Ascension Presbyterian Lord's Day Worship

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Grace and peace to you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Welcome to the corporate worship of our great
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God. Please stand. Oh, come, let us sing unto the
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Lord. Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation.
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Let us come before his presence with Thanksgiving and make a joyful noise unto him with psalms.
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For the Lord is a great God and a great king above all gods.
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In his hand are the deep places of the earth. The strength of the hills is his also.
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The sea is his and he made it in his hands formed the dry land.
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Oh, come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the
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Lord, our maker, for he is our God and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hands.
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Please pray with me now. Oh, Lord, we invoke the name above all names.
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We come to you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, father, son and Holy Spirit.
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And because of this, oh, Lord, we are assured of the suitableness of our station to be here because we are united to Christ.
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The feebleness of our worship is transformed by the
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Holy Spirit. And father, we ask that you would be glorified in all these things.
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It's in Jesus name that we pray. Amen. Please kneel for the corporate confession of sin.
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Let us confess with one voice. God of love, it is your will that we should love you with heart, soul, mind and strength and our neighbor as ourselves.
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But we are not sufficient for these things. We confess our affections continually turn away from you from purity to lust, from freedom to slavery, from compassion to indifference, from fullness to emptiness.
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Have mercy on us. Order our lives by your holy word and make your commandments the joy of our hearts.
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For us, the image of your loving son, Jesus, that we may shine before the world to your glory.
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Please stand. Who is a
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God like you, hardening iniquity and passing over the transgressions of the remnant of his heritage?
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He does not retain his anger forever because he delights in mercy.
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He will again have compassion on us and will subdue our iniquities.
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He will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea. Oh, people of God, rejoice today.
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If you be in Christ, your sins are forgiven. Amen. Let us take up the hymnal now and turn to number 55.
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To God be the glory. Please take up the insert which we just practiced prior to the service for Psalm 67
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C. Oh God, show mercy to us. Please turn in your
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Bibles to Revelation chapter 21 for the reading of the scripture.
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Revelation 21. And I saw a new heaven and a new earth. For the first heaven and the first earth were passed away, and there was no more sea.
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And I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
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And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them and be their
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God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things are passed away.
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And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I will make all things new. And he said unto me,
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Write, for these words are true and faithful. And he said unto me, It is done. I am
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Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is a thirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.
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He that overcometh shall inherit all things, and I will be his God, and he shall be my son.
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But the fearful and unbelieving and the abominable and the murderers and the whoremongers and the sorcerers and the idolaters and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.
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And there came unto me one of the seven angels, which had the seven vials full of the seven last plagues, and talked with me, saying,
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Come hither, I will shew thee the bride, the lamb's wife. And he carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me the great city, the holy
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Jerusalem, descending out of the heaven of God, having the glory of God, and her light was like unto a stone most precious, even like a jasper stone clear as crystal, and had a wall great and high, and had twelve gates, and at gates twelve angels, and names written thereon, which the names of them were the twelve tribes of the children of Israel.
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On the east three gates, on the north three gates, on the south three gates, and on the west three gates.
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And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and in them the names of the twelve apostles of the lamb.
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And he that talked with me had a golden reed to measure the city, and the gates thereof, and the wall thereof.
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In the city lieth four square, and the length is as large as its breadth. And he measured the city with the reed twelve thousand furlongs, the length and breadth, and the height of it were equal.
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And he measured the wall thereof a hundred and forty -four cubits, according to the measure of a man, that is of the angel.
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In the building of the wall it was of jasper, and the city was pure gold, like unto clear glass.
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And the foundations of the wall of the city were garnished with all manner of precious stones. The first foundation was jasper, the second sapphire, the third a chalcedony, and fourth an emerald, and the fifth sardonyx, and the sixth sardius, and the seventh chrysostom, and the eighth beryl, and the ninth topaz, and the tenth chrysostom, the eleventh adjacent, and the twelfth an amethyst.
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In the twelve gates were twelve pearls, every several gate was one of the pearls. And the street of the city was pure gold, as it were transparent glass.
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And I saw no temple therein, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it.
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And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God did lighten it, and the
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Lamb is the light thereof. And the nations of them which were saved shall walk in the light of it, and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honor into it.
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And the gates of it shall not be shut at all by day, for there shall be no night there.
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And there shall bring the glory and honor of the nations into it, and there shall end no wise enter into it.
