Wednesday January 6, 2021 PM

To pray about, so we want to take time to do that tonight. So let me open just with a brief word of prayer and then share some things, all right? Lord, we are grateful for the day you've given us. Thank you for your faithfulness, your loving kindness, your graciousness towards us.

We certainly don't deserve the blessings that you pour out upon us day by day, moment by moment. Lord, we know that we are a needy people and we look to you. You are the God who supplies all of our needs according to your riches in Christ.

Lord, we pray for your blessing on our time tonight as we share together, as we pray together. Lord, would you knit our hearts together in love for one another, but most especially, Lord, may we love you with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Lord, we come before your throne of grace tonight seeking mercy and help in time of need. We thank you that you are a faithful God who hears the prayers of your people for the glory of Jesus' name. So may you bless our time tonight.

In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Well, I want to talk to you a little bit about prayer tonight and a particular kind of prayer. And to lead into that, I was thinking about Paul's prayers. And we certainly see a number of prayers of the Apostle Paul scattered through his letters.

And one of the things that impresses me about Paul is how many of his letters open with prayer, or at least the mention of prayer. Romans, in Romans 1, verses 8 -10, Paul talks about his thankfulness and his prayers for the believers in Rome.

1 Corinthians 1 -4, Paul says nearly the same thing regarding the believers in Corinth. In Ephesians 1, after Paul goes through in the first 12 verses or so, just recounting all the blessings that we have in Christ, then in verse 15, he turns that to say, because of all that, this is what I pray for you all.

In Colossians 1, verses 3 -5, Paul talks about how he prays with gratitude for the believers in Colossae. You see that same thing in 1 and 2 Thessalonians. 2 Timothy 1, verse 3, Paul tells Timothy that he prays for him and that he counts it a privilege to pray for him personally.

And in Philemon, verses 4 -6, Paul tells Philemon, I'm grateful for you, for your faith, and I pray that you may be effective in sharing that faith with others. So, Paul regularly prays for the saints.

He prays for the believers. But one prayer that I want to read that kind of represents all of those prayers that Paul has for the saints comes from Philippians. Philippians 1, starting in verse 3. Philippians 1, and I want to read verses 3 -11, and I'm not going to comment a whole lot on it, but I just want you to get a sense of how Paul prays for the people that he knows and loves, for fellow Christians.

Paul says this, Philippians 1, verse 3, he says, I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all, making my prayer with joy, because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.

And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. It is right for me to feel this way about you all, because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel.

For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus. And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God.

That's a beautiful prayer. As Paul expresses not only his gratitude for the Philippian Christians and their partnership with him in the gospel, but also what he prays for them, that they will be growing always in their love for the Lord and in their love for one another, and that they may approve, by their consent and by their behavior, the things that are excellent and pure and blameless and righteous for the sake of the glory and praise of God.

So that's just a good representative of Paul's prayers for the saints, and he does that regularly. One of the words that he always throws out is, always. I'm always praying for you. And so he mentions that often.

So, appreciate Paul's prayer for the saints. I also thought of another passage, and you're going to wonder how this fits together, and I'll show you here in a moment. But back in the Old Testament, in Exodus chapter 17, we have another example of a leader praying, and it's Moses.

And in Exodus chapter 17, you have that familiar story of when the Israelites were at war with Amalek. And Moses sends out Joshua and the army to go out and fight with Amalek, and Moses says, while you're doing that, I am going to pray.

So just follow along while I read here. Exodus chapter 17, verse 8. It says,. So Moses said to Joshua,. So Joshua did as Moses told him and fought with Amalek, while Moses, Aaron, and Hur went to the top of the hill.

Whenever Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed, and whenever he lowered his hand, Amalek prevailed. But Moses' hands grew weary, so they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it, while Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on one side and the other on the other side.

So his hands were steady until the going down of the sun, and Joshua overwhelmed Amalek and his people with the sword. So Moses knew the importance of prayer and knew that the battle was not just for Joshua and the men that fought with him, but ultimately that the battle was the Lord's and that they needed God's help if they were going to defeat this enemy.

And so Moses was determined to pray, but he needed help in praying. And so Aaron and Hur come alongside him and help to hold up his hands in prayer. That made me think then of this passage, okay, in Matthew chapter 26.

And I'm not going to read this whole passage, but you know what's taking place in Matthew 26. It's Jesus in the garden. And as Jesus goes into the garden of Gethsemane, he tells his disciples, you sit here while I go over there and pray.

And then he takes Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, James and John, and he says, remain here and watch with me. Pray with me. And then it says he goes a little farther and he prays and he prays. And he comes back and what does he find?

The disciples are sleeping. And he says, watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. And he goes away a second time and prays. Father, if you're willing, let this cup pass from me, but not my will, but yours be done.

