Turn with me to Ephesians 3. Verse 14 is where we'll begin
today. Ephesians 3 verse 14. Last week we saw in verse 13, As Paul says, so I ask you not
to lose heart over what I'm suffering for you, which is for your glory.
The main two points that I wanted to make last week that I feel
like I did not convey, that I'll reiterate this afternoon. Point
number one is that because of the gospel, because of the power
of God, because of the mercy of God, Do not lose heart, number
one. And number two, do not lose heart
by remembering the mercy and the power of the gospel. So that's
what I meant to communicate. Now, what I communicated to you,
I'm not sure, so take that that you heard last week and put it
into those two points because that is what I was hoping to
bring in the argument. What God has done, God is the
actor, the one who is doing all the action, the verbs belong
to Him in this letter to the Ephesians. And so what God has
done and is currently actively doing then produces the ability
not to lose heart. And it also gives us the understanding
of what He's done. Therefore, it gives us some substance
to look at which should in turn cause us not to lose heart. Does
that make sense? Okay. So Paul, in the beginning of
chapter 3, says, therefore. See, he has this word, therefore. There's this conjunction. It's
moving in. It's a causality. So what he
said prior to chapter 3, what he said already in this letter,
therefore, for this reason, is what he says. Now he gets then
to verse 14, he says, therefore again, for this reason. So he
says, for this reason. So because of God's great mercy,
because of Christ, because of the gospel, because of the power
of God and the mercy of God in our lives, because of being created
before the world began, being purposed to be called, to be
saved, to be elected, to become the children of God, to be presented
holy and blameless before Him, because of that, because of all
the spiritual blessings that are in Christ, like redemption
and forgiveness and the wisdom and the knowledge and adoption
and regeneration, all these things, because of all that, then Now,
we know that you are also part of the body of Christ. All Israel
are those who are in Christ. Paul says, we who are the Jews
were saved in Christ, and you who are of the Gentiles are saved
in Christ. So then God has created one body, one church, one bride,
which is comprised of all the peoples of the world, all nations,
all tongues, all tribes, all ethnos, all ethnic groups, All
sorts of people with one thing in common, they were all dead
in their sins and trespasses against Him, all due the judgment
that was deserving them, and Christ took all of that, put
it on Himself, and thus satisfied the wrath of God. So because
of that, then, I was made a minister of the gospel.
We're fellow heirs, members of the same body, and because I
was made a minister of the gospel, I'm now a prisoner of whom? Jesus
Christ. You see? I'm a prisoner of Jesus
Christ, and this gift of imprisonment, and of course I'm paraphrasing
a bunch of sermons here, was given to me by the grace of God
and through the working of His power, which is also working
in you to create you to be holy and righteous and blameless before
Him, which has given you the ability to become a believer,
which is by grace you've been saved through faith, and this
is not of your own doing, but is a gift of God so that no one
can boast. And so all of this stuff has
been boiling and boiling and boiling, and the lid has blown
off, and the pressure is released, and Paul has began to pray, but
before he can pray, he's got to get all this out, because
it's important. He's got to get it all out there so that we can
be enriched and encouraged and understand
what it is that God has done on our behalf. We are the beneficiaries
of God's action and we've done nothing to deserve it and we've
done nothing to receive it. God has given us life through
Christ, by through grace, by faith. So what does it mean by
faith? In other words, the only action
is that it's not even an action, the only action is to believe
which has no outward movement. You can't see someone believe.
So that's important to understand. You cannot see belief. You can
see the results of belief, but you cannot see belief. So praying
is not believing, and knowing it's true, thinking is not believing,
though it involves these things, and sometimes it's expressed
in this way. Coming is not believing. We get it wrongly when we think
we receive Jesus. That Jesus is standing there
and the gospel is... He's going... Another one got
away. That's not the desperate God
that really exists. That's not the God of the Bible.
The God of the Bible is here and He says, repent and believe. Be holy or perish. Worship Me
or die. That's the God of the Bible.
That's the Jesus of the Scriptures. Well, that's pretty egotistical.
