The Need for Prayer

the following message by aleister begg is made available by truth for life for more information visit us online at truthforlife.org okay i'm going to read familiar words here from ephesians 6 and beginning at verse 10 finally be strong in the lord and in the strength of his might put on the whole armor of god that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil for we do not wrestle against flesh and blood but against the rulers against the authorities against the cosmic powers over this present darkness against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places therefore take up the whole armor of god that you may be able to withstand in the evil day and having done all to stand firm stand therefore having fastened on the belt of truth and having put on the breastplate of righteousness and as shoes for your feet having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace in all circumstances take up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one and take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit which is the word of god praying at all times in the spirit with all prayer and supplication to that end keep alert with all perseverance making supplication for all the saints and also for me that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel for which i am an ambassador in chains that i may declare it boldly as i ought to speak so that you also may know how i am and what i'm doing titicus the beloved brother and faithful minister in the lord will tell you everything i've sent him to you for this very purpose that you may know how we are and that he may encourage your hearts peace be to the brothers and love with faith from god the father and the lord jesus christ grace be with all who love our lord jesus christ with love incorruptible amen just a brief prayer an old anglican prayer father what we know not teach us what we have not give us what we are not make us for your son's sake amen now as i have read that passage a number of you have been saying to yourselves oh here we go another talk on uh garner's the christian and complete armor we're going to have to wave our way all the way through these different uh pieces of equipment and so on well set your minds at rest no we're not we're going we're going to actually consider just two verses um a verse that begins 19 at least in the esv halfway through the sentence and i'll tell you why and how it is we've arrived here before the weekend joe was in touch with me and said you know we have our prayer time in our church how should we pray for you and i can't remember just exactly how i replied but it was striking to me uh that the request would come in that way and it got me thinking about if you like the flip side of things we know as pastors that if our prayer if if our the activities of 24 hours appeared as a pie chart behind us with prayer as a sliver in that pie chart we would be ashamed actually i would be ashamed for you to see my pie chart we know that we are called to pray we know that we must pray we know that public prayer is often a hard exercise but i don't want to think about that i don't want us to be pressed down as it were under the burden of that we take it as the exhortation of scripture and we look to the lord for his enabling but rather what i want us to notice this morning and think about is not our responsibility to pray but the great need in each of our lives for others to pray for us and particularly for our congregations to get under the burden of prayer in relationship to the responsibility that is given to us and the way that we come at this is because here paul having exhorted the the listeners the readers there in ephesus having given them this comprehensive call to prayer you notice all kinds of prayer praying at all times with all perseverance for all the saints and then almost casually almost almost inadvertently he then says and also for me also for me in fact the end of this ephesian letter gives us such an indication of the tenderness if you like of of paul they're in verse 21 this is not our text but i mentioned it now so i'll just stay with him for a moment so so that you also may know how i am and what i'm doing he recognizes that they care how he is that they care about what he's doing and our people do too i'm going to give you somebody who'll tell you how things are going why so that they might be informed yes but not really so that they might pray for him now it's interesting isn't it that the first time we're introduced to saul of tarsus following his conversion as luke records it go to a street called straight and at the house of judas look for a man of tarsus named saul for behold he is praying he is praying now here we find him nearing the end of his journey through life and he is aware of his need for the prayers of his people when spurgeon who as we know was a phenomenally effective preacher in victorian england when he was asked to explain the success of his ministry he said in a simple sentence my people pray for me my people pray for me so what i want us to notice and very straightforwardly and in the first place is this that although we can refer to paul as the mighty apostle paul was not a superhero he was not in any way a superhero in writing to timothy he referred to himself you remember as the chief of sinners in an earlier letter in writing to ephesus he refers to himself as the least of all the saints what do you have to say about yourself that's the great question that was the question that was put to john the baptist wasn't it what do you have to say about yourself who are you some of us love that question oh goodness the person who asks it is going to regret ever having asked it well let me tell you and then furthermore and of course not to say anything about you know the person's like oh his eyes have glazed over a long time ago what do you have to say about yourself i think this points i think this points to his vulnerability his vulnerability now i'm not a fan of what i call naked preaching i'm not a fan of the pastor getting up and trying to explain to everybody how wretched he is he doesn't need to do that at least i don't my people know how wretched i am i don't need to use up sermon time explaining that to him but one of the things that we may become adept at trying to conceal is the fact of our own vulnerability now this comes across as we read paul's letters for example here in this section he doesn't