Let's turn in our Bibles to the
book of Ephesians chapter 6. These past several weeks I've
been preaching through this wonderful, wonderful book of Ephesians. And we're going to conclude that
this morning in this message entitled, Praying and Persevering. It begins at verse 18 where the
Apostle Paul, he had been talking about warfare of grace, putting
on the Christian armor, the armor of God, in order to withstand
the wiles, the deceptions, the subtleties of Satan in the world,
which stands in opposition to the truth of God's grace in Christ
Jesus. Our Gospel is such a wonderful
message. It's an amazing message. We sing
amazing grace and that's what our gospel is all about. Salvation
for sinners like us by the sovereign mercy and grace of God in and
by the Lord Jesus Christ. And once God the Holy Spirit
in His sovereign power brings us to see the greatness of this
message, it's sort of hard for us to understand how anyone would
reject it. But we know the truth. We know
that by nature, if God the Holy Spirit hadn't taught us, convinced
us, we would reject it. That's the sense of it. And so
we're going through this world with a message that people by
nature don't want. And it's a battle. And we're
to equip ourselves in this battle, and that's what we dealt with
in the armor that Paul was inspired by the Holy Spirit to list here.
And so when Paul finishes that, he concludes it with this. Look
at verse 18. He says, praying always with
all prayer and supplication in the spirit and watching thereunto
with all perseverance and supplication for all saints. So he mentions
these two words about praying and persevering And that's what
I want to talk a little bit about this morning. But these are essential
elements of the warfare that we have with the world, with
the flesh, with the devil, that we are to engage ourselves as
believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, justified sinners, sanctified,
indwelt by the Spirit. We're to engage ourselves in
these two things, praying and persevering, praying and persevering. And so many people have so many
misconceptions about both, but let's read these first three
verses again. Look at verse 18, I'll reread
it. Praying always with all prayer. and supplication, that means
that we're praying for our desires, and not that we're always gonna
get our desires, but we'll talk about that in just a minute.
In the spirit, as we're led by the spirit, moved by the spirit,
and that means we know the right attitude, the right motivation
of these things, watching thereunto with all perseverance, never
letting up, and supplication for all saints, praying for one
another. We pray for ourselves, we pray
for one another. And verse 19, now here's what
Paul's aiming at here. And for me, that utterance may
be given unto me, that I may open my mouth boldly to make
known the mystery of the gospel. Paul's saying, I wanna preach
the gospel. The gospel is the power of God
unto salvation to everyone that believeth, to the Jew first,
the Greek also, for therein is the righteousness of God revealed
from faith to faith, as it is written, the just shall live
by faith. That's what Paul said. He said, pray for me that I have
opportunities, open doors to preach this gospel. And that's
what he wanted to do. And he says in verse 20, for
which I am an ambassador in bonds, Paul was in chains that therein
I may speak boldly as I ought to speak. Paul in the book of
Philippians, he makes it clear that the fact that he's in chains
or that he's been arrested or confined to his house has not
hindered the preaching of the gospel because God is going to
get his gospel out. Let me tell you something. Christ
has sheep in this world, all over this world. He died for
those sheep. They're going to be saved and
brought to glory. And in the meantime, He's going
to get the gospel to them. He's going to do it. And it'll
be His way. And it might be a way that just
totally blows our minds. But He's going to get the gospel
to them. He said, My sheep will hear My voice. And His voice
is in the preaching of the gospel. But what Paul is saying here,
as he closes out this beautiful letter, is that we, as a people
of God, are to put on the whole armor of God, engage ourselves
in this battle, and engage ourselves in this way, in praying and persevering. Prayer. What about prayer? We teach our children to pray,
don't we? Now I lay me down to sleep. I've learned that, I can't
remember when I first learned. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take. The Lord God Almighty, there's
no doubt about this. Two things, God is absolutely
sovereign and you cannot change his mind. Did you hear that? Maybe that
blows our mind. God is absolutely sovereign and
you cannot change his mind. And God commands us to pray to
him. Now most people today, not just
today, but always, will say, well, if I can't change his mind,
why pray? Well, prayer is not engaged in
to change God's mind. Prayer has more to do about changing
us. Nothing about changing God. But
God commands us to pray to Him. And He says pray persistently. Pray without ceasing. One scripture
verse tells us. He tells us to pray with thanksgiving.