Yes, it is. But it's not wrong because He
alone is worthy of that type of praise. So if I'm to give
my worship to anything or any person, then I am an idolater
and an adulterer, and I'm forsaking the very first commandment to
have no other gods with the first and second, to love the Lord
God with all you've got, and to have no other gods before
me. So we all violate that by our very existence. So therefore,
Paul is teaching that the plan of the mystery hidden for ages
was that Christ, that God Himself, would become a man. He would
create a woman named Mary, and He would put Himself in her and
create an embryo to become a baby. And that baby would be God, not
born of a man, but born of a virgin, conceived by the Holy Spirit,
and would grow as a man, but fully God. The Creator of the
world created the womb from which He was born. into this life. And then he lived a life of obedience
and he died a willing death of obedience, the passive obedience
of Christ. And so in that now, we know that it is the power
of God and the wisdom of God that is made known to the rulers
of the heavenly realms, which is Satan and all of his legions,
that there is no victory for him. It has been done. Christ
is the victor. The church that it exists. Remember,
I preached this. Because the church actually exists
means that Satan has been defeated. And not only has He been defeated,
but death has been defeated. So the penalty of sin for all
who believe now is gone. Because Christ took it all Himself.
He who had no sin, who knew no sin, became sin. He became the
object of God's wrath. And so that we might become the
righteousness of God, the Scripture teaches us. So, we have boldness
and confidence and assurance and we come bold to God. We have
access to the same Father. We're all one body. You see,
the point of Ephesians is that the church is unified and we
talk about that in doctrine, in worship, in service, in affection. And when we aren't, and there
will be times when we won't be, it's a mockery of the gospel.
It's awful. It makes a mockery of Jesus. But we who are truly His, with
the right patience, can endure and forgive and repent and we
can heal and we can come back together. That's what the power
of the gospel does. It brings and it continually
unifies. And yet there will be some that will come and go through
the seasons and through the decades and through the millennia or
through the centuries. And they will come and go and they will
profess Christ and they will fall away and then they'll do this
and they'll... And so we know that there are some who will
think they believe and some who will stay in the church and think
they believe. And they'll stand before Christ and Christ will
say, I never knew you'd depart from Me. You call Me Lord, but
I'm not your Lord. Didn't we cast out demons? Didn't we preach?
Didn't we heal? Didn't we serve? Didn't we love? He says, get
away from Me. I don't know you. Because it's
not just our actions. We cannot be justified by the
law of works. But we're justified by the law of grace, by the law
of faith. And that God gives us justification. He redeems
us. He sets us judicially in an innocent position, though
we are holistically guilty in all the evidence that stacks
against us. And he says, you're forgiven. Now how can a good
judge give sin a break? He can't. He's wicked. But because
he became a man and then destroyed himself who was perfect, then
the perfect took the punishment for the wicked. So that has taken
place. Then God now is still righteous
and just to forgive sinners because the debt is paid. The debt is
paid. So do not lose heart over what
I'm suffering, Paul says, for it is for your sake, for your
glory, which is your glory. So we have joy in suffering. We have joy in the suffering
of those who have confidence through our faith in Him. And
for that reason, in verse 14, Paul says, I bow my knees before
the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named.
that according to the riches of His glory, He may grant you
to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in your inner
being, so that Christ may dwell richly in your hearts through
faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have
the strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth
and the length and the height and the depth, and to know the
love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled
with all the fullness of God. Now to Him who is able to do
far more abundantly than all that we ask or think according
to the power at work within us, to Him be glory in the church
and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever. Amen. Now, I'm not going to get
into that today. What I am going to get into is
something that I think is essential. Tuesday night, we had two weeks
where we took two Tuesdays and we took a break from our classes
and we just had open question answer. It gives time for us
to reflect. It gives a little more time for communication and
dialogue. So for those of you who have been in our classes
on Tuesday, we just finished the foundations, seven weeks and
foundations, which we really could have been about 60. And
then we went two weeks for question answer. Well, we got 18 questions
Tuesday and I only answered 10 of them. Four of those eighteen
had to do with prayer. It's no coincidence then that
the next text is, for this reason, I bow my knees before the Father.
And that prayer is not only vital and required, but it's essential
and essential, but it's extremely prevalent throughout the Scripture.
Everywhere you look, there are prayers. Prayers, prayers, prayers,
prayers. I had questions. Like, should
we pray imprecatory prayers? Should we pray prayers to curse
people, that God should kill people and curse people? I had
a prayer that said, if God knows everything, why should we pray
anyway? I had a prayer that said, what good is prayer, does it
change people? And so I was not able to answer
all of them. I thought, well, there's a lot
of questions here that I think need to be addressed. And maybe
those of you who haven't been here, it's an opportunity. I'm
not going to address all those tonight. I'll address some of
them Tuesday, a couple at the end of our introduction to church
history. That's where we're going to start out this week. But now
for this reason, the main point, I'll go ahead and give you the
main point. Here's the close of the sermon. The close of the sermon is that God's power and purpose produces
prayer in His people. That's it. God's power and purpose
produces prayer in His people. That's going to be the crux of
the next few weeks if you look at that. And so the essential
question then for us as believers, there's a lot of Presupposition.