say you do not wrestle against flesh and blood now he says we do not wrestle against flesh and blood in other words he's not immune to the insinuations the accusations of the enemy he was able to write to timothy about the time when people will be unprepared to endure sound preaching and the reason he could write with such clarity concerning that was not simply his knowledge of the purposes of god but because of his own personal experience i remember he was able to say to timothy all who are in asia turned away from me in other words i've known this wholesale desertion the dwindling if you like of numbers uh the members that were present there and have drifted away his congregation that was once larger it is gone i think he's vulnerable in this area secondly we might consider the fact that he is vulnerable also to pride to pride now if we doubt this we just simply go to 2nd corinthians 12. and it comes across so wonderfully straightforwardly in jb phillips's paraphrase i think it is where where phillips paraphrases it to keep to keep me from getting a big head to keep me from getting a big head there was given to me a messenger of satan a thorn to keep me from becoming conceited a messenger to harass me to make sure that i don't get such an inflated head that i'll be no use to anybody at all you know as pastors we need wives if for no other reason see this this is this is when you know you're in a group that's a good group i mean i don't even need to finish my sentences [Applause] and if our wives don't take care of it our teenage children will they're for sure he's vulnerable to depression really to depression yeah i think so second corinthians you can read it on on your own later on chapter one around verses 3 to 11. again let me give it to you in phillips because it comes across so clearly he says to his readers you should know that we were completely overwhelmed the burden was more than we could bear in fact we told ourselves that this was the end yet we believe now that we had this experience of coming to the end of our tether that we might learn to trust not in ourselves but in god and here you can join in and help us by praying for us i see this again and also for me i need your prayers 1871 spurgeon wrote to his congregation he at the age of 37 had been forced to take three months off because of illness and the nature of the illness as you will know if you've read the biographies was partly in his mind not entirely but partly and he writes to his congregation in 1871 as follows dear friends the furnace still blows around me since i last preached to you i have been brought very low my spirit has been prostrate with depression i entreat you not to cease your supplications i am as a potter's vessel when it is utterly broken useless and laid aside now remember who's writing this this is the most effective preacher in the entire british isles right into his congregation he continues nights of watching and days of weeping have been mine but i hope the cloud is passing in this relative trial a very keen one i again ask your prayers so praise your suffering pastor charles hadden spurgeon we wrestle not says paul against flesh and blood this battle is not a political battle this is not an engagement with the forces that we can see but rather with cosmic powers you he says have been raised up with him into the heavenly places in christ jesus and in those heavenly places the battle rages you should know these things he says and i want you to be praying make sure all the time all supplication all the saints everybody and also for me for me not only is it an indication of his vulnerability but it is a clear expression of his humility and there is a genuine link isn't there between these two things again not a self-assertive or as aggrandizing kind of perspective that draws attention to ourselves but rather to acknowledge that the self-assured of us see no real need to pray when we begin to rely upon ourselves it's only when we're brought to an understanding of our need it's only when the accusations of the evil one begin to debilitate us begin to unhinge us that we end up realizing if my people don't undergird this ministry in prayer i don't know what's going to happen to me don't let's get caught up in trying to analyze what the messenger of satan was some of you are very good at that i look forward to reading your comments maybe um but it does mean something very straightforward and that is that a bad thing has been brought into his life for a good reason a bad thing brought into his life for a good reason and the ultimate source of course is the hand of god but it is come employed by the evil one presumably the evil one coming as the messenger what is the messenger you know luther's when they asked luther how did you notice the devil talking to your jesus he said my god speaks with sweet reasonableness which is very wonderful but the evil one doesn't did he come to paul and say to him hey paul if you're as useful as you think you are why are you experiencing these things if you really are the great apostle of god why why has there been such a wholesale desertion in asia people are not really interested in you anymore do you really believe in the god that you serve these you see are the kinds of things the evil one says and so his request for prayer makes perfect sense and it's not unique he does it all the time i leave you again to search that out right into the colossians he says continue steadfastly in prayer and almost immediately he says and at the same time pray for us in thessaloni to the thessalonians in the second letter pray for us that the word of the lord may go forward unhindered how is it that the word of the lord will go forward unhindered well as the people pray the word of the lord will go forward spurgeon again said to the young men that he was encouraging in the task of preaching listen he says fellows you can preach the same sermons to far greater effect if your people will pray the exact same sermon to greater effect because the word of the lord goes home unhindered for we have divine power to break down strongholds what strongholds all the insinuations and accusations of the evil one that comes to unsettle us to destabilize us don't listen this isn't for you and how it comes home to us comes home to me at least the sword of the spirit the scalpel by which the teaching pastor has the privilege of opening up dissecting making clear the truth of god's word and