Let's take a moment to read our passage together. So please have that portion of the packet there with you. And the scripture says, "For this reason, I too, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus which exists among you and your love for all the saints, do not cease giving thanks for you while making mention of you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and a revelation in the knowledge of him.

I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of his calling, what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of his power towards us who believe. These are in accordance with the working of the strength of his might, which he brought about 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 in every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And he put all things in subjection 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.

Okay. It's a really beautiful passage of Apostle Paul essentially sharing his mentality about the church, right? Now as we come to this passage, we want to review that remember in the last section that we took several weeks to cover, we reviewed and learned the massive blessings that exist all in Christ.

Everything was in him and through him, right? And we saw that the incredible loving intentionality that God had towards us, right? There was nothing in terms of flippancy. There was nothing in terms of last minute like, "Oops, Valentine's is Friday." It just didn't creep up on him like, "Oh, shoot, I forgot all these little ones I made." It just never happened that way.

But rather it was meticulously planned from the creation of the world, right? We saw that intentionality and it was crazy. Everything was in accordance to his perfect will. And so what we saw was an incredible list of not just simply things we receive, it was an incredible list of God's intentional will.

Everything was by his own decision, his purpose, and we saw that repeated so many times. And so therefore, all of that was to result in praise to God. All of that was supposed to result in blessed be God, the Father of our Lord. And so the challenge to you, application wasn't like, "Go out there and build the church," or whatever, although that's something you should always be doing.

It was more so worship. Bless God. Think him in your heart, right? Check your heart to see if there's any part of you that's like, "Wah, boo-hoo, look at my life. What have you done for me lately? Don't we dare ever." After covering a section like that, we dare not have that kind of hurtful heart and mentality inside our minds or inside our emotions when we think about the Lord.

Now when we just read this passage, moving from that long list of blessings, how are we to move into this passage is the question, when Apostle Paul says the various things. So in order to do that, I just want to challenge you guys to regularly summarize what you're reading because it helps you kind of just remember and retain, but also to keep thinking and thinking and thinking about all the stuff you saw.

What I like to do is read the passage again, but to read the passage on your packet on the next page behind it in the kind of breakdown fashion that I like to do because that'll help us notice. So I'm going to read it again. He says in verse 15, "For this reason, I too, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus which exists among you and your love for all the saints, do not cease giving thanks for you while making mention of you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation and the knowledge of him.

I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened so that you will know what is the hope of his calling, what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of his power towards us who believe. These are in accordance with the working of the strength of his might, which he brought out about in Christ.

And he raised him from the dead and he seated him at the right hand in the heavenly places far above all rule, authority, and power, dominion, every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And he put all things in subjection under his feet and he gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all." Okay?

As you take a look at that, man, you know, we ask this question and so we're going to come back to this question, is how do you summarize this? And what I like to say is, man, you see him connecting the thought of the blessings that he has seen and praises God for, and he connects it to the people whom he sees faith in.

And therefore he prays. What am I saying here? By way of kind of connecting the dots for us a little bit, again, I think Apostle Paul, he doesn't just jump from one thought to another. What he really is doing is he's seeing, yes, the long list of blessings that we went through in the last passage and saying, "We have to really, really appreciate all of these blessings we have in Christ." So you notice the theme of this entire section, there's so much about knowledge, understanding, and having your eyes wide open.

You should really understand this stuff. Is that what he's saying? Well, I think there's more. What am I saying? Here, let's jump to the first section and take a look. He's got this thought for this reason, but what he's saying is, "What I've heard is your faith and your love that exists in you." What does he see?

He sees genuine markers, evidences of true faith. So in Paul's perspective, he's got one on one side in his mind, all of these incredible blessings that come in Christ that are, for lack of better words, just incredible, right? Just absolutely incredible. And so on this side, though, what he sees is that there is marks of genuine faith among the people that he's writing to.

And that to me all makes sense. For example, imagine if you were a teacher, let's say in high school, a high school English teacher or something like that, and you had a class of like 30 students. And you find out, "Oh my goodness, that young man over there, he's a Christian." Would you be like, "Ah, then I don't need to pay attention to him, because he's going to be all right." No, you'd be like, "Oh my goodness, you're a Christian?" All of a sudden you feel what?