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Anything that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination or makes a lie. And they which are written in the
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Lamb's book of life. This is the word of the Lord. Let us now confess our faith with the joyful singing of the
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Apostles' Creed. I believe in God, the living
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Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the
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Holy Spirit, born of the virgin's womb, was crucified dead, and He descended into hell.
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The third day He rose again from the dead to have the right of the
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Holy Spirit. I believe the holy catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body.
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Please take up the hymnal and find number 111. This is my
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Father's world, 111. Let's begin. This is my
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Father's world. Preparations now for the prayers of the people.
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Let us now pray together in unison. Almighty and everlasting
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God, in whom we live and we your beloved children, offer to you our humble praises for having preserved us from the beginning of our lives to this day.
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Especially do we praise you for having delivered us from the dangers and uncertainties of this past week.
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These mercies we bless and magnify your glorious name, humbly beseeching you to accept this our morning sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving.
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For His sake who lay down in the grave and rose again for us, your Son, our
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Savior Jesus Christ. Fulfill now, O Lord, our desires and petitions as may be best for us, granting us in this world knowledge of thy truth, and in the world to come, life everlasting.
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Amen. I ask your prayers for God's people throughout the world, for our denomination, for this church, and for all ministers and missionaries.
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Pray for the church. Lord, hear our prayers. We pray for the
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Covenant Presbyterian Church, especially as it regards the issues of of the elder and the office of elder.
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We pray that you would grant the CPC wisdom, and that we would be walking in your truth, and when all is said and done, we would hear, well done, good and faithful servant.
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Regarding the CPC, we pray that we would be found faithful. We pray especially for Ascension Presbyterian Church, Lord, that we would be found faithful.
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God, I pray that no root of bitterness, of envy, of slander, of gossip would be found in our church, but that we would truly love one another, that we would have love cover a multitude of sins amongst us, and in this way that we would show forth that we are your disciples, that others would hear in and see the glory of Christ in his gospel.
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And we pray that you would do this, not because we're worthy, but because we ask in the name of Jesus.
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Amen. I ask your prayers for the poor, the sick, the bereaved, the burdened, and for the widows, orphans, and prisoners.
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Pray for those in any need or trouble. Lord, hear our prayers.
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Ask your prayers for those who do not know Christ and for those who seek a deeper knowledge of him.
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Pray that they may find and be found by him. Lord, hear our prayers.
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Lord, hear our prayers.
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I ask your prayers for our children and future generations which will be born to them.
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Pray that the knowledge of the Lord will fill the earth through them. Lord, hear our prayers.
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Pray that we may have grace to glorify Christ in our own day. We pray,
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Lord, that as we seek your face, even the trials would be sweet to our face.
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As we seek your face, Lord, that even the things that are difficult, we would bring you great glory.
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We ask that you would have us prioritize what you prioritize, and that you would show us,
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Lord, where we need to perform the things in order, that we would keep
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Christ as the main thing, and in this way glorify you. In Jesus' name we pray.
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Amen. Please remain standing for the reading of the word from the epistle of James in chapter 5.
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I'm going to begin reading in verse 7 and complete the entire chapter from there.
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This is God's holy and infallible word. Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the
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Lord. Behold, the husband waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain.
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Be also patient, establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh.
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Grudge not one against another, brethren, lest ye be condemned. Behold, the judge standeth before the door.
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Take, my brethren, the prophets who have spoken in the name of the Lord for an example of suffering affliction and of patience.
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Behold, we count them happy which endure. You have heard of the patience of Job and have seen the end of the
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Lord, that the Lord is very pitiful and of tender mercy. But above all things, my brethren, swear not, neither by heaven, neither by the earth, neither by any other oath, but let your yea be yea and your nay, nay, lest you fall into condemnation.
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Is any among you afflicted? Let him pray. Is any merry?
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Let him sing psalms. Is any sick among you? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the
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Lord. And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up, and if he has committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.
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Confess your faults one to another and pray one for another that you may be healed.
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The effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.
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Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain, and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months.
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And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit.
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Brethren, if any of you do err from the truth, and one convert him, let him know that he which converted the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and he shall hide a multitude of sins.
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Please pray with me now. O Lord, I ask that you would grant these your people the gift of prayer, that they would pray in accordance with your will, that in every season and circumstance their attitude would be one of either praise or prayer, hope and obedience.
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And we ask all this in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. Please be seated.
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The title of the message today is Providence and Prayer, and the whole of the sermon could be found under this heading,
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The Efficacy of Prayer in Every Circumstance. The Efficacy of Prayer in Every Circumstance.