Most of the time we pray when we're in trouble or we want something. But a lot of times, prayer is
just to be engaged in thanksgiving. Thank you, Lord, for saving my
soul. Thank you, Lord, for making me
whole. Thank you, Lord, for giving to me thy great salvation so
full and free. There's a song that we used to
sing as children, count your blessings. And we do have a lot
of blessings. Think about that. We have a lot
to be thankful for. We're to pray to God in faith.
And I'll tell you about that in just a moment. We're to pray
within the will of God. You know, the basis of all prayer
is our standing before God in the Lord Jesus Christ. And the
codicil to all prayer is God's will be done. Let my will be submissive to
God's will. We're to pray for the glory of
God. We're to pray from the heart. What's the essential elements
of prayer? Turn to Hebrews chapter 4 that I read at the opening
of this service. What are the essential elements
of prayer? What is it all about? It's not
about how many people we can get to pray. You know, a lot
of people today in religion, they have prayer chains. We have
national days of prayer. And I think sometimes people
think, well, if we can gang up on God, we can get what we want. But that's not the case. In the
Bible, we see so many historical events where many people prayed. I think about the prophet Elijah. Or was it Elisha? It's Elisha,
I think, and the prophets of Baal. Elisha was one man. The prophets of Baal were like
almost 500 people. And they prayed and they danced
around to their God. They got nothing. But the prayer
of one man, Elisha, praying to God according to his will, accomplished
everything that God had preordained to be accomplished. So it's not ganging up on God.
You say, well, I want people to pray for me. I want the people
of God to pray for me. The people who don't know God,
they're praying to an idol. Does that shock you? If you don't
know the God you're praying to, who are you praying to? Most
people pray into a God like themselves. It's not how many pray. The power of prayer is not in
the prayer. The power of prayer is into the
God to whom we pray. And it's not who sees us pray. In fact, when Christ instructed
His disciples to pray in the Sermon on the Mount, He said,
don't go out here and make a display of your prayer. He actually said,
don't pray in public. Does that shock you? He said,
go into your closet and pray unto God. It's between you and
God. I've heard some people say, well,
if I pray in public, that's my witness. Well, that's a poor
witness. You know what our witness to the public is? Doing this
right here. Me preaching, you listening,
and then going out and spreading the gospel. That's our witness. It's not who sees us engage in
any ritual. The Pharisees, they loved to
pray on the street corners so that men could see them. But
that's not the way we're to do this. First of all, the key is faith
in Christ. Look at verse 14 of Hebrews 4.
He says, seeing then that we have a great high priest, Now
right there is the ground of all true prayer. Do you have
a great high priest? Now if you say you do, then I
would ask you, who is your great high priest? Is it some man who
holds a high position in the religious organization? Oh, that's
not a great high priest, that's a poor high priest. Seeing then
that we have a great high priest that is passed into the heavens,
that's gone to heaven, passed through from earth to the heavens. Have you got a high priest who's
done that? He says, Jesus the Son of God, there's the great
high priest. Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory,
the one who died on the cross for the sins of his people, drank
damnation dry, satisfied law and justice, established an everlasting
righteousness upon which God justifies the ungodly, died and
was buried, raised from the dead, and passed into the heavens in
his ascension. Because if He is not your Great
High Priest, all your prayers fall flat. I don't care who you
are or how good you've been in your eyes. The power of prayer
is not in who you are or who I am. The power of prayer is
not in how good I try to be. The power of prayer is in my
Great High Priest, Jesus Christ the Righteous. who is passed
through into the heavens. He's seated at the right hand
of God, ever living right now to make intercession for his
people. He presents me, he presents my prayers, he presents my works
unto the Father as washed in his blood. What can wash away
my sin? Even the sins of my prayer. You
say, you mean to tell me that there's sins in your prayer?
Have you ever prayed a prayer that in its essence is kind of
selfish? You ever done that? Have you
ever been praying and your mind wandered? Let me tell you something. Nothing
we do, including our prayers, are perfect enough to make us
righteous or qualified to go before God. He says, verse 15,
well he says in verse 14, seeing them we have a great high priest
that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us
hold fast our profession, that's perseverance there. For we have
not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of
our infirmities. Now that's talking about the
humanity of Christ. He was a sinless man. But he
still had the infirmities of the flesh. He got hungry. He
got tired. He wept. But was in all points
tempted as we are, yet without sin. That's the kind of high
priest we need. One who is both God and man and
one person, but who is without sin. And based upon the hymn,
His glorious person and His finished work, verse 16. Now here's the
prayer. Let us therefore come boldly,
confidently unto the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy
and find grace to help in time of need. We pray to the Father
through the Son. Turn over to Hebrews chapter
10 that Brother Mark read a while ago. And here's what I want you to
know. This is talking about prayer, but it's also talking about all
our dealings with God as sinners saved by grace. We have no goodness
or righteousness of our own by which to qualify us to come before
God in His holy place. That's why we need Christ. That's why we need grace. Look
at verse 19. Having therefore, brethren, boldness
to enter the holiest. Freedom, liberty, confidence
to enter the holiest. On what ground? On what basis? Well, I've tried to be the best
I can be today. Is that a proper ground or basis
to enter the holiest? No. On what ground? Look at it. By the blood of Jesus. There's the only ground. Again,
what can wash away my sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
By a new and living way. Every other way is a dead way.