Affinity? What's more, all of a sudden you feel more concern, because you know that he's going to be perhaps walking a hard path, because he's going to have to contend for his faith, because he is a minority in terms of just the culture of the day or whatever it may be.

And now all of a sudden you might even want to meet with him. "How are you doing? Is it hard? Are you doing okay?" And then you'd be what? Inspired to pray for him. Right? I kind of feel that sense. It's like once Apostle Paul sees that there is faith in these individuals, there is even a greater concern.

Perhaps some of us feel like, "He's Christian, he'll be fine." Maybe you think some of the people around you, it's like, "They'll be okay. We don't need to pray for them." Right? Just got to pray for the lost. Well actually, as a matter of fact, if you think about it in the right perspective, this all makes sense.

That Apostle Paul would be giving great thanks because all the great blessings that he just talked about is yours. Right? I mean, imagine with me another scenario. If I said, "Great news, I won the lotto." And to one single worthy person, "I would love to give a million dollars." Right?

And then imagine the next week, at the next Bible study, you see, I don't know, you see Emily, she's just like happy and she's like, "Here, I love you." You know? She's just giving it away. Maybe she's just a lady, she's like happy the whole time. Immediately you think like, "Oh my gosh, did he give it to you?" Why?

Because of her generosity. Likewise, if he sees love for all the saints, if he sees faith filling an individual's heart, a church, their hearts, I mean, he's so grateful for that. Right? So, all I'm saying is this, is here in the beginning, we think about what Apostle Paul is really both excited about, right?

You would be just ecstatic for her, happy with her. Think about what he's praying for. And then let's take a moment to just think and meditate, you know? Because in these beginning portions of the book of Ephesians, a lot of it is not didactic teaching and instruction about this is what you need to do.

A lot of it is think, remember, understand, and know. Yes? In Apostle Paul's mind, the perspective and definitions of what are true blessings, then contribute to you thinking about what are then true sources of joy for you. If for him, the true blessings are all up in Christ, then that also then paints for him what are those things that he's going to be most thankful for, most happy about, most ecstatic, and therefore also most pressing on his prayer list.

Yes? Take a moment to meditate for yourself. Then are these the things that you give thanks unceasingly? Are these the things that just make you keep worrying and make you keep thinking and motivating you? Like, "I got that student who's a Christian and he's growing. I need to pray for him." You see what I'm saying?

Is this what's kind of pressing? Is this what's valuable? And the evidences of faith that Apostle Paul sees in this church then to him are absolutely important. And I want to show you that too. First Peter. First Peter chapter one, verse six through seven, it says, "In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while it's necessary that you have been distressed by various trials." Lots of hardships, right?

"So that the proof of your faith is," what? "It's being more precious than gold, which is perishable, even though tested by fire may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ." Take a moment to meditate upon this. I am saying to you, there was this question, why is Apostle Paul praying for a bunch of people he knows are already Christian?

Yes? Because there is a second thought that the ongoing perseverance and the evidence of that faith is more valuable than gold. And so, when you look at your friends, brothers and sisters at church, and you're praying for them, right? You can, it's totally okay and ecstatic, and good for you to be ecstatic that your friend landed that job, right?

Or that they got out of that horrible, miserable situation, whatever it may be. Be happy for them. But there is that question of how you are interpreting what are true blessings, right? There's a question you need to meditate about what are true things you're seeing as like that's so good for Apostle Paul.

It's the evidence what he sees and what he hears that these individuals have true faith. Next, section two. Let's take a look at this, and I ask you the question, right, for your Bible study, what does Paul pray for? So what is the content of Paul's prayer? And what is the pattern that you see in his prayer?

So let's read that as well. So follow along on the screen here. And you saw it, it's like so, like again, he's so clear in his teaching, it's like that, number one, God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom, of revelation, and the knowledge of him.

Okay? And he says, I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened so that you will know. Let's stop there, okay? So clearly we can say we see a pattern. We see a pattern of the emphasis that Apostle Paul is clearly praying for and giving his devoted time and energy, asking that God would constantly give them truth, right?

