Adopted Into The Family of Promise

I do wanna share a few things from our Ephesians study with you. If you will turn your Bibles to Ephesians 3, starting in verse one, that's where we are today. Ephesians 3, starting in verse one. And I want to be explicit from the beginning. I have a goal for us today, a place where I believe God wants to lead us. And I want to inspire you. I wanna encourage you. I want to provoke you, exhort you, motivate you to participate in our upcoming time of prayer and fasting, March 2nd, 3rd, and 4th. Now, when I say that, we do that each and every spring. And when I say that, there are a few people that are the woo-woo, excited about it from the beginning. Got a text from Haley Perry, wanting to know, hey, on the prayer and fasting, tell us what's coming. We're excited, right? A few of you are excited. Maybe three or four of you are like, okay, I'm excited. To the excited crowd, here's a little place we want you to sign up so we can send you the prayer points and a devotional guide, and when the prayer meetings are during the fast. So you can go ahead and pull out your phone and sign up for that, March 2nd, 3rd, and 4th. Just remember, we're not fasting tomorrow, not tomorrow.

A week from now, March 2nd, 3rd, and 4th. For a lot of us, though, we believe in the power of prayer. We believe in the power of fasting. We believe in doing that together. When we hear, okay, prayer and fasting coming up, that's good, we should, oh, that's uncomfortable, I'm busy, I'm sure I've got something that day, I'm sure, you know, and we can kind of backpedal a little bit in our hearts. Maybe not you, maybe me, when I see those things coming up, but it's a self-confession. And then there's some of us here that are like, I, fasting, that's new to me, what are we talking about? Sure, church, you should pray, but prayer and fasting together? And you're a little bit like, I don't really know about that. And so my goal today is, as we go through Ephesians 3, that this would inspire you from God's Word that we would come together over March 2nd, 3rd, and 4th to seek the Lord in prayer and in fasting, for God to pour out His Spirit in our midst in a fresh way, in a fresh way. So let's read Ephesians 3. If you wanna stand up, we're gonna read, starting in verse one, we're gonna read two verse 16. So 16 verses that we're gonna read together, Ephesians 3, verse one through 16.

So put up on the screen, here we go. For this reason, I, Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus, on behalf of you Gentiles, assuming that you have heard of the stewardship of God's grace that was given to me for you, how the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I have written briefly. When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations, as it has now been revealed to His holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. The mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. Of this gospel, I was made a minister according to the gift of God's grace, which was given me by the working of His power. To me, though I am the least of all the saints, this grace was given to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things, so that through the church, the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to rulers and authority in heavenly places. This was according to the eternal purpose, which He had realized in Christ Jesus our Lord,

in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in Him. So I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory. For this reason, I kneel before the Lord, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray. He may be strengthened with power. Amen. Amen. Okay, you can sit down. I got off track there at the end. Y'all did good. Y'all passed the reading test. And so we saw as we started in Ephesians, we saw that Paul saw God. move in power in the city of Ephesus. There was an outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the church was birthed, people's lives were changed, families were changed, even the city was impacted and eventually the region was impacted by what God was doing in their midst. We read about that, we learned about that in the first week of our study. Fast forward five years or so from that launch, from the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, now we find Paul in jail, he's writing to this church that he loves, he's not with them physically, but he's with them in spirit and he's writing words

to them to strengthen them for the things that God has before them. He talks about how he's praying that they would be a people who the eyes of their heart would be enlightened, that they as a community would have a spirit of wisdom and revelation and the knowledge of Jesus, that they would be a people of hope who walk in their calling and that they would experience the power of the resurrection of Jesus at work in their midst. We saw that they were a people like Mick shared with us, they were a people marked by God's grace, it was a community built on God's grace. And now as we go into chapter three, Paul is gonna speak to them, he's gonna intentionally try and lead them like I am trying to lead you to provoke them and inspire them of their need to be a community of ongoing prayer, not just individually, but together so that they could walk in all that God has for them. One of my favorite Christian heroes of ages gone by is Hudson Taylor. He was from the 1800s, a British guy who he felt like God called him to China. And so he moved to China to share Jesus with people who had never heard, much like Ken was talking about people from our midst sent out to the nations to proclaim the gospel. And he spent much of his life laboring in China

