Again reading in verse 30 Now
I beseech you, brethren, for the Lord Jesus Christ's sake
and for the love of the Spirit. that you strive together with
me in your prayers to God for me, that I may be delivered from
them that do not believe in Judea, that my service which I have
for Jerusalem may be accepted of the saints, that I may come
unto you with joy by the will of God and may with you be refreshed. A venue, a place you go into
is usually valued by how much it costs to go in there. If it costs a lot, it's something
that's valuable to you. And our entrance into the holiest
of holies, into God's presence, is the most valuable thing there
is for a believer because of what it costs to give us that
entrance. Christ is the new and living
way. He's the new and living way,
as opposed to that old way of entering through the veil. We
don't enter an old temple, an earthly temple. We're entering
into God's presence, where God is in His holy place. And to enter in, we have to have
acceptance. And we have that acceptance through
the blood of Christ. The way we have that new and
living way is through Christ being made flesh and laying down
His life for His people. We've been completely washed
by His blood. We've been completely washed
in regeneration. So that now we're holy and perfect
and righteous in and by Christ or else God wouldn't let you
come to His throne of grace in prayer. Nobody can come to Him
in prayer unless you come through faith in Christ, in Christ's
name, because you have to be holy to be accepted of God. And
we have that acceptance, brethren. We can come with boldness. We can come with liberty. We
can come with welcome, because Christ has made that new and
living way for us. Prayer is a valuable, valuable
thing. We can pray to God, and God will
receive us. And that's amazing. And it's
a great privilege to know that your brethren pray for you. That's comforting to know. I
don't like this new thing in today where people are just quick
to say, pray for me or I'm praying for you. You know, it's just
become slang. It's just become commonplace.
You know, that's something believers as brethren say to each other. It's not just anybody in the
world. Pray for me. You don't know God. You're not
accepted of God. God won't have anything to do
with you. You hate God. You hate the true and living
God. You want me to pray to the true and living God for you?
You know what I'm saying? You've got to be accepted. You've
got to be robed in Christ. You've got to come in Christ
to be accepted. This is not just something we
flippantly throw around. Prayer is a serious thing. Prayer
is in Scripture, it's worship. It's worship. When you read in
acts of them praying, they were worshiping. It was much like what we do when
we come together to worship. They were doing everything that
we do here. They were reading scriptures.
They were praying for one another. They were singing hymns. They
were hearing the gospel declared. And scripture calls it gathering
together in prayer because they were worshiping God. That's what
prayer is. Paul knew he was going to face
many dangers at Jerusalem. He knew he was going to face
dangers in his travels to Rome. And so he beseeches them as brethren. That's a strong word, I beseech
you. I beg of you to pray for me. And he does so as brethren. Brethren
chosen by the same Father. Brethren, redeemed by the same
blood of Christ. Brethren, born of the same Holy
Spirit. United in an unbreakable bond.
Brethren, I beseech you, brethren. By the Spirit of God, believers
strive together in prayer. It's by the Holy Spirit we strive
together in prayer for the glory of Christ and for the good of
His church. That's our prayer, that's our
motive, and that's our end to our prayer, for the good of His
church, for the good of His, for His glory. I've titled this,
Striving Together, and I want to show you three things. I want
to show you our motive, I want to show you the manner in which
we pray, and I want to show you the essence of all our requests
that we make to God. First of all, a believer's chief
motive in all true prayer is for Jesus Christ's sake and for
the love of the Holy Spirit. That's our motive, for Christ's
sake and the love of the Holy Spirit. Verse 30, now I beseech
you, brethren, for the Lord Jesus Christ's sake and for the love
of the Spirit, that you pray for me. That's our motive right
here. The preeminent motive in prayer is for the Lord Jesus
Christ's sake. This ought to be on our heart
when we come, approach God in prayer, is for Christ's sake.