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For those of you who need some form of outline to help you with your attention, the first point
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I would offer is the Christian is to see everything in relation to God.
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That is obvious, but we need a special attention to this subject.
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The Christian is to see everything in relation to God. Second, we will recount the circumstances of prayer and praise in our text.
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And lastly, we will probably not give much attention to, you'll have an assignment today, this afternoon, to read the narrative of 1
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Kings 17 and 18. It's a lot more than just rain not falling in context.
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We're probably not gonna spend much time because of how long it will take to get through the other parts, but I encourage you to read that today.
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An example of fervent, effective prayer of a righteous man, the example of Elijah, is the third point.
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And finally, we will give more application. Hopefully there'll be more interspersed throughout.
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The Efficacy of Prayer in Every Circumstance.
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John Calvin said in relationship to this part of the book of James, James here means that there is not no time.
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There is no time in which God does not invite us to himself.
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And I was spellbound by that. There is no occasion, there is no time where God does not bid us to come to him.
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Wow, what a privilege it is to be the people of God. We say, though, with the disciples,
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Lord, teach us to pray. The Christians are to see everything in relation to God.
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One of the things that is so often a challenge for us is we have many needs and responsibilities, many obligations and duties to perform.
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And because of that busyness and our own creatureliness and the earthiness of our lives, we can go along with some period of time not considering how this relates to my relationship with God.
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Everything in life, as we learned this morning, everything is touched by the word of God.
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Everything for the Christian must be seen and perceived in relation to his covenant communion with God.
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That right there would be enough for us to dwell on, to think about. But this is just an overarching idea.
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A great commentator and theologian, Mateer said, to pray to him is to acknowledge his sovereign power to meet our needs.
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And to praise every occasion, prayer and praise in our text, in every circumstance.
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In praying, we acknowledge his sovereign power to meet our needs. And in praise is to acknowledge his sovereign power in appointing our circumstances.
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And you may say, I don't like my circumstances. And I say, toughen up. Praise the
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Lord. He has put you there. Whether as a source of supply in need, he is our supply or the source of the gladness of our joy.
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God himself is our sufficiency. Your life must be characterized by prayer, by praise, by faith, by obedience and hope.
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If you live your life before the face of God and you're praying to him and you're praising him, that will be your experience, an experience of joy and hope and obedience.
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This is more than just a proposition. James urges us to find in God sufficiency and to make use of the divine resources that he has supplied.
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Brethren, do you see everything, every detail of your life in relationship to your relationship with God?
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How is the Christian to see everything in relation to God? Mater, again, the
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Christian life is to be an exercise, listen carefully, in practice consecration.
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The Christian life is to be an exercise in practiced consecration to how though every pleasure praise.
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Every pleasure that comes in is an occasion for me to praise God and brethren, moment by moment, every heartbeat, every breath, you, the people of God have an occasion for praise because you have been redeemed by the precious blood of the lamb.
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The father has so loved you that he has sent his son into the world to die for you and to redeem you and to sanctify you and to draw him, draw you to himself.
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How though every pleasure sanctify each pain, the whole of our lives, whether sorrowful or joyful, should be deflected upward at once into his presence.
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These two concepts will come a little bit later. I'm going to offer them now. The praise reflex is reflective.
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God in his mercy does things that are beneficial to us and kind to us and we reflect back to him the goodness of his dealings with us.
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But when trials come and circumstances come and hard things come, we grab the shield of faith and when those circumstances come, we hold up a shield of faith and we deflect it and allow it to go back up to God.
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The Christian has tremendous privileges here in prayer that others do not enjoy. These afflictions, these hardships don't just fall upon me, they're deflected heavenward.
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When we exercise in faith this great joy and privilege of prayer in both of these, there is a glad acceptance of the will of God.
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And that's going to become very critical for us because there may be a deficiency not only in our practice, but our understanding of prayer because it swirls around this concept of the will of God.
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This is the common element of both prayer and praise.
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In praise we say to him, Oh God, your will is so good, perfect and acceptable.
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This is what you have done for me and in this I will rejoice. And in prayer, in the time of trouble, in emulation of our
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Lord Jesus Christ in the garden, it is a faith declaration that says, not my will, but yours, oh
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Lord, be done. When Jesus faced all of the forces of evil, all of the anguish, all of the difficulties, what set before him the cross, the turning of God's back on him, the laying upon him and making him of sin at the moment of that strongest attack.
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The Lord Jesus, it says in Luke 22, he prayed more earnestly.
