Lessons from the Underground Church 10: Treacherous Quarreling

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Father, Turn Our Hearts

Luke 1:11-17.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on June 20, 2021, Father’s Day.

We are celebrating Father’s Day.  It is easy in life to let your heart turn towards the things that it wants to turn towards.  It doesn’t help when you have a society that elevates following the heart over doing what is right and pleasing God.

Don’t get me wrong.  Sometimes, God puts things in our hearts, but the follower of Jesus will wrestle with those things, seeking to be intellectually honest before God.  They desire more to follow him than to follow their own heart.

Today, we will look at a man who was grieved by the fact that he and his wife couldn’t have any children, and through his interaction with an angel, we are reminded of God the Father’s heart for us.

Let’s look at our passage.

The Father’s impact

In this passage, we are not told whether Zacharias was praying for a child that day in the temple.  He was a priest who had been picked by lot to offer the incense in the Holy Place before the veil, and the Presence of God.  We are told that he and his wife were “well advanced in years.”  This probably means that his years of praying for a child had long since ceased, and his hopes for such had long since died.

God the Father chose a particular day, when it looked like there was no hope, and in fact he wasn’t even looking to see if there was hope anymore.  It was at that moment that He sent an angel to give Zacharias the good news.  God had a present for him, a large measure of grace; he was going to have a son!  As exciting as this news was to Zacharias, notice that this grace is not all about him and his wife.  It is also about the nation of Israel and its need to turn back to God.  We must always remember that the grace of God in our life is a present from a loving Father, but it is also intended to bless more than just me.  It is our natural tendency to be short-sided in regard to the grace of God in our life.

This is probably the first time that Zacharias has seen an angel.  Though we are not given a description in Luke, the angel explains that he is Gabriel who stands in the presence of God.  This angel called Gabriel also interacted with Daniel in Daniel chapters 8 and 9.  There he is described as looking like a man (no wings).   So, it is most likely not what Gabriel looks like that startles Zacharias, but the fact that no one is supposed to be in the Holy Place at that time, but him.

There are things that can make men afraid.  Zacharias is a righteous man who has been serving God “blamelessly.”  It would be easy to say that a righteous man shouldn’t fear anything, even that we shouldn’t fear God; He is on our side!  However, God still does things, or allows things, in our life that we can’t control, and that we weren’t expecting.  Fear is a natural response in these times.

Many fathers try to look like they aren’t afraid, but if we don’t keep our heart and eyes turned towards God, we can become entangled in a web of fears.  You can spend your life trying to become greater than your fears, or you can turn to the One who is greater than all that you fear.  In fact, when we are not living right before God, we often fear things that we shouldn’t.  Proverbs 28:1 says, “The wicked flee when no man pursues, but the righteous are bold as a lion.”  We can become trapped by a mixture of real things and figments of our warped imagination.

The real problem in life is not that we fear, but that we are truly bad at fearing the right things.  There are many fathers today who are not afraid to abandon their children, or they are not afraid to help a girl abort their baby.  They aren’t afraid to abuse the woman that they are with.  Really, they don’t fear God who has warned those who do such things of the consequences of the things they are doing.  We are not afraid to play God in our labs, businesses, and government buildings.  We are not afraid of throwing off the time-proven wisdom of the past for the seduction of a future that we think we can control.  Yes, the real problem is that we aren’t afraid of running off the cliff with all the other lemmings.

In the end, God is not a danger to those who serve Him in love.  I should add a caveat to this.  It all comes down to the definition of “danger.”  Jesus served the Father faithfully in love, but he died on a cross.  Yet, God is showing us through the resurrection of Jesus that any danger He purposefully brings before us, or even allows to come before us, has a way through it that brings us to the good things that He intends for us on the other side.

In truth, He is a danger to our flesh, but He is Eternal Life, Peace, and Joy to our soul, and to our future.  He really does love you, and will bless you if you will turn to Him in faithful love.  Like Zacharias, we must be those ones who are rare in a land of men who have turned away from God.  We must pass that reality on to the next generation, both with our natural children and with the spiritual children that God brings into our lives.

The Father’s desire

As the angel describes God’s purpose for the child that Zacharias will have, we see the desire of our heavenly Father’s heart, and the things that were keeping Israel in bondage.

The term “children of Israel” is used in this context as a reference to generation, and not as a reference to age.  It is not talking about everyone under the age of 12, but of the current generation who had been birthed by the generation before.  It pictures each generation as Israel giving birth to the next generation of Israel.  The nation of Israel, both young and old, were the children of Israel, just as we today are the children of the United States of America. 

The problem with any nation is that our hearts get turned away from God the Father.  No matter how good our beginning may have been, all nations run into peril as more and more of their people turn their hearts away from God.  The Father’s desire was that the hearts of that generation be turned back towards Him.

We must not see God as a Father who is hurt and mad that His children don’t love Him.  Instead, we must see the reality of what happens to children who turn away from loving parents, and cast off their godly instruction.  Such children turn towards foolish things, and the path of folly always brings ruin to a person and to a nation.  God’s heart breaks over the folly that is taking over, not just our land, but all of the nations on this earth.  With a Father’s heart, He cries out, “Why will you die?  Choose Life, and turn back to Me!”