We not only come in his name, and we must come in his name,
but we come for his sake. We're praying for his sake. Paul
was Christ's servant. It was Christ's gospel he was
preaching. It was Christ's gospel he was
preaching. He was preaching Christ in what he preached. And so Paul
is going forth and he wants Christ to be glorified in that message
he preached. And he wants him to receive all
the glory for sending the gospel. He wants him to receive all the
glory for making him preach as he ought to preach with boldness.
He wants Christ to receive the glory for making the word effectual
in the heart of his people. He wants Christ to receive all
the glory as being the end of the law for righteousness to
everyone that believes. He wants to be able to declare
that Christ is God in human flesh who fulfilled everything that
he requires of his people. So that now his people believe
him and come to God in him. We used to try to come to God
in our works and in the law and in our goodness and in our merit
and in our worth, our will. He takes you from that and shows
you, you can't come to God that way. And he shows you, you come
to God trusting him. He is everything God requires
of a sinner, Christ is. God's not interested in what
you're doing to try to please Him because you can't please
Him. And Paul wants this to be declared. He wants Christ's glory. He wants Him to have all the
glory in his preaching. So he's asking them to pray for
him for Christ's sake. Whenever a lost sinner is called
out, it's Christ who gets the glory for that. He's the head
of his church. He feels all in all. He's the
prophet. He does the preaching through
his preacher. He's the high priest. He's the
one that makes intercession for his people with God. And he's
the king. He's the one that rules everything
in this world to bring the gospel to his people and to call his
people out. And Paul wants Christ to receive the glory for that.
That's why he's saying, pray for me. So often when we pray,
we're just thinking about things we want. God's not just there
to give you what you want. He's not just a golden ticket
that you can call on every now and then when you need a little
help. The purpose of prayer is to pray that God would glorify
His name. And Christ is His name. Christ
is Him. And He gets the glory. He's the
one that sends the Holy Spirit. Christ did. He bought the rights
to this by His blood. He sends the Holy Spirit. He's
the one who preaches through His preacher, makes it effectual
in your heart, so that the preacher you're really hearing when you
hear the gospel is Christ our prophet. And when the Spirit turns you, when
He gives you a change of mind, which is repentance, that repentance
came from Christ. He grants it to those He redeemed. So that He gets the glory for
that. Faith in Christ. Believe in Christ. Trust in Christ.
That's because Christ reveals Himself in you and you don't
have a choice. You don't want a choice. You're willing to believe
on Him because you see Him now and you really understand He's
all. And He gets the glory for all
that. He's our chief motive in prayer
because we owe everything to Christ. We owe everything to
Him. God the Father loves His people
with an everlasting love. You know why? Because He loves
us in Christ. Because Christ is the same yesterday,
today and forever. He never changes. Therefore God's
everlasting love toward His people never changes. God doesn't love
you yesterday, but today you messed up so God quits loving
you. God doesn't love you and then one day you come to the
end of your life and you never believe Christ so He throws you
into hell and starts hating you. No! Those God loved from eternity,
He created time to save them through the blood of Christ,
to call them to faith in Christ, so that when it's all said and
done, God never stopped loving them. He loves them in Christ. A love... Listen to this. People say, God loves you. Don't
ever tell that to somebody. Because you don't know. God might
not love them. God doesn't love everybody. He does not love everybody. What use would a love be that
doesn't provide and doesn't save His people? To say God loves,
but then to say that those He loves perish in hell anyway?