To give the church truth and true understanding. Because we know it's not enough, it's absolutely not enough to just know some things. It's not enough to have some fact toys in your brain. It's not enough to have the intellectual knowledge. You need to understand. And you need to have wisdom where you can skillfully apply truth, right?

So that's what he's asking for. This is very similar to what we studied long ago in Colossians chapter one, verses nine through 10. For the sake of time, I'm gonna read it for us. It says, "For this reason also, since the day we heard of it, we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding so that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord." Okay?

So let's take a moment to meditate upon that too. I mean, really fast, I could just ask you to meditate upon your life specifically now. Are you growing in fact toys? Are you growing in good student-based homework assignments? And you've got binders full at home of all the assignments you did.

Or are you growing in understanding? Depth of appreciation for the love of God, for the work of God, for the redemption that we have, the blessings of God? Are you growing in such a wisdom where your consideration of God, you see him in greater light, you see his everything, holiness to his mercies, to his righteousness, and not only do you appreciate that, but being then in his presence as you see him, it's absolutely affecting the way that you talk to him, it's affecting the way that you talk to others.

Are you growing in that? And so another way to apply this and meditate upon this is thinking about Apostle Paul's prayer and then applying that to you. I would ask, especially because our theme is like knowing God and then making him known, every single one of you is like at some point or another going to be an older brother in the faith, older sister in the faith.

Can you take a moment to just imagine with me the person in front of you who you love and you want them to come along in the faith? And you wish that you could teach them some things? Maybe you have a younger brother in the faith who's just like stubborn as can be, and they're always contentious with you.

It's like, "Whee, a butt!" And he's just like, "Rawr!" Or maybe you can imagine the person, maybe it's your own child, and I think about this, how do I teach my sons to be godly, mature young men? Have you ever thought stuff like that? How do you get someone to move from point A to point B?

Lesson one to session 10 and actually grow from here to there. If we're real, we all know that's a very difficult calling, right? For us to try to teach and model and instruct and coach. And there are times when we get all frustrated, it's like, "What are you doing?" And there are days when you wish, like I wish I could just reach into your heart and just like change it, you know?

If I could, right? And then there are moments when I start thinking even on my own kids. I think about how do I make sure that they don't grow up to be unappreciative, just selfish, arrogant kids, you know? Arrogant young men. And there are days when I start imagining, "You know what I'm going to do?

I'm going to make them suffer." You know? They're going to know what it means to not have. And there are some times I sit my boys down and I'm like, "I'm going to be honest, you're so blessed, it's ridiculous. You have two parents who love you to death. You have this amazing church where your friends are awesome.

You've got other uncles and aunties and you've got brothers and sisters above you. And you're so blessed." And then I start sometimes comparing with them and then I get this inspiration, "I'm going to make them suffer." So that they will know what it means to appreciate the stuff they have, right?

And then I think, "What am I doing? What am I doing?" And then I want to share with you something really interesting. There was a time when like, you guys have probably done this before. If you've suffered in your life, you kind of have a little like, "That's right.

You have a silver spoon right up in your mouth, man. But me, I suffered." And so you have this little bit of arrogance in you, right? But we went to a conference where Dr. Steve Lawson was preaching. And this man is like godly. You know, he's a godly man.

This individual is just like, his passion to preach the gospel, see people saved, and he's trained the Christians. It's like so intense. This conference was a conference where he preached eight sessions by himself, did Q&A in between, and walked with people through questions the whole time. I'm like, "Dude, you're crazy, right?" You know what's really interesting?

The guy grew up as goody two-shoe as you could possibly think of. He was wearing a suit since he was like six years old, okay? His father made him like iron his pants and put on his blazer and wear a tie every Sunday since he was a child. His father taught him everything there is to know, and he was talking about how he's thankful for that.

And I was kind of sitting there like, "Hmm. This guy's so passionate. Like, I thought he'd gone to jail or something before." You know? Isn't that a prerequisite to be all passionate and stuff? Brothers and sisters, why do I talk about that? Like, why do I talk about the difficulty of training kids and then this other extreme where you have some of the godliest men who've had an incredibly privileged life?