And what that means is that we suppose prior to teaching that
everybody understands the same thing. Well, that's really a
fallacy. That's really wrong to do. For me to come in and
say, ok, now everybody in here prays, everybody in here understands
prayer, everybody under the sound of my voice, and heck, I could
be teaching and not understand prayer myself. I can honestly
tell you that it is an amazing thing. And I don't fully understand
it. We may practice it differently.
We may think differently about it. Some of us may practice prayer
because it's required of us. Some of us may practice prayer
because we're superstitious. Some of us may practice prayer
because we believe we've got the power just to affirm things
and make things happen in the world. That's not true. Human beings don't have creative
power. There's no such thing as a creative bone in any of
our bodies, except the sin that we make out of the desires of
our flesh. Prayer is probably one of the
most abused things in the church today. But it is the foundation,
apart from the truth of the Gospel, it is the foundational action,
apart from faith. As a matter of fact, prayer has
to be done by faith. But the very essence of prayer,
the very existence of prayer means that we trust in God in
so many ways that we expect that when we ask Him something, He
will listen and then respond. So it's the epitome of faith. I think it takes more faith to
pray than it does to walk into the wilderness and do what God's
called you to do in a possible task. I think it takes more faith
to pray than it does to cross the Red Sea. I think it takes
more faith to pray than it does to believe that God, the Holy
Spirit, can actually save your loved ones from hell. Because we know those things
and we rest in them, but the evidence of that, do we pray?
Do we talk to God? What is prayer? I mean, really,
can you answer that question? I did a little search this week
with some people throughout the centuries who have been preaching
and teaching. I've looked at A.W. Pink and
I've looked at Charles Spurgeon and I've looked at Jonathan Edwards
and I've looked at John Calvin. I've looked at Luther. And I've
looked at a lot of people, and I've just sort of searched in
my library and on other websites, and there's a lot of cool, free
stuff out there, and looked at their writing. And I will tell
you, as many of the sins that are on the sea, there are thoughts
on prayer. I mean, I had no idea. I mean, A.W. Pink writes an issue,
a little treatise on prayer, and it's several hundred pages.
It's a primer, he says, if you would. Prayers of this, prayers
of that, prayers of this. This is most overwhelming. Some
of us think that real Christians pray and they just sort of close
their eyes and the Spirit of God just fills the area around
them and they just pray and they've sort of got this one-on-one connection
with God in such a way that we could never have. You ever feel
like that? You see people praying, you go,
oh wow, I wish I could pray like that. I busted some bubbles on
Tuesday night when those questions started coming. Why can't we
pray the way other people pray? I'm a failure at prayer. No,
you're not a failure at prayer if you're praying. As long as
you're praying with the right heart and by faith, and as long
as you're praying to the right person, you're not failing. As long as you're ultimately
desiring to see God's will and glory through it all, despite
what we specifically want, then we're praying effectively. But
what we see all the time is these pastors who pray. Why does my
language sound different than your language? Because I pray
probably, hopefully, prayerfully more often than you do, just
by the nature of what God has to do with me as He rings me
through it every few seconds. But also, I read. It's amazing
when I read Spurgeon, when I read Spurgeon for a long period of
time, and I remember reading for the first time lectures to my
students. And it's a series of short lectures
in written form that he gave to his seminary students, to
his pastoral candidates at his seminary in England. And as I
read that and I read more and more and more, it kept me up
at night as I read the harshness of those words and read that
older English. And then I had a couple of writing
assignments due that semester. And as I turned those assignments
in, I found that my language and my writing had sort of a
Spurgeon-esque flair to it. Matter of fact, one of the professors
emailed me directly and said, you're writing this. I love to
read it. I was on the edge of my seat. I can't wait for your
next assignment. Well, when you read things, your words begin
to take the tone of what you read. So if we are reading the
Scripture, our prayers will sound a little bit like Paul's or Jesus. Or John? Or Moses? Or David? So if you see yourself
not knowing how to pray, of course I'll deal with that. Romans 8
teaches us we don't have to worry about things like that. But if
we think, I just have nothing to say, then get in the Word
of God. Because you will pray from the Scriptures, you'll pray
through the Scriptures, And you will not know anything apart
from the Scriptures. And so you've studied it. So
you have a doctrine in Bibliology, if there is such a thing. You've
memorized the whole Scripture, word for word, verse for verse,
page for page, map for map, star for star, inkblot for inkblot. What good is it if it's not meditated
on? I know how to get from here to
California in a car. I know how long it takes. But if I don't
do it, for the next few years, I'll have to get the map back
out. Just because we have read doesn't
mean that we know. And just because we know doesn't
mean that it's applicable to our lives and powering our lives
now. So prayer. Let's basically discuss what
prayer is. I told you it was going to be more of a topical
sounding sermon. Prayer in its raw definition
is communicating with God. Do you understand the idea of
how absurd that sounds? I'm talking to God. Do you know
how absurd it sounds? We all believe that it's true. Christian
Americans, we all believe that prayer is talking to God, that
we can actually talk to God. But the minute we hear somebody
say, yeah, I've been talking with God, we think they're crazy.
