Such Love—Part V

Subtitle: Let's Be A People of Prayer

Ephesians 6:10-18.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on Sunday, April 30, 2023.

God has created humanity with the ability to communicate with Him, and it is one of His greatest gifts to us.  Of course, without salvation, we do not experience the fullness of these gifts that He gives.  However, the gift of communicating with God is called prayer, and it is as simple as talking with God.

Think on this.  No matter how subjugated, tortured, and surrounded by enemies you may be, they cannot keep you from talking with God in your heart and your mind.  They can only make your flesh want to stop. 

Yes, man in his ego relishes "breaking" such people, whether by supplanting their faith in God, or by breaking their mind.  However, those who study such things have found that there are people who appear to be essentially unbreakable.  What makes them so?  Those who are unbreakable have something that is so worth living for that nothing, no propaganda, no amount of suffering, can cause them to deny its continued worth to them.  They would rather die than sacrifice its value to them.

Do I really know God and have a relationship with Him that is of such value to me?  Not that I am projecting these things, but, I don't want to wait until I'm being tortured to try and develop a relationship with God and work on my mental strength.

How can Christians all around the world be persecuted for God, die for God, even harder, live for God after their loved ones have been slaughtered for God, without giving up their faith in God?  Prayer is that foundation to our relationship with God.

We can talk about prayer as a duty, but each one of us needs to come to the place where prayer is on the level of breathing.  It becomes a necessary thing to my spiritual life.  In truth, prayer is spiritually breathing in the life of God.  It is a great ability, right, duty, and joy all wrapped up in this one thing.  If we stop at duty, then we miss out on the great joy of becoming close to God and knowing that He is with us.

Let's look at our passage.

We are to be strong in the Lord (v. 10-17)

Verse 10 has a strange command.  It is not just telling us to be strong, but rather to be strong "in the Lord."  It begs the question, "What does that look like?"  On top of this, the verbal phrase "be strong" is speaking of something that is done to us.  It is essentially commanding us, "be made strong, be empowered, in the Lord."  How can I be commanded to be made strong?

It makes perfect strength if you are thinking spiritually.  The Lord wants, is endeavoring every day, to make you strong in Him, but there are things that you need to do in order to cooperate with His strengthening work in you.  This is a command to let the Lord's mighty power be at work in, through, and around you.  This is in contrast to the things that we tend to rely upon.

Thus, verse 11 shows us the first thing we must do in order to have the Lord's strength at work in us.  We need to put on His spiritual armor, all of it.  These are listed in verses 14-17.

It may be good to point out that this contrasts with the story of the emperor's clothes (or lack thereof).  In that story, the emperor has no clothes, the people know this, but they pretend like he does have clothes on.  They refuse to speak the truth because of fear of sticking out and what may happen to them.  However, the Christian may appear to the world to be easy prey, weak, and unprotected.  What they cannot see, because they do not have eyes to see, is that the believer can be armored up more than any warrior throughout history.  This armor is invisible in some respects, but in other respects these things can be seen.  We just don't recognize them as spiritual armor, spiritual protection.

Because we are focusing on prayer this morning, I am going to go through the list of armor quickly.  Yet, make sure that you are putting these things on in your life just as a soldier wouldn't go into battle without their battle attire and battle gear.  Paul spent a lot of time with soldiers around him during house arrests.  He is telling us that we need these things.

We need to put on the Belt of Truth.  Without a belt, a warrior could literally be caught with his pants down (lower protective gear).  It also served to hold weapons and items of utility.  For the believer, walking in truth, and with Jesus the Truth, is a critical protection.

We need to put on the Breastplate of Righteousness.  This is, at its foundation the righteousness of Christ, and yet also living out that righteousness in our lives.  It becomes a protection for our heart and any mortal blow that would seek to strike it.

We need to put on the Shoes of the Readiness of the Gospel of Peace.  The shoes of the Roman soldiers had nails sticking out the bottom to help them be sure-footed across any terrain.  The believer who embraces the Gospel is both readied by that Gospel for battle, but also he is readied to share that Gospel of Peace.

We need to put on the Shield of faith.  This shield is so amazing that it even extinguishes the fiery darts that the devil shoots our way.  I think of David and Goliath in this.  David was unable to wear Saul's heavy armor of the flesh.  It didn't fit him, but God's armor always fits.  To Goliath, David appeared to have no armor, and no shield, but faith in God was his shield.  We are not talking about a mind over matter mentality in which we can actually stop real bullets with our powerful faith.  It is actually walking forward putting our faith in God and letting Him do the protection.

We need to put on the Helmet of Salvation.  Again, our head is a vital area.  The enemy continually seeks to get into your mind and turn your heart against God in bitterness, anger, or apathy.

Lastly, we need the Sword of the Spirit.  We are told that this is the Word of God.  We see Jesus using this effectively when he was in the wilderness and the devil came to tempt him.  He used the Word of God to take his stand against the scheme of the devil, and to send him away in retreat.

Just as David felt uncomfortable in Saul's armor, our flesh can feel uncomfortable in God's armor.  It will perfectly fit, and perfectly protect, but your flesh will continually seek to protect itself with the things of the world.

God's spiritual armor will protect you from your spiritual enemy.  We are enabled to stand against his wiles and schemes when we trust in God.  Some of these schemes are: temptations, fears, worldly "wisdom," even demonic "wisdom," false religion, materialism, and more.  We need to take our stand in the power of God against what the spiritual foes are trying to do in our own soul, in our family, friends, church, even in our enemies.  We are not fighting them.  We are armored up to fight the spiritual enemy that manipulates them in to playing the part of an enemy against us.