Because no human experience is going to teach what the Holy Spirit is going to teach. The Word of God is absolutely sufficient for us. Yes? And what that means is, yes, I might want to soul control and manipulate my children's life. "You're not going to do this, and you're not going to see that, and you're not going to do this." And I might be tempted sometimes to scream in his face, like, "Just do it!" Right?

But even my passions will not compare to the power of the Holy Spirit illuminating someone's heart. And therefore, we must pray. And that's why every single night when Bia and I put our boys to go to sleep, we pray a friend and we say, "May the Lord bless you with wisdom and instruction so that you will fear the Lord." I'm going to be faithful to teach my kids, and I will model what the Bible looks like in real life, and I will try to guard them and protect them.

But we should be praying regularly that people hear the voice of God for themselves and that the Spirit empowers that. Amen? It won't compare. And some people may falsely think that only if I said this and did this and then manipulated their lives so that you make this mold and you pour the child in and they come out perfect.

That's not true. Scripture says we must pray, just as Apostle Paul. You guys are memorizing Scripture? This is a great one. You know, rather than writing on Christmas cards and yearbooks or whatever, it's like, "Yeah, I hope you have a great summer." You know, write this. That God may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation and the knowledge of Him.

He'll open your heart and enlighten. This is a prayer for every Christian, right? This is a prayer for every Christian. Part three. What are some of the things that we really have to know? Apostle Paul doesn't just stop at, "I want you to know stuff, guys," period, right? He says, "No, we need to know what is the hope of His calling." And because of the limitations of our Bible study, I'm not going to be able to extrapolate all those things.

But did you notice how, again, organized he is? It's like, "I want you to have, you know, pray that God reveals to you, gives you the spirit of wisdom," right? And then all this stuff. And then he says that all of this is so that you would know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance, what is the surpassing greatness of His power towards us who believe, right?

I want to ask you a really interesting question. Every time you see a list, it's not always the case, but you should ask this question. Like, how are these things in the list joined together, right? So even here, you should ask. Later on, when we talk about the power of God in Christ, you should ask that question.

Why are these examples cased together, right? Are they all privileges? Are they all just a continuation of the many blessings that we have? Are these all maybe resources for motivation for the believer? Are these great summaries of what we learned in verses 3 through 14? Are these the great foundations upon which we build our Christian lives?

What are these? Okay, what are these? In my mind, as I kind of like reflected and meditated, so I want you guys to take a moment to meditate on this stuff. One of the greatest struggles in living life here is just to stay motivated. Right now, I'm preparing a sermon series for the single adults for our retreat coming up, how to live your life in the grind.

Where life is mundane, where work is heavy and your life is dominated by one facet of your life, what do you do, right? The reason why the grind is hard is because it's so hard to stay focused and motivated, yes? When I read this, there is nothing more motivating than this, right?

These are the fuels for the Christian. That's the way I see it. Now, someone, again, you can differ on that and people are like, "No, these are the blessings." These are blessings, okay? But I see nothing more motivating than to hear God has called you for an incredible purpose, to be his reflection, to be holy and blameless, and then to be his great treasure serving him in his heaven.

Think about motivations, I mean, that's amazing. To have the riches of the glory of his inheritance, what motivation for us? To see the surpassing greatness of his power? Meditate with me and flip it around the other way. If you did not have these motivations, what would you do, right?

If you did not have these motivations of hope, the riches of glory, and of his great power, what would you do? I mean, life would be bleak. Our table started talking about, it is sad, it is sad that in recent past, there has been stories of individuals taking their own lives, yet calling themselves followers of Christ.

They have forgotten this. If I have no hope, what's the point? If I have no point, if I have no hope, there is no direction. What is this for? If I have no riches in Christ, then I am valueless. What do I really have, right? What do I actually own?

Even the stuff that I own, I can see it decay in my own lifetime. If there is no power, who do I trust? If there is no strength, then I am left to my own wit, and I have already seen how weak I am. People who commit suicide are individuals who have seen their weakness and have given up.

Without these great motivations in your life, your life is absolutely feeble, right? These are things to really meditate on. Now, with that said, we want to move to that last section because that last section, it took a huge chunk of the space of a passage, right? So the beginning portions of it basically had his thankfulness and prayer, "I want you to have God's wisdom, His revelation and knowledge, and for you to know," right?