And he comes back again, finds them sleeping again, goes back and prays the same thing for a third time. And he comes back and finds them again sleeping. And verse 45 says this. Then he came to his disciples and said to them, sleep and take your rest later on.

See, the hour is at hand and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us be going. My betrayer is at hand. You put all that together. Paul's constant prayers for the saints. Moses praying for the Israelites and yet needing help in that.

And then Jesus asking for help in prayer but not getting it. It made me think about the importance of praying for preachers and especially praying for our pastor. It is expected that pastors would pray for their people.

We automatically assume that that's going to happen. And we expect that to happen. That our pastor would be a man of prayer. And that he not only prays for himself and prays that God would give him wisdom in leading the flock as our pastor.

That God would give him wisdom as he pulls his sermons together, as he counsels with people. We would expect him to pray for those things. But we also, I think instinctively, intuitively, maybe even unconsciously, we expect that he prays not only for his own needs but that he prays for the flock.

We expect that. That's what a shepherd should do. That's what a pastor ought to do. So we expect our pastor to pray for us. We expect pastors to pray for their people. But that people would pray for their pastor, that's something that's often neglected.

We expect our pastor to pray and to pray for us. But do we pray for him? Do we make that an ongoing practice and priority? One of my favorite authors on prayer is E .M. Bounds. And I never fail in reading Bounds to be both rebuked and encouraged when it comes to prayer.

Bounds has a great way with words. I may not agree with every particular detail of everything that he says. But usually I find little to argue about when he is encouraging God's people to pray. And in one of his many books on prayer, there's a short chapter entitled, Preachers Need the Prayers of the People.

So we're going to read that tonight. So I made copies of it. And we're going to read through this. I think I have enough. This is messing up the live stream, I know, because I'm not back at the stand there.

I'll get there in a minute. But if you would just follow along while I read this. At the top of the page is a quote from Jonathan Edwards. And hopefully you're familiar with Jonathan Edwards. Edwards said this.

He said, if some Christians that have been complaining of their ministers had said and acted less before men, and had applied themselves with all their might to cry to God for their ministers, had, as it were, risen and stormed heaven with their humble, fervent, and incessant prayers for them, they would have been much more in the way of success.

So this is E .M. Bounds. Somehow the practice of praying in particular for the preacher has fallen into disuse or become discounted. Occasionally we have heard the practice arraigned as a disparagement of the ministry, being a public declaration by those who do it of the inefficiency of ministry.

It offends the pride of learning and self-sufficiency, perhaps. And these ought to be offended and rebuked in a ministry that is so derelict as to allow them to exist. Prayer to the preacher is not simply the duty of his profession.

It is a privilege. But it is a necessity. Air is not more necessary to the lungs than prayer is to the preacher. It is absolutely necessary for the preacher to pray. It is an absolute necessity that the preacher be prayed for.

These two propositions are wedded into a union which ought never to know any divorce. The preacher must pray. The preacher must be prayed for. It will take all the praying he can do and all the praying he can get done to meet the fearful responsibilities and gain the largest, truest success in his great work.

The true preacher, next to the cultivation of the spirit and fact of prayer in himself in their intensest form, covets with a great covetousness the prayers of God's people. I've never known of a preacher who would turn down prayer.

The holier a man is, the more does he estimate prayer. The clearer does he see that God gives himself to the praying ones and that the measure of God's revelation to the soul is the measure of the soul's longing, importunate prayer for God.

Salvation never finds its way to a prayerless heart. The Holy Spirit never abides in a prayerless spirit. Preaching never edifies a prayerless soul. Christ knows nothing of prayerless Christians. The gospel cannot be projected by a prayerless preacher.

Gifts, talents, education, eloquence, God's call cannot abate the demand of prayer, but only intensify the necessity for the preacher to pray and to be prayed for. The more the preacher's eyes are open to the nature, responsibility, and difficulties in his work, the more he will see, and if he be a true preacher, the more he will feel the necessity of prayer.

Not only the increasing demand to pray himself, but to call on others to help him by their prayers. Now this next paragraph I want you to give particular attention to, because this really is the heart of the argument as to why preachers need the prayers of the people.

Paul is an illustration of this. If any man could project the gospel by dent of personal force, by brain power, by culture, by personal grace, by God's apostolic commission, God's extraordinary call, that man was Paul.

That the preacher must be a man given to prayer, Paul is an eminent example. That the true apostolic preacher must have the prayers of other good people to give his ministry its full quota of success, Paul is a preeminent example.

