The preaching text on March 3 for my sermon, "How To Pray for One Another", was Ephesians 3:15-18, Here it is:
"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 a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, have 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..."
Paul prayed for fellow believers in Christ at Ephesus, and he teaches us to pray for one another, that we would have knowledge of God-- "a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him"...and that we may "know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints..."
So we have the amazing privilege of praying for our brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus that we will know more of God's promised spiritual blessings (v. 3), including divinely seen wisdom and revelation, and hope and a gloriously eternal inheritance, by knowing more and more of God. I say that because Paul surely know that the knowledge of God is infinite in measure because He is infinite. His riches are unfathomable, and verse 19 tells us that his power is immeasurably great!
Charles Spurgeon preached this on June 3, 1877-- "The most of the subjects which mortals study here will be forgotten in the world to come; the profoundest of them will be too trifling to be pursued amid angelic thrones. The honors of classical and mathematical attainments will shine but dimly amidst the glories of of heaven, but the knowledge of Christ Jesus will still be priceless, and it will cause those who possess it to shine as the sun. He that knoweth Christ shall go on to sit at his feet and still to learn, and as he learns he will tell to principalities and powers the manifold wisdom of God in the person of Jesus Christ. Se ye, then, beloved, that the apostle for the sake of the knowledge of Christ Jesus his Lord still counted all the things that he had once gloried in to be but loss."
So, dear Rocky family, let us pray for one another in terms of Paul's example in verses 15-18. And in these times of increasing uncertainly in the world, let us pray that Christ will be our hope. He is our hope of glory (Col. 1:27)!
As we prepared for communion on Sunday, I spoke this invitation to the table: "Come to the Lord's table...rejoicing and remembering that our hope is built on nothing less that Jesus' blood and righteousness, and our inheritance is sure because of Him, and His substitutionary, atoning death in our place and his resurrection from the dead." Some of those words are quoted from the following hymn, by Edward Mote, 1797-1874:
"My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness;
I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus' name."
"When darkness veils His lovely face, I rest on His unchanging grace;
In every high and stormy gale, my anchor holds within the veil."
"His oath, His covenant, His blood support me in the whelming flood;
When all around my soul gives way, He then is all my hope and stay.
"When He shall come with trumpet sound, oh, may I then in Him be found;
Dressed in His righteousness alone, Faultless to stand before the throne.
Refrain-
"On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand; all other ground is sinking sand,
"All other ground is sinking sand."
Praying for you like Paul prayed, in the love of our Lord Jesus Christ,
Pastor Carey