And then he started listening, "I want you to know the hope, I want you to know the riches, and I want you to know the power." And then right when he hit power, he stopped and pulled the brakes and said, "Let's talk about power. Let's camp here and meditate on His power." Now I found something really interesting about this because he uses synonymous terms, right?

There is this incredible, I love the way that NIV puts it, there's like this, he says, "Incomparably greatness," like it's a weird way of saying it in the NIV if you have it. There's a surpassing greatness of His power, and then synonymously it says, "All of this in accordance with the working of the strength of His might." Wow.

Like, think about it, right? God is a God who says a word and it is, but there is this exertion of His power that He exercises in Christ, yes? Let's read this section, it says, "These are in accordance with the working of the strength of His might, which He brought about in Christ." Now, notice how I put some of those He's in parentheses because I added that for emphasis, okay?

And I also added it because, honestly, when I was doing my own Bible study, I was like, "Too many pronouns, who is who?" I'm pretty sure you guys might have felt the same way. So then I started listing it, it says, "Look at God's power He brought about in Christ when He, He raised Him," that is Christ from the dead, "He seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come.

And He put all things in subjection under His feet. And He gave Him as head over all things to the church, which is His body and the fullness of Him who fills all in all." Okay, there's a lot there, there is a lot there. But as we think about that, I found something interesting.

Initially, you start thinking the might and power of God. The Old Testament has so much to say about the might and power of God, right? There is creative power. There is the power that God exerts where He brings into existence stuff out of nothing. Yes? I've got a little chart for you.

There is even sustaining power where He holds all the things in the universe. He holds them in place, Scripture says, right? Because if He so wishes, if He metaphorically just let go, right, things would absolutely go into decay. And even scientists know that. There is a rule, things do not go into order, they go into decay, right?

What's more? There is the power of His wisdom. His knowledge is power. Absolute. Now, these samples are just a sampling of God's power exerted. So many times He'll say, "By my right hand, I've delivered you," right? "I've crushed nations." Interesting question. Why is none of this in this passage?

I mean, this is great stuff. We can talk tons. He could have quoted O.T. so many times about the incredible excellencies of God's power. Why? Because notice that when He is thinking about this power, that this power is God's power towards us in Christ. There is this incredibly unique power that God is exercising.

I'm not sure if I can say that this is His greatest power, but this is an incredibly precise power that God is exercising towards you and me. For the individual who knows that he is a sinner apart from God, for the individual who's read ahead and chapter two says, "And you're dead and your chest passes," right?

To hear that there is resurrection power, to hear that there is power to overcome, to hear that there is power to overcome the authorities, the powers, and the dominions, and the enslaving forces of your lusts of this world of Satan, your ears would perk, right? Why? Because this is power exercised towards me, the believer in Christ.

God exercises a unique power where through the work and person of Jesus, He is transforming billions, literally changing the lives of billions. Radically filled with love. So this is amazing stuff. This is amazing stuff. Now as we meditate upon that then, we observe His, again, wise, incredibly meticulous, intentional, willful use of His power to exercise.

To me, this is absolutely radical because I took a moment to kind of think about this, like how are we supposed to appreciate power, you know? And then for some odd reason, I started researching like how do you measure power? And then I went into this rabbit trail where I started researching like solar power for like a long time.

Did you know that watts is calculated by amperage in volts? Now the really interesting thing about this is whenever you research power, any kind of power, there are different measurements of power, whether it be watts, kilowatts. If you're researching furnaces or heaters or whatever, there's BTUs, and did you know that stands for British Thermal Units?

I don't know what's up with that. Now the figures that you see typically with BTUs and all this stuff, it's crazy numbers. It's like this furnace has 80,000 BTUs, you know? It's like, "Whoa, 80,000," right? But every one of those measurements for power are conditioned by something per hour.

What's really interesting to me was as I think about this, like within this first chapter, one of the things that God highlighted within His like revelation of His acts and His works and His will and His redemptive power towards us is how eternal it was, right? That it spanned time.