in very difficult conditions through persecution and trial, and he saw much fruit. As an older man who was a seasoned missionary, a seasoned church planner, he was one that younger leaders would look to and ask for advice. And there was a younger couple who was from Canada who had moved to China, they felt God calling them to go to a province that previously was unreached, that there were no known followers of Jesus, there was no church there, the gospel of Jesus had never been proclaimed there. And they wrote Hudson Taylor asking for his advice on what to do, what did he think? And he said, that particular province is so fraught with challenges. We've been trying to get in there for 10 years. We believe that God has a great inheritance there. But he said, if you are going to go forward, if you believe this is what God is calling you to do, he said, brother, if you would enter that province, you must go forward on your knees. If you're gonna step into that place of inheritance that you believe God has for you, that place for the gospel to go forward, the only way you're going to be able to make it, the only way that is going to come to pass, the only way you're going to move forward is that if you go forward on your knees in prayer,

that that was a place that only God could unlock. And that through praying, you would see the power of God unlock that thing that he had to step into as inheritance. Paul is writing to the church at Ephesus, and in this chapter, he's gonna speak to them about their inheritance. And he's gonna say, if you're going to go forward, if what you've seen in the past, this outpouring of the Holy Spirit that birthed the church, you've seen God do extraordinary miracles, you've seen lives transformed, you've seen nations reached through what the Spirit did in your midst. But Paul is saying to the church at Ephesus, for you to go forward from here, if your best days are in front of you instead of behind, if you're gonna walk into the inheritance that God has for you, church at Ephesus, the only way you're gonna be able to go forward is those same words from Hudson Taylor, is on your knees in prayer. That's the only way forward for the church at Ephesus. And I believe that the Holy Spirit would speak to us through these words today, Antioch Community Church, you've seen a mighty outpouring of the Holy Spirit. We've seen God do extraordinary miracles in our midst. We've seen lives change, we've seen cities change, we've seen nations change and churches planted. But I believe Like Paul for the church at Ephesus,

I believe that our best days are in front of us and that there is inheritance that God has before us, places that He wants to take you and me, assignments that He has for us individually and together. But the only way for us to enter into those territories are on our knees in prayer, not just individually, but together in prayer and in fasting. And as we do that, we're gonna see what Paul was contending for the church at Ephesus, what Hudson Taylor was admonishing this younger church planter missionary, we're gonna see God do above and beyond what we can ask or imagine. But the way that we're gonna see that is on our knees in prayer, as God pours out His Spirit again on the church at Ephesus and again on us, in us, and through us into the world around us, amen? Amen. So let's start out. Let's take note of why did Paul say that to them and why would the Lord lead us into that now? The first thing that Paul wanted them to see is in verse 10, Ephesians 3, 10, he wanted them, the church at Ephesus, to see their high calling in the Lord. God had a calling for them. It wasn't a small calling. It wasn't a mediocre calling.

It was a high calling on His people. Paul wanted the church at Ephesus to see the calling that God had for them together. Look at verse 10. Here's their calling. It says that God, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. So we don't use the word manifold, manifold wisdom, like what are you talking about? What that word means is the many-sided wisdom, the beauty of God's wisdom, the depth of God's wisdom, the creativity of God's wisdom, that God wanted to make that wisdom known through the church. Now, when I read that, it's just stunning because I would think it would make sense to say that God wanted to make His wisdom known through Christ. I'd be like, of course, Jesus is the wisdom of God. Of course, God wants to make His wisdom known through Christ, amen. I could see it saying, God wants to make His wisdom known through the cross. Of course, the cross is the wisdom of God. We see that in 1 Corinthians. I would think that would be a good thing to write, but it takes me back when I see what Paul is saying is that God wants to make His wisdom known, of course, through Christ, of course, through the cross, but God wants to make His wisdom known through His church,

that God wants to display His infinite wisdom through the lives of His people, that that's His plan, that we are His canvas. I'm like, wow, I have a hard time just making it through breakfast, walking in the Spirit, and you are wanting to display your wisdom through my life, through our life together, and note who is the object of that display. Paul doesn't say it's your neighbors, although it surely would include their neighbors. He doesn't say it's their city, although it surely includes their city. Paul says that God wants to make known His manifold wisdom through the church to whom? To rulers and authorities in heavenly places. What are you even talking about here, Paul? When he uses those phrase, rulers and authorities in heavenly places, he's talking about the spirit realm. We'll see that in Ephesians 6. He's talking about to angels and demons that God through the church wants to make His wisdom known to our neighbors to our cities, yes, but also to the heavenly host, to angelic beings and demons below that the angels would see God's wisdom at work and on display amongst His people, and that they would be moved to worship, and that demons would see God's wisdom displayed through His people,