He also desires to turn the hearts of the fathers towards their children.  When our hearts are turned towards God, He teaches us to have our hearts turned towards each other in the right way.  There is a plague of fatherless children across our land.  Too many fathers have rejected the heavenly Father and His desire to turn their heart towards their wives and children.  This is not just a problem for fathers.  Mothers and children have the same problems too.

However, men, we must be bold as lions and care for the people that God has put in our lives.  Regardless of how they respond, we must love them and seek God’s best for them, by showing them what a righteous man looks like, and how he lives.  This world successfully seduces our hearts away from what really matters because it first seduced our heart away from God.  This is how Satan plunders us from the goodness and inheritance of God.

Ultimately, the Father desires to turn the disobedient towards the wisdom of the righteous.  Israel had become disobedient children.  They were fathers who were disobedient to the heaven Father, and children who were disobedient to earthly fathers.  They refused to hear the words of wisdom spoken through the righteous men of the past, and written down in the Bible.  In short, to turn is to repent.  There is a lot of turning going on in this world.  People turn from one thing to the next seeking their own happiness.  However, it is not good enough to repent of one fleshly pursuit to go after another.  The only repentance that will actually do you any good, and even do good for the people around you, is the repentance that turns all the way around back towards God.  Finally, when we are truly oriented towards Him, He is able to turn us back around to the people and things in our life in wisdom and righteousness, in a way that gives life, and not death.  May God help us to cast aside disobedience, hear the heart of a loving Father, and turn into the path of life!

Jesus Teaches on Prayer

Mark 11:22-26.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on July 19, 2020.

Last week, we talked about the situation where Jesus had cursed a fig tree and within 24-hours it was dead down to the roots.  There, we talked about the symbolic importance of what Jesus did.

Today, we are going to look at what Jesus told his disciples immediately after Peter expressed amazement that the bush was so dead only one day after Jesus spoke to it.  Peter’s amazement is itself a demonstration of his ignorance at how powerful prayer truly is.  Thus, Jesus takes advantage of the opportunity to hammer home just how powerful prayer is to the person who has faith.

We should have faith

Jesus does emphasize the faith of the person praying, but even more critical is his emphasis on whom our faith is based.  My faith must be based upon God alone.  God is the foundation of our faith, and prayer is a dependence upon the power of God.

People who do not pray do not believe that they need God’s help.  It is also possible that they may think they are too spiritual to ask God for things, but the prior reason is the most typical.  Such people will attempt to gain the goal or target that they desire by their own abilities.

Here is where we should recognize that it is unbiblical not to pray, and yet just as unbiblical to sit back and do nothing while asking God to do everything.  Instead, we are to do what we can while praying for God’s help in those things we can’t.

To emphasize the critical nature of having our faith based solely on God, here are some examples in Scripture.  When Jesus tells us that it is impossible for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God, he follows it up with the statement that with God all things are possible.  Thus, he is not impressing on us that rich people cannot be saved, but that it can only happen with God’s help- this is actually true of all of us.  This is the same message that the angel Gabriel gave to Mary when she questioned how she would have a baby- she was still a virgin.  The angel tells her that with God nothing will be impossible (Luke 1:37). 

The same God who created the universe is the Heavenly Father who watches over us.  His possibilities go far beyond our impossibilities.  He did not intend us to do life without Him.  Prayer is our ultimate birthright, to cry out to our Father for help, the one to whom all things are possible (that conform to his character, of course).

In case the teaching hasn’t sunk in, Jesus gives his disciples an illustration that is much greater than praying that no one will ever eat fruit from a particular fig tree ever again.  Praying that a mountain be removed and cast into the sea represents an extreme fantastic prayer that seems impossible.  There is an added symbol to this prayer because mountains are used as metaphors for political powers and empires, such as the Roman Empire.  It is the extreme nature of the request that highlights how unable we are, and yet how able God is.  By definition, God has the power to literally cast a mountain into the sea.  Yet, why would I ever need a real mountain thrown into the sea, and who will the resulting tsunami imperil?  A literal mountain is not the “impossible thing” that we typically need removed from our way, or life.  Instead, it represents an impossibility of any nature for which we would need God’s help.  This extreme example is intended to stretch our faith to the point that we stop limiting God just because we are limited.  Did not God literally move the waters of the Red Sea aside so that millions of Israelites could escape Pharaoh’s army?  So, can He not take care of my problem?  Of course, He can!

It is here that Jesus adds the issue of doubt.  We must not doubt God’s power, but neither should we doubt His care and concern for us.  It is one thing to have enough faith to pray a prayer, but we should not doubt that God will do it.  Granted, doubt is not the only issue here, but it is a critical one.  It might be better for us to ask the question, “Why do I doubt that God would answer this prayer?”  We will come back to this, but doubt is a huge reason why many people have quit praying, or never started in the first place.  We start doubting that God will do anything about our request.  He may help others, we tell ourselves, but I doubt that He is willing to help me.