This may not be the strength that you want, and it may not be the enemy that you want to fight.  However, it is exactly the strength we need to fight the enemy that we need to defeat.  Israel wanted a military conqueror to destroy Rome.  Guess what, we essentially want the same thing.  We want God to come down and fix all the things around us, but a follower of Jesus knows that the real battle is within their own heart and mind.  The devil has taken hold of many hearts and minds through the schemes I mentioned above.  He manipulates this world for his own agenda, and too many of us love to have it so.

Verse 12 reminds us that our real battle is in this spiritual realm.  He uses various terms to refer to a hierarchy among the dark spiritual powers: principalities, powers, rulers of the darkness, spiritual hosts of wickedness.  "Heavenly places" here simply means in the spirit realm.  The key is not to discover the exact terminology used in the spirit realm among these beings, or even to discover their name.  Our power over them does not lie in such detailed knowledge.  It lies in our relationship with Jesus and our knowledge that they are our true enemy.

Though Paul continues his thought uninterrupted, there is a definite change at verse 18.

We need to be praying and watchful  (v. 18)

After such a powerful picture of a Christian who is spiritually armored up with sword in hand, we would not expect Paul's instruction in verse 18, that is unless we are thinking spiritually.  Paul emphasizes that those who are armored up in Christ need to be a praying people, and a watchful people.

Prayer is connected to the visual of watching.  Jesus spoke of this when he asked his disciples to "watch with" him on the night of his arrest.  If you pay attention to this event in Matthew 26, you will see that Jesus begins to pray (v. 38).  He then comes back to find that they have fallen asleep.  Jesus wasn't angry because they weren't watching his back.  He wanted them to pray just as he was doing.  It is in v. 41 of that passage that Jesus directly ties our watchfulness in prayer with our ability to avoid falling into temptation.  The sleepiness, lack of prayer, of the disciples the night before would be their weakness against temptation the next day.  But, this is how we are in our flesh.  We want to be great in God, but do not watch in prayer like we should.  Jesus told them, "Watch and pray, lest you enter temptation.  The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak."  If they had spent that night strengthening their spirit and weakening their flesh through prayer, it may have been a different story the next day.

Peter's bragging about his great faithfulness to Jesus could not be backed up because his flesh was too strong.  He had not fought the battle against his own flesh in prayer.  Why is Jesus praying?  I get it.  Jesus is God, and so we tell ourselves that he doesn't really need to pray.  Jesus knows that he will be dead by the end of the next day,  What does he do?  He talks with his Father in heaven, and so much more should we.  He has shown us the way.  Will we walk in it?

Up to this point in Ephesians 6, Paul has been describing what he means by the armor of God.  Verse 18 stops this description and moves to the activity we should do.  We can infer some activity in some of the armor, but here we are told to give ourselves to prayer.  Could it be that the act of putting on the armor is part of what gives us the strength to battle in prayer?  I believe so.

Verse 18 employs the word "all," or "always," four times.  This is not an overemphasis.  Rather, Paul is stressing just how important prayer is in the life of a believer.  The first description of the activity of a spiritual Christian warrior is that they are praying always.

Whatever the excuses that may arise in my heart and mind, Christ is calling me to always be praying.  We are to pray without ceasing.  Of course, the mind of flesh scoffs at the idea that we should always be praying.  The point is not that we never do anything else, but that there is always an open channel of communication between the Lord and me.  Does God get a busy signal when He comes calling for me?  Do I answer God's texts and social media messages?  I am not trying to make communication with God trite, but rather, help us to see that we often have our "coms" down and then scramble in difficult times to get God to talk with us.  We are to be a praying people always.

Next, he mentions that we need to pray with all prayer.  In other words, with all different kinds of prayer.  A good acronym for memorizing the different kinds of prayer is ACTS.  It stands for prayers of Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and lastly Supplication.  Supplication is a prayer of petition.  It is helpful to think of this in to forms: petitions for others (Intercession) and petitions for ourselves.  It is probably best to make petitions for ourselves last because we tend to let the prayers we do pray become all about what we need/want. 

He then describes that we should pray with all perseverance, or endurance.  Don't give up on prayer, don't become discouraged and quit.  People can say that they have prayed for years and it didn't work.  They become discouraged and quit.  However, be careful with that phrase, "it didn't work."  We are terrible at defining what it means when prayer works.  In fact, the greatest work of prayer is what is does to you, not for you.  It shapes you into a person who is more like Christ than you were before  you persevered in prayer.

Atheists will sometimes scoff that God must have a big ego because He wants everyone praising and worshipping him.  However, we do not pray prayers of adoration and thanksgiving because God has a big ego.  We worship God because we have an ego that is too big.  Don't let the enemy use tricks and sleight of hand to pull you away from talking with God.  And, don't let prayer just become a duty.  Learn the joy of relationship in prayer, rather than the "joy" of God giving us something we asked for.  In prayer, God gives us Himself, and that is all we need.

There is a passage in Isaiah where the people are crying out to God asking where He is.  They cry out for him to rend the skies and destroy their enemies.  God's answer is basically this.  Where were you when I can knocking all those times before?  If I do come down there, you are not going to like it because I will come down there and give you discipline.

Paul then says that we are to pray for all the saints.  It is not good enough for our prayers to be always centered on ourselves.  We need to pray for all of God's people, all the time, with all endurance, and with all kinds of prayer.

This is a person who is readied for any attack from the enemy.  Jesus was in the wilderness fasting and praying when the devil attacked.  He was ready to use the sword of the Spirit because he had been vigilant with the Lord.  Let us learn this lesson.  In this sense, prayer is a part of our protection, or readiness.

