The Incarnation of Jesus

Galatians 4:1-7.  This Christmas sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on December 24, 2023.

It is an amazing reality that the Creator of all things took on the nature of a human in the man called Jesus. 

It is called the incarnation as a reference to God coming in human flesh.  He did not come merely in the appearance of human flesh.  Neither did he materialize like angels do. I am referring to the fact that angels can take on material form, and when they do, they look like men (i.e., humans).  Yet, it is always clear at some point that they are not men when they do things that men cannot.  A case in point would be the Angel of the LORD in Judges 13.  When the “man” ascends into heaven in the flame of a sacrifice, they know that this is not a human (i.e., a man of human flesh and bones).

This is a very important point.  Jesus didn’t even jump in as an adult.  Rather, he went through the full gestational process, was born, and experienced all the things that we experience as humans.

Have you ever had someone complain that, “You don’t know how it feels to have (insert tragedy here) happen in your life!”  This is often used to shelter a person from any input in their life from others.  There can be some truth to this, but, even with other humans, this is often over-played.  A man doesn’t have to carry a baby for 9 months and birth it in order to understand that this is simultaneously a difficult and wonderful thing.  Yes, he can’t know exactly how it feels, but he doesn’t have to in order to empathize.  If a man has his arm hacked off by a sword, everyone on the planet who saw it, or the aftermath, can empathize with the horror of what has happened and the urgency of medical attention he needs.  We don’t have to have an arm hacked off to deeply understand what a trauma this person is going through.

If this argument fails to completely hold water with humans, how much more the Creator of the Universe?  To everyone who would shout, “God doesn’t know what it is like!”  He is God.  He created all the sensory perception that you have.  Does He not know what you are feeling?  Yet, in the incarnation, God has completely taken it off of the table.  Not only can he understand your pains and difficulties, the chances are that He endured far worse than you did.  Maybe, it is us who can’t understand God.

Still, we should notice that God didn’t have to do this in order to counter our complaint.  Yet, in His grace and mercy, He takes on the nature of a human and goes through life.  In Jesus, God lets us know that He knows it is tough, and that life can cause you to want to quit believing.  Yet, there Jesus is, hanging on a cross, bidding you to pick up your cross and follow him.

Yet, Jesus came to do far more than just let us know that he is aware of how difficult it is.

Let’s look at our passage.

Jesus came when the time was just right (v. 1-5)

Paul is writing to the churches in the interior of what we call Turkey today.  The Christians there have been told by certain itinerant teachers that they had to obey the Law of Moses in addition to believing upon Jesus in order to be saved.  Paul was writing to counteract this teaching with the truth about why God gave Israel the Law, and how it functions for Jews and Gentiles.

This is an important point because we can have large assumptions about the purpose of the Law without even knowing it.  Did God give Israel the Law to save them?  Were Israelites saved by keeping the Law?

Paul uses the analogy of a tutor, or governess, for a minor child who would first step into the family business at adulthood, and then later inherit it all.  Paul is essentially describing this setting as a picture of what God the Father was doing with Israel His son.  The Law was given to be a tutor, a schoolmaster, to help Israel be ready for the day when they would be ready to step into adulthood.  This is where we are at in chapter 4 of Galatians.

Even though he is an heir, the child has a status that is like that of a slave.  They have to listen to a teacher, who may themselves be a slave of the child’s father.  This status of a slave is temporary and Paul equates it to the period from Israel’s establishment at Mt. Sinai to the presentation of Messiah Jesus.  This is over 1,400 years.  During this period, God has been using the Law of Moses to teach Israel some things so that they will be ready for the day when Messiah appears.

This brings us to the statement in verse 4 that Jesus came at just the right time, “in the fullness of time.”  There is a quantitative aspect to this because it is time, but time is not the essential element.  There is a qualitative aspect that has to do with learning that is even more important. 

We might argue against this claim of perfect timing.  In fact, Israel herself often complained of God’s timing.  They felt God was taking too long.  Perhaps, we feel that he came to soon.  Maybe that is a sign that this was the perfect timing.  Yet, the perfect timing has nothing to do with what we, or the ancients, thought about it.  For us, yesterday is the perfect time for a savior to come forth from God.

This is a statement from God’s perspective.  Notice how verse 2 reads.  Paul states that it is the Father who determines the metrics for the timing of when the young man is ready to step into adulthood.  Though Paul doesn’t mention this, we can also add that this doesn’t mean the son quits learning.  It is simply that he is no longer under the tutor, but begins to help out in the family business. 

From God’s perspective, the Law had taught Israel all it needed to know in order to embrace Jesus as Messiah, and then, to move forward in what God had for them as adults who were no longer in a slave status.

We  have been talking about Israel as a whole, but the truth is that lessons are learned individually as we corporately walk through things.  Not everyone really understands what the lesson was teaching.  Some people perhaps “learn” that they are tired of listening to a boring teacher and would rather do other things.  Others may “learn” things that are quite wrong.

Is the Law necessarily teaching that God doesn’t love the Gentiles because He never gave it to them?  Does it teach that they are irredeemable because they weren’t given the Law? 

In fact, we might ask just how the Law “teaches” us?  I would say that the Law teaches us each time that we sin, and also in the times that others sin.  It teaches us each time the prophet calls us to repentance by pointing back to the Law, and forward to right relationship with God.

This demonstrates the great wisdom of God in setting the exact right timing for the things that He does.  It is right because the experience of the “child” will have done its proper work to prepare them for the decisions to which God will bring them.   Paul boils this argument down in Romans 1 through 3.  In chapter one, he establishes that the Gentiles were separated from God by their own actions of exchanging the One True God for worshipping created things.  Every Jew would be giving a loud amen at this point.  Yet, in chapter two, Paul turns around and demonstrates that the Jews are also separated from God and guilty before Him because they have broken the Law.  Those under the Law are guilty because they have broken the Law, and those outside of the Law (Gentiles) are guilty for reasons outside of the Law.  They are both in the same place of guilt.  Chapter three follows up with a powerful statement of the purpose of the Law in Romans 3:10.  “Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.”  There you have it.  The purpose of the Law is to show even the relatively “righteous” of the world that they are sinners in need of God’s mercy.  Israel had been under slavery to a law that showed them their failures at every turn long enough.  It was now time to receive God’s mercy in Jesus.