What good is God's love? God's love saves. those he loves
everlastingly. He told Jacob, I have loved you
with an everlasting love, therefore in loving kindness have I drawn
you. That's what love does. We owe it to Christ because it's
in Christ that that love never changes. That's why we pray for
his sake. We owe everything to him. We
have a righteousness Perfect righteousness. Before God we
fulfill the whole law and can never break that law again. And
that was accomplished by Christ for us and He is in essence that
righteousness for us. And so we pray for Christ's sake
because we want Him to be glorified. He is our righteousness. We talk about being made holy. Christ is our holiness outside
of us because He perfected forever them that are sanctified. He
is the sanctifier and the sanctification. And when Christ enters in you,
the holiness you have, that new man that's created in true holiness
as opposed to that sham holiness that we call holiness, That new
holiness is Christ our sanctifier and our sanctification being
formed in you. He's the holiness. He's that
holiness without which no man shall see the Lord. Most people
preach that as being something you do. No, that holiness you
have to have without which you cannot see the Lord is the same
holiness the thief on the cross had when he was saved that instant
with his hands nailed to the cross and he didn't have time
to do anything. That's the holiness Hebrews 12
speaks about, without which no man shall see the Lord. That
includes that thief on the cross. The way he was accepted of God
and entered into God's presence with a perfect holiness was Christ. You and I are not going to get
the glory in anything. And really it's vain glory when
we pray just for our sake. Isn't it? Think about it. What do you really want? I just
want spiritual life. I just want to be accepted of
God. I just want to be with him. Then pray for Christ's sake because
he's the one that's going to do it. I don't know what he's going
to do tomorrow, but he's the one that's going to do it. That's
fine with me. He's our motive in all our prayer. We were dead, we were ignorant,
we couldn't know God, we didn't know a thing about God, and Christ
is our wisdom. We wouldn't even know to pray
to God if we didn't have Christ our wisdom. You see what I'm
saying? He's our redemption. He's the constraint of our heart.
He's our joy and our comfort. He's our access to the throne
of grace. He's the only reason God will
hear you when you cry. Wouldn't it be a slap in his
face to come to God praying and only be accepted because of Christ
but not pray for his sake? Think about how just obnoxious
that would be. So our prayer is not only in
Christ's name, but preeminently it's for Christ's sake, for his
sake. And then look, united with that,
and I'm going to spend a little more time on these two things
because they're one, but united with this is the motive of love. He says, and for the love of
the Spirit. Now there's two things here that
I think need to be said about this love of the Spirit. Number
one, It means for the sake of the Spirit of God who is love
and who loves us. We don't speak enough about this
probably, but God the Father is love. God is love, John said. God the Father is love, God the
Son is love, and God the Holy Spirit is love. He manifests
His love to us in that He gave us the Holy Scriptures. Holy
men of old spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. We wouldn't
have the Word of God if it wasn't for the love of the Holy Spirit.
In love, the Spirit regenerated us, made us worship in spirit
and in truth. We couldn't know God. Now we
receive not the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is
of God, that we might know the things that are freely given
to us of God. The Spirit of God did that in
love to His people. They're His elect. The Spirit
of God is not a thing, it's not an it, It's not just some entity. The Spirit of God is a person.
And He chose a people. He has to elect people. And He
in love regenerated us and made us to know Him. Made us to know
Christ. It's in love that the Spirit
convinced us of sin because we believe not on Christ. He convinced
us of righteousness because Christ goes to the Father and we see
Him no more. That tells us Christ is the righteousness God will
receive and He convinces you of that. He convinces you of
judgment because the prince of this world is cast out. He convinces
you that our judgment was settled on Calvary's cross. There's no
more work for you to do to be accepted of God because He's
condemned the accuser. The accuser of the brethren is
the devil, but he's got nothing else to accuse us with because
Christ settled our judgment at Calvary. That's the love of the
Spirit to convince you of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment.
That's how you're converted. It's the love of the Spirit of
God who gives the earnest in our heart, who gives the pledge
that we are really going to be with God in glory. It's how come
you believe God. It's how come you continue in
hope. It's how come you have this Knowing this unction, this
pledge, this understanding that you're going to be with God.