I mean, our worldview is like this, like, "Did you think of me now? Are you helping me?" And then He shatters that and says, "I had you. I chose you before the foundation of the world." But think about the timing of this. If we're thinking and we're going to receive these blessings in Christ, when is that going to be?

This is incredible stuff. Like radically challenging how we view the power exerted towards us. And I wanted to at least try, just try to help you appreciate that as well. Now in the last section, there is this one aspect of His power that's really interesting. And He says on top of overcoming, there was a resurrection, there was a seating, like an authority, and then there was dominion over all powers and such.

And then there was this last portion when He says, "And He gave Him as head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all." I'm just going to tell you from the get-go, this is one jam-packed verse that there are still questions, right?

And He's going to expand upon it in the future times to come, but I did want to say some things about it because you guys had some great questions. I think it was essentially the question of, what does it mean, the fullness? Because that term is a little bit interesting.

All I'm going to say is this. Believe it or not, when we see with our eyes, when we look at the church, we see a building with a bunch of people having service. However, what Scripture is trying to say is that God has created this church, and over time, right, all of history passed.

God has established His church as a show of His power, right? And in magnificent ways. I want to highlight for you a passage in Ephesians chapter 3. Please turn there. Ephesians chapter 3, verse 8 through 10. And He says this. I'm going to actually start from verse 6 and go to verse 10.

He says, "To be specific, that the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body, the fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel, of which I was made a minister according to the gift of God's grace, which was given to me according to the working of His power.

To me, the very least of all the saints, this grace was given to preach to the Gentiles the unfathomable riches of Christ, and to bring to light what is the administration of the mystery, which for ages has been hidden in God, who created all things. So that," look at this, "the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places.

This was in accordance with the eternal purpose which He carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord." That too is quite an incredible passage. But what I'm going to say is this. The might of God is active in the church. And so what I'm saying is when the passage says to you, right, because this passage says Christ is the head, He's ruling over, right, over all things in the church, and then there's an appositive saying this is His body, which is His body, and another appositive, the fullness of Him.

The way I'm taking it is the church is His body, is the fullness of Christ. Not so meaning the completion of Him or that Jesus is lacking anything, but it's one of these ideas that's showing to you in marvelous fashion a representation of the great powers and majesties of our Lord and Savior, right?

And that to us is quite a mystery. We're just a bunch of people gathered together on a Wednesday night studying the Bible, but if you think about it, the power of God to draw us together in one singular person and name, right? It's an incredible power that He's displaying.

And the more and more is gonna be shown through the time, so we'll stop there. Let's take a moment to pray and wrap up our session. Lord, we thank you for your grace. Thank you for your mercies. God, we recognize that Apostle Paul, he was praying so fervently, unceasingly, because he saw the great value of the salvation we have in the Lord.

And what's more, Father God, he saw the importance that every believer would grow, would mature in the knowledge of the Lord. And so I pray, Father God, that that would be also our earnest desire. I pray, Father God, that also that that would be our heart's yearning, not just simply for those around us, but ourselves too.

And I pray, Father God, that yes, if we are a church that's desiring to walk with you, to live according to the gospel, help us, Father God, to begin with the right understanding of you. Help us, Father God, to begin with deep appreciation for the gospel and to keep growing in the depth of the understanding that we would hold fast to the great treasure that we have.

We thank you, it's in Christ. Let me pray. Amen. Okay. I'm just going to take two minutes, because today I actually got a ton of messages from you guys on questions. And I wish that I was quick on my feet and I could just insert your questions into my lesson, but I can't do that.

So I'm just going to take like two minutes at the end of the session to answer some of the questions, and then we'll kind of go from there, okay? I'm not going to say who the question's from, but I'll just ask the question. Oh, this is a good one.

Oh, there's difference of translation, spirit of wisdom. Sometimes the spirit is capitalized, sometimes the spirit is not. What's the difference and why is that important? Okay, good. You know, if you look at the passage, when Apostle Paul prays in verse 18, and he says that, oh, sorry, 17, that he may give you the spirit of wisdom.