Especially if they say, you know, God told me. Well, yeah, if they
say that bush caught on fire and God told them, call somebody.
They need help. Is it impossible? No. I doubt
it happened though. Unless he's going to be doing
something else to send a prophet somewhere else. But I see that
that prophecy is done. So we don't need any more bushes
burning. We have the Word. We know everything that God has
to say to us is right here. There's no new revelation under
the sun. And anything that's added to the Word of God is not
true. But we think it's talking to
God because it is. Communicating with God in such
a way. Paul has just got through talking about that. Look here.
We have confidence. Look at this. This was according
to verse 11 of chapter 3. This was according to the eternal
purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord. In
whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith
in Him. So we have the power and the
access to God because of God's gracious gift. of Jesus Christ. Because of the Gospel, because
of our lives in Him, we can have access. Well, what does it mean
to have access to the Father? Does that mean that one day,
you know, next week when God restores the world, or in 50
million years, we don't know when it's going to be, so in
that time, so we have access way back in the future, we have,
can I say back in the future? Way ahead in the future? We have
access to God and we're just going to look forward to that?
Yeah, we know that we will be like Him. We know that we will
be in His presence. But that's not what He means there. We have
access. It's certainly included. But
most specifically, it's dealing with the idea that we live our
lives today by faith with access to the same Father right now. How do we access the Father?
Through the Word and through prayer. So prayer is an essential
reality in the life of the church. It should be. A powerless church
is a church that does not pray. A powerless Christian is a Christian
who does not pray. So as we look at prayer, we have
to ask ourselves, how is our prayer life? We know what we
want to do. We know where all of these goals
might lead us. We know we want to, as you see
in our little literature and on our website and our documents,
we want to display the wisdom of God together. We want to live
as a people for God's glory, as worshipers. We want to worship
God. We want to love Him. We want
to know Him in such a way that everything in this world, as
the old hymn says, would fade away. That the things of the
world would just fade away and grow strangely dim in the light
of His glory and grace. You know that song? I love that
song. Beautiful. Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus, I
think is the name of it. We should sing that. So we want
that to happen. We want to live and worship in
spirit and in truth. We want to grow with our minds.
We want to live out the gospel with power as people who receive
grace upon grace. We want the world to look and
see the power and the wisdom of God displayed in our lives
individually and corporately. We want to know that as we live
together, we're reaching others and making disciples and teaching
people to obey. We want to do it all in the power
of God with the fullness of joy that comes in Christ alone. We want to do that. Everybody
would say, yay, hallelujah, let's go. How? If it's done without prayer,
it's never going to be done. We cannot fulfill our mission,
our vision, God's mission, God's vision, apart from dependence
upon Him. So prayer, it's amazing. Paul
is an apostle, and everything he says, thus saith the Lord.
I mean, that's some major stuff. There are a few instances in
the Scripture where Paul says, it's not the Lord but I. Very
few. So when Paul writes, it's God
writing. Except for a few places where
he says, just my opinion on this is. This is not a command from the
Lord, but any other time, if it's a command, it's God's commandment,
not Paul's. So as he's teaching that, as
he's writing that, as we're reading that, we see it. There's enough
there already in these three chapters of Ephesians that we
need to be excited. We need to be filled. We don't
need to be relaxed. See, that's the trouble that
I see this morning. I preached in Reidsville at Twin Oaks. And
my grandfather's in a room right now there and he came down with
severe something. He can't talk and he's coughing
badly. So he calls me out of the blue,
can you preach? Okay, I'll preach. So I had to come up with a one
word sermon. I'm going to teach these people
the true essence of propitiation. So I went to Romans 3 and I went
to Isaiah 53. And we looked at what God had prepared for Christ,
and there's millions of other places I could have gone, but
this is what we are. We see what propitiation really
entailed. How is it that Christ satisfied God's wrath for us?
