in one sense, it is so foreign to us, this concept, because we are so bound by our temporal existence, our existence which is so bound by time and space with philosophies and thoughts and teachings that are so bound with the expectation that we have only what is here and now. Help us to find and see the liberating power of an eternal life that can never be taken away. And Father, the things that we sow now, we sow for eternity. And God, that gives us incredible perspective.

Help us to strive to live in that confidence and rest, first and foremost. Help us as Paul prayed, to have and to understand with eyes that are enlightened, that we have a hope which is immeasurably great. A power to all who believe. And so Father, we as people who hold on to this, we know that we have been, therefore, given a command to lead and guard our families in godly fear, trembling under the watchful gaze of our King. Lord, as husbands, as leaders of families, as leaders of this church, know that we can never ever abuse power because we know that there is a far greater authority over us who crushes our puny strength.

And for our wives and our ladies in this church, Lord, that we may find rest and peace from chasing after comparisons with an out of control world that's telling us how to live, how to look, and how to act. Help us, help them to see that this social power is no power at all. The one whose opinion really matters has deemed them worthy of His death, His sacrifice, and His love. Oh God, it is the greatest affirmation of our worth we can ever find. And so, Father, we commit our lives to living this life in full confidence and hope of what we have already received and are just now waiting to experience most fully.

In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.