I think we checked on our group. I believe the only translation that says, oh, like, oh, sorry, that's not capitalized, and this is a spirit of wisdom is the NASV. The NIV and the ESV are capitalized that. Now, the reason why there's a difference is because when you take a look at a passage, remember that context is very important, and then the immediate contents of that passage is important.

So, one, context. If you're looking at context, chapter one, that first section, had so much to say about the trinity affecting our redemption and the blessings that we have. And right before this, it mentioned that the Holy Spirit was your seal. And what's more, in the immediate context, there's this idea of, like, praying that the eyes of our heart may be what?

Enlightened. Who does that? Scripture says the Holy Spirit, right? So by context, you can see why an interpreter would be like, the spirit, the pneuma, is the Holy Spirit giving you understanding. And so they capitalize the word. But if you're looking at immediate content, you're kind of thinking, well, Apostle Paul is praying that you get knowledge.

The Spirit's already in you. The Spirit's already working. The Spirit's already, like, full, right, in your life, and you're walking with him. What needs to happen, though, is you need wisdom. And so this could be more like the heart of wisdom. This could be more like the essence of wisdom directing your life, right?

And so you could tell where somebody's thinking, like, okay, this is more so on the lines of the contents of the prayer. It's probably more so the spirit of wisdom on a general level, right? That you'll be walking in wisdom. Now is there a major difference between the two?

In terms of impact for us, I think the thrust is the same, right? The thrust is the same. And so you don't have to think, like, oh, gosh, like, are we going to interpret something wrong? In the reading of the passage, the thrust of this section, verses 15 through 23, is a section on deep prayer, that our theology matters, our concept and view of God matters, our beliefs is going to what's going to drive later chapters of our application.

And so we have to be filled with the knowledge of the Lord, okay? Great question. Okay. If you guys have other questions, too, you guys can ask that kind of, okay, what is the nature of the inheritance? Ooh, okay. Yeah. Come up, several of you asked the same thing.

Okay, what is the nature of an inheritance? I'll do this one and let you guys discuss, okay? So where is that one? In verse 18, when he says, what is the hope of calling and what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance? If there was a comma right at what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance, I think it wouldn't have been confusing, but then it says in the saints, okay?

What I mean is, when you guys do Bible interpretation, sometimes what's good is to lay down your options. What I mean by that is, A, option A to read that is, okay, you should know the riches, this is a wealth, and this wealth is glorious, and this wealth is the inheritance God is going to give you.

That's plain reading, right? God is going to give you his own possession as a father would give his son. However, the passage says in the saints, and so someone might read the other option would be the riches of the glory of his inheritance, which is God is getting his possession of the saints, meaning the bucket of riches that is being gained is us, right?

There are passages in scripture in a larger, broader context that actually say, just like Jesus says in the gospels, those that my father has given to me, apostle Paul is preparing a bride that will be presented to the Lord. God is going to present us as a church, holy and blameless to Christ at the end of days.

Is it consistent with the scriptures? Yes, okay? Now, the way that I'm looking at this, though, is one part. Should a Christian be super, super amazed and enriched that God would see you as his own possession, right? You should. That is like a truth that to me is mind baffling.

I don't know how to describe it. Part of it seems almost ridiculous. There are certain truths in the gospels, just like ridiculous, right? It's like Ephesians 2 says, "You're children of wrath, lustful, wicked, walking with all kind," like disobedience, right? You're just like the most wicked thing in the world.

And then for God to say, "I want you to be my treasured possession," right? It's just crazy, okay? Could that be the case? I would say, again, it is consistent with the broader context of scripture, so okay. But what makes more sense to me here is because I am seeing in context, it is pinched between the hope of his calling, so he's calling us, the riches of his glory, and then so some of the prepositions, although it says, "in the saints," and in the Greek it is, "in the saints," and then what's more, the surpassing exercise of his power towards the believer, it kind of still runs the line, I guess, benefits and motivations for the Christian, right?

Blessings for the Christian, so to speak. And so I would like to translate it, or at least just take it as, this is the riches of his glory that he has for the saints, right? Now is that something I can put my foot down and say, "That's the right one"?

I just kind of explained to you, you can kind of see both angles, but in context, in the immediate paragraph, it makes more sense that this is the inheritance that we receive, okay?