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The son of God, righteous, all of his perfections, he prayed earnestly.
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I feel under heavy conviction personally, for our congregation, for the church as a whole, we are weak in prayer.
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We are weak in praise. We are weak, but he can make us strong.
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Prayer doesn't always remove the affliction. This is
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R .B .G. Tasker being quoted in a couple of places. Prayer may not remove the affliction, but it most certainly can transform it.
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The Christian in prayer is reflecting all of his life upward, acknowledging the sufficiency and sovereignty of God and his dealings with us in Providence.
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The difficult circumstances that come in your life are not a deficiency in God's plan.
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They are God's plan. Your hardship has been given to you by God himself.
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Practicing, however, the grace of acceptance. Rejecting the disgrace of stubbornness in this, the voice of prayer and praise are united.
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They come together in one. For alike, they say, this will of God is good.
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Only prayer can do that. Only praise facilitates and fosters this in the heart of the believer.
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Only then, when you do these things, take advantage of these things, which the Lord has supplied for us so abundantly.
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Then you will get a sense of it all. Then you'll understand why these afflictions come. You understand why you have more and more occasion to praise his holy name.
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Well, the first question that we have to answer, it's one of those funny things we always talk about prayer.
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Do we really know what it means? The prayer is an offering up of our request to God, certainly, isn't it?
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But when you get into the deepness of the language and you begin to consider it across the whole of scripture, there's something that emerges that is very striking, and it may be missing in your own thinking.
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I want you to listen to this in part definition of prayer. To pray, to really pray, is to interact with the
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Lord, your covenant God, by switching and transforming your ideas and your human wishes and exchanging them for his wishes as he grants you faith.
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This is what it means to pray in the silence.
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That's not really what we do when we pray. We say, oh,
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God, give me what I want. And he says in silence, no.
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We ask a miss. We say, oh, God, take away this affliction.
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And he may say, no, you must be instructed by her. No, the people around you must be instructed by your affliction.
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I'm not going to take it away. Prayer, real prayer, genuine prayer, is to interact with the
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Lord by switching our wishes and ideas for his. Sounds similar to what the definition of repentance ultimately is, is to take upon ourselves the mind of God related to some sin or some obedience or some omission in our lives.
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We've not repented. If we still cherish that sin, we've not repented of it.
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To repent of sin means not only am I not doing it, I want nothing to do with it any longer because God has said it is bad and is evil.
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And I agree with God. So to the Christian and prayer.
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Interacts with the Lord with a switching. Oh, Lord, my circumstances are hard.
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Oh, Lord, I am grieved. Oh, Lord, life is hard. I bring these things to you in prayer.
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Now correct my thinking about all that is happening in my life and in prayer, the grace of faith.
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He's going to reveal to you the errors in your thinking, the ways that you are praying that are amiss.
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And he's going to set you on the right course. I want to confront us all with this.
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Because really, we have to confess today and we have to today for not another moment, we have to repent of this.
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We've come to God in prayer and said, oh, Lord, give me what I want.
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Repent of that today. Purpose to repent of that idea today, that notion of there is a sanctified granting of our desires in accordance with his will.
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If your will is in accordance with his will, your desires are going to be granted. But we have to confess that you must confess that you have gone to him saying,
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I know what's best for my life and I want you to give me what I want. It's not good.
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It's an egregious thing. Do you pray that your wishes would be changed?
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So how we pray, we are an idolatrous and self -willed people.
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The last idol to be slain is you, your idol, your selfish idol.
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You pray wanting what you want. You pray in a self -willed way, approaching
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God with the intent of him granting your wishes. You see the idolatry in there.
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You see, you and your wishes are the most important thing. It's idolatry.
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Maybe, maybe we don't pray as we ought because we intuitively know that he may say no to what we want.
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Now, I know there is an omission and a deficiency and a laziness in our approach to God.
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And I would say there is a deficiency in our faith. It's an element of unbelief. We do not believe that God's arm is long enough or strong enough to act practically.
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This one is scaring me a little bit. This possibility. Maybe we don't approach
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God in prayer because we know he won't give us what we really want.
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We have not because we ask not from James.
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We ask and we receive not because we ask amiss that we may consume it in our lusts.
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Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.
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Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness. Oh Lord, teach us to pray.
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Our father, which art in heaven, hallowed be your name, thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
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Oh Lord, will you teach us to pray today? We ask this through the expounding of your word.
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Let's look again at our text in verse 13.