Exhortations in prayer

I want to finish with some exhortations in the area of prayer.

Prayer should be an expression of a relationship with God.  It is not good for a child to refuse to talk with their parents.  If we have put our faith in Jesus, then we are His spiritual children and He is our Father.  Yes, the relationship is different because He is a spiritual being.  This has always been true and understood by all who have gone on before us.  Yet, we need to keep our relationship with God in prayer at the level of a child coming to their Father.  We do this by faith.  Prayer is an act of faith in a loving Father.

Therefore, do not let your prayers become rote, scripted, mantras that you say because you think the words themselves have power.  People will try and learn Hebrew, memorize prayers because they have come to believe that such things make our prayers more powerful.  What makes prayer powerful is that you are God's child.  He doesn't need perfect Hebrew, or English from you.  He doesn't need candles and a certain ambiance.  He needs you pouring your heart out to Him. 

This doesn't mean that a written prayer cannot be used.  Praying through Scripture, particularly the Psalms, can be a meaningful experience.  Praying the Lord's Prayer can be a wonderful thing, but it can also turn into a mechanical thing that we do because we think it works.  Or, we may be hurrying to say it so many times, and in such a ritual, that God always answers this prayer.  The power is in the Lord.  It flows into our life when we approach Him by faith.  Such a person will grow in spiritual strength over time.

If you find yourself wandering in prayer, then just stop and tell the Lord that you don't want to be wandering unfocused.  Tell Him that you don't want to be simply doing a ritual, that you really want to connect to Him by His Spirit.  Invite God's Spirit into your mind and heart and ask Him to help you to grow in this relationship.

The next exhortation is to remember that public prayer is only so good as our private prayer.  There are pitfalls on both sides of this issue.  I can be cowardly about praying openly, and I can lust for attention of people in public prayer.

Your public prayer may bless people and encourage them.  However, if you are not praying in private, then you are accomplishing nothing with God in your public prayers.  You are like a clanging cymbal in His ears.

I don't think that God has a formula, or ratio, for comparing private prayer to public prayer.  However, it is safe to say that you should pray more in private than you do in public.  For a new believer, the trial is generally in the fear of people seeing you pray in public.  However, it is important to recognize that many who lust for attention in public prayer are just as cowardly towards private prayer.  Let us avoid both of these pitfalls.

A third exhortation is to understand that private prayer is acid to the ego.  Private prayer is when no one is listening.  It is just God and me.  This is very hard on our flesh.  If you aren't sleepy, just try praying.  You will be amazed at how quickly your mind will feel sleepy.  This is generally because we haven't developed the self-discipline that it takes to pray to God for very long.

When I say it is acid to the ego, I mean that a person, who tries to pray because they know that they should, will run into resistance from their own fleshly pride.  All kinds of thoughts will crop up in the mind of a person trying to pray.  How can this really do anything?  I probably look and sound silly.  I really have a bunch of other things to do.  I don't have time to do this.  Is God really hearing me?  Do I look like I have lost my mind? 

These are all the excellent flesh-reasons why we should not pray.  However, by faith, we take hold of our flesh and say, "No, flesh, I will yet praise the Lord!"  As our ego diminishes, as we diminish the control of our fleshly self, Christ increases in us by His Spirit.  Life will begin to flow as God intended it.  It is only in private prayer that we can wrestle with our flesh and become a person of the Spirit of God.  This is a daily work, a daily joy.

My last exhortation is that some things will only happen through prayer and fasting.  Jesus mentions this in Mark 9:29 in regards to a demon that his disciples could not cast out.  He said, "This kind can come out by nothing but prayer and fasting."  This is interesting because Jesus had given them authority to cast out demons and they had successfully done so (Mark 6).  This demon was powerful enough that only a person of private prayer and fasting would have the spiritual strength to cast it out.  Thus, the disciples had not done the hard work of prayer.  They had not learned the lesson from Jesus.  The point is that times of private prayer and fasting were needed, otherwise, this wouldn't happen.

God in His sovereignty determines that some things will happen regardless of what we do.  Jesus will come back again, cast out the usurpers, and establish His kingdom.  However, there are things that He will only do if we dare to believe for them through prayer.  We are not given a list of what those things are.  We know that we should pray in accordance with the will of God.  Yet, we pray in faith.  Prayer is a relationship in which we discover the purpose and the mind of God in our life.  It changes us, and gains more grace from the Lord for others.

Prayer was never intended to be a kind of cosmic vending machine.  Rather, it is an anvil on which God tempers His people.  It is the place where God teaches us to follow Him! 

Let us be a people of prayer, particularly, private prayer!

People of Prayer

The Acts of the Apostles 15

Subtitle: The Power of Prayer

Acts 4:23-31. 

This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on Sunday morning August 28, 2022.

Last week, we saw that Peter and John were severely threatened not to teach in the name of Jesus, and they were released from custody.  With the response that Peter gave them, they can’t hope too much that these men will actually stop.  However, it will buy them some time to craft a plan for dealing with them just as they did with Jesus.

We are going to see the importance of prayer today.  These men were full of the Holy Spirit, but they were not a source unto themselves.  In fact, the Holy Spirit was poured out upon them during a prayer meeting.  Instead of responding to the threats of the rulers with threats themselves, they responded to the threats with more prayer to God.

May we never forget that all our doing must have a foundation of prayer underneath it, so that God is evident within it.

The believers turn to God in prayer (vs. 23-30)

Upon their release, Peter and John go to their companions to describe the actions of the rulers of Israel.

After hearing about the threats, the disciples turn to God in prayer.  Notice that we have that phrase again “in one accord.”  Remember that this means they were all singularly focused with a passion for reaching God in prayer. 

