Peter Barnes | Ephesians 1:15-23
SERMON NOTES
Prayer for Growth
(Eph. 1:15-19a)
– prayer in chapters 1, 3, 6.
1. What is a Christian?
– 1:15; faith in the Lord Jesus and love to all the saints (written to a Gentile Church)
– Luke 6:32; Martyn Lloyd-Jones rested on this verse
2. Praying thankfully for Christians.
– 1:16; Philemon 4-5
3. Prayer for growth in knowledge and understanding.
– 1:17-19a (Spirit, not spirit, say NIV, Charles Hodge, and Peter O’Brien)
– the hope of your calling, the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints (John 17:24; Donald Cargill in 1681 as he was about to be hanged, sings Psalm 118:16-9), and the ‘hyperbolic’ great power in believers.
– ‘you’ becomes ‘us’ in verse 19; need to grow
– My knowledge of that life is small,/ The eye of faith is dim (Richard Baxter)