We see this perfect timing concept in other areas.  In Genesis, God tells Abraham that He would give the land of Canaan to his offspring, but not until 400 years had passed.  This was because the “sin of the Amorites” was not yet complete, or full.  They were already sinful, but it wasn’t the perfect time to judge them yet.  God would give them the perfect amount of grace, and even a witness of Yahweh through Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and his family.

Another example of this is given by Paul in Romans 11.  There he talks about the partial blindness of Israel in rejecting Jesus as Messiah.  Paul tells us that this blindness to Christ would not be forever.  When the fullness of the Gentiles has come in, then Israel as a whole will have their eyes opened to who Jesus really is.

We could even ask ourselves this.  What if Jesus had been born to Adam and Eve instead of Cain and Abel?  Would they really have understood the depth and the seriousness of the problem of sin and its solution?  I don’t think so.  In fact, as I said above, not everyone learns the lessons as they should.  Even today within His Church, there are those who do not treat the problem of sin as a serious issue.

If God had seasons of learning for Israel under the Law, wouldn’t it make sense that He also has seasons of learning for the Church.  We are waiting for Christ to return, and he will do so at the perfect time.  Yet, that time is connected to God’s people and the world being taught some things.

The early Church saw persecution up into the early AD 300’s.  Think about the lessons regarding enduring persecution and the reward for those who are faithful until death.  By the end of the 300’s things changed drastically as Theodosius I became the emperor of the Roman Empire.  He was raised a Christian and even outlawed paganism.  This is why historians to this day will treat this era as the end of the Roman Empire and speak of a “Byzantine Empire.”  Pagan Rome under pagan Caesars was very different from the Christian Empire.  Yet, they are one and the same.  This season of the Church seems to teach some new lessons.  What will Christians do when they are in charge of the Empire? 

Christianity was very successful within Europe due to this turn of events.  It is interesting that Christians continued to be enamored with kings, monarchies, and emperors, and it makes sense.  God allowed Israel to have kings, and Jesus is the king of kings.  Yet, we see over and over again that no amount confessing Christ, or becoming the “Defender of the Faith,” can make a man really be like Jesus.  For 1400 years Christianity doubled down on kings, until 1776.

Did American independence transition us into a new period of learning about self-governance under “No king, but King Jesus”?  I think so.  I believe that God allowed us to establish a new kind of government that was not the failed democracies of the past, and uniquely modified the Republics of the ages.  We would now be a self-governing people with constitutions that put our servants on notice of how they were to operate.  The true human sovereignty was now collectively held by The People.

What lessons are we just beginning to understand now?  It is easy to say, “No king, but King Jesus!”  However, it is harder to live that out.  Is Jesus the king of America?  Yes, he is in position by God’s decree, but not in practice of its people.

The return of Jesus has an aspect to it in which there are lessons that we need to learn.  Yet, it also has an aspect of the fact that God will not judge the world until the sin of the nations has reached its full.  May God help us as believers to be learning the lessons while rescuing sinners out of a spiritually decaying humanity. 

This Second Coming of Jesus is a transitional point for the world.  Yes, it seems like God is taking too long, but in truth, God has just the perfect time for it to happen.  It is not ours to worry about the timing, but to be faithful to what God has given us to do for now.

Is it possible that I am spending far too much time complaining to God that He is taking too long?  Perhaps, I even have hints of threatening to leave the faith under my complaints?  Would I not do better to spend more time seeking the Holy Spirit to open my mind to the lessons that God is teaching us through His Word, and through the history and activity around us today?  Yes, I am very sure that I would.

Jesus was sent forth to redeem us

It was at this perfect time that God sent forth Jesus in order to redeem us.  There is a lot happening in that sentence, so let’s begin with the fact that Jesus was sent.

The Gospel writer clearly show that Jesus was not doing his own thing.  He was on a mission for God the Father.  Of course, this is a common problem of all the human servants of God, mixing our plans and purposes with God’s.  This is true even of the political “saviors” who rise up in our Republic, or around the world.  Ultimately, they are doing their own thing and coming in their own name.  Yet, Jesus said that he would only speak and do what the Father had sent him to say and to do (John 5:19-20; 12:49-50).  The cross itself becomes the proof that he was not just talking smack.  He put his body where his mouth was.

God wanted something done, and it wasn’t pretty.  Have you ever had something that you knew God wanted you to do, but it was a difficult thing?  Think about Mary and Joseph.  As the angel explains to Mary that she will become pregnant, but not by a man, rather, a miraculous conception, she can look ahead and see all the ways in which her society will not accept such an explanation.  She can imagine the heavy price that she is going to pay if she goes along with this.  Yet, she responds, “Let it be to me according to your word.”  Similarly, the angel appears to Joseph in a dream and tells him not to be afraid to take Mary as his wife.  Joseph knows exactly what others will say and do, if he marries her.  They will see it as admission of unrighteous, sexual activity.  He too will have to pay a price.  Yet, he marries Mary anyways.

Now, Israel knew that Messiah was coming, but they believed his mission would be all about putting down the Gentiles and lifting Israel up over them.  To be sure, that is part of the work of Messiah.  We can be guilty of crying out to God for help with a long list of the things that we think He should do.  Yet, many times we do not understand what is best for us.  The first coming of Jesus is a rebuke that tells us that our greatest enemy is our own sin and its spiritual tyranny.  Only having defeated that enemy can we even talk about tyrannical forces outside of us.

This is politics in our Republic, and in any nation end up being.  A stomach churning event in which we all point the finger at the other side, or other nation.   “You are the problem!” “No, you are the problem,” comes the reply.  “Let’s lock up those people, kill that guy, etc.”  Of course, the targets of today will change tomorrow in a never ending circus of avoiding the true enemy, the sin of my own heart.

In the Bible, deliverance from spiritual tyranny is pictured as redemption.

Just what is redemption?  It starts with a person who has fallen into a state in which they have lost their inheritance, and are too poor to redeem it back.  That is, they are unable to pay the price to get it back.  The book of Ruth pictures this perfectly.  Ruth will not only be unable to pay for her husband’s inheritance in order to get it back, but she has no children to give it to.  The solution in that case had to be another Israelite who was a near kinsman, and who would be willing to pay the price of buying the land and marrying her in order to raise up a son to inherit it.