and they would be moved to shudder in fear at the majesty of God. Church, this is your calling. This is what Paul is telling the church at Ephesus. This is the territory that God has you to go into, and this is what the Holy Spirit speaks to us today through His word. Church, we have a high calling. You might be in a season where you're like, I don't really know what God's calling me to. I don't really know that I have that significant of a calling in the Lord. I'm not really sure. I want you to know from God's word, you have a high calling. The calling on our lives together is to display His wisdom. to rulers and authorities in heavenly realms, that angels would worship and demons would shudder through what God does in and through us in the wisdom that he displays. Wow, that gets me excited. I hope that gets you excited. Second thing that Paul wants to point out to them, he wants to make sure that they know that they're aware of is the key hour in which they live. At our family dinner time, one of the questions we'll ask from time to time is, hey, if you could live in any period of history, you know, when would it be and why? Right, and depending on the ages of our kids,

you know, some of them were like, man, I would like, you know, back in Noah's day, I'd like to see how did all those animals get on the ark? Or I'd like to live in the time of dinosaurs and see what that was like. I'd like to live with David and see him kill Goliath. Or maybe I'd like to live when Texas was being, you know, the pioneer days and kind of live that type of venture. We list different times and ages and epochs. You probably have those as well. Paul wants the church at Ephesus to see God chose them to live in one specific era of redemptive history. It's actually an era that we live in as well. Look in verse four through six. He says, when you read this, his letter, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which has not been made known to the sons of men and other generations. So he's talking about a generational shift. It was not made known in the same way in the days of Abraham or Moses or David or Esther or Solomon, but it is now, everybody say now, now, it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the spirit. This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs. That's what's been revealed. That the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.

Okay, so what does that mean? Paul is saying to them that God is gathering this manifold wisdom displaying church from the nations made up of both Jews and Gentiles, both brought near, both bought by the blood of Christ and brought into one family in the gospel. And that God is redeeming a people, gathering a people from the nations for himself to display his wisdom through to the heavenly realms. This was the hour in which they lived. This was the hour in redemptive history. They didn't live in the days of Abraham. They didn't live in the days of Joshua of going into the promised land. They didn't live in the time of David and the slaying of giants or Solomon and the building of the temple. They lived in this window where God by the Holy Spirit was gathering a people for himself from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. And Paul wanted the church at Ephesus to see that. Why? So they could enter into the purposes of God in their generation. Church, we live in that same hour. We are still in the now. God is revealing this. God is gathering a people for himself. Any stats fans out here, I'm gonna show you a few stats. So where are we?

The promise made to Abraham now being fulfilled that we'll see in completion at the end of time. Look at this. Researchers, people who study this kind of thing have found that there are around 17,000 total people groups, total nations, families, tribes, tongues in the world, 17,000 between the days of the church at Ephesus and now. So around 2000 years, the gospel is spread from a small little group. It's spread out to now 10,000 of those 17,000 have people in them that follow Jesus, have a church in that people group that has the opportunity to reach their whole community. 10,000, that's amazing. That's encouraging. You think when Paul wrote this to the church at Ephesus, they're a small little group, right? In over 2000 years, we've seen the Holy Spirit take that gospel from a small little group and spread it around the world. That's awesome. That's amazing. And in our current day, there are 7,000 unreached people groups. That represents 3.4 billion people. That's a lot of people, 42% of the world's population. What that means is in these people groups, there are not, there's not local churches that love Jesus that are focused on displaying the manifold wisdom of God to that community.

We see in Revelation. tribe, tongue, people, and language. There are people from those tribes and tongues, languages gathered around the throne. These 7,000, not yet. How many of you know that God is jealous, that He's eager, that He's desirous for the gospel of the kingdom to be preached to them just like it was preached to you? Most of these people live in what's called the 1040 window. I'll show you a map in just a second of that, about 85% of them. It's like a latitude lines on the map. And less, get this, less than 3% of Christian missionary activity is focused on this particular area. So can you put that map up? So North Africa, the Middle East, India, China, Malaysia. That's where the most of those unreached and unengaged people groups live. And only 3% of our global church missionary activity is focused on these areas, because it's really hard. I've lived there, it's very hard. And Paul is sharing with the church at Ephesus, saying I want you to understand the times in which you live and what the spirit of God is doing in your day. And the Holy Spirit would speak to us through His word today that He wants us to understand the hour of redemptive history that we live in.