In verse 24, Jesus gives us a summation of what he is saying.  When you pray asking for something, you should believe that you are receiving it, and it will be yours.  Another way to say this is that we should believe that God is taking care of it and that we will experience His answer to our prayer.  There is a certain load and burden in life that we all need to learn to carry, but there are things that are too heavy of any of us.  Prayer is intended by God to be the place where these overly heavy burdens are moved off of our shoulders and onto God’s  O, what joy we will experience when we learn to put those things we can’t change onto the shoulders of the one who cares for us (1 Peter 5:6-7).

This is not an exhaustive summation on prayer, but we need to let it sink in on its own merits.  Once that is done, we can move on to the other lessons concerning prayer.  This summation does beg two questions.  First, what impossible things should I be praying for that actually need removed from my life?  Second, what is the source of my doubt about it?

We must deal with our sins

In verse 25, it may appear that Jesus is switching the subject, but in reality, he is still teaching on prayer.  The sentence is introduced with the connective word “and,” and it involves a particular thing that affects our prayers, sin.

Jesus brings up the heart issues of what other people have done to me.  It can be hard for me to forgive those who sin against me and this becomes a source of problems for our prayers.  It is in the heart that I am to believe without doubting.  Yet, this very heart is often full of hurts and wounds that I have received from others.  Many people stop praying because they are angry that God has allowed other people to hurt them.  Technically, these are the sins of others, but they have intersected with my life and infected my heart.  We could say that they are other people’s sins that are now stuck in my heart.  Believers must learn to deal properly with those sins.  Harboring a grudge, hurt, or anger towards another person, and refusing to forgive them, becomes an obstacle to answered prayer.  Why is this?  It may be because it affects my faith and causes doubts, leading me to doubt that God really cares about me.  However, it may be because God is not pleased and wants me to deal with my lack of forgiveness first.  Scripture does not detail the nuts and bolts behind how this affects our prayers, but that it surely does.  Jesus teaches more about this in Matthew 18:15 and the following verses.  This would be good homework for us in the area of dealing with the sins of others against me and forgiving them.

Yet, notice that Jesus does not end up on whether or not our prayer is answered.  A lack of forgiveness for those who sin against me can even become a hindrance to me having my sins forgiven by God.  This is the exact situation that Jesus describes in the parable of The Unforgiving Servant in Matthew 18:22-34.  The question ceases to be about answered prayer and becomes about my own salvation.  A lack of forgiveness is far more serious for the believer (note the irony in that term) than just having our prayers answered.

Jesus leaves the teaching there.  Perhaps, he felt that it was a sufficient amount for them to contemplate.  However, I want to look at two more areas that God’s Word tells us can be a problem for our prayers.

The first is when we sin against others.   Jesus taught on this in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:23.  When we approach God in prayer and worship, He may bring to our remembrance some way in which we have sinned against others.  We are told to go and make things right with them, and then come back to God.  We may be avoiding things that we don’t want to deal with, or we may be obstinately clinging to our own righteousness in the situation.  Regardless, we are called to be at peace with all people, as much as is possible with us.  Being right is not an excuse to treat someone harshly, in short, to sin against them.  Such, lack of repentance in our heart will cause our prayers to be hindered.  The Apostle Peter gives us a picture of this in 1 Peter 3:7. There, he cautions husbands to dwell in wisdom with their wives, recognizing that, though they have different constitutions and roles, they have the same inheritance as them before God.  Husbands who mistreat their wives (i.e. sin against them) will find that their prayers are hindered by God.  Such hindering is God’s way of getting our attention and challenging us to deal with our sins against others.

James also gives us some more instructions on prayer.  In the first chapter, he too focuses on praying without doubting. 

“If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him.  But, let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind.  For, let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord;” (James 1:5-7 NKJV).

Yet, in chapter 4:1-3, James gives us more teaching about prayer.  Prayers that are focused on our desires for pleasure in this life will also be hindered.

James says that he is writing to people who are relying on clawing their way over others to get what they want instead of praying and believing God.  Their problem is that they are not asking God for help.  They are prayerless.  Yet, in the rare times that they did pray to God, there was a second problem.  Their prayers were focused on their own fleshly pleasures.  James literally says that such prayers are bad or wicked.  God is not our Golden Willy Wonka Ticket to chocolate pleasures, or any others.  A heart that is only filled with the desires and pleasures of this life will also find that its prayers are hindered by God.  Why?  We will find them hindered because we are still pursuing the flesh instead of following the Spirit to become like Jesus.  It is not that God doesn’t want us to enjoy the simple pleasures of life.  He made them.  Yet, our flesh hijacks the purpose of our life and makes it all about obtaining as much pleasure as possible.  God in His grace will not answer such prayers.  However, let me give one caution.  Scripture does say that, if we persist in seeking wickedness, God may give us what we seek as a judgment against us.  We must not be deceived.  God will not be mocked.  If you sow to your flesh then from your flesh you will reap destruction, but if you sow to the Spirit of God then you will reap everlasting life (Galatians 6:7-8).

We need to be a people of prayer for our sakes, and for the sake of the lost around us.  Yet, to do so means to be a person who deals with the sin that is in their life on a daily basis.  Then, our hearts can be clean before God and our prayers will not be hindered, but answered.  Amen!

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