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Is any among you afflicted? And this affliction covers the whole breadth of life.
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There's certainly sickness included in this. This is part of afflictions, but this is any hardship or trouble.
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James in his very practical instruction at the close of this epistle says, are any among you afflicted?
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The efficacy of prayer in every circumstances, happy, merry, afflicted, sick, dying, starving, vigorous, whatever it is, the
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Christian in relation to God through prayer and praise, he has an answer. If any of you is afflicted, any of you enduring any hardship, any suffering, you need to pray.
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I know some of you are dealing with hard things today. Some of you have health challenges.
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Some of you have financial pressures. Some of you have strained relationships.
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You're enduring hard things. You should be in a constant state of prayer.
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You are enduring afflictions. The remedy, the answer is to pray in that way that we have described.
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To literally switch our wishes and our ideas for his wishes as he imparts faith.
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Oh, Lord, I'm under this hardship and this affliction. You may find that this is a self -inflicted wound.
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Your sin has led to all of the hardship. You can't even ascribe it to just works of providence.
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Your sinful actions have dug a pit for yourselves. A snare has gone around your leg.
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You have fallen into it. If you're afflicted because of providential circumstances, you run to Christ in prayer.
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The part I'm most excited about today, because the other part is a little too convicting, in verse 13, are any of you merry?
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Are you cheerful? And really at the heart of this word, it's kind of an old way of saying it.
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Are you of good courage? Does joy fill your heart? Well, you can't move on from that without responding in every circumstance.
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There's an appropriate response to God in affliction. I have to pray if there be cause for rejoicing and merriment.
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I need to burst forth in song and every Lord's day. As the gathered people of God, there should be the joyful singing of songs.
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But you know what? That should happen as a course and pattern of your life throughout the week. I'm the redeemed one.
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I belong to Christ. My sins have been forgiven. Burst forth in praise.
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Now, what's interesting about this in the original language, it doesn't say sing psalms.
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It says, let him sing. But the word that is translated sing is psaletto.
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It's from where we get the idea of songs. But this is the part that I really want you to grab.
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To psaletto is to pull, to twitch, to twang, or to play.
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To play on a stringed instrument. To celebrate the praises of God in song.
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And brethren, you and I today and every day, because of the merriment of our heart, need to pluck the strings of our cheerful hearts and allow the vibrations of joy to exit our mouth in the exclamation of praise.
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Pluck the harp of our hearts. The twang comes out.
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We strum and twitch and we pull and we say, oh God, you have done a mighty thing in saving us.
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And your heart bursts forth in song. But you see, there's an activity there.
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You have to reach in there. You have to pull on it. You have to twitch it.
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You have to twang it. You have to play it. That you might sing.
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That's the other part of this. And the reason there's not a praise on our lips, like there's not a prayer in our heart, is we don't do these things.
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We don't see, we're not looking for occasions for praise. We're looking for reasons to complain.
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Oh Lord, make our hearts merry. Oh Lord, teach us to pray.
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Help us to pluck the chords of joy in our hearts that we might sing praises to you.
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It requires something of us to see things as they really are.
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To really acknowledge the good things that Christ has done for us.
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Let's consider verse 14. Is anyone sick among you?
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We see the importance of seeing everything in relation to God. But there's some other components in this that are tied to our relation to God.
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We are tied to the ecclesia, the church. It says in verse 14, if any are sick among you, let him call for the presbyteros, the
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Presbyterians, the elders of the church, and let them pray over him.
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I don't know what the occasion is. I don't know that you should call for the elders of the church if you have a common cold.
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But if you're afflicted, if you're suffering, if you're languishing in your sickness, in your illness, you should pray and ask the elders of the church to come and pray over you.
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It's important to see here that we cannot have a relationship with God apart from a relationship with his church.
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And a church isn't a church if it doesn't have officers. There has to be elders in a church.
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So you and I have to recognize that God has established order in this world. And he says, you're not just a
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Christian floating around. You're a member of the church and you're under the authority of the elders. And those elders are under the authority of other elders in a presbytery and call on them, ask them to pray over you.
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I've been asked to do this twice and I've done it twice. If you ever want the elders of the church to come pray for you, call upon us.
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We will come. Now, the next word is important.
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Anointing. To anoint him with oil in the name of the
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Lord. This idea is usually seen with some question marks.
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We would reject the notions and I'm not going to get into it in the Romans of extreme unction. But I've done this prayer ritual and I've brought olive oil both times.
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Some people say today we shouldn't do that. To anoint something is to show honor.