the key the prayers of the people of god not our giftedness not our articulation not our preparation it's it's phenomenally humbling isn't it somebody has converted and you go home and you say to yourself well that was i really i really clinched that at the end i can see why that happened and that that was the devil telling you that because one day in the glory you'll find out that some lady sitting you know three rows from the back that prayed for you as you lost your place in your notes and [Applause] and and she was back there saying use him god use him he's he's lost it he's lost it again okay now he wasn't just asking for prayer in general his request is specific and when you read the prayers of paul you realize that his focus in prayer is not on matters of passing personal concern he read even his prayers in in in the colossian letter or in here in ephesus again and what is so striking about it as he prays for the people is most of the stuff that's in our prayer meetings isn't even mentioned in his prayers now that doesn't mean that the things that we're praying about shouldn't be prayed about but it does identify the fact that his focus was kingdom-oriented he wasn't just you know it was it says howard hendricks i think it was said you know the average prayer meeting no it wasn't it was don carson the average prayer meeting spends more time trying to keep christians out of hell out of heaven than praying sinners out of hell you know bless mrs reynolds she's back in again you know like the lord's going oh thanks for letting me know like you think i didn't know that uh please be with tommy i already am with tommy let's get on let's let's get on to something that will advance the kingdom for goodness sake let's pray let's that's why the average prayer meeting in a church just eventually dwindles to nothing that people say the same thing week after week instead of the brother that just prayed before i love that give us this give us that give us the world give us america give give us lord big prayers now you will notice that this is the case here as he identifies his request pray for me you're not concerned about liberation he's concerned about proclamation the strength that he requests is not for his own personal confrontation with the devil but for his evangelistic ministry by which he might enjoy the privilege of seeing people liberated from the dominion of the evil one and when he explained to king agrippa back in it's recorded in acts chapter 26 he quoted the charge that the lord jesus had given to him to do this very thing and so it's no surprise he prays right down that line that words that words or king james i think that utterance utterance i think utterance is good don't you because we we don't use it usually words we got words coming out of our ears as it were and uh an abundance of words he's asking for that utterance should be given me perhaps we should think of it particularly in terms of um first corinthians two and uh what is it verses four there i was with you in weakness and in fear and how much prayer and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom but in demonstration of the spirit and of power so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of man but in the power of god in other words perhaps we could say that he identifies the difference between saying something and having something to say you know the question is are you going to say something yes do you have something to say that's the more important question so i want you to pray also for me that words that words may be given to me lord speak to me that i may speak in living echoes of your tone as you have taught so let me teach your airing children lost and alone the hem writer gets it not only in word he says to the thessalonians the gospel was received by you as it came not only in word but also in power and in the holy spirit again the hymn writer oh teach me lord that i may teach the precious things thou dost in part and wing my words that they may reach the hidden depths of many a heart how can this be nobody understands how to preach none of us really know how to preach jesus was could preach apart from that it's all an approximation it is a great mystery it's humbling it's right that it should humble us it's wrong that it should paralyze us and if paul prayed pray for me that words might be given to me are you kidding me paul you wrought the half the jolly new testament yeah exactly so if he is praying what about us well to whom was he speaking to him was he speaking well he was speaking to the soldiers he was speaking to the visitors he was speaking to the contacts he was speaking to the people that he could speak to i mean philemon what what a day that must have been when when onesimus you know shows back up again hey i'm back oh yeah you're back all right yeah yeah i've been waiting for you no no no no i met a guy well she's just like jesus and the lady come see a man they're like what you've had five husbands you're living with a guy and you want us to come see a man no no no no i met a man i met a man he told me everything i ever did lord give me the words onassimus hey mr useful now what is he to do and how is he to do it well i pray for me that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly boldly now here we go boldly say well of course he is the apostle paul he's saul of tarsus and uh in other words he's just asking for something routine well no not at all because boldness clearly despite his background did not come naturally to paul it didn't come naturally to paul we have to take a face value surely what he says this is not some kind of pathetic attempt at humility when he writes to the corinthians and he says you know when i came to you when i came to you people weren't going my what a remarkable fellow look how tall and and handsome he is and his and his words no i came to you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling you know it's a bad day for us guys when we when we start to say to ourselves i've got this i'm flying over here i had a little boy with me and he wanted to see my notes and showed him my notes he was singularly unimpressed which which i was too but that's by the way but he said can you preach without notes i said yeah he said why do you have notes i said to keep me from preaching without noise [Applause] and then and then i explained to him that i've been doing this since 1975. but i write out all of my notes in the same way