The task is before us. Does God wanna reach people in Waco, Texas? Yes, amen. And we are on mission in our city. Does God wanna reach people in our nation? Yes, and amen. Does America need Jesus? Yes, America needs Jesus. And does God wanna reach and gather for Himself from every tribe, tongue, people, and language, including those unreached people groups? Yes, and it's the task of the church in this hour to partner with the Lord to see that come to pass. Paul wanted the Ephesians to know that, and I believe the Holy Spirit wants us to know that today. Third thing that Paul points out that would lead them to a conviction about praying together is their great weakness. Their great weakness. Now look in verse eight, Paul refers to himself as the very least of all the saints. Now, I imagine I'm in the church at Ephesus, I get this letter from Paul who I've seen do extraordinary miracles, seen God use in power, and he's writing, and he's saying, hey, I'm the very least of all the saints. I would get that letter and be like, then I don't even know if I'm in the same ballpark, right? And we've got some really mature people in the Lord here in our church,

but for most of us, if Paul is the least of all the saints, like, I don't know, sometimes I'm like, am I even playing t-ball? When I look at him and look at me, not much. So there's that. Also, there's a lot of suffering in following Jesus. Paul's talking about it. He's in jail, verse 13. He says, I don't want you to lose heart over what I'm suffering for you. He tells Timothy, who's a leader in the church at Ephesus, he's gonna tell him, hey, all, all who are godly and follow Christ Jesus are going to suffer and be persecuted. So there's suffering, there's weakness. There's suffering that he's like not sugarcoating to them. There's suffering in this. And for them, and I would say for us, they have a proclivity to lose heart, a proclivity to be discouraged or disillusioned. He's like, I don't want you to lose heart over my suffering. It's very easy for me to get discouraged. It's very easy for me to lose heart. Like, I can relate to that. So there's a high calling. There's a key hour in which the church at Ephesus lives in which we live, and there's a lot of weakness. Can anybody just agree with me that we have a lot of weakness in our lives, right? We've got three people.

Come on, guys, we got, we know each other. We got a lot of weakness. We can get easily discouraged. So it's like, oh my goodness, Lord, you have this high calling. You have this very important task, and I'm very, very weak. But Paul doesn't stop there. He goes on, look in verse 14, and he points them. In light of their high calling, in light of the hour in which they live, and in light of their great need, their great weakness, Paul says in verse 14, he points to God's glorious power. And he says, it's for this reason, I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory, that he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being. So what Paul is saying to the church at Ephesus, you have a high calling. You have an important hour in which you live. You have great weakness, but you have a great God who has glorious power, and the Holy Spirit that you experience at salvation, that God will be with you. wants to fill you afresh with the power of the Holy Spirit on your inside so that you could have strength to walk into all the things that God has for you. The power source for this is not of ourselves, praise God.

It was not found in the church at Ephesus in them by themselves. It was found in the Lord's power that He was ready to pour out on their midst to fill them afresh with the Holy Spirit so that they could, though they were weak, they could be faithful. Though there was suffering, they could see glory. Though they do get discouraged, there would be that spirit of encouragement that would allow them to keep going to enter into the inheritance that God had for them and the inheritance that God has for us. And He doesn't want just him to be on his knees praying for them. He's actually reminding them in verse 12 of their great privilege, that in Jesus that they had been invited in, that this power-releasing prayer was not just for apostles of old like Paul, but this was a privilege of the body of Christ. Look at verse 12. He said, in Jesus, we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in Him. The way that he puts it, or the way the writer of Hebrews 4 puts it, is that we can come before the throne of grace with confidence, that we don't have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but that Jesus has walked the road that we walked.

And when we come to Him, we can find help in our time of need. So Paul is reminding them, the church at Ephesus, of their great privilege of prayer, that they can come before the Father, on their knees before the Father, the glorious Father who has a glorious spirit, and they can say, Lord, it's not in me, but I can do the things that you've called me to do. I can't walk in the inheritance that you have for me, but you, Lord, you have power, and you wanna pour your spirit out on your people as we pray. So Paul is inspiring, he is invoking, he is provoking them to take up that place that they would be a community marked by prayer together. They'd be a community marked by the Holy Spirit, Ephesians 1, they'd be a community marked by grace, Ephesians 2, here we see in Ephesians 3, that they would be a people of prayer that experience an outpouring of the Holy Spirit such that at the end of Ephesians, excuse me, in verse 20, they would see God do above and beyond what they could ask or imagine in the church and in the generations in Christ Jesus. In church, that's the opportunity, that's the invitation for you and for me. So I wanna put that QR code back up, and I wanna challenge you to jump in with us in these days of prayer and fasting.