It is hard enough to get ourself singularly focused with passion on one thing, much less a whole group of people.  This really is a miraculous move of God that is happening among these early Christians.  O, that believers today would be moved upon by the Lord to be in one accord about reaching God through prayer.

Let’s take a look at how they pray and then how God responds.

They start out glorifying God by declaring that He is the One who created everything.  He created the heavens, the earth, and the seas, and then He filled each of these domains.  Salient to the moment, God is the Creator of those people giving them threats.  Essentially, they are appealing to the higher authority.  The men who have threatened them are accountable to a higher power, just as the disciples are.

Prayer is never about telling God something that He doesn’t know.  It is more about demonstrating that we know who He is.  Prayer is not getting God to the place where He will do what you want, it is about getting ourselves to a place where we can truly serve Him.

To glorify God is to lift our own spirits up out of the squalor of this world, and the clouds of confusion.  It is to come out of ourselves and into the presence of One who is greater than us.  It is to focus our heart and mind upon the only One who can sustain us and enable us.  Prayer gives us God’s perspective about our life and the things that bother us.  If we spent more time in prayer, then we would have a better perspective on life when we get up off of our knees and go about our day.

God is not only the One who created these men threatening them, but He has also spoken things through the prophets about just such men.  Through the prophet David, God said this very thing would happen.

Psalm 2 is a powerful psalm that clearly depicts God making His Anointed One (Messiah, Christ) to be king over the nations at the protest of their rulers.  Those rulers will attempt to throw off his rule, but God in heaven will laugh at their attempts to reject His decision.  “I have set My King upon My Holy Hill!”  The rulers are then warned that if they do not turn to the Anointed One in fealty, then they will perish when his wrath is kindled just a little. 

It ends declaring, “Blessed are those who put their trust in Him.”  This is similar to the message Jesus sends back to John the Baptist, “Blessed is he who does not fall away because of me.”  Really these are flip sides of the same coin, one positive and one negative.  To trust in Jesus is not to fall away.  Not to fall away because of Jesus is to put your faith in him.

These disciples of Jesus are actually seeing Psalm 2 happening in real time.  In fact, we are seeing the same thing today in our world.  The rulers of the world are set on casting off the “bonds” of God and His Christ.  This is what it looks like.

The question today is, “Whom do you fear, God and His Messiah, or the powerful rulers of the earth?  Our response will set the position that we will be in in the day of His wrath.

Verse 28 holds a nugget of powerful understanding that we must get ahold of and never let go.  No matter what the enemies of Christ may do, they can only accomplish what God has purposed ahead of time.  This does not mean that they are doing a good thing.  They have the power to choose wickedness, but they don’t also have the power to choose where that path will take them.  God is truth and reality.  You can’t fight reality without paying a price of your decision. 

Thus, all beings in the universe will do the will of God.  Some will accomplish His will by choosing to cooperate with His purposes and being transformed into His righteousness.  Others, will accomplish His will by refusing to cooperate with His purposes.  They become something far worse than they ever imagined, but in so doing, also accomplish the will of God.

Only God is the Sovereign over all that happens, and it is His Providence that is before us.  Christians must never think that becoming so grants us sovereignty over our own life.  The best that we can do in this life is to cooperate with the will of God and thereby to be transformed into the image of Jesus.  Yes, some of the path ahead is revealed to us through prophecy, but all of us must learn to trust God with our today.  If God had allowed Jesus to die in order to do something greater, then God may choose to do the same thing with Peter and John.  They have no guarantee exactly what following Jesus will look like, only that Christ will be with them all the way.  What matters in life is doing the will of God regardless of what the future may hold, and that will take a lot of time in prayer tuning our hearts to the heart of God.

Though they have been glorifying God, they are also building a case, asking God for His help.   They first ask that God would grant them to speak His word with all boldness.  A “grant” is in keeping with coming to a great King, but this is more than getting a title to some land.  They are asking for God’s help in doing what they know must be done.  God, whatever you have to do in me in order to do this thing that must be done, then please do it!

The content of our speech to this world and to one another needs to be the Word of God.  Yet, the boldness cannot come from a place of our flesh.  The Sadducees and the Pharisees had a boldness that came from much study, and the accolades of an intellectual system.  In fact, it takes a lot of boldness to put the Lord Jesus Christ to death even though it didn’t square with the Law of God.  Fleshly boldness will not work to lead us in what God is doing.  It only made things worse. 

At each point along the way, God in His mercy gave them opportunity to jump off this confidence in their own righteousness.  Nicodemus jumped off.  Even the Apostle Paul saw the light and turn around to the point that he later says that he considered all that previous boasting as rubbish, garbage, in the face of knowing Jesus.  The problem is not that God is wanting us to get rid of everything.  The problem is in my heart.  I so easily try to hold onto fleshly things that give me confidence instead of only holding on to the Lord.  Eventually, you will have to choose.  If something is getting in between you and Jesus, just know this.  There will come a day when it will be to hard to hold onto both.  Like a man trying to hold two horses together going in opposite directions, you will either let go or be destroyed.

The boldness they wanted could only come from the Holy Spirit within them and speaking in the moment.  This is only granted as we daily come to God in prayer, seeking Him, and seeking His will.

They also ask that God would stretch forth His hand to heal and give signs and wonders in the name of Jesus.  We see this again that they are fully aware that any miracles would be by the hand of God.  They would simply be faithful servants whom God worked through.

We are called to be a blessing to the sick and the hurting.  These things will then be signs pointing people back to Psalm 2.  We must make our peace with Jesus today because the day is coming when his complete rule will be established.