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To anoint oil on someone is to smear and cover their face in their head.
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It was perceived to be of medicinal value, but I think that the real balm of the oil in that ancient world was soothing.
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It was comforting. So prayer should be for us as the people of God.
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It was usually olive oil. It was put on the face of a guest to refresh them.
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And I was thinking about this in a very practical way. I spend time in the sun, too much time in the sun, and sometimes my skin is dry.
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And I was thinking that dry and arid land, how dry it must have always been and dusty.
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I bet the young people had raggedy, crinkly, wrinkled skin. And what must have it have felt like to have something that was somewhat costly to produce.
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For you to come to a house and for the host of that home to take that oil and to smear it and rub it to show you honor and to relieve you of your suffering in some way.
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It must have been very powerful and beautiful to have your head anointed with oil.
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Anointing, it's been said, shares a penetrating comfort to impart strength, healing and joy.
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We should use oil in this ceremony because of our creatureliness and the provision of the
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Lord. The prayer, the oil running down our face would be the covering of our prayers.
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We would tangibly feel that oil dripping down our head and onto our beard.
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And we would say, oh, Lord, I feel and I sense the physical, but it points me to the spiritual, the reality that the elders appointed for this very purpose to lead the church, to serve the people have come and have prayed over me for my healing.
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Oh, Lord, this is a comfort. We pass over these ordinary things.
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You've probably got a better moisturizer in your cabinet than olive oil.
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But I wonder if we've lost something. Now, the question of healing comes here.
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Look at verse 15. It says, the prayer of faith shall save the sick.
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Does that mean every time you pray for the sick, I can imagine there'll be some in the charismatic realm says the reason the prayers don't work is their lack of faith and everybody can be healed if there's the proper prayer.
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Does it seem to teach that? The idea of sozo, and it's one of those words that is connected to save and salvation, is to heal, preserve, rescue, to properly deliver out of danger and into safety.
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Do you know that you could be wretchedly sick because of sin? Providence, circumstances, we live in a fallen world.
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You can be diseased for no fault of your own. I think this pastoral approach acknowledges that maybe
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I have brought some disease into my life through sin. This would make some sense to me why the elders prayers would unearth this.
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They're shepherding. They'd be saying, okay, are you cheating on your wife? Maybe that's why you're afflicted.
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Are you robbing your employer? Maybe that's why these things are happening. The pastor would be looking into this.
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Not every sickness is because of sin overtly, but it is ultimately, isn't it, about sin and the salvation that we enjoy.
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The sozo of this might be a comfort and a peace and a shalom in the midst of this sickness, which would lead ultimately to your death.
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There is a salvation, a saving in that. This idea, of course, is principally used of God rescuing believers from the penalty and power of sin.
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Maybe I've read of a Puritan account of a man who was obstinate and his reception of the gospel fell desperately ill.
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He called for the elders and they prayed for him, anointed him, and he actually came to saving faith in Christ and died a couple of weeks later.
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They said it was assuredly the illness, the sickness that drove this obstinate man to his knees.
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The saving of that man was not that he got relieved of the affliction, but he had a soul that was now reconciled to God and was saved.
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It says the prayer of faith shall save the sick and the
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Lord shall raise him up. Of course, we immediately think of resurrection, but it could be a healing physically, bodily out of the bed.
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It could be a real resurrection unto life with faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
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And it says, and if he has committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.
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You and I need to be keeping short accounts with God and with one another.
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The second part of this is first was our relation to God in that global sense in every respect.
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And then the church, which is reflected in the representatives of the church, the officers, but we're also required to have communion with one another.
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It says in verse 16, confess your faults one to another and pray for one another that ye may be healed.
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I thank Mitch for praying today about the things that can happen negatively in the church body.
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If we're sinning against each other and we're not loving each other properly, bitterness begins to grow.
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We become discontent. But if we confess our faults to each other and pray for one another and love each other in this very deep and profound and intimate way, then there would be healing.
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And I think this healing extends beyond, of course, the physical, but the breaches that could exist in a home and a marriage between parents and children and husband and wives.
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One of the greatest things that you can do if you're in any conflict is to acknowledge and own your part to confess your faults.
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One of the things I hope will happen in the years to come at Ascension is that we would love each other and trust each other so much that we could confess our faults to one another.
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We wear masks. We cover ourselves. We perform for each other.
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It's time we became very honest with each other. And I think you'll find that when you go to an honorable
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Christian person in your time of need, confessing your sins, they're going to be very eager to run to help you, to deliver you out of that struggle and bondage that you find yourself.