And you can't stop believing Him. Why? Because He sealed you. He sealed you. Scripture says,
Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby you're sealed unto
the day of redemption. It's in love that we have the
spirit of adoption. He's the spirit of adoption.
that made you in the very first moment that you ever called upon
God in truth, He's the one that made you do it. You have received
the spirit of adoption whereby we cry, Abba, Father. He made you do that. True prayer
is given by the spirit of God from the first hour He gives
us life to cry to Abba, Father, to the last. He keeps you calling
on God. Now, secondly, what this means
is for the love of the Spirit means for that love of God he
shed abroad in our heart, whereby he made us love the Lord and
he loved one another. We're won by the same Holy Spirit
of God. We're believers in Christ bound
together in an unbreakable bond by the Holy Spirit. We're the
family of God. We're of the household of faith.
We're one with God the Father, one with God the Son, one with
God the Holy Spirit, one with one another. Because He's made
us one body. Christ and His people are one.
Paul said, endeavor to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond
of peace. Endeavor to keep that unity.
He's going to make His people keep that unity, but He's going
to make you endeavor to keep it too. Why? Because there's one body, one
spirit, one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism,
one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all
and in you all. That's so of His people. And
by the Spirit dwelling in us, by that love of God shed abroad
in your heart, that's why scripture says charity never faileth. Emotion, earthly affection, that
we sometimes call love and, oh, it's so deep, I love you and
I'll love you forever. And then one day it stops. That's
not the love we're talking about. The love that never fails is
the love of the Spirit in the heart that He sheds abroad, the
love of God. He makes it so that it never
fails. Even with somebody like Paul
and Barnabas who had fallen out with one another over something
carnal. Later you read in the Scriptures and Paul speaks about
Barnabas. And the Spirit made them make
amends at some point. Charity's not going to fail.
Faith's going to end because it's for this life. Hope's going
to end because it's for this life. Charity is going to last
throughout eternity. It never will fail. If you love,
if you love your brethren and you love the Lord truly by the
Spirit of God, You'll never stop loving Christ and you'll never
stop loving your brethren. That's what it means. Charity
never faileth. Why do you think that in unsuspected times, and
this happens to me sometimes when I'm driving down the road,
all of a sudden you'll have a heart to pray for your brethren? What
makes you do that? The Spirit constrains us with
true love for one another. makes us think on one another.
Paul is saying here, what he is saying to them is this, he
is saying if there be any consolation in Christ, any comfort of love,
any fellowship of the Spirit, any bowels and mercies being
constrained within, if the Spirit is in you, if Christ is in you,
then for Christ's sake and for the love of the Spirit, pray
for one another. Now secondly, the manner that
we pray is we strive together in prayer. Look here, verse 30.
Now I beseech you, brethren, that you strive together with
me in your prayers to God for me. That word strive together
means agonize. Agonize as companions. Agonize
together with me in your prayers. It's the strive there is the
same word that was used over in Luke 22. Listen to this. Being
in an agony. Same word. Christ prayed more
earnestly. And He sweat, as it were, great
drops of blood falling down to the ground. And when He rose
up from prayer, He came to His disciples, and He found them
sleeping for sorrow. In the garden, our Lord agonized
in prayer, with strong crying and tears. He agonized in prayer. That's the same word as our text.
You know, the first Adam was made sin in a garden, and the
last Adam began to face that in a garden. And it was agonizing
to him. Because of the shame of sin.
Because of the curse he was going to bear. Because of the temptations
of the devil. It was agonizing to him. He knew
no sin, but he was touched with all the feeling of our infirmities.
All the feelings of our sin. When he said to them, the spirit
is willing, but the flesh is weak. He experienced that. And it was a burden. It was heavy on him. It made
him agonize. It made him sweat, as it were,
great drops of blood. He really was sweating blood. That's how agonizing this was.
But while he was agonizing earnestly in prayer, his apostles slept. They couldn't pray with him. They couldn't watch and pray
one hour with him. They slept. Why? Because he must tread the winepress
alone. There could be nobody to help
him. He couldn't have the help of brethren. He had to do it
all by himself. But you know what? He did it.