It is clear from history that God has granted seasons of healings, and signs and wonders.  It is not our job to know either way, but to pray for God to move and to work.  No number of miracles can save a person’s life.  People need Jesus, not miracles.  Perhaps the greatest miracle they will ever see is a man or woman of God coming out of the wilderness and speaking the word of God to them by the power of the Holy Spirit. 

They were not praying for miracles because they wanted to be wowed again.  No, it is a wicked and adulterous generation that seeks for signs and miracles.  No, they are praying for God to confirm that they are from Him through these miracles.  Only God can help us to make it to that pure place where we are praying for Him to move in our time, but we are not seeking things rather than Him.  They are not asking miracles for themselves, but to be done among the people in order to draw them to Jesus.

God’s response to their prayer (vs 31)

Verse 31 tells us that there was a response from heaven.  They would get up off of their knees that day knowing that God had heard them because the place was shaken with an earthquake.  We do not know how widespread it was.  It seems to be more for them than Jerusalem.  Of course, the skeptic will say it is only a coincidence.  However, such a person was not there to see the lame man dancing in the temple, nor the ministry of Jesus before.

So why did God shake the place that they were at?  In Psalm 18:6,7 it says, “In my distress I called upon the LORD, and cried out to my God; He heard my voice from His temple, and my cry came before Him, even to His ears.  Then, the earth shook and trembled; the foundations of the hills also quaked and were shaken, because He was angry.”

This is David recognizing that his victories over Saul, and the nations surrounding Israel, were not about his great ability.  It was always about God answering his cry.  This imagery is used throughout the Psalms and the prophetic literature.  When God is stirred up to judgment, the natural order is practically unable to stand it (Hills melting like wax, etc.).  It is a sign that God is angry and is not to be messed with.

This can be seen at Sinai as well.  The powerful demonstration of quaking, thundering, lightening, fire and smoke demonstrates that God is legislating the righteousness that they should be doing.  The law is a scary thing without the mercy and grace of God.  Thankfully, it was not without mercy and grace.

The Bible says that the righteous are a people who cannot be shaken, and consequently destroyed.  Here, God shakes the place to show that He is rising up, just as David spoke of it, to stand on their behalf before these rulers.  He is not happy with their actions, though He will use them for His purposes.  When we are in right relationship with God, we need not fear His judgments around us.

This is shown in Hebrews 12, where God promises to shake the heavens and the earth.  This great day of shaking no wicked person will survive.  The only way to survive it is to become an unshakeable person.  Only God can make us an unshakeable person by the power of His Holy Spirit.

Perhaps, we should remind ourselves that Satan tries to shake us as well.  In this mortal flesh, we will be tested.  As long as we hang on to faith in Jesus, we cannot be destroyed.  In fact, the devil will only succeed in making you stronger.  Yet, if we let go of faith in Christ, then we can be destroyed.  Let us receive an unshakeable faith by the help of the Holy Spirit.

They were then all filled with the Holy Spirit.  As we have mentioned before, being filled with the Holy Spirit is not a one-time event.  There is a fresh pouring out of the Holy Spirit in response to their prayer.  We must see this and pay attention to it.  God wants to fill you, but He does so in the relationship of prayer. 

Public prayer times with other believers has its place, but the foundation of our walk with Christ is our private prayer time.  We cannot skip these private times of prayer and expect that the Holy Spirit will just always be there to back our fleshly minds up.  God help us to desire to be a people of prayer because it was God’s desire first, and it is His Holy Spirit even now stirring you up to want to pray.  You won’t be able to run the marathon tomorrow, but if you get up and start a little at a time, each day, over time you will develop a strong foundation of prayer that your flesh resisted at first.  Prayer is hard.  There is no lime-light, no accolades.  Our flesh shrinks back from it, but we must master ourselves and turn to God in prayer, if we want to know Him and the power of His resurrection.

It ends by saying, “and they spoke the word of God with boldness.”  I believe this is simply saying that God answered their prayer and this was the hallmark of their activity moving forward. 

O friend, we need to speak the word of God boldly.  It is the only hope that people have, whether they know it or not.  However, that kind of power is only found in a place of prayer seeking God’s help.  Let’s get to it!

Power of Prayer audio

Where Are We Headed? Part 1

Subtitle: When Intervention Goes Too Far 

2 Kings 20:1-7 (Also, Isaiah 38/39).  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on March 13, 2022.

We are going to start a new series that asks a question about this world and humanity as a whole.  Just where are we headed as a world and as humanity?  Of course, there is what the Bible says about this.  However, I want to focus first on the things that the world is saying, so that we can then turn to the Bible and see what it says.

This approach is important because it pulls back the curtain on some big issues and prepares us for the debates that are happening now and looming on the horizon.  It also helps to protect us form becoming a lemming that blindly follows the herd.  Though it is now known that they do not commit mass suicide by running off of cliffs, lemmings will migrate outside of their proper habitat and die off in large numbers due to social stresses.  Of course, we have a lot of stresses on our world today, both real and made-up, which makes this question more important than ever.

Let’s get into our passage.

King Hezekiah is told God’s will

In this chapter, we find King Hezekiah who was the king of Judah, reigning roughly 716 BC to 687 BC.  He becomes king right after the destruction of the northern kingdom of Israel by Assyria in 722 BC, just six years prior.  Though the timing is a bit unclear, our passage today is related directly after a siege against Jerusalem by the Assyrian leader Sennacherib.

Before we look at that siege, let me remind us of 2 Kings 18:5-7.  It tells us Hezekiah’s character and faithfulness to God. 