Before I got up to preach, he said something about if we're
going to be a church that's glorifying God, and I'll paraphrase a little
bit, he said these things. We're going to have to get up
and quit sitting with our hands folded. And two pictures came to my mind.
One is that when you're in a classroom with children, and they're picking
their noses and their friends' noses and everything else, and
you want them to not put their hands where they're putting them,
you have them sit on their hands. So when we sit on our hands,
we're preventing them from doing what we want to do. But the idea
of us just folding our hands means we're content with where
we are. And the very next picture that came to my mind was the
fact that the only place where we see people truly folding their
hands is in a casket. You notice that? Sort of like
this. Sort of like this. And then they close the lid on
that sucker and they put us in the dirt. Friends, we can't be a church
that does that. And the foundational action of the church must be
prayer. Must be prayer. We can't go on our academics,
though they're important. We can't go on our journey and
our obedience, though that's important. It's imperative. These
things must be there. Because everything we do that
is not perceived from faith is sin, according to James. So if
we eat and it's not from faith, it's a sin. I get crude, but
I say this just to bring the point across to my children.
If we use the bathroom and it's not an issue of faith, it's sin.
Of course, that's a little hyperbole there. But bear with me. So as
we do anything without prayer, it's sin. Because prayer is communicating
with God, but prayer is communicating with God as our sufficiency. Do you see that? We're sufficiently
entrusting what we do to God when we talk to Him. This mystery's
been revealed. Paul's working. Now he's praying. He's saying, this is what's happened.
This is what we've got to do. This is how it's going to work
in you. This is what it looks like. This is it. Now I'm going
to pray. Now I'm going to pray for God
to give you the power and the strength to do this. He's already
given it to you, but I'm going to pray for it anyway. I'm going
to pray that God would Establish that and strengthen you with
the grace that He gave you. With His power. And you know
the whole thing that we need to keep in mind? You know how
it closes out in chapter 6 of this letter? It closes out with
this spiritual battle. Helping us understand that we're
not fighting against our own psyche if there is such a thing,
or our personalities, or the people around us. We're not fighting
against flesh and blood. We're fighting against the principalities
and the powers of darkness. We're fighting against those
same powers that we see that the church has shown that they
have lost. And if we're fighting a battle
to grow a church, to grow in our own worship, we're fighting
a battle to display the power of the gospel in our lives, then
without prayer, we're failing. We're failing. And friends, let
me go ahead and let you off the hook. You should not feel guilty
from this sermon. Because we're all guilty of not
praying enough. In some sense, it was probably
guilt that you didn't pray enough. But you know, there's no guilt
in grace. You realize that? No guilt in grace. It's freedom.
We're free. We do things not out of beauty,
though it is a requirement to pray. You must pray. It's a command to pray. Pray
without ceasing. So in that, let's look at it. For this reason, I bow my knees
before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on
earth is named." I'm just going to stop there, and then I'm going
to talk from that. Talk to you from that. There's
three things I want you to see about prayer based on what Paul
has written and said right here. Prayer. Prayer has an attitude. The attitude of prayer. And yes,
Sometimes we're thinking differently in the concept of prayer in itself,
but there's an attitude that creates the desire and the need
to pray. And when we pray, there needs
to be a certain attitude of our spirit. What is that attitude
there? We have boldness and confidence and assurance in Christ. Look
at that. We know we have it. We have access to the Father,
but how do we come to Him? We come to Him with an attitude
of humility. We come to Him with an attitude
of awe. We come to Him with an attitude, and I'll say it, with
fear. Not fear of judgment, but respect. That's why He bows. You realize
in the Old Testament, the words, and I'm not going to try to do
Hebrew here, but the words that are translated into the word
worship, oftentimes, is the word for bow, to lay down, to prostrate
oneself. Out of all the ideas of worship
in the Old Testament, that's one of the most used terms, to bow
down. So when we pray, it's an act
of worship. We are praying. Jesus teaches
us in Matthew, doesn't He? When you pray, pray this way.