that i did when i was 23 years old and i was 69 on saturday not because i have to but out of discipline because the longer that we go and the more facility we have with words and the greater our ease in front of a congregation there is an exponential risk that attaches to that and i'm not suggesting for a moment that the antidote to that is in writing out of notes all i'm telling you is that for me the discipline of doing this is vital to prevent me from doing something other than that the boldness then won't be a boldness of personality it will be actually a boldness that sometimes surprises us that there's a forcefulness in the way in which we've said something that we didn't even plan to say because we realize that we're taken up as it were with the very proclamation that we're making and the gospel mystery that he was proclaiming and that he has written about in the earlier part of this this letter to the ephesians had so gripped him the amazing news that jew and gentile alike can and must be saved through the work of the crucified messiah and paul is consumed by this and so it is that he says i want to be able to proclaim this in a way that is bold is bold now when you think about it this is an apostolic pattern isn't it and i'm just thinking now that when peter and john are released from the custody of those who had opposed them back in in acts chapter four um the reason that the people were quite uh overwhelmed by them was when they saw the boldness of peter and john and perceived that they were uneducated and common men and they were astonished and they recognized that they had been with jesus that that that was the nature of the how could these feelings be so bold about this i mean they didn't go to any decent university they're not that significant i think everyone fellow was a fisherman wasn't he they're saying to one another but did you were you not struck by the way they said that that there is salvation in no one else for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which they must be saved can you believe they said that and can you believe they said it with such firmness and people said no i can't believe it at all and so when they were released they went to their friends and reported what the chief priests and the elders said to them and when they heard it they lifted their voice together to god and said sovereign lord who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them who through the mouth of our father david your servants said by the holy spirit why did the gentiles rage and so on for in this city they were gathered together against your holy servant jesus and so on and so on and so on and so we pray that you will grant to them boldness that they filled with the holy spirit will continue to speak the word of god with boldness with boldness loved ones i think it is the day for boldness and all in but we got to get it we've got to get it at the right place on the right subject in the right way okay does it we've all got strong feelings about all kinds of stuff that's going on the politicization of so many different things has uh brought out of us the good the bad and the ugly and in some cases a little more ugly than we would like and it's very easy at least for me to get real bold about stuff that i don't really need to get as bold about and to fail to be bold about the things that really matter the the the cosmic battle that rages in the heavenly places over western culture is impossible to avoid and it strikes at the very heart of the gospel itself the nature of what a family is the nature of what a man is what a woman is the nature of what truth is and so on and if we as members of um the clergy if we as pastors shepherds over our flock wimp out in these areas then we can we can be forgiven for giving such a dreadful lead to our congregations wilberforce uh in the in the context of britain many years ago uh was was engaged in a two-handed fight on the one hand if you like proclamation and on the other hand refutation refuting what isn't true and proclaiming what is true and some of us are very good at refuting and we end up building a kind of uh spirit of animosity amongst people who are end up being like a a whole host of waldorfs and stattlers those two old guys in the muppets that just sit up on a balcony just complaining about everything that's going on can you believe that look at the state of this look at that look at this and people love that yeah i agree i hate it don't you hate it yeah so where's the gospel right now or we'll get to that later we're doing refutation at the moment okay some of those are proclaimers there it is over there look at it over there look at it look at it look at it yeah but what does it mean don't worry about that look at it over there no if you're going to teach your children about animals you have to teach them this is a cow it goes like this okay and this is a horse it is not a cow and so if you don't teach them that a horse is not a cow then they're in trouble and so you know saying what's going to happen to them riding around uh milking horses and riding round and cows and say well how did you get yourself a nest there was my papa he told me no he didn't explain to you this is this but that is not this now loved ones this is where we've got to be clear we've got to be prepared in proclaiming the gospel in saying what is we have to say what isn't so for example we believe in legal tolerance right we believe in the tolerance that our democracy affords at least has done up until this point to be able to say what we believe about certain things and to afford to others the same opportunity to say what they believe even though we disagree with it that's legal tolerance social tolerance we understand that people who are different from us and came from different places and dress in a different way and have a different background like scotsman that wear kilts and things like that we have to say to our children now be nice to him he's not wearing a dress it's a kilt be nice to him you've got to be nice we understand that but intellectual tolerance tolerance that are that affords acceptance to every idea no matter what it is we can't get to we can't my jewish friends in cleveland believe that jesus is not the messiah i believe he is the messiah we can't both be right the muslim doctors that are working this morning at the cleveland clinic many of them highly moral and their children many of them in terms of moral