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Pray for one another. When those prayer requests come through, earnestly, if you're able to in that moment, stop in that moment and adopt that idea of that newer, fresher definition of prayer, that you would take that circumstance and you would beseech the
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Lord and plead with him that he would reveal his will and that we would be conformed to it.
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That we would bear each other's burdens in this way, that we would carry the load of one another.
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And it's only possible if we share that load with one another.
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Well, the last part of verse 16, I'm going to spend a moment on an overarching doctrine, the whole of life.
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Now, relationship to the church broadly through her leadership and her members, and now the results.
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Do we really believe in the power of prayer? As I said this morning, propositionally we do, practically we don't.
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We simply do not believe it. The favorite slogan of the 80s probably was for Christians, prayer changes things.
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I want to have a different definition. Prayer changes you. Prayer changes me.
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And that's what we don't want. That's the confrontation. That's the tension. Do you want to be irrevocably changed?
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As a pastor, I see in myself and others, we rarely change our personality defects.
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Defects get a little bit sanctified, but there's not radical change. And I have to wonder, is it because we don't want to be changed?
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It says here that the effectual, it's the word that we ultimately get energy from, the idea of being at work, made to a work, made to accomplish things, the effectiveness, the intensification of work.
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So this kind of praying is just not, Oh Lord, help Mark's toe that's hurting. This is a prayer at work, laboring and really being spent and giving a lot of energy and attention to and a crying out to God.
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It takes things from one stage, one point, and it takes us to the next.
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One description of this is it's like an electrical current energizing a wire at the end, making it a shining light bulb.
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It is the reason why the righteous man's prayer has outward success.
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He's a righteous man. He's praying in the will of God. He's clinging to the hem of the
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Lord's garment. He is not letting go until God blesses him. That's a prayer that works.
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We don't pray that way. Oh Lord, you know, all the troubles I have in my life and I pray that you would make my circumstances better.
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Amen. It's not this kind of praying, but maybe most striking in this language structure of prayer is the idea of fervency.
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The effectual fervent prayer says to be strong, to have power.
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I am filled with health and vigor. If I'm fervent, I have this strength. Fervency is an embodied strength.
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And I love this language. It gets into the fray. It engages the resistance.
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I should point out to you, one of the reasons we don't pray and one reason we don't pray, especially for one another is every time
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I pray for someone, the Lord seems to make me want to go do something. The Lord meets the needs of his people through his people.
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I don't know if you know that. He doesn't send money down from heaven. The Lord provides for us, his people through the moving in the spirit of his people to help them in their time of need.
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I don't want to pray because that means I might have to go do some work for somebody. I don't want to pray for them.
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I might have to step in and get involved. Are you getting into the fray with people?
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Are you engaging the resistance? For the believer, this idea of fervency is referring to the
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Lord strengthening them with a combative, confrontive force to achieve all he gives faith for.
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It's got a military tone to it. This is the kind of prayer that the
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Lord loves to hear and to answer. That is when we're facing some kind of resistance.
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This is what brings. This is very important. What the Lord defines is success.
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Fervency brings not what I think success is, but what the Lord defines success to be in the will of God, praying in the will of God, praising him for his will.
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All these things seem to be coming together. This very combative.
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Are you combative in your prayers? Are you engaged? Are you fully engaged in your praying the urgent request?
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Oh, Lord, the Lord approves the urgent request of a righteous man who's energized by him.
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One commentator on the Greek text said here, the believer seeks to make petitions in faith.
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And I love this language again, which are in accord with God's in birthings.
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And what is that? The persuasion of his will, earnestness, eagerness, great vehemence with great warmth,
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Epaphroditus, Paul writes, salutes you, Colossians four. He labors fervently for you in his prayers.
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Well, the time is gone. The James gives us a great example in Elijah and in that account.
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And I gave you at first Kings 17 and 18. Please read that this afternoon. It is the Sabbath day after all.
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You don't have anything else to be doing. You should read a couple of chapters of the Bible. In this section, we have.
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Elijah confronting the wickedness of Ahab, the exposure of the 450 wicked prophets of Baal, the destruction of them, him calling fire down from heaven.
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And just before that, he has the provision of the widow and her son, the death of the widow's son and the reinvigoration and life and resurrection of the dead son.
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All happens in this section that James cites to show that the effective fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.
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Well, the first thought that comes to mind is our Lord in his high priestly prayer prayed.