If we take that story and lay it over humanity and our sin problem, then you begin to understand why God’s solution involved incarnation.  Sin is so bad that we are debtors to God with no means of making it right.  The problem is that many humans do not believe that they are that sinful, or that sin is a big deal.  We have been cut off from our inheritance as humans (not just a problem for Israelites) because of our sins.  We are spiritually poverty-stricken and are in need of a redeemer.  This is where Jesus steps in.

Jesus qualifies to redeem us.  He is a kinsman (for Israel, a fellow-Israelite, and for the rest of humanity, a human).  This is why Paul emphasizes in verse 4 that Jesus came forth “born of a woman and born under the law.”

Being born of a woman, ties back to the original promise of God when He cursed the serpent.  He said that the seed of the woman (one from her line) would crush his head, even though he would crush the seeds heel.  This mortal wound versus an injury is the promise that a deliverer would come.  Jesus qualifies as a seed of Eve.  God could not just wave a scepter and whimsically decree that sinful humanity should have its birthright back.  A price had to be paid, and we had to agree to the terms of that payment.

Being born under the law, ties back to the covenant that God had made with Israel.  Israel saw itself as righteous among the nations.  They could understand that some Israelites needed redemption, but that as a whole, the nation was righteous before God.  It was really Gentiles who needed redemption.  Yet, the death and resurrection of Jesus under the law, and the rulers of the Law at that time, is proof that perfect laws (a divine source) can not make us righteous, or help us to inherit eternal life.  The sin-problem has to be solved.  Of course, humanity seems intent on not hearing this lesson that God has been showing us.  We appear to be doubling down on fixing things by  more and more human laws.  It won’t work because those who operate the system are just as much sinners as those who come under their purview.

Even the Millennial Kingdom shows that if we had a perfect Executive (Jesus), perfect laws, and glorified, perfected administrators (the resurrected believers), it still would fall apart if God wasn’t restraining evil.  The problem will always reside in our mortal hearts, and in the heart of the spiritual interlopers, the devil and his angels.

America is part of God’s argument to humanity about freedom.  It is great to be freed from under a tyrannical power, but now you are responsible.  You can’t blame it on King George III any more.  Politically, we haven’t gotten out of bed in order to go to work.  We’ve allowed a new tyrant class of criminal “servants” to rise up over us.  Freedom is easier said than done.

We have received the adoption of sons (v. 6-7)

We have received the adoption of sons because of what Jesus has done, because of his redemption.  In Ruth, the solution was marriage.  This image is also used of Jesus and the Church, the Bride of Christ.  However, in Galatians the solution is the Adoption of us into God’s family.  Jesus is the one true son, but we are adopted into the family of God through the work of Jesus.  The true son died in order for you to be adopted into a greater family.  When you place your faith in Jesus as your redeemer, the one who paid the price for your sins, you are then adopted by God as His child.  In fact, you enter as an adult-child.

It is one thing to be 19, 22, even 26, stepping into adulthood for yourself.  However, there is still a whole range of adulthood before you with a number of seasons filled with a number of lessons that you will need to learn.  So yes, a new Christian is a baby-adult.  We are not under the Law of Moses and so we are adults, but we have a lot to learn through the world and the Word of God, both by the Holy Spirit’s help.

We still have a lot to learn, and we are not in our glorified bodies yet.  We need to pay attention to Jesus because he is preparing us for an eternity with the Father.

Notice in verse 6 that the same words used of Jesus are used of the Spirit.  He is sent forth by the Father.  The Holy Spirit is on a mission for God too.  When you are adopted into God’s family, His Spirit takes up residence within you in order to help you become like Jesus.  Just as Jesus was on a mission of redemption, the Holy Spirit comes alongside of us to help us walk in faith through the wilderness of this world, this new adulthood.  He helps us to overcome our own sins and to become an incarnation of Jesus by proxy to the world around us.  This is referred to as a down payment on the fullness that we will receive at the resurrection.  So, think about that!

Through Jesus, God has brought you into a familial relationship that is intended to be intimate.  The Spirit witnesses with our spirit that we are a child of God, and He helps us to cry out to God in intimate terms, “Abba, Father.” 

It used to be very popular to emphasize that Abba is equivalent to “daddy” or “papa,” something a very young toddler would use.  Of course, that is a beautiful picture, and the word was (and still is) used by little kids for their fathers.

However, we should notice that it is used by Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane praying to the Father.  He was asking if the cup of crucifixion might be avoided.  Regardless, we see him resigning himself to doing the will of the Father.  “Not my will, but Yours be done.”  Jesus sweat great drops of blood as he was praying this.  This is no little kid crying out papa in the night.  This is the eternal son of God gearing up to go to war against our deadliest enemy by dying on the cross.  This is one warrior speaking to another warrior.  The word essentially means Father, but it carries with it the complete intimacy of a son, whether child or adult. 

We too can cry out to God in the midst of our difficulties and know that He hears us with full love, even when a difficult task lies ahead (especially when so).

To the world and worldly Israelites, the death of Jesus was proof that He was a sinner and not loved of God.  However, they don’t understand that this is not about the Father’s love.  His love has never been in question.  It has always been our love that fails.  No, the crucifixion is proof of the Son’s perfect love for the Father, and the resurrection is the response of the Father.

Paul ends this section by concluding that the Galatians, and we who believe in Jesus today, are no longer slaves under the Law of Moses.  We no longer need God to give us a bed-time (a superficial law that points to something deeper).  Rather, as adults, we tell ourselves that we had better go to bed because we have a lot of work to do for God in the morning.  We have stepped into the relationship of adult-sons.  We are not running the business yet, but we get up each day and report in to Jesus by the Holy Spirit.  What are going to do today, Lord?

There will be another transition to our relationship with Christ.  Whether we die or not, the resurrection will forever deal with our sinful flesh.  We will have glorified heavenly bodies and be like Jesus, perfectly in his image.