Our Father. See the essence there? It's not
just words. We're not witches. We don't just say the right words
and the right stuff happens. We don't blink our eyes and twinkle
our magic wands and stuff takes place. It's not the context. It's the power of God and the
recognition of who He is. And God works His pleasure out
in our lives. when he purposes his people to
pray. So Paul bows his knees before
the Father. It's still his daddy. It's still
the Father. There's still this intimate connection
through Jesus Christ, but he approaches the Father with humility. That's the attitude of prayer.
See, oftentimes, and nobody disagrees. You're right. But listen, when
we pray, sometimes we pray so flippantly. We just sort of go,
yeah, God, what's happening? You know, this mindset. We don't
say those words. Maybe we do. But we get into
this routine of just doing it. We're not actually praying. We're not actually meditating.
We're not actually focusing on God and His glory and His essence.
And our hearts aren't really in tune with Him as a worshipper.
But we're just trying to get from Him what we need and what
we want. It's okay to pray for what we need and what we want,
but we don't approach Him with some expectation that we deserve
it and that He has to give it. We must be humble to realize
that God will do what He pleases. The example that I always give,
and this is the fact that as we see in the Scripture, does
the clay tell the potter what to make? Does the crayon tell
the artist what to draw? None. We don't tell the Father
what He will do. We ask that if it pleases Him,
would He? We humbly ask. Anyway, God is
holy. I pray you understand that. When
we pray, we must have an attitude of humility and in doxology,
And prayer has authority. That's the second thing I see
in this, is that prayer has authority. Look at this. For this reason,
I bow my knees before the Father. Now this Father, think of the
nature. Father, from whom every family,
and I'll talk more about this next week, but from whom every
family in heaven and on earth is named. Think about it. So prayer, we
must have an attitude of humility in order to pray. And prayer
has authority because of who we pray to. The recipient of
our prayer, the one who listens to our prayer, has authority.
That every living being in the world is His. That's the broad
scale. Every family is named. And now
the great scale. All those who are His are His. See, all people of the world
are His, and those who are His are His. Meaning the church. Every nation, every tongue, every
tribe. So even the wicked are His, and He will judge them,
and they'll still be His. And He will damn them, and they'll
still be His. But those who are His are His. So He has effected
the salvation of all that are His, and He's effected the creation
of all that is His. Every name, every family that
is named on earth and in heaven is through Him. So that means
there's not a soul you can pray for that doesn't belong to Him.
And there's not a thought in this world, in any of our minds
right now, that escapes Him. That's authority. That's power. That's vast, unimaginable, inexpressible
glory. Paul has the attitude of humility
and he has an understanding of prayer and the authority of prayer. So prayer has an attitude, prayer
has an authority, and prayer finally has an action. Paul then asks God to do something. He bows. He knows, He recognizes
who God is and He recognizes His authority and He expresses
that in His prayer. Then He acts upon the understanding
that God wants to hear, number one, what He has to say. And
number two, He expresses that God's riches and the riches of
His glory may grant. You see the word grant? Give
to you, grant to you. It's not a guarantee, it's not
a right. We've got so many rights in the
church today. Everybody has a right. They've
got a right to their opinion, a right to vote, a right to say
what happens, and a right to do this, and a right to do that.
We all ought to be concerned with each other's thoughts and
opinions. But God is the only one with
rights. Your pastor doesn't have rights. Your deacons don't have
rights. Your elders don't have rights. Your members don't have
rights. We have the right to be quiet according to Romans
chapter 3. It says, for every mouth will
be silenced before Him. We're not going to be pleading
our case. Because either Christ has paid it, or we're going to
be condemned. Clearly. So what is the action of prayer?
Well, Paul prays out of delight. How do I know that? Because we've
already seen that the doxology that starts in verse 3 of chapter
1, we see this big doxology. What is the doxology? Worship,
praise, blessed be the name of the Father, blessed be God or
the Father of Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with all spiritual
blessings in the heavenly realms. So blessed be. He is praising. He is expressing praise and blessing
and worship and exaltation to God. And he is joyful because
of all that God is and all that God has done. And so the action
of prayer has several questions. The first one is why do we pray?
Why do we pray? Why did Paul pray? Out of duty?
Yes. He prayed out of duty. We have
to pray. Pray without ceasing. That's
a command in 1 Thessalonians chapter 5. Pray without ceasing. But also, the power of God prompts
us and possesses us and purposes us and empowers us to pray. We want to pray out of delight,
not beauty. So we don't approach God because
we have to. We approach God because we want to. So in that now, we pray out of
delight. Out of a delight for worship,
out of a delight for beauty to our fellow brothers and sisters,
out of a delight for the fact that we are truly Understanding
that God is sufficient to meet our needs and to hear our prayers.