Now, let me just say a few things. When you sign up, we're gonna send you a prayer guide. And these are things that we wanna be praying as a church family over those three days, March 2nd, 3rd, and 4th. We'll be praying into these and asking God to fill us afresh like the church at Ephesus, fill us afresh with the Holy Spirit. Who in here needs a fresh baptism of the Holy Spirit? Okay, come on. So we're gonna be praying for that together, not just individually, but together, we're gonna be contending for that. And we're gonna talk about what that looks like next week, we're gonna have a great sermon from Dorothy Abshire walking through these prayer points. Got some Dorothy fans, there we go, walking through these prayer points of things we're gonna be praying into. And then with fasting, sometimes when we come to fasting, you can be like, oh, I don't wanna do that. Okay, now Jesus said his followers were to fast, so we gotta wrestle with Jesus said that we need to be people that fast, Matthew 5-7. But listen, I wanna encourage you with grace. I realize some of you medically, maybe you can't fast, grace to you. For some of you, I wanna say, maybe the Lord puts on your heart to fast a meal over those three days.

Grace to you, praise God, way to go. Maybe the Lord puts on your heart to fast lunches for those three days. You say, I'm gonna fast lunch and I'm gonna pray. I'm gonna let myself be emptied out of my own strength and I'm gonna pray over lunches, praise God. Maybe some of you, you're gonna fast a whole day or two days or three days. Whatever God puts on your heart to do in the area of fasting by grace, praise God. But let's do it together, let's pray together, life groups, let's join in together. This is a time where we. can sow in prayer together in life group, carry each other's burdens. And I believe that as we do that, we are gonna see the wisdom of God displayed through our church in ways that we wouldn't have even imagined. We're gonna see breakthroughs. I just, even in praying for today, I believe that there is territory to be taken in the area of marriages that is only gonna come forward as you are on your knees together before the Father, asking for power from the Holy Spirit for your marriage. I think, we're gonna move the podium today. I think that there are places in your kids' lives, parents, there's inheritance for them, there's territory for them to take that's gonna come.

The only way forward is mom and dad. We're on our knees together before the Father, asking for him to do above and beyond what we could do in our own feeble strength. Young people, teenagers, college students, you go even to elementary school. I think there are things that the Lord has for you that he wants to speak to you in that place of prayer. There's land for you to take. And we wanna get behind you and we wanna pray together. Places in business, places in your workplace for all of us, places in our neighborhood. There might be places, when we showed the 1040 window, there might be callings to the nations that have been dormant. You're just like, I'm weak, I get discouraged, I get dismayed, I don't know. But as we go together in prayer, the Holy Spirit is going to fill us. And through his power, we're gonna step into the territories that God has for us. Church family, there are territories ahead that God wants to lead us into. But the only way forward is on our knees together. So again, I wanna invite you, March 2nd, 3rd, and 4th, for us to go together to the throne of grace, for us to go together to find the mercy and the help that we need in our time of need, that we will be filled afresh

with the power of the Holy Spirit, to walk in our calling in spite of our weakness and to see Jesus glorified in his church. I wanna invite you to stand. If I can get the prayer team to come forward. Jeremy, you wanna come up too, buddy? In addition to a general exhortation to prayer and fasting coming up, we have some specific words of ministry that we want to lean into together. So Jeremy's gonna share those, and then we'll have a time to come forward and minister and the worship team lead us. Amen, our prayer teams, y'all can go ahead and get up on this side as well. When we were just praying for the service, I just kept hearing the phrase, God has fresh oil for us this morning. And worship was so rich, and then we heard about the joy of giving and the joy of taking territory. And I just sense if you're like, someone's heart, you feel like your heart is burning, you want more of Jesus. You're like, what happened? I need more of him. I want more of his presence. When they were singing, that was amazing. And then there's this place of giving. There's this place of giving of your own self,

whether that's praying and fasting or giving, there's a crushing that brings fresh oil. There's something when you say, I will give of myself, that God gives more of himself to you. So if you feel that burning in your heart, we wanna pray for you to have the anointing of the Holy Spirit. Y'all can start making your way and start walking now. We also just have a lot of different words about physical healing. That there's some folks where you have an ear injury, where it's maybe hard to hear. You got some folks might have neck pain or back pain, but lots of words about God bringing breakthrough even this morning. So I would say any need that you have, we believe God is here to move and to bring that breakthrough. So go ahead and make your way down. If your heart is burning for more of him, for that fresh oil, or you need healing anywhere in your body, or you wanna have an assignment from the Lord, come to the front, we wanna pray for you.