purity are far more significant than the average evangelical child those those guys believe in the scales that the good that they're able to do will outweigh the bad we say no it can't be scales it is a cross we can both be right we can both be right the hindus believe that the incarnation has taken place again and again and again and again we believe that the incarnation was a unique and unrepeatable event and we can both be right now don't let's misunderstand boldness for arrogance but boldness the kind of courage that is needed is the courage for which he prays being bold doesn't mean being unkind there's a sweetness in it it's not fanatical it's not sectarian simply bear the torch in the face of external persecution in the face of internal opposition uh the final minister in the presbyterian church in new milnes which is in ayrshire in scotland was a man by the name of macleod he was the last gaelic speaker in that congregation there and he wrote a hymn which contains these lines courage brothers it began courage brothers do not stumble and uh he he had faced the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and it contains the it contains the verse some will love thee some will hate thee some will praise thee some will slight cease from man and look above thee trust in god and do what's right well i need to take that to myself perhaps you do too so let's try and draw this to a close we wanted we do want to have lunch at least i do that was part of the deal there has been a progression of thought in this which i'm sure i've done a wonderful job of clouding for you it started off by saying that paul was no superhero and he reveals himself as being both vulnerable and humble that his prayer request was not some generalized statement but it was specific for utterance and for boldness and he explains that it is on account of this that he was an ambassador in chains again luke records for us when he came when we came into rome paul was allowed to stay by himself with a soldier that guarded him it's because of the hope of israel he said to them that i am wearing this chain in other words it was his faithfulness that had cost him his freedom his faithfulness cost him his freedom i'm not a prophet i'm certainly not the son of a prophet but if things continue as they are one or two of us are going to go to jail for holding true to the gospel and i hope it's a good albus a good guy which limits the possibilities significantly as it as um but you know what i mean you know what i mean i mean if you know if things continue as they are it's not difficult to imagine that any faithful pastor trying to unpack the second half of romans chapter one is going to be on the receiving end not only of opposition but actually of persecution have you noticed how stalin-esque things have become the other day watching a soccer uh game in in the the uk from from here but watching it on tv i noticed that in the hoardings that go around advertising things it it came up liverpool fc forward slash abuse reports and what it's actually saying there is we want you [Music] to tell on your friends and your family if they violate some of our now accepted creeds for sexual matters for race matters and so on in other words that's that's what stalin did right that's exactly what he did he made sure that he didn't just have secret police who were watching out for things he encouraged the general population to spill the beans on members of their family who were prepared to violate the accepted norms now you think about that yes well [Music] an ambassador for the gospel in chains god making his appeal through us ambassadors enjoy special privileges access freedom diplomatic immunity they speak with the authority of the government that they represent if they had a chain it would be a sign of a dormant a symbol of dignity a signal of the symbol of power paul's chain is a very different chain i am an ambassador in chains why because he represents a higher throne a higher throne than this world is now he represents the king of kings the lord of lords his painful prison chains he regards as a royal insignia of his service of jesus and once again you will notice he makes it perfectly clear that he's not seeking their sympathy he's not praying for freedom except for the freedom of the gospel and for their help in declaring it boldly well how did it go how did it go the evidence is at the end of his story when he finally writes uh his swan song and uh he writes to timothy there in chapter four and he says here's the deal the lord stood by me and strengthened me so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the gentiles might hear it oh that's wonderful isn't it well how did you do on sunday pastor well the lord stood by me and he gave me strength so that through me yeah vulnerable little me the message of the gospel might be fully proclaimed and all the gentiles might hear it well let's just pause for a moment of silence and a prayer only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of christ so there whether i come and see you or i'm absent i may hear of you that you're standing firm in one spirit with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel and not frightened in anything by your opponents this is a clear sign to them of their destruction but of your salvation and that from god for it has been granted to you that for the sake of christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake engaged in the same conflict that you saw i had and now here that i still have father thank you that you put your treasure in old clay pots so that the transcendent power might be seen to belong to god and not to us help us in our task we pray help us to help one another by our prayers help us to remind our congregations that we're not even close to super let alone superheroes and that we are entirely dependent that they would stand by us in prayer thank you for those who do thank you that in eternity it will become clear that prayer was the work and preaching was just gathering up the results we bless you in christ's name amen this message was brought to you from truth for life where the learning is for living to learn more about truth for life with aleister begg visit us online at truthforlife.org you

Channel: Alistair Begg

Views: 134,124

Keywords: Church Life, Evangelism, Pastors, Prayer, Preaching

Id: eXpDJ8olpXE

Length: 47min 12sec (2832 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 01 2022