He asks, he covets, he pleads in an impassioned way for the help of all God's saints. He knew that in the spiritual realm, as elsewhere, in union there is strength. That the concentration and aggregation of faith, desire, and prayer increased the volume of spiritual force until it became overwhelming and irresistible in its power.

Units of prayer combined, like drops of water, make an ocean which defies resistance. So Paul, with his clear and full apprehension of spiritual dynamics, determined to make his ministry as impressive, as eternal, as irresistible as the ocean, by gathering all the scattered units of prayer and precipitating them on his ministry.

May not the solution of Paul's preeminence in his labors and results, and impress on the church and the world, be found in this fact, that he was able to center on himself and his ministry more of prayer than others.

To his brethren at Rome he wrote, Now I beseech you, brethren, for the Lord Jesus Christ's sake, and for the love of the Spirit, that you strive together with me in prayers to God for me. To the Ephesians he says, Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints, and for me, that utterance may be given unto me, that I may open my mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel.

To the Colossians he emphasizes, With all praying also for us, that God would open to us a door of utterance, to speak the mystery of Christ, for which I am also in bonds, that I may make it manifest as I ought to speak.

To the Thessalonians he says sharply, strongly, Brethren, pray for us. Paul calls on the Corinthian church to help him, Ye also helping together by prayer for us. This was to be part of their work. They were to lay to the helping hand of prayer.

He, in an additional and closing charge to the Thessalonian church about the importance and necessity of their prayers says, Finally, brethren, pray for us, that the word of the Lord may have free course and be glorified, even as it is with you, and that we may be delivered from unreasonable and wicked men.

He impresses the Philippians, that all his trials and opposition are to be made subservient to the spread of the gospel by the efficiency of their prayers for him. Philemon was to prepare lodging for him, for through Philemon's prayer, Paul was to be his guest.

Paul's attitude on this question illustrates his humility and his deep insight into the spiritual forces which project the gospel. More than this, it teaches a lesson for all times, that if Paul was so dependent on the prayers of God's saints to give his ministry success, how much greater the necessity that the prayers of God's saints be centered on the ministry of today.

Paul did not feel that his urgent plea for prayer was to lower his dignity, lessen his influence, or depreciate his piety. What if it did? Let dignity go. Let influence be destroyed. Let his reputation be marred.

He must have their prayers. Called, commissioned, chief of the apostles as he was, all his equipment was imperfect without the prayers of his people. He wrote letters everywhere urging them to pray for him.

Do you pray for your preacher? Do you pray for him in secret? Public prayers are of little worth unless they are founded on or followed up by private praying. The praying ones are to the preacher as Aaron and Hur were to Moses.

They hold up his hands and decide the issue that is so fiercely raging around them. The plea and purpose of the apostles were to put the church to praying. They did not ignore the grace of cheerful giving.

They were not ignorant of the place where religious activity and work occupied in the spiritual life. But not one nor all of these, in apostolic estimate or urgency, could at all compare in necessity and importance with prayer.

The most sacred and urgent pleas were used. The most fervid exhortations. The most comprehensive and arousing words were uttered to enforce the all-important obligation and necessity of prayer. To put the saints everywhere to praying is the burden of the apostolic effort and the keynote of apostolic success.

Jesus Christ had striven to do this in the days of his personal ministry. As he was moved by infinite compassion at the ripened fields of earth, perishing for lack of laborers and pausing in his own praying, he tries to awaken the stupid sensibilities of his disciples to the duty of prayer as he charges them.

Pray ye to the Lord of the harvest that he will send forth laborers into his harvest. And he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray and not to faint. Preachers need the prayers of their people.

Certainly there are all kinds of other things to pray for and about that are needful, and we want to do that and take time to do that. But also take special time tonight to pray for our pastor. And not just for the health of his family, as important as that is, not just that he gets adequate rest, and not only that God gives him strength for each day, but that God would encourage his heart daily in the work of ministry, which is no easy task, it's not an easy work, that God's word indeed would be living and active in his own heart, not just in his head, that his love for the flock would grow, that his desire to glorify God would be always increasing.

There are all kinds of things that we can be praying for for our pastor, and that we need to do so regularly. I hope you pray for him on Sunday mornings, but I hope you pray for him throughout the week as well, because the pastor's duties are not confined to nine to noon on Sundays, but to go throughout the week and into the evenings and sometimes late at night.

And his work is both a glorious work, but a difficult work as well, because you know that wherever God's work is being done, Satan is always at work to oppose it. So we want to certainly take time tonight to pray for our pastor.

So that's where I'd like for us to begin, is just to take some time to pray for our pastor. And what I'd like to do to begin with is just to open it up for anyone to pray out loud, to lead us, and we'll just kind of pop around whoever wants to pray, to pray for our pastor, to pray for Michael.

Thank you.