Sermon Text: Ephesians 3:14-21
Scripture Reading: Psalm 50
WHAT IS PRAYER?
Prayer is the offspring of faith (Calvin).
To neglect prayer is not the result of forgetfulness or negligence, but self-reliant pride. Prayer is the refusal to drink from the empty sinful cistern of self-reliance and self-exaltation. Prayer is worship-fully and dependently bowing down to drink from the self-sustaining river of delights to find strength and satisfaction.
Prayer is about as central to the meaning of the created universe as you can get. God created us for His glory (Isaiah 43:7). He created the universe so that persons created in His image would look to Him to satisfy all their wants and needs so that they would get the joy and God would get the glory. When we express this looking to God, we call it prayer. Prayer is at the heart of why God created the universe.2
WHY PRAY?
Introduction
“And whatever you ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son” (John 14:13). The Divine purpose of prayer is to magnify the greatness of God. Prayer exists for the glory of God. The aim of prayer is that the Father be glorified through Jesus.1
“A man is what he is on his knees before God – nothing more” (Robert Murray McCheyne).
God has ordained that the course of this Church is directed by your prayers. The implications of Scripture suggest that prayer is God’s primary method through which He accomplishes His will (John 17; Colossians 4:2-4), saves man (John 17; Colossians 4:2-4), and curbs the will of the just and unjust (Romans 15:30-31; 1 Timothy 2:1-2). The individual influence you can have and the corporate influence we can have through prayer is unfathomable.
Imperative or Precept (Objective Truth)
God commands prayer (Colossians 4:2-4). Before I expound on this important point, let me be clear what I am not trying to accomplish. Most of us have heard sermons or Bible studies that seem to imply or focus on our defective practices of prayer including how undisciplined we are, how lazy, and how lacking in resolve. We are often wrongly motivated by being told of Luther and Spurgeon who regarded two hours a day in prayer as the norm. We hear sermons that remind us that Jesus got up very early while it was still dark to pray (Mark 1:35). The effect is to make us feel both guilt and discouragement. A terrible legalism seems to surround the subject of prayer.3 If you have sinned, which is what prayerlessness is, you should feel guilt. However, you should not leave here today driven by guilt to pray. Your guilt should drive you to the Gospel, which then should compel you by the goodness and mercy of God to pray.
“But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’ So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God” (Galatians 4:4-7).
We are not merely counseled and recommended to pray, but commanded to pray. A soup kitchen is well provided for in the depth of winter. Notice is posted that those who are poor may receive free food; but no one thinks of passing an Act of Parliament, commanding the poor come and wait at the door to take the charity. It is thought to be enough to proffer it without issuing any sort of mandate that men shall accept it. Yet so strange is the infatuation of man on the one hand, which makes him need a command to be merciful to his own soul, and so marvelous is the condescension of our gracious God on the other, that he issues a command of love without which not a man of Adam born would partake of the gospel feast, but would rather starve than come.4
Incentive or Promise (Subjective Experience)
Why does God give incentive to pray? If God is King, why doesn’t He just command us to pray? Only when our obedience to God is stimulated or motivated by our view of God, does God get all the glory. It is only when God gets all the glory that we are fully satisfied in Him.
If God were to command and we were to muster our willpower to obey (we know it to be impossible to obey through flesh/willpower alone – John 15:1-5; Romans 8:8), we would take credit for the outcome and find satisfaction in our accomplishments rather than God’s grace.
I someone says, “Why are you praying?” and we say, “I don’t know, I just felt this impulse,” God would not get the glory he would get if you answered, “I am praying because Jesus is Lord and has the right to overrule human plans in answer to prayer; and I am praying because the Spirit of God is a Spirit of love, and will hear my prayer for mercy.”1
THE DANCE OF PRAYER
To the Father, Through the Son, by the Spirit
It is obvious that Jesus would address the Father in His prayers and teach His disciples to do the same. What, then, can we say about prayer addressed to the risen Christ and to the Holy Spirit? From the theological angle we recognize the Trinity as one God. The unity of God means that all three persons of the Trinity are involved in any divine action, including listening to our prayers. The distinction in God, however, means quite simply that the three persons are ontologically distinct though not separate. The ontological distinctions also affect the roles in that they cannot be interchanged. The Father sends the Son, the Son is sent and is incarnated to live, die, and rise for our salvation. The Father and the Son send the Spirit and make themselves present to the people of God by the Spirit.3
When we examine the evidence of the New Testament we find that almost all the prayers recorded after the ascension of Christ are directed to the Father.
- The Glorification and Enjoyment of the Father (John 17; Ephesian 2:18). “For through him (Christ) we both have access in one Spirit to the Father” (Ephesians 2:18)
- The Intercession of the Son (Hebrews 4:14-16; 7:25)
- The Supplication and Influence of the Spirit (Romans 8:26-27)
“But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, Abba! Father!” (Galatians 4:4-6).
- Read Ephesians 1:15-23
- Read Ephesians 2:13-18
- Read Ephesians 3:14-21***
Prayer is a great blessing, but it can be daunting and difficult when you stop to think about what is involved in a finite, sinful creature reaching out to an infinite, Holy God. Not only does God know that prayer is daunting, but it is even a biblical doctrine that we are not in ourselves equipped for. This takes the pressure off us to make prayer happen. The Son and Spirit are involved in our prayers. We are invited to enter an eternal conversation in an appropriately lower, creaturely way, but the heavenly analogue of prayer is already going on in the life of God rather than waiting for us to get it started. If you have ever become weary of working up the right response in prayer or worship, you can glimpse the relief of being able to approach prayer and worship with the knowledge that the party already started before you arrived.
“An ordinary simple Christian kneels down to say his prayers. He is trying to get into touch with God. But if he is a Christian he knows that what is prompting him to pray is also God: God, so to speak, inside him. But he also knows that all his real knowledge of God comes through Christ, the man who was God – that Christ is standing beside him, helping him to pray, praying for him. You see what is happening? God is the thing to which he is praying – the goal he is trying to reach. God is also the thing inside him which is pushing him on – the motive power. God is also the road or bridge along which he is being pushed to that goal. So the whole threefold life of the three-personal Being is actually going on in that ordinary little bedroom where an ordinary man is saying his prayers. The man is being caught up into the higher kind of life; he is being pulled into God, by God, while still remaining himself. He is being taken up into the life of the Trinity” (CS Lewis).
When your prayers come to God it is a very different thing from what it was when it issued forth from you.
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