So why pray? That's why we pray. Like I said,
there's a lot. That can be a sermon about self.
When to pray? The second question of the third
point. The action of prayer. When to
pray? When do we act in that? 1 Thessalonians 5, verse 17,
I've already said. We pray at all times. What is
it? What does he say there? Praying
at all times in the Spirit with all power and all supplication. To that end, keep alert with
all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints. So we pray
at all times. Where do we pray? In all places. Jesus in John 4 teaches that
we worship everywhere. Not in the temples. Not in the
buildings. Not in the churches. But we worship
where we are. We worship in spirit and in truth,
so we pray in all places. We pray at all times. And then
how should we pray? How should we pray? Well, Jesus
teaches us in Matthew 6, the Lord's model prayer, if you will.
Why is it the Lord's prayer? Because He's the Lord and He
prayed it. It wasn't a wasted prayer. It was an essential prayer.
Maybe one day we'll visit that to look and see just the steps
that Jesus Himself called us to pray. Starting there with
recognizing, just as he prays there, our Father. And then holy
is Your name. We desire Your kingdom to come.
Your will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. And then
we ask for something, don't we? We petition. Give us what we
need to eat. Give us our daily needs. Give
us our bread for today. And forgive us of our sins as
we forgive those who sin against us. and protect us, lead us not
to temptation. That's the model that Jesus gave. There are amazing sermons that
have been preached on the Lord's Prayer. I would highly recommend
you read some of them or listen to some of them. For our purpose
today, the next question is, what should we pray for? As Paul
teaches in 1 Thessalonians 5, of course, there's many things
to pray for, but at all times, with all prayer and supplication,
take that in. Keep alert. Persevere. We should
pray all the time without ceasing. We should pray for other people.
We should pray for ourselves. We should pray for the saints.
Do you pray for the saints? Do you pray for the church? Do
you pray for others? Do you pray for the needs of
others? Do you pray for the salvation of others? You see, I could go
in and spend the next two or three hours dealing with examples
of prayers and breaking down and expositing specific texts
and looking at the essence. And we'll do that next week as
we get more into what Paul is praying here. But I figured what
better way of looking at prayer than to quickly review the prayers
of Jesus. Not just not to read all of them,
but the very nature of when he prayed and why he prayed. Jesus
prayed in Luke 3 at his baptism. And most specifically, he prayed
most of the time for God's glory to be done, for God's will to
be done, for God to be glorified. And every time He prayed, He
prayed. That model prayer that He gives us in Matthew 6 is clearly
used every time Jesus prays. Every aspect of that, Jesus prays. Jesus prays at His baptism. He
prayed in Luke chapter 4 and Mark 1 after He'd had a day with
the crowds. He prayed in Luke 5 that He would
escape the crowd's popularity. He prayed in Luke 9 with His
disciples, with those who were close to Him. He prayed in Mark
6 after He had a really tough day. He prayed on the mountain. He prayed when things went well.
He prayed when things went bad. Jesus prayed as a habit. He prayed
at the grave. He prayed out of anguish. He
prayed for a backsliding disciple. Jesus prayed as the high priest
in John 17. Jesus prayed in the Garden of
Gethsemane. Jesus prayed at the cross. So when should we pray? For what end? To what end? Why? Well, the question for you in
closing is this. Why do you pray? Is our prayer life individually
just a shopping list for God? Or does it flow out of worship?
Church, as we look in the next few weeks, as we move, it's going
to get more and more intense for us personally as we look
into this. Because now that Paul is petitioning
God, and verse 20 is a key text, now to Him who is able to do
far more abundantly than all that we ask for or think, according
to the power at work within us. And then He gives doxology to
him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all
generations forever and ever. Amen. And so what Paul's saying
there is we're going to pray that God would manifest His glory
and establish His church for His purpose and with His power.
And we're going to pray that He does all of this and that
you're rooted in love. That's really the essence of this prayer,
that you'd be rooted in love with power. And that through
that, all of these things would become at work in you. And then what he's about to teach
us starting in verse 4, therefore, he's going to urge us to walk
with God. He's going to give us details on how we should.
And he says, and we know that only God can do it. So he's praying
that only God can do it. And then when we fail, God is
faithful, for He cannot deny Himself. But then he says, and
even what we ask Him to do, He is able to do far more. You should
hear that, church. God is able to do far more. So what is it that you pray for?