Which he, Christ, hath consecrated, made new, forest through the
veil, that is to say his flesh. and having a high priest over
the house of God, that's Christ. Let us draw near with a true
heart in full assurance of faith. Now what is the full assurance
of faith? It's the full assurance that I have that Christ is my
righteousness, that Christ is my hope, that Christ is my Redeemer,
that He did all that was necessary, like it says up in verse 14,
by one offering He hath perfected forever them that are sanctified.
having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience. An evil conscience
is a guilty conscience. It's a legal conscience. Somebody
gets to feeling guilty. And so what do they do? They
concoct a way of removing that guilt in their own minds by their
works. And that conscience is soothed
over for a little while. That's an evil conscience. Well,
what is this sprinkling from an evil conscience? It's the
application of the truth and the knowledge that the blood
of Christ has cleansed me from all sins. That soothes my conscience. And our bodies washed with pure
water, which is the same thing, washed in the blood of Christ.
Faith in Christ is the key to prayer, godly prayer. And then here's another thing
about prayer. You know what prayer is? Prayer is worship. When we
pray to God, we're worshiping God in spirit and in truth. We're
praying, as the Lord said, hallowed be thy name. High is God's name. I want to honor God. It's not
just getting on our knees trying to get what we want. Now again,
there's nothing wrong with making our petitions, our desires known
to God. He already knows them, the Bible
says. He already knows what you want and what you have need of
before you even think about it. God does. Nothing wrong, as long
as our desires are not evil. But we worship in prayer, we
pray to the glory of God. Whatever God gives me or holds
back from me, I want God to be glorified. And then thirdly,
we pray in Thanksgiving, as I said before. We've got a lot to be... Listen, if you're a sinner saved
by grace, you have a lot to be thankful for. But just think about the things
that God has even given us in this life. And I always tell
you, you know my old Saying, take your next breath, that's
a gift from God. What if He withheld it? Where
would you be? And then another thing about
prayer is submission. Submission to God. And it comes
in this form. Here's what Christ taught His
disciples when He taught them to pray. He said, Thy will be
done. Thy kingdom come, as in earth
as it is in heaven. Somebody said, well, I want to
know God's will. Well, there's God's revealed
will. I dealt with that the other week. What He tells us to do. But then there's God's secret
will, where He doesn't tell us. We only know it after the fact.
You can get on your knees tonight and pray for a million dollars.
And if you get the million dollars tomorrow, Or tonight, you'll
know it's God's will. If you don't, it's not His will. Period. You may say, well, why
God? Why didn't you give me what I
want? I don't know. He may not tell you. You don't
know. Maybe you can't handle it. I
don't know. We pray, thy will be done. That's
what prayer is all about. Prayer is an act of worship in
faith, thanking God and submitting to His will. And that's what
Paul says here, praying always, verse 18, with all prayer and
supplication, not on our own goodness, not on our own merit,
not trying to earn our way. I had a man who was dying, I've
told you about this, who wanted to talk to me, he's
dead now, And I thought he wanted to talk
to me about the gospel, but he didn't. He wanted to tell me
things. What he wanted to tell me, he
wanted to tell me how much he had prayed for everyone. How
he had lost sleep praying for people. And that may sound good to the
natural ear. But my friend, my hope is not
built on how much I prayed for you or myself or anybody else.