“5 He trusted in the Lord God of Israel, so that after him was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor who were before him. 6 For he held fast to the Lord; he did not depart from following Him, but kept His commandments, which the Lord had commanded Moses. 7 The Lord was with him; he prospered wherever he went. And he rebelled against the king of Assyria and did not serve him.”

Hezekiah had lived a faithful life that was comparable to David.  Then, the Assyrians surround Jerusalem (see 2 Kings 19) and threaten it.  In short, God protected Jerusalem when one angel in one night destroyed 185,000 Assyrian troops, ruining Assyria’s plans of extending their dominion.  On the heels of this great victory, tragedy strikes when Hezekiah become deathly sick.

Directed by God, the prophet Isaiah comes to Hezekiah and gives him a Word from God.  He tells him that he will not recover from the sickness, and he should get his affairs in order.  Let us recognize that this is not a doctor telling Hezekiah that he has no hope.  This is God telling him that his time is up.  There is a big difference between turning to God in prayer when the doctor says that you are going to die and turning to prayer when God directly tells you that it is your time to die.  This would hit anybody quite hard, especially coming from a prophet like Isaiah.  This is no crackpot who is guessing.  He has proven himself to be a true prophet of God.

Next, we are told that Hezekiah weeps before God in prayer, asking Him to remember his life of faithfulness and grant a reprieve.  One good thing about Hezekiah is that this is the second time in Scripture that we see him on his face before God weeping in prayer.  He did this when the Assyrians surrounded the city and now when he is told his life on earth is ending.  Would that we had much more of this in our churches, people on their face weeping over the condition of our communities, States, and The Republic.  Hezekiah was a righteous man who knew that God was his main hope.

At this point, God relents and listens to Hezekiah’s appeal.  Even as Isaiah is leaving through the courtyard, God tells him to go back to Hezekiah with a message.  God would grant him to recover and live for 15 more years.  Of course, this comes true and Hezekiah goes on to reign 29 years instead of 14.

On the surface, this appears to be another witness to the miraculous power of God and the power of prayer to turn the heart of God.  However, this event becomes a turning point in the way that the Bible describes Hezekiah and begs this question.  Were those extra 15 years a blessing or not?  Even the phrase “wept bitterly,” used to describe Hezekiah’s praying, seems to speak of one who is struggling with accepting God’s will.  He clearly had not reached the point that the apostle Paul had reached when he said, “I am hard-pressed between the two, having a desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better.”  (Philippians 1:23 NKJV).  However, the apostle Paul had dealt with tortures and much grief, whereas Hezekiah has had a comparably comfortable life.

The Bible gives us a glimpse of what happened in those 15 years. 2 Chronicles 32:25 says of Hezekiah, “But Hezekiah did not repay according to the favor shown him, for his heart was lifted up; therefore wrath was looming over him and over Judah and Jerusalem.”  Following a miraculous destruction of the Assyrian army and a miraculous recovery from a deathly sickness, Hezekiah’s “heart was lifted up.”  This is a Hebrew expression meaning that he had become proud.  Is it possible that the blessing of God can make us proud?  Oh yes, it is not only possible, but it is also the true test of blessing.  Will I become proud and arrogant in the face of God and my fellow man, or will I humble myself and recognize that it is His undeserved grace?  God was not please with Hezekiah’s heart, which demonstrated its pride in all manner of small and large incidents.

2 Kings 20:12-19 describes such an incident.  Having heard of his “good fortune,” Babylon sends some ambassadors to congratulate King Hezekiah on his recovery with a gift.  Hezekiah’s pride leads him to show them all the treasure, goods, and the armory that he had “in all his dominion.”  His pride set him up for a great fall.  Babylon would remember the great treasures in the nation of Judea.  Such a prize would later come to be too desirous to resist.

Hezekiah will die and 2 Kings 21 opens with Hezekiah’s son Manasseh beginning to reign at 12 years old.  If we do the math, we come to realize that Manasseh was born during those 15 extra-years in Hezekiah’s life.  This is how the Bible describes Manasseh in that chapter.  He, “seduced Israel to do more evil than the nations whom the Lord had destroyed before the children of Israel.”  It goes on to describe him raising up the high places and worship of Baal.  He raised altars to all the host of heaven within the Temple courtyard, and built an altar to Molech where caused his son to “pass through the fire,” a reference to child sacrifice.

This casts a shadow over Hezekiah’s recovery and grant of 15 years.  Manasseh holds the title of the most wicked king that Judah ever had.  This brings us back to the difference between being told by a doctor that you are going to die, and being told by a proven prophet.  We are told to pray for recovery when we are sick.  However, Hezekiah becomes a cautionary tale that reminds us that we don’t always know what is best for us, and others around us.

Can we create a world that erases all tragedies, and should we try?

I share this story about Hezekiah because there is an impetus in our modern world to try and erase all tragedies, as if we could get to the number zero.  Imagine a world where nothing bad ever happens.  Shouldn’t we try to create it?  Wouldn’t it be our moral duty?

Even Christian groups have come to promote the idea that, when God prophesies that an evil will occur, He tells us so that we can work to avoid it.  The story of Jonah and Nineveh would be a perfect illustration.  Yet, I would caution us that repentance can never be primarily about avoiding an evil.  Ultimately, repentance has to be about the recognition that I have chosen a wrong path, and turn back to God regardless of how He will respond.  I do it because it is the right thing and I see the error of my way.  God is not required to relent when we repent, and we are not told in Scripture that all prophecies can be overturned.  Yes, in general, God warns of evil so that we will repent and be spared that evil.  However, some things cannot be overturned.  Can the judgment of the nations that happens at the Second Coming of Christ become merely a great earthly welcoming of heaven when Christ breaks the clouds?  I do not believe we can actually avoid the prophecy.  We can only kick it down the road.  The people of Nineveh repented and avoided judgment, but most generations do not repent.  Eventually, judgment fell on Nineveh, just like God said it would.