You pray for people who are sick? Do that. The Scripture calls
us to do that. The Scripture calls us to get
the elders of your church to go and lay hands on them and pray
for their healing. Pray for healing. Pray for people
who are sick. God save them, heal them, bring
them out that you may be glorified and praised for a miracle, that
your will be done. And when they die, it was God's
will they die. Oh, that's just a cop-out, Pastor. That's a cop-out.
It's not a cop-out. It's the truth. You pray for those who are lost. You pray for those who have no
hope in Christ, who live their life for themselves and their
flesh and their desires, who are constantly and continually
seeking out glory in the world, seeking pleasure in the world
to cover up the stench of failure and depression and depravity
and sin. Do you pray for those people?
Do you pray that she would have the right words? Do you pray
that she would be in the right circumstance? No, you cry out
that God would save them at any cost. Be careful that you really
mean it. See, we don't need to be superstitious when we pray.
When you pray for your children, do you pray for your husband,
for your wife, for your parents, for your siblings? Do you pray
for those around you? Do you pray for your enemies?
The Scripture commands us to pray for our enemies, to love
them, to lay down our lives for them. That's contrary to what
the world does. That's where the wisdom of God
is displayed. Do we pray that God would do
a work in us? Do we pray that we would be better
worshippers? Do we pray that God would be
glorified in our lives? Do we pray for our church? Do
we pray for the churches who are apostate in the world? Do
we pray for those men and women and children who have been led
astray by cults? Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds right here
in the city limits of this small town. are so deeply rooted in
occultism. And we just go, eh, they're lost.
Let's pray for them to be freed from the ensnares of the devil.
You pray that God would establish His will in your life, even if
it includes the death of someone close to you, the destruction
of your business, failure of your finances, or your spouse
running off and leaving. But we know that whatever we
ask of God, He will give it. If we ask rightly, if it is His
will, and if we are in the Word and praying from a desire to
see Him glorified, then we will pray correctly. But the last
thing is this, what happens when I can't pray? I'm so distraught, I'm so frustrated,
I'm so depressed. I don't even know that I'm saved.
I don't even think there's a God. I don't know how to pray." Well,
the Scripture teaches us in Romans 8 that the Spirit, the same Spirit
that gives us a hope of glory, the same Spirit that picks us
up and prepares us for glory, will intercede on our behalf
when we are too weak to pray. And the Spirit will pray for
us. God prays to Himself for us. For the Spirit knows the mind
of God. And Paul teaches that we who
are in Christ also know the mind of Christ, for the mind of Christ
is ours. So there's a test for us. Where's our mind? I know
where it goes. I know what it does every day,
all the time. I know the wickedness and the
sin that fights the mind. But is the soul, is the heart,
is the mind of your inner core, is it the mind of Christ? You won't get it apart from this.
And you won't rest in grace and the power of God except that
you pray that He continues to work in you as you walk with
Him. Let's pray. Father, it is exciting. And honestly, as we talk about
prayer, We really begin to evaluate our lives and our hearts and
we know that we are not effective in our prayer life continually. So help us. We need You in order
to glorify You. We need You in order to live
for You. We need You in order to love each other and our enemies
and others in the world around us. We need You in order to fight
sin. We need You in order to believe
and to repent of our sin and to trust in Jesus Christ. We
need You. And if You aren't working, we
are lost. We're hopeless and helpless.
So Father, we pray that You would teach us to pray. That You would
give us a hunger for You, for Your Word. That You would help
us to truly display Your glory in such a way that nothing, nothing
stands against us. And nothing defames Your name. Father, keep us from sin. Help
us to see it and to run and to fight it with the power of Your
Word, through the power of Your Holy Spirit. will help us to rest not in our
sinlessness and our life and our morals, but God and Christ
alone who is the fulfillment of holiness in the flesh. And God, there may be some in
this room who are struggling with their faith, who are struggling
with talking to You, Lord. Would You give them peace? We
pray that as Paul has told us and as You promised, You do pray
for us. So pray for Your children, Lord. We thank You that You do. Make
it known to them that they are not alone in the battle. God, we pray for those who are
sick, who are dying, who are overwhelmed, who are emotionally
distraught, who are frustrated, who are angry, who are depressed. We pray for those who are lost,
who have no hope in the world, that You might bring them to
life, that they may see Your beauty in Christ. And it's in
His name we pray. Amen.