Those lessons learned by Israel over 1400 years of servitude must be absorbed by us today, while also learning the lessons taught by the Lord to his Church over 2,000 years of working for him.  In fact, we need to remind ourselves over and over again.  Praise God that His Holy Spirit helps us to war against sin in our own hearts and minds, and then helps us to be a help to others.  Christians are a people who have learned to go to war, and are still going to war, against the sin of their own flesh.  It is in that bloody battle that the grace of God brings us through, and it helps us to minister to others.

The problem today is that too many people are on the warpath to fix the sin in your life, or worse metaphorically crucify you for it.  Yet, they lack Jesus because they haven’t lifted a finger to fight sin in their own heart and mind.

All through this, Paul has referred to us as heirs of God.  We are spiritual adults, but we have only received a portion of what we will inherit.  It is not yet fully manifest what we are and shall have.  We are to show ourselves faithful with the little that we have, so that God will reward us with much by His grace.

Let every day be an adventure of discovering even more that, if it wasn’t for Jesus, we would still be stuck in a poverty-stricken state of being a slave to sin, and judged by the Law of God as unworthy.

Praise be unto Jesus!

Incarnation audio

The Sermon on the Mount II

Subtitle: Jesus Opens the Door to the Kingdom

Matthew 4:23-5:12.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on December 10, 2023.

We talked last we about Jesus as King Messiah delivering the teaching in our passage.  We also talked about Jesus as the Greater Moses, the greater prophet, delivering the instructions of Yahweh to God’s people.

This is how we need to see this passage from chapter 4 through the end of the Sermon on the Mount in chapter 7.  Through Jesus, the promise of Abraham was even now breaking forth upon Israel.  Furthermore, it will not stop until it has inundated the whole earth.

Let’s look at our passage.

The setting (4:23 to 5:1)

Chapter four has Jesus calling the four fishermen to follow him.  However, Matthew records his own call in chapter nine.  The emphasis is more on his teaching and ministry to the people than it is on The Twelve who will follow him. 

I mention this because Jesus is speaking to “his disciples” in Matthew 5:1.  It is easy to immediately think of the 12, but Matthew purposefully puts this before mentioning any other of the twelve being called.  I do not believe that Matthew means the 12, or even the 4 that we know are called at this point.  I believe it refers to the larger group of those who wanted to hear what Jesus was teaching.

Notice that the ministry of Jesus leading up to this has been to the desperate multitudes that had followed him.  Of course, they came to him because they were sick, lame, needy, and some even demon-possessed.  However, Jesus was setting them free.  Imagine if experiencing such a thing.  The man is healing people, but he is also teaching and preaching about the “Gospel of the Kingdom” (4:23).

These people are not just seeing a power that was greater than any prophet before, and had not been seen in Israel for centuries.  They are also hearing a different kind of teaching.  It is not completely different.  It talks of the kingdom as the rabbis of their day did.  However, Jesus interacted with the sick and hurting different than they did.

I think this can be summed up in the rebuke of Jesus in Matthew 23:13.  “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  For you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men; for you neither go in yourselves, nor do you  allow those who are entering to go in.”

Jesus is going to talk about “the narrow gate” in Matthew 7:13.  He is also going to refer to himself as the door in John 10:1-10.  The religious leaders of Israel were keeping people from coming into the Kingdom, but Jesus, who is the very door and gate into the Kingdom, is calling to them to come in.  He is healing them and telling them that the Kingdom belongs to them.  This was a very different approach from a religious leader, and it shocked them.

The image of a scary, ferocious dog comes to mind.  The religious leaders were hypocrites because it was their job to help the people towards God and His Kingdom.  However, spiritually they were keeping people from entering it.  They wouldn’t go in and they were intimidating people not to go in.

More than that, their view of those who were sick, infirm, and demon-possessed caused them treat the people in that condition as sub-class, as if God had cursed them and didn’t care for them.  The attitude projected the idea that if people were more like them, then they wouldn’t have the problems that they do.  They had no problem moving on and leaving the poor and oppressed behind.  However, Jesus said that they were not entering the kingdom.  So, where were they progressing to?  They were leaving the oppressed behind, but they were only progressing towards an imaginary kingdom of their own making.

They had a system that had been developed, and many of them had risen through the ranks of it.  It was a system of theology and thinking that told them that they were God’s best and blessed.  It patted them on the back and told them that they were doing good in God’s eyes.  They had the right credentials hanging on their walls, and they had the right people patting them on the back.  Their lives were relatively good, and so they must be God’s favorites.  They could look at a person with a horrible sickness, or disability, and rejoice that God loved them more.  They didn’t have a demon-possessed child, even more proof.

The problem is that, when it is your child who is sick or demon-possessed, you don’t have the luxury of just moving on.  Of course, there are some people out there who disown family because they “didn’t sign up for this.”  But, many a loved one suffered through with family members without knowing why this was happening to them, and yet being told by the religious leaders that they were cursed of God.

Life has a way of challenging us in ways that we didn’t ask for.  Do you think any sick person wanted to be sick, or that they all somehow deserved it?  What about congenital stuff that is in the DNA?

There is a certain “accident” of nature in the DNA of a man and the DNA of a woman coming together and producing a third combination.  Though we can talk about the process of this, there is still a mystery in how certain genes are picked versus others.  Does God completely control that?  Is any of it left up to the lower natural laws that He has created, and just becomes what it will be?  We must confess that there is much mystery here that we are not given the answers to. 

So, life tests us.  What is our choice?  Do I come alongside a person in compassion, or tells myself that there is something spiritually wrong with them, or it wouldn’t have happened.  Do I isolate myself because I don’t want to get it too?  Who wants a leper in the Kingdom?

A surprising definition of the blessed (5:3-12)

This is how I believe Matthew is presenting Jesus as he gives his address, which starts with the “beatitudes.”  They are called the beatitudes because “beati” is Latin for “blessed” and the ending “tude” simply means “thing.”  These are the blessed things or blessings that Jesus declared to the people.  We see this throughout the Bible.  However, each of these blessings give a surprising definition to just who are the blessed in Israel that day.  Let me give you a hint.  None of the people in that crowd thought of themselves as the blessed, except for the fact that Jesus had just healed them.  Everything else told them that they were cursed.