How about America?  How is our repenting going?  Of all the generations that have been born since 1776, what is our percentage of repenting generations to the total?  I believe it is abysmally low, and that we are in grave danger.  Repentance may grant us a reprieve, but that is not why we should repent.  We should repent because our sin is dragging us to hell, and only God can save us.

Is it our job as Christians to create Utopia?  It is interesting that Christ never told us to focus on fixing the world, but rather, to make disciples of those who respond to our sharing of the Good News.

One of the problems in this area is the law of diminishing returns.  Society has been on a trend of making laws to keep bad things from happening: seat-belts, bicycle helmets, social security, insurance, life-support systems, etc.  However, this has not removed all tragedies.  We are now at a stage where it is becoming vogue to take the right of choice from individuals and put it in the hands of wise, “all-knowing” elite in our society.  Now, the first laws we pass and the first things that we do can make a large difference.  Kid’s wearing a bicycle helmet will drastically impact the numbers of head injuries and deaths.  However, to get that next percentage will take far more drastic laws.  It will take more and more drastic changes in order to get less and less of a difference.

Picture global warming.  The weather and temperature of the earth is a highly complex system.  It is questionable whether humans can actually effectively change the temperature of the planet.  However, cleaning up the emissions of our vehicles and factories has made a huge difference in smog around highly-populated areas.  It will take more and more drastic measures, in dollars and freedom, to make less and less of a difference.  In fact, our attempts to make good things happen in one area of a complex system often have negative effects somewhere else in the system.  You can picture the proverbial plate spinner trying to keep millions of plates spinning at the proper rate all the time.  Humans can’t do this, and so we turn to artificial intelligence, AI.

Part of the problem is the physical frailty of humans.  Think of all the safety engineering that goes into the modern car.  We have lane assist computers with smart cruise control, so you don’t drive into the back of someone when you get distracted.  The car is designed with crumple zones and air bags so that you have a good chance of surviving accidents.  As amazing as all of this technology is, humans are just too frail to get the number of deaths, and even accidents, to zero.  Sure, we could ban all transportation of people, but do you want to live in such a world?  And, are there not other tragedies we should want to avoid, not all of them about mortality alone?  Trying to get tragedies to zero is a no-win game.  Yes, we can make a big difference, but there is a point at which we say that it isn’t worth it to keep beating the dead horse.

We will talk more about this in a later sermon, but we keep bumping up against this reality that we are simply too frail.  Our attempts to counteract the frailty with technology has brought us to the point of desiring to use the technology in order to change ourselves as a species.  As long as we are mortal humans, tragedies will occur and will never be zero.

At this point, we should see that there is an even greater problem that humanity keeps running from.  It is the problem of our moral frailty.  Our penchant for choosing sin is at the heart of this tragic world.  Sin is the source of all tragedy as seen in Genesis chapter three.  No matter how perfect a system we create, humans are always the weak link in it.  We amass great power to help humanity, and then certain humans use that great power to enrich themselves and make slaves of the rest.

This too presents another pressure for humans to take a path of becoming not human.  There is no path back from some decisions and the repercussions cannot be known in advance, though they can be suspected.  Only God can help humanity back from the decision to listen to that ancient serpent, the devil.  We are even now attempting to take hold of our evolution inside of labs all across this world.  Will we survive?

Christians should not be fatalistic and refrain from making the world a better place.  Yet, notice that it is not our goal, but a side-effect of discipling people to be like Jesus.  This will never make the world a zero-tragedy place, and it is not even our focus.  However, the lepers of India are sure thankful that Christians came to the shores of India and were moved by Christ to have compassion upon them.  In this, we must have all our hope in God and not in the technology of man taking His place.  Such interventions can go too far and open Pandora’s box.

Where are we headed audio

What Does God Really Want from Me? Part 4

1 Peter 4:1-9.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on Sunday, February 6, 2022.

What does God really want from Me?  We continue today on part 4 of God’s desire for us.

Last week, we talked about the analogy for spiritual growth given in John 15, the vine of Christ.  We want to connect into the vine of Christ and draw life from him, instead of drawing death from the vine of this world.

Today, we are going to look at some very practical ways in which we can focus ourselves and ensure that we grow spiritually.  Yet, we must remember that all spiritual growth is measured by Jesus Christ.  He is the goal, and the means by which we attain it.

Spiritual growth takes intentionality from God and from us.  God is always faithful to do His part, so the only question is me.  What is my focus on?

Let’s look at our passage in 1 Peter 4.

Live for the will of God, not lusts

In Philippians 2:5, Paul said, “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.”  In verse 1 Peter is basically saying the same thing.  “Arm yourselves also with the same mind.”  Peter’s version gives a distinct reminder that spiritual growth is also spiritual battle.  Christians need to get themselves ready to think like Jesus did, and Jesus thought about doing the will of God, not satisfying his earthly lusts, and fleshly desires.

Jesus physically suffered for us in order to do the will of God, and we need to do the same.  His life was first filled with slanders, which is emotional suffering.  However, he was also physically abused to the point of death for the will of God.

If Jesus had been living for the lusts of his natural self, then he would not have suffered a death on a cross.  He was put to death because he was following his Father in heaven. 

Do you remember that vine imagery in John 15?  Later, in verses 18-19, Jesus said,

“If the world hates you, you know that it hated me before it hated you.  If you were of the world, the world would love its own.  Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.”