He accomplished redemption. He successfully paid the price
owed by his people and saved us from our sins. And for that
reason, he won't ever let you be alone. He's going to put it in the heart
of your brethren when you're suffering, when you're under
a heavy load, when you're agonizing. He's going to put it in the heart
of your brethren to agonize with you. So that they together agonize
with you and the Spirit itself helps our infirmities agonizing
with us. Strive together, agonize together,
the Spirit of God. will make you consider your brother
and the burden that they're under. If you don't have the Spirit,
you'll never think of this. If you've never thought of this,
I'd be frightened. But the Spirit of God is gonna
make you agonize for those you love. He's gonna make you put
yourself in their shoes and make you think about the load that
they're under, the trouble they're under, the burden they're bearing. And he's going to bring you to
really, truly agonize with them in prayer. He is. God has tempered the body together,
having given more abundant honor to that part which lacked, that
there should be no schism in the body, but that the members
should have the same care for one another. Whether one member
suffer, all the members are going to suffer with it. Take your
physical body for instance. If you hit your finger with a
hammer, your whole body is going to suffer. Because a member of
your body is suffering. I woke up with something wrong
with my eye and it's killing me. And it's affecting my whole
body. It's affecting the rest of the members in my body. In the church of God, the spirit
of God is in his people. And when one member suffers,
he's going to make the other member suffer. Why? So the body
cares for one another. You know, when you have an injured
part of your body, every other part of your body, there's things
that takes place in the blood and to heal that one member.
He created the body, the physical body, to picture his body, the
church, and what he does in his church. And he's going to make
us agonize together. And I noticed this too, Paul
was not present. He wasn't present when he wrote
this. They weren't going to have a prayer meeting. Now I'm not
knocking prayer meetings, that's fine. We pray when we come together. But the point I'm making is,
we're confined to time and we think that we have to be together,
time and place, and we think we have to be together. When
the Spirit of God puts it in your heart to pray, and your
heart to pray, and your heart to pray, and your heart to pray,
it don't matter if you're together or not. It's not your coming
together that's going to make it effectual. It's Him that makes
it effectual. And it comes up to Him just like
you was all right there shoulder to shoulder with each other. But He makes you strive together. You're striving together even
though you're not physically together. Because this is how
God operates. Everybody likes to You hear preachers
bragging on Jacob and about how Jacob was so strong and he wrestled
with the Lord until the Lord blessed him. That's not what
happened. That's not what happened. If
that's our spirit in prayer, if we're strong enough and we
labor intensely enough, we're going to get God to do what we
want him to do. Do you think how arrogant and how opposite
that is to the truth? What happened? When it says,
he saw that he prevailed not, Christ came there and was making
Jacob pray. And he saw that Jacob wasn't
prevailing. It was Christ who saw that Jacob
was not prevailing. Why? Because Jacob was trying
to wrestle in his own strength. He was trying to do something
in his own fleshly strength, and so what did Christ do? He
touched the hollow of his thigh and put him out of joint so that
he couldn't wrestle anymore. Jacob couldn't use his own strength
anymore. What did Jacob do? All he could
do was hold on to the Lord and weep and beg for mercy. In other words, he depended on
Christ to do it, because he couldn't get that blessing unless Christ
did what he was willing to do. And the scripture says, he had
power with the angel and prevailed. You know how? He wept and he
made supplication unto him. He stopped wrestling in his strength
and he just wept and asked God to do what he was willing to
do. That's true prayer. And it takes the Lord putting
us out of joint sometimes. with whatever trial He sent you,
whatever burden He's laid on you, whatever He's brought your
way to bring you to the end of yourself so that you will actually
truly pray to Him and ask Him to do it and quit trying to wrestle
in your own strength. And then lastly, that brings
us to the essence of prayer. The essence of prayer is submission
to God. Listen, Romans 15.31, Here's
what he prayed for, that I may be delivered from them that do
not believe in Judea, and that my service which I have for Jerusalem
may be accepted of the saints, that I may come unto you with
joy by the will of God, and may with you be refreshed. Paul asked
for some specific things. Scriptures tell us, let your
requests be made known unto God. Be specific about it. When I'm
praying for you, I try to call your name, and I try to ask for
the specific things that I know you need. But in each one of these requests,
Paul submitted to God. Did you catch it? He didn't pray
that I can. Can means you have the ability.