This surprise twist is opening the door for them to enter the Kingdom.  Notice the formula first.  It states that “blessed are,” and then it states a condition of life, or experience, or even a particular kind of activity.  It then follows that up with a reason why they are blessed.  In essence, they are things that God has planned for the people who fit the first category.  They are not so much blessed by the first category, but they are blessed by what God intends and plans for those in that category.  Again, they all have a surprising twist to them.

Before we look at each of them, it is important to recognize that we have a message regarding just who is blessed and it is being given by the Messiah.  This is interesting because the Psalms are put in a 5 different collections that use the Covenant of David and the Promised Messiah as a call to Israel for faithful trust in Yahweh’s plan.  The first two psalms give a sort of introduction to the whole collection.

The focus of Psalm 1 is on defining for Israel both the proper way to follow Yahweh and the blessing that Yahweh will dispense to them.  Psalm 2 may seem to drastically change the subject as it presents the nations rejecting and conspiring against Yahweh and His Anointed One.  The Psalm ends with another statement of blessing, which clearly ties back to the blessed person of Psalm 1.  There are other literary ties between Psalm 1 and 2.  Thus, they are intended to function together.  They picture a person who does not follow the wicked, sinners, and mockers of their age.  Instead, they meditate on the instruction of the LORD night and day.  This causes them to become a fruitful tree, rather than chaff.

The word for blessed essentially speaks to the effect of a relationship with God.  It is sometimes translated as happy, but that falls short.  It speaks to the good effects in our life, and in every kind of way, because we are faithfully trusting God.  This person will be able to recognize Messiah and quickly embrace him in trust, in faith (Ps 2:12).

Yet, the connection goes deeper than this.  The Messiah, Jesus, is the perfect example, exemplar, of the Psalm 1 blessed person.  He is the ultimate tree of life in which all the righteous are able to be fruitful.  Every one of the beatitudes are exampled perfectly by Jesus throughout the Gospel of Matthew.  God is not just saying that He has a plan for us and we should trust Him.  Even more, He has joined us in those difficult situations and promises to lead us to that blessing that God plans for us.  Jesus is not just identifying intellectually with these people, with us.  He is identifying by immersing himself in the same situations.

Each one of these situations have an aspect to them that our flesh doesn’t like.  Because of this, we are tempted to run from them or do what we can to avoid them.  We can spend so much energy in avoiding them that we lose sight of a blessing that God is trying to give us through them. 

Our flesh, the world, and the devil, can pile on when these situations are present.  “If you really had God then this wouldn’t happen.”  Or, “If God really loved you, was really on your side, then…”  They do not appear to be blessings.  In fact, notice that the condition, i.e., poor in spirit or mourning, are not themselves the blessing.  They are like a present that is wrapped up and yet leads to a good thing.  The blessing is the thing that God plans to do or give for those in that tough situation.

When we end up on a sick bed it is not a good thing.  Yet, if we trust God and wait upon Him, He has a blessing, a good plan through it.  We must be careful of letting fear cause us to flee from the very things in which God is trying to give us a blessing.  I’m not saying that God purposefully causes these bad things, but that He allows them because He can overcome it and use it for the good.

The blessings (v. 3-12)

We will talk about the structure of the Sermon on the Mount later, but this introductory message about being blessed by God comes in three sets of three.  Threes play a big part in the structure of this sermon, so I am going to look at these in sets of three.

Let’s get into them.

The poor in spirit (v. 3) is using wealth terminology, but applies it to a person’s spirit.  It is speaking of being humble as opposed to proud.  Yet, it is not just talking about a moral ethic.  Of course, it is good to be humble and not good to be proud.  However, in our context, these are people who have been ground down by their condition of life.  They have been politically dominated by successive empires.  They have been religiously dominated by an uncaring know-it-all class.  On top of this, they had things going on physically and spiritually in their life that brought them to very humble, very low, circumstances.

As we go through this list, we should recognize that some of them present things that we should ethically try to do.  However, underneath of that idea, there is the bigger issue of not even having a choice.  You are humble because everything in life has ground out any pride you may ever have had.

Let’s look at the second blessing.  Jesus speaks to those who mourn.  Again, Jesus isn’t telling his followers that they should never be happy, but always mourning.  Rather, it is about speaking to people whose life has descended into something difficult over which they mourn.  This is definitely one of those things that we try to avoid in life.  Yet, here is Jesus saying that God sees us when we mourn, and He has a blessing for us.

The third  situation is the meek.  It is sometimes translated “lowly.”  We see this in Zechariah 9:9.  “Behold, your King is coming to you; He is just and having salvation, Lowly and riding on a donkey…”  This is the same word for “meek” in our passage.  This word is also applied to Moses in Numbers 12:3.  “Now the man Moses was very humble, more than all men who were on the face of the earth.”  Again, this is the same word.

In some ways, the word meek has the concept of lowly and unimportant.  However, notice that we cannot say that Moses and, even more, Messiah are not important.  The word is not about your role and purpose in society.  It is a word of how you carry yourself towards others.  It is a person who is not seeking a position even when it is given to them.  They are not desperate for everyone to see them as something great.  Instead, they are lowly, humble, meek of spirit.

When I think about Moses, I believe that he is lowly because he knows that he can’t deliver Israel at all.  He has no power and is no one.  If it wasn’t for God, he could do nothing.  When Korah, Dathan, and Abiram complained against Moses, it wasn’t Moses who rebuked them.  It was God Himself who stood up for Moses and rebuked the rebels.

It is similar with Jesus, but not in the same way.  Jesus is perfect and has no sin, unlike Moses.  However, Jesus does not fight against his detractors.  He humbly and meekly trusts in the Father to be his defense, even to the point of crucifixion.

Now look at the blessing side of these three.  For those who are poor in spirit, we are told “theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.”  Similarly for the meek, “they shall inherit the earth.”  This is Kingdom terminology.  Israel had been waiting for Messiah to come and set up the kingdom, and here he is, talking with broken people and telling them how blessed they are.  The Kingdom has been brought near to them and it is there for them to enter.