To choose to live for God instead of living for your flesh is a hard choice that only those who are connected to Christ can follow through because it requires suffering that is emotional and physical.

In verse three, Peter reminds us that we spent “enough” of our past life living for the lusts of our flesh.  He goes on to list the various things that people pursue in such a life.

Lewdness is a life that is lived without any restraint.  Lusts are those strong desires that our flesh has for the pleasures of this life.  Next, we have three partying terms that often go together.  Drunkenness is drinking too much wine, but often can become a way of life.  Revelries represent the activities of those who get drunk with others and are caught up in all manner of public nuisance afterwards.  Drinking parties is a word connected to drunkenness.  It is seen as a worse stage than the previous word.  Lastly, we have abominable idolatries.  The worship of idols and the things connected to them is a constant challenge in this life.

For the Christian, we know that it is high time that we leave this stuff behind, and begin to follow Christ, to learn from him a new way of life that is truly life.

Peter then recognizes that people in this world will be annoyed that you don’t live like they do.  This judgment can be as simple as speaking evil of you, but can also go to the point, as it did with Christ, that they put you to death.

Being judged by people in the flesh has to do with this life and what we experience from sinners.  Their judgment of us is “thumbs down,” but it is a judgment of fleshly people who can only see our outer man.  Their judgments can only touch our bodies, as Jesus reminded us. 

“Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.”  Matthew 10:28 (NKJV). 

Don’t let the fleshly judgment of sinners bother you because there is One who is your judge, and it is only his judgment that matters.  In fact, he is also the judge of those who are judging you.  Verses 5 and 6 remind us that those judging us are about to be judged themselves by Jesus.  So, don’t pay a lot of attention to their antics and statements.  Focus on Jesus who is the judge.

Verse 6 continues this point, but is a bit cryptic.  The key is to recognize that the main point is in the second half of the verse.  You may be judged by men through fleshly means while you live on this earth, but in Christ we will live by the judgment of God through the power of His Spirit.  Peter points out that even those righteous men and women of the past who have died had to live with the same tension that we do. 

Think of those righteous people before the flood who were living in dangerous times.  There is a Jewish tradition that Noah’s father Lamech was killed by a wicked man.  They did not have as much information as us, but they knew to live for God rather than for the flesh, regardless of the judgments of the world around you.  They died and went into the grave awaiting God to vindicate them.  As Peter detailed in the prior chapter, Jesus went into Hades, the grave, and proclaimed his victory over sin and death.  This was bad news to those on the bad side of Hades, but it was wonderful news to those in the Paradise side.  They would now be enabled to follow Jesus into heaven and dwell in the presence of God while they await the Resurrection of their bodies.  All righteous individuals of every age must live in this tension of fleshly judgments of this world, and the judgment of God that is not clear to the world yet.  That day will come, and you will shine on that day!

In verse 7, Peter reminds us that the end of all things is at hand.  Remember, in chapter 1, we are told that Peter is writing to Jewish Christians who had been dispersed throughout the region of modern-day Turkey.  They knew that the judgment of God was coming upon the nation of Israel.  It was the end of national Israel until the times of the Gentiles would come to an end.  The way things were would come to an end and not continue into the way things were going to be.

This is a kind of template, or parable, for how the righteous should always live.  The pre-flood world had been warned that a judgment loomed over the earth.  The righteous lived in such a way that recognized the judgment on this world, whether it happens in their lifetime or not.  The righteous remnant of Israel lived this way, until Christ came and things changed.  We too know that this world is under the judgment of God.  The end of all things is near, and we should not view the world with the eyes of flesh.  It will look invulnerable and powerfully persuasive with such eyes.  However, with the eyes of faith, we will see that it is near to destruction and judgment by God. 

Peter tells us that this ought to inspire us to be a person of prayer, a person who spends time talking with God about the world around them, and what is to come.  This is a person who is serious, that is of a sound mind.  They haven’t been caught up in the crazy thinking of this world.  We are to be also watchful.  This word has the idea of sobriety at its root.  Instead of getting drunk with the world, we are awake and at our post in this spiritual battle. 

There is a connection in Scripture between watching and praying.  Jesus used this with his disciples on the night he was betrayed.  He asked them to come and watch with him for a while in prayer.  Yet, they kept falling asleep.  Thus, Jesus revealed the big problem in all spiritual growth.  “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”  Your spirit may want to be like Christ, but your flesh doesn’t!  Only a person who wrestles with their flesh in prayer and watches over their soul before the Lord in prayer can overcome in the time of temptation and trial.

Then, Peter tells them to love one another.  We need other believers around us, and we need to be there for other believers.  This world is hammering on our faith, attempting to get us to follow it into what it thinks is its glory.  Our love must be fervent.  That English word gives the idea of heated, on fire.  However, the original word is more the sense of stretching forward, or leaning forward.  Instead of holding back, we are to lean into loving one another.  It is the picture of eagerness in fulfilling the command.

Peter says that this would involve covering a multitude of sins.  This is not the idea of covering up sins, but in making a proper covering for sin.  Peter doesn’t explain, but James does in James 5:19-20.

“Brethren, if anyone among you wanders from the truth, and someone turns him back, let him know that he who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save a soul from death and cover a multitude of sins.”

Without other believers around, we would be wandering away from the truth, and that’s the truth!  Keeping ourselves in Christ is the only way to properly cover sins.  That is why Repentance, Forgiveness, and the deeds of faith in Jesus are so important.

May God help us to help each other in this spiritual battle of faith.  In so doing, we will all spiritually grow through intentionally becoming like Jesus!

Grow part 4 audio