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That he would carry some people with him. And you are part of that band.
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The effective fervent prayer of the righteous man has availed much the people of God, you and I in light of these things must boldly approach the throne of grace.
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That we might find help in our time of need to neglect.
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Prayer is a great deficiency in Christian virtue. It demonstrates a lack of faith and it denies that God has power to act.
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Where do you run when the chips are down? You better be running to the Lord in prayer. You better be ready and willing when you pray to him on your knees and your knees better get scabbed.
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You better be on your knees and you better be able to hear his voice. The truth to come through in prayer as revealed in scripture and the power of the spirit.
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You've also got to pray in such a way that you're really willing to get mixed up in the dirty business of everybody's lives.
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We need to ask the Lord today to grant us greater faith that would yield greater fervency in our prayers.
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And finally, take every circumstance to the
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Lord. Reflect his goodness and praise.
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Or hold up the shield of faith and redirect all of the trials and the hardships and the sufferings and the afflictions of this light.
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Deflect them heavenward in prayer that we might find help in our time of need.
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Brethren, James teaches that righteous praying yields God's power because righteous praying has
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God's will as its aim. Let's pray together.
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Oh Lord, we cry out to you with thanksgiving for your servant Calvin, who teaches us through the exposition of your word, through ordinary preaching.
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He comes to this, that your servant James means to tell us that there is no time in which
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God does not invite us to himself. And oh Lord, how much more weighty and potent is this for us who are now about to approach your table?
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You bid us to come. Oh Lord, help us to enjoy the fullness of the gift of your grace.
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And oh Lord, we say with the disciples, oh Lord, teach us to pray.
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We ask all these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Let us continue our worship through the presentation of our tithes and offerings.
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Please stand and let us pray. Our gracious God and Father, we have just heard that we are to praise you through our singing.
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That if we are cheerful, if we are of good courage, that we would praise you in our singing.
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Your word also tells us that you love a cheerful giver, that one of the things to which we can, out of the great joy and the bounty which you have provided us, and we are truly very blessed, that we would be pleased to show that through cheerful giving.
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We pray, Father, that as we have done this as part of our worship service, that you would give us thankful hearts for the great provision which you have given us in Christ.
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We ask you, Lord, that we would continue to do these things as part of our worship service, but also,
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Lord, that you would bless those with wisdom to whom these funds are committed, that they may use them appropriately.
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And we ask this in Christ's name. Amen. Let us glorify our great
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God in the singing of the Gloria Patri. Glory be to the
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Father, and to the Son, and to the
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Holy, as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be for ever.
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The Lord be with you. And also with you. Lift up your hearts. We lift them up to the
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Lord. Let us give thanks to the Lord. It is right, and a good and joyful thing, that we should, at all times and in all places, give thanks to you,
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O Holy Lord, Father Almighty, Everlasting God, because you sent your beloved
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Son to redeem us from sin and death, and to make us heirs in Him of everlasting life, that when
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He shall come again in power and great triumph to judge the world, we may, without shame or fear, rejoice to behold
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His appearing. Therefore, with angels and archangels, and with all the company of heaven, we praise and magnify your glorious name, evermore praising you and singing.
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Please be seated.
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Let us pray. Almighty God, you are the creator and Lord of all things.
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You are the sovereign majesty whom we have offended. You are our most loving and merciful
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Father, who has given your Son to reconcile us to yourself, who has ratified the
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New Testament and covenant of grace with His most precious blood, and has instituted this holy sacrament to be celebrated in remembrance of Him till His coming.
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Sanctify these creatures of bread and wine, which, according to your institution and command, we set apart to this holy use, that they may be sacramentally the body and blood of the
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Son, Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen. The night in which our
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Lord was betrayed, He took bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it and gave it to His disciples, saying,
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Take, eat. This is my body which is broken for you.
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Likewise, after supper, He took the cup, and when He had given thanks, He gave it to them, saying,
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Drink this, all of you. This is the New Testament in my blood. As often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the
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Lord's death until He comes. Therefore, we proclaim the faith. As we approach the table, let us pray this prayer together.
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We do not presume to come to this your table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in your manifold and great mercies.
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You are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs unto your table, but you are the same
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Lord who always shows mercy. Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of your dear
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Son, Jesus Christ, and the drink of His blood, that our sinful bodies may be cleaned by His body, and our souls washed through His most precious blood, and that we may evermore dwell in Him, and He in us.
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Amen. Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us, the gifts of God for the people of God.