Yet, notice the blessing for those who mourn.  It simply lets them know that they are blessed because they are going to be comforted.  He is not talking about someone in this life comforting them.  He is talking about God the Father.  He has a plan to comfort them for the things that cause them to mourn.  Instead of tying it to the Kingdom, it is simply tied to trusting God, period.  In the end, God is the only true source of blessing, and if He is blessing us, then it doesn’t matter whether it is in the Kingdom or outside.  It is blessed because God is with us.

The second group of three begin with those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.  Hunger and thirst are things that come to us because food and water are lacking.  Of course, this world clearly lacks righteousness.  It pictures a person with pains and panting for just a bite and a sip of righteousness in this life. 

This begs the question.  What am I thirsty for?   There is a commercial that has the line, “Stay thirsty…”  Yeah, we should stay thirsty, but we had better be careful what we are thirsting for.  In a world thirsting for righteousness, it is easy for us to develop and accept worldly substitutes instead of true righteousness.  Messiah is the true righteousness.  However, we can be so full of eating at the trough of false righteousness that he is not palatable to us.  Instead of redefining righteousness and creating a system of traditions that pats you on the back, telling you that you are righteous, (a righteousness that our flesh likes) we come to God and seek His righteousness, and wait upon Him.

Next we have those who are merciful.  The merciful are generally those who have been in tough times themselves.  We should seek to be a merciful person as a matter of ethics.  However, the truth is that life teaches us mercy by the difficult things that we experience.  We gain empathy through the things that happen to us.  It slows us down and enables us to see people that we used to walk on past without a thought.  The more we flee environments where we need mercy, the less we are able to hear the hurting heart of those who do.

Then, we have those who are pure in heart.  We can make this more complicated then it needs to be.  It is not about never making a mistake or sinning.  It speaks to a singleness of purpose.  I may fall into sin because of my flesh, but my heart simply, purely, wants to be right with God.  For Israel, singleness of purpose meant honoring God and following His instructions.  Guess what, it means the same thing for us.

I find it interesting that, in this central group of three, the blessings do not mention the Kingdom.  We can put so much emphasis on ruling in a Kingdom with Messiah that we can lose sight of what is most important, and that is a relationship with God that is good.  Can I be satisfied in this life before, or without, the Kingdom?  Can I be merciful?  Jesus was all of these things even though his life was tough, and he laid the throne of Israel and the world on the altar before God and allowed it to be burned to powder at the cross.  God’s people being free from their sins and truly knowing God the Father was more important than a thousand years of ruling on this earth.

Thus, the hungry and thirsty will be satisfied by God.  When, LORD, when will you do this?  This cry of our heart can overwhelm God’s promise that He will satisfy us, both in helping us to be righteous and in making this world a righteous place one day.  The merciful will be shown mercy by God.  Imagine crying out for righteousness and then standing before God and finding out that you yourself were not righteous, were not merciful.  Imagine hearing the words, “Depart from Me.  I never knew you.”  The pure in heart, those who keep singularly focused on God’s purpose and will, will find a day when they see God.  This is not just talking about judgment day, but beyond.  We will one day dwell in His presence never to be separated again!

It has been said that God whispers to us in our pleasures, but He shouts to us in our pain (C.S.Lewis).  Can I hear what God is saying over the din of my own heart, the world, and the devil?  May God help us to trust Him.  None of these central blessings mention the Kingdom because the Kingdom is just a part of God’s plan of blessing for us.  Even now, He has a blessing for us in the midst of our difficulties.

This is why Job could give the cry of faith in Job 19:25-26.  “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and He shall stand at the last [day] on the earth; and after my skin is destroyed, this I know, that in my flesh I shall see God!”  Wow, what a statement of faith in the midst of difficulty.  His only hope is to simply see God and be received.

The final three begin with the peacemakers.  There is no more thankless job than getting in the middle of two people who are angry with each other.  If you really care about reconciling them, you may find both of them turning their proverbial guns upon you.  In fact, even Christians can do this.  When we are offended, we can demand that the people around us pick our side, or die.  You have to agree with me to be right.  The heart of a peacemaker cares about both people and both sides of the issue.  In general, both sides will have something to work on. 

The ultimate peacemaking is to mediate between God and the lost.  Very few people will thank you for trying to reconcile them to God, unless they actually are reconciled to God.  Jesus says that the peacemakers are blessed because they will be called the sons of God.  Who is going to call them that?  It won’t be the world.  It will be God who calls us the sons of God.

It may not be manifest to the world that we are the sons of God.  In fact, they may accuse us of being the sons of the devil.  But, it will be manifested one day.  It won’t be an in-your-face celebration because that isn’t the heart of Jesus for the lost.  He is the ultimate peacemaker, and he did so by laying down his life.  He suffered that we might be able to reconcile with God.  No, we will have tears of joy that God has fulfilled His promise, and tears of sorrow for those who never believed.

The last two blessings are sometimes looked at as the same.  They are both about being persecuted, but the difference is why you are persecuted.

Those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness (doing/trying to do the right thing) are first in view.  We can notice that the tight formula that Jesus has been using opens up to greater commentary, even instruction, by him.  This is interesting because persecution has a way of breaking down our formulaic approaches to life, and gets us real with people and God very quickly.  These are blessed because “theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.”  This is the same blessing as the first beatitude and points to the kingdom again.

The Kingdom is important to God, and there will be a literal rule of Jesus physically on this earth.  God is not a liar.  He will keep His promises to the saints.  However, keep that in mind as we go to the next blessing.

Those who are persecuted for the sake of Jesus are the last we see.  This is parallel with the Old Testament saints who were persecuted because they were faithful to Yahweh (sometimes even by apostate Israelites).  Such are blessed because their reward is reserved for them in heaven.  This does not just mean heaven itself is the reward.  It is a recognition that your reward cannot be touched by anything in this world.  It is held firm, reserved, secure in heaven for you.

If you truly understood God’s heart for you in the midst of the difficult things you are going through, then you would rejoice and be exceedingly glad.  Perhaps, Jesus is laying it on a little thick?  Listen, this is the One who went to the cross, into the grave, and trusted God to overrule His treatment in this life.  He trusted the Father to be the only source of blessing that He would cling to.  Like Jacob wrestling with the Lord, Jesus becomes the ultimate Israel, “One who has Power with God!”