He prayed that I may. That means that I might have
permission. That's submission. He prayed if it be the will of
God. He knows he's under the authority of Christ Jesus our
Lord and so he asked, may I do this? If it's your will, Lord,
may I do these things. That's submission. That's the
essence of prayer. From eternity, God already purposed
what He's going to do, when He's going to do it, and how He's
going to do it. It's already been predestinated, it's already
purposed, and it's not going to change. Ever. Well, why then do we pray? God
said, I, the Lord, have spoken and I will do it. but thus saith
the Lord God, I will yet for this be inquired of by the house
of Israel to do it for them. God's going to do it. But you're
going to be thankful and you're going to ask him to do it. So
prayer is not you trying to get God to do what you want him to
do. Prayer is God bringing you to submission to God to depend
on God to do what God's going to do. That's what prayer is.
And if you've ever been in a serious trial where you After you prayed
and prayed and prayed for what you want, and God don't give
you what you want, you're brought to eventually your joint, your
thigh will be out of joint, and you'll quit praying for what
you want. And you'll start praying, Lord, thy will be done. And then you're gonna get what
you want. Because his will's gonna be done. And that's what
prayer is for. Prayer is to draw you closer
to Christ, in whose name we come. Prayer is to turn you from your
will to God's will, whose will shall be done. Prayer is to bring
you to submission to God, to trust God, to do what He purposed
from before the foundation of the world. That's what prayer
is for. And this is the confidence we
have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears
us. And if we know that He hears
us whatsoever we ask, according to His will, we know that we'll
have the petition we desired of Him. When in your heart all
you really want is for God to do what He wills to do, you'll
get what you ask for. Because that's what God's going
to do, what He wills to do. That's what prayer is. Y'all
don't have it as much up here, but down south they have these
they have these prayer teams and Kelsey you know about it. They have these prayer Nights
where they all get together and and it and that's fine if you
really pray and for God's will to be done that's fine to get
together and pray but But they don't do that. They glory in
what they're getting God to do. They have the leaders of it,
they call their prayer champions, and their prayer warriors, and
their prayer leaders, and all this. Like that person's leading
them and getting it done. Prayer's not for us to glory
in something we did. Prayer is for us to be brought
to, it's a sacred thing. Prayer is a holy thing. Prayer
is an intimate thing. Our Lord told us to go in our
closet and pray. Our Lord told us don't pray to
be seen of men. Our Lord warned us more against
Phariseeism, against the leaven of the Pharisees, against self-righteousness,
more than anything else. And it's sad that we'll take
something so valuable as prayer, so intimate as prayer, so needed
as prayer, and turn it into vain glory. Isn't that sad? I pray God, make us really pray. Make us really pray. That would
be something to pray for. Lord, make us really pray. Remember,
the disciples came to the Lord and asked Him, Lord, teach us
to pray. Before we ask anything, maybe we should start there.
Lord, teach me how to pray. I pray God will bless it. Amen. Let's stand together. Our blessed Lord, we thank you
for All Your tender mercies, we thank You for access to Your
throne of grace. We thank You for encouraging
Your people to approach unto You and let our petitions be
made known. We're thankful for the way we
have this access, Lord, through the blood of Your Son. Lord,
teach us to pray. Teach us to pray and to really agonize with
our brethren and their burdens. Make us pray with feeling and
make us pray with heart and with love. Make us pray for Christ's
sake. Don't let us ever take it for
granted. Don't let us turn it into a show. Lord, we ask now that you would
be pleased to work your will in the hearts of your people,
work your will in our lives, and amongst your church. Bring
to pass that which you determined from before the creation of this
world. We ask these things in that precious access, in that
wonderful name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.