That's a poor hope. My hope is built on nothing less
than Jesus' blood and righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest
frame, not even my best prayers, but I wholly lean on Jesus' name,
on Christ the solid rock I stand. All other ground is sinking sand. Do you believe that? I do. I do. Well, Paul goes on. He says, "...watching thereunto
with all perseverance and supplication of all saints." Perseverance. What is perseverance? It's continuing,
enduring in the faith under glory. What is the power that causes
us to persevere? if we do persevere. The Scripture
says that. Well, I'll tell you what the
power is. It's God's grace, it's God's power, it's His righteousness,
His goodness, and not our own. We're weak human beings, even
sinners saved by grace, we are weak human beings. And we're
sinful human beings. And if left to our own power,
left to our own goodness, left to our own determination, the
Bible tells us we will not persevere. We persevere upon the power of
God who preserves us under glory. You know why we continue in the
faith? It's because God in His grace through Christ will not
let us quit. That's right. Because if He removed
His hand of power and grace from us, we'd fall a thousand times
a day. God's true children will without
fail, persevere. Let me give you these reasons.
Number one, because God chose us unto salvation in Christ and
conditioned all of our salvation, including our final end, our
final glory, upon the power and the goodness and the righteousness
of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's right. Me being saved,
me staying saved, And me going to glory forever was all conditioned
on Christ and none of it on me. That's what it is. Grace saves
me. Grace keeps me. Grace will bring me to glory. And then secondly, it's because
Christ is our surety. What does that mean? That means
He took my sin debt. And it was charged, accounted,
imputed to Him before the foundation of the world. And I cannot be
charged with my sins. The Bible says in Romans 8.33
and 34, Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?
It's God that justifies. Who can condemn us? It's Christ
that died. And that brings me to the third
one. Christ redeemed us by His blood. And His righteousness,
the merit of His obedience unto death, has been imputed to us.
And His righteousness given to us, charged to us, is perfect. It cannot be taken away. There's
no flaw in it. You see, if it was based upon
my works, my goodness, or my righteousness, you could poke
a lot of holes in that one. There could be a lot of flaws
found there, but not in Him. In Christ, because of His death
for our sins, we have a perfect righteousness in which there
can be no flaw. It's a forever righteousness,
redeemed by the blood of our Savior. And if He redeemed us,
He won't let us go. And then fourthly, Christ has
sent forth the Spirit of God to give us life and to indwell
us. 1 John 3, 9 says that those who
are born of the Spirit cannot sin in the sense they cannot
apostatize, they cannot fall away, they cannot totally leave
Christ. We're still sinners. sinners
saved by grace, kept by the power of God, and the Holy Spirit indwells
us. And then fifthly, we persevere
because Christ continually intercedes on our behalf before the throne
of His Father. We have, we have, an advocate
with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. Now based upon
that, God commands us to make a determination in our minds
and in our hearts that we will continue in this faith. We will
not fall away. We will not leave Christ. And
listen to this. Here's Philippians 1 and verse
6. Let me just read these verses to you. He says, Being confident
of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you,
And who began that good work? God did. We'll perform it until
the end, until the day of Jesus Christ. What God started, God
will complete. And what did He start? Our salvation. Ephesians 2 and verse 10 says,
we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works,
not because of good works, but unto good works, they're the
fruit. which God hath before ordained, that we should walk
in them." If God began this work, He'll
complete it. He'll finish it. He'll bring
it to its culmination. You will be glorified. Now, if
you began it, like most preachers say today, it won't finish. It won't be completed. It'll
fail. Hebrews 7.25, listen to this. Wherefore he is able also to
save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing
he ever liveth to make intercession for us. Well, where does our
perseverance come in? Let me read you another verse.
Philippians 2 and verse 12. This is the command of God. Wherefore,
my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence
only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation
with fear and trembling." Work out your own salvation with fear.
Is he telling us to work for our salvation? No. He's saying
work out, literally out of. your own salvation, but look
at verse 13 that follows that. For it is God which worketh in
you both to will and to do of his good pleasure. Perseverance. And that's what Paul's talking
about here at the end of Ephesians. And then he concludes it, he
says in verse 20, look at this. He says, for which I am an ambassador
in bonds, that therein I may speak boldly as I ought to speak.
I want to preach the gospel. And then he gives his concluding
remarks in the last few verses of this passage. The motivation
for all obedience that is acceptable with God through the blood of
Christ is his grace, Our gratitude and our love for Him. It's not
rewards as if we can earn things from God. It's not fear of hell
as if we can remove His wrath. Christ did all of that. And as we pray and as we persevere,
what are we doing? We're looking to Jesus, the author
and finisher of our faith. He is our hope. And there's none
other. There's no other. And we thank
God for it. Because that's the assurance
of our salvation. All right, let's turn in our
hymnals to hymn number 282. 282, Hiding in Thee. Persevering in the faith. Prayer
and persevering in the faith involves hiding in Christ. Let's stand and sing this.