May God help us to also keep our eyes upon Jesus.  If we are persecuted for doing the right thing, and especially for trusting Jesus, then we can rejoice that we are taking our place among the many saints in the Bible, and the countless saints throughout all of time.  Let us follow Jesus, the ultimate blessed one, and learn of him the path of blessing.

SotM 2 audio

The Acts of the Apostles 63

Subtitle: The Gospel Comes to Greece 

Acts 16:11-24.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on November 12, 2023.

It is interesting to contemplate when the Gospel first came to a particular geography.  In our story today, Paul and Silas will take the Gospel to the Grecian city of Philippi found in Macedonia.  Thus, we know that the Gospel entered the area of Greece around AD 50.

It is clear that Paul and Silas were actually more interested in reaching more places in Asia Minor, but Paul has a vision of a Macedonian man begging him to come and help them.

Ministry in Philippi (v. 11-24)

Luke gives us several stories from the labor of Paul and Silas in this European city.  The people of that day would not have likely thought in terms of Asia versus Europe.  Still, we can see that the Gospel spreads beyond the Near East and crosses into Europe through the Apostle Paul.

A more biblical way to think of it may be in recognizing the beast empires of the book of Daniel.  Greece is the origin of the third beast.  By the time Luke’s account ends they will be in the territory of the 4^th beast, Rome.

These men represent the kingdom of the Son of man (Daniel 7) to whom the Ancient of Days had given all dominion.  They are more than missionaries.  They are the beachhead of the warriors of Christ against the spiritual powers that then held Greece and Rome under bondage to false religion.  The Gospel is a call for people to leave the kingdom of darkness and to join the kingdom of light.

After they had been in Philippi for several days, the Sabbath arrives.  We can see here that there must not have been a synagogue because this was Paul’s practice.  Instead, they find out where people in that city who worship Yahweh go to pray.  It is a nearby river,

At this river, we do not see them addressing any men.  To set up an official synagogue required 10 believing, Jewish, adult males.  We can assume that they had less than that.  Perhaps they had no men in the city, or perhaps only women went to the river.  Regardless, there are no guys mentioned here.

We are then introduced to a business woman from Thyatira (Asia Minor).  She is clearly a woman of means.  She is a seller of “purple,” a reference to an expensive dye and the expensive clothing made with it.  We also see that she has her own house along with a “household” (v. 15) that is big enough to have room for Paul, Silas, Timothy and Luke.

Luke does not refer to himself other than to use the pronoun “we,” as opposed to “they.”  There are several section in Acts that are referred to as the “we” sections.  The first is from the port city of Troas to this city of Philippi (Acts 16:10-17).  The others are: 20:5-15, 21:1-8 and 27:1 through 28:16.  Luke is clearly not intending to draw any attention to himself.  Yet, at the same time, this signals to readers that he has spent time with these men that he writes about, and he even experienced some of these things with them.  His account can be trusted.

Back to Lydia, we are told that she is a devout Gentile who believed in the God of Israel (“worshipped God” v. 14).  This is why she was at the river on the Sabbath praying with other believers to the God of Israel.

As Paul and Silas spoke to the women there about Jesus, the Lord opens Lydia’s heart to heed the thing that they were teaching.  She and her household, which would include slaves and family members, put their faith in Jesus as Messiah and are baptized in water.  She then pleads with them to stay at her house, which will become the first house church in Greece, and Europe.  These are the nucleus of the people that Paul is writing to in the letter to the Philippians.

I find it interesting that the Macedonian man turns out to be a Thyatiran Woman.  Men will also be saved in Philippi, but Paul initially runs into women, and his first convert is a woman and her household.  Of course, God is concerned about everybody.  Paul is not sure what to expect.  Is he supposed to recognize the man in his vision, or is it more general, representing the people of that area?  My point is that he didn’t know.  Visions by definition tend not to have a lot of explained detail.  Yet, Paul was faithful to the mission that Christ had given him, preach the Gospel.  Who responded would be up to the Lord.  Lydia is the first to be saved there, but she won’t be the last.

At verse 16, Luke introduces a new part of the story with the phrase “as we went to prayer.”  This is most likely a subsequent Sabbath, whether the next Sabbath or several later.  Paul and his group continue to go back to the river to pray, but also to proclaim Jesus as the Christ to those who were gathering.

I believe that incident with a possessed slave girl demonstrates that the word was spreading among the spiritual realm in Philippi.  The devil didn’t like what was going on, even if there were not hundreds of people being saved.  Thus, a slave girl begins to follow them. 

We are told that she had a spirit of divination.  The word in Greek is literally a spirit of python.  For those who may not know, the python was connected with the false-god Apollo who killed the enormous serpent.  The priestess at Delphi was known as an oracle because she would give prophecies from Apollo.  This ability to give a prophecy or fortune was referred to as a spirit of python, i.e., a spirit that helped the person to tell fortunes.  Those these spiritual beings are not actually gods, they are real spiritual beings who manipulate humans to do their bidding.

Since she is really listening to a spirit and giving a real message from it to people, we could say that her masters were not running a scam operation.  However, these evil spirits are misrepresenting themselves.  They do not know the future, and they cannot be trusted even if they say something that turns out to be true.  They simply have lived a long time, can communicate with each other, and have personally experienced human history.  The devil and those fallen spirits who follow him are the ultimate scammers.  They promise people power by certain rituals and mechanisms.  They also present a perverted view of the world and reality.  They cannot be trusted because they despise humans who are imagers of God.

Christians should have nothing to do with using spirits to divine the future.  I mention this because there are people today who claim to be Christians that take occult practices and try to “Christianize” them.  One such deluded practice is the concept of Christian Tarot cards.  They make the images nicer and dress it up in Christian lingo.  This is dangerous and should be avoided and denounced, along with any other such practices.  God tells us not to look to the spirits of the spirit world to give us information.  Rather, we are to pray to God and trust Him and His revelation. 

So, when this girl begins to herald Paul and Silas as “servants of the Most High God,” and declare that they are there to “proclaim to us the way of salvation,” we can be sure that the evil spirit animating her is up to something nefarious.  It may be that there is a mocking attitude to it.  However, it may also be an attempt to muddy the waters by associating what they were doing with Apollo.

Whatever the spirit is trying to do, Paul becomes “greatly annoyed” by her activity.  What she is doing grieves him.  It is not clear if he knew it was an evil spirit from the beginning, or why he would delay in rebuking the spirit.  It is possible that Paul knows that the situation could blow up if he rebukes the spirit.  There is no mention of what the Spirit of God may be telling Paul to do.  Is God telling Paul to wait for two days?  When Paul finally responds, we can also wonder if the Holy Spirit tells him to rebuke the evil spirit.  Regardless of all of these questions, we can empathize with Paul’s situation.  What do I do?

There may be a level here where these evil spirits are trying to bait Paul into a situation where they can discover some information about him.  There is a bit of this in the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness.  If Jesus would have jumped off of the temple, and then was not hurt, the devil would know that killing him was off the table.  Jesus didn’t give him anything.

Finally, the Apostle Paul  turns to the girl and speaks to the evil spirit.  “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her!”  Though Paul does the commanding, i.e., he is the one having faith and standing up to the evil spirit, he makes it clear by what authority and by what power this demon would be made to obey.  No matter how crafty, powerful, and intelligent, these spirits may be compared to humans, they are still under the power and authority of Jesus Christ.  Paul stands firm as an ambassador of the kingdom of the Son of God’s love, Jesus.  He has been fully authorized to go into any nation, region, or town, and preach the Gospel.  Jesus never made humans to be manipulated by these evil spirits, whether through possession or through listening to them.  Christians need to have a strong relationship with Jesus through the Holy Spirit so that they can stand up to evil spirits “in the name of Jesus Christ.”  In ourselves we have no power, but we can command them to leave because of our relationship with Jesus.  We are to declare liberty to those who are oppressed in the Name of Jesus.

We are told that the spirit came out of the girl “that very  hour.”  This may give the impression of Paul saying the same phrase over and over again for an hour, but that is not what is likely intended.  “That very hour” was a phrase that often meant that it happened right away.  Yes, some spirits are harder to cast out, but Jesus emphasized that his disciples should pray and fast more often (Mark 9:28-29).  Notice that Jesus cast out the demon immediately in that context.   

This is a spiritual encounter, and we need to have a true spiritual relationship with Jesus that is more than a superficial stating of some exorcism formula.  Be a person of prayer and fasting today because we will see more and more spirit possessions as our society turns away from God’s Word and towards the occult.  People will need someone with a real relationship with Christ in order to help them be freed.

Though the girl is set free from the spirit of python, she needs to put her faith in Jesus and be filled with the Holy Spirit.  Otherwise, that spirit will show up again with seven more stronger than itself in order to attempt to repossess her.

You will also notice in this story that the masters have no care for this young girl’s soul.  They don’t care that she is shackled to a spirit.  They only care that they can make money through her.  When they find out that she no longer has a spirit of divination, they are not happy.  Paul had messed up their gravy train.

We should note that, throughout history, men of business have held an important sway on the authorities of a town, city, region, or nation.  They are a big part of the engine of wealth for the rulers and the citizens alike.  They often have connections and ways of leveraging the authorities (lobbying) to do their bidding.  Sometimes, they can even run the show from behind the scenes.

If you are looking for corruption in government, this is a good place to start.  Look for connections between business and those who sit in the chairs of power.

These men drag Paul and Silas before the magistrates of the city of Philippi and charge them with disturbing the peace, and promoting illegal activity (probably promoting a religion that is not approved by the State).  They are able to whip up a mob of the citizens along with the magistrates to deal with these “troublemakers.”

Christians should not fall into the error of seeing business men as the bad guys and the poor as the good guys.  This pitting of groups against one another has been a favorite tactic of rulers through the years, but especially by socialist groups.  Over the years, we have seen many stirring up one group against another group within our Republic: poor against rich, black against white, workers against employers, criminals against cops, homosexuals against heterosexuals, etc.  You will always find evidence of one group sinning against another, and none of these groups is without sin.  The problem is not the “power imbalance.”  The problem is that we are too easily manipulated, both to sin for our benefit and to sin against others for their hurt.

These business men are a problem for Philippi, but Lydia is a business owner too.  She is not what is wrong with Philippi.  The true problem goes deeper than simply business.  We must understand that not every polarization that is thrust in front of us is about truth.  This is why justice is supposed to be blindfolded (at least when it is a human judging the case).

The magistrates order that Paul and Silas have their clothes torn open to expose their backs so that they can be beaten with rods.  They are then put in the prison with their feet in stocks, representing the most secure form of detainment.  Stocks were often designed to create severe discomfort what would be normal.

This is what spiritual warfare looks like.  We can be guilty of only fighting spiritual battles in our prayers and in our mind.  All spiritual warfare starts in prayer, but it cannot end there.  If you want to really be involved in spiritual warfare, then go into the devil’s territory and start working to set people free.  You will probably see all hell break out, but you may see people set free by Jesus!

The devil is going to get some licks in.  He won’t just stay silent as you plunder his spoils.  However, we must keep our eyes upon Jesus and trust him no matter what happens.  This spirit was prodding Paul to see how much of God he had.  Well, he found out when he was cast out.  Greater is Jesus who is in us than any evil spirit in the world.

Ask yourself how much Christian ministry doesn’t happen because we are afraid of what people, business, and authorities might do.  Perhaps, this is exactly why Paul delayed to cast out the spirit.  He knew that he would be poking the hornet’s nest.  Regardless of how many “hornets” are in your town, when the devil comes after us, he is doing some poking of his own.  Paul may have poked a hornet’s nest, but the spirits of Philippi were now poking the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, Jesus!  When the devil comes after you, he comes after one who is a child of the God of all things, the Most High God!  We should not be arrogant in that, but neither should we forget it.  The devil is in the weaker position, and we should not fear him, but rather fear not doing the will of God.

May God help us to avoid the kind of spiritual growth that is only in our imagination.  We need true spiritual growth where the rubber meets the road.  True spiritual growth is always forged in the fires of a relationship with Jesus by the Holy Spirit.  It is forged in the fires of trials and temptations, where we learn to trust Jesus and walk with Him.

We need to be bold, but we also need to be a people who are praying and fasting, and ready for every good work that Jesus may have for us to do.

The Gospel Comes to Greece audio

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