Praying in Lord's Day Worship

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Alright, well, tonight we are going to continue our study of Lord's Day Worship, understanding proper Lord's Day Worship, and we are going to be looking at praying.
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So far, we have looked at the importance of Lord's Day Worship, the priority of Lord's Day Worship.
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That was our first lesson.
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We have looked at how Lord's Day Worship has been misunderstood and misapplied within the church.
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And last week, we looked at preaching in the Lord's Day service, and the value of God's Word being spoken through God's man to God's people.
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And today we are going to move on in our study of the liturgy of the church, or the elements of worship.
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We are going to look at the subject of prayer.
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You will notice in your folder, or your handout that I gave you, I have a little introductory statement.
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An element which is becoming conspicuously absent in modern worship is the practice of intentional corporate prayers.
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And the prayers that do exist tend to be filled with repetition, shallowness, and clichés.
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Prayer is an essential element of corporate worship and mustn't be seen as a mere formality.
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Open your Bibles with me to Acts, the second chapter.
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We are going to go to Acts 2 and look at verse 42.
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You will remember this is right after the Holy Spirit has fallen on Pentecost, and He has empowered the church to begin evangelizing the world.
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And so we see in the second chapter of Acts the establishment of this new body called the church.
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And we see how the church was operating in its most formative of days.
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Here we see in Acts chapter 2 and verse 42 an outline of what we call the earliest liturgy of the church.
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This is the outline of worship in the early church and what it looked like.
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It says in Acts 2 and 42, And they devoted themselves to four things.
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And you will see what those four things are.
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One, the apostles' teaching.
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Two, the fellowship.
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Three, the breaking of bread.
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And four, the prayers.
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Now, what we need to understand is that the word prayer there is given the article.
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It is an articular noun.
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It has the article in front of it and the article is the word the.
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It tells us that it's not just that they came together and prayed, but within the worship service they had the prayers.
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Often times we might go right over that and not realize the significance of that being an article.
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But what it's identifying is that there were specific prayers which were made within the worship of the church.
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So tonight what we're going to talk about in our lesson is we're going to talk about what prayers are appropriate for Christian worship.
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What prayers should be included in the corporate Lord's Day expression of worship.
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And as I said earlier, the intentional prayers.
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We are praying these on purpose and we're praying these with purpose.
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And it's part of our regular Lord's Day observance.
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So, our first letter here.
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What prayers, our first question, what prayers are traditionally offered within Lord's Day worship? Letter A.
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The prayer of invocation.
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The prayer of invocation.
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What does it mean to invoke something? Anybody know? What does it say? Not quite provoke.
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To invoke means to call upon or to invite, to welcome.
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The prayer of invocation is the starting of the worship service.
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God, be among us, bless us, and fill us with Your Spirit as we worship You.
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That would be a prayer of invocation.
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We're inviting, we're asking that God's presence be among us.
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It's often that the prayer of invocation would either precede or would conclude a call to worship.
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Now you'll notice in our worship folder we have the call to worship.
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What is the call to worship? That is a reading from God's Word that we start the service with so as to bookend the worship service with Scripture.
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We begin with Scripture.
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So, an example might be Psalm 42.
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If you want to just turn in your Bibles quickly and look at Psalm 42, this would be an example of a text which would be a call for God's people to worship.
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Psalm 42 says in verses 1 and 2, As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God.
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My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
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When shall I come and appear before the Lord? That would be an appropriate Scripture verse to open or to begin a worship service.
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And oftentimes that would either be preceded or concluded with a prayer.
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God, please be among us.
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Make us pant after you.
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Within the prayer, use the Scripture that you've just read as part of the prayer.
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Psalm 150 is one that's often used.
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You don't have to turn there, but most of you are familiar with Psalm 150.
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Praise the Lord.
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Praise God and His sanctuary.
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Praise Him in the mighty heavens.
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Praise Him in His mighty deeds.
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Praise Him according to His excellent greatness.
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Praise Him with trumpet sound.
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Praise Him with lute and harp.
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Praise Him with tambourine and dance.
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Praise Him with sounding cymbals.
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Praise Him with loud crashing cymbals.
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Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.
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Praise the Lord.
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And it ends with that exclamation of praise God.
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Praise the Lord.
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So we begin worship.
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We invoke God's presence.
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We ask the Holy Spirit to be among us.
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And that would be the first element of prayer in a worship service.
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The second that we see here is the prayer of intercession.
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The prayer of intercession.
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I left out an R.
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Often times we call this the pastoral prayer.
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If you want to write that off to the side.
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The pastoral prayer.
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This is where, as the minister, I stand up before the people of God.
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And I seek to intercede on the behalf of God's people.
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We will pray for confession of sins.
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We will pray for God's leadership over the church.
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We will pray for people who are ill.
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We will offer up both confession and petition to the Lord in that prayer.
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And typically that prayer is the longest and most expressive prayer that is within the worship service.
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Sometimes taking 5, 7, 8, 10 minutes to pray that prayer.
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Because it's the opportunity.
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I don't get to come to your house every day and pray for you.
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I don't get to come over at night and pray over your children.
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And I don't have an opportunity to do those things.
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I pray for you in my home.
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And I pray for you with my children.
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But that is the opportunity for the pastor to lift up his hands over the people of God.
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And pray for them.
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And to ask God's mercy on them.
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This is something that is very, very absent in a lot of the contemporary church.
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To see prayers that are lengthy and deep and powerful and Scripture filled.
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We just don't see that often in the church much anymore.
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And that is a precious time within the worship service.
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To have the pastor intercede on behalf of the people.
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So that is the prayer of intercession often called the pastoral prayer.
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The next we have is called the prayer of consecration.
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The prayer of consecration.
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The word consecrate means to be associated with the sacred.
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That's what the word consecrate means.
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The prefix con means to be with or to associate with.
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And when we put that in front of the word sacred it becomes consecrate or consecration.
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When we come around the communion table.
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You ever notice I read the same verse of Scripture every week? And I rarely deviate from that particular passage.
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Do you know why that particular passage? It isn't because I lack creativity.
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But it is because that particular passage of Scripture.
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1 Corinthians 11 is wherein the apostle Paul is quoting the Lord Jesus Christ.
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In giving the elements of bread and wine their special characteristic.
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Why is anything holy? Because God makes it holy.
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Because God proclaims it as holy.
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I don't remember if you remember our study of the holiness of God.
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And you remember one of the students of Dr.
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R.C.
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Sproul said why can't we have donuts and coffee as communion? Or something like that.
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I don't remember what it was.
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It was like potato chips and soda pop or something for communion.
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And he got upset.
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He said because Christ didn't consecrate potato chips and soda pop.
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He consecrated bread and wine.
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And so when we come around the table we are consecrating these elements.
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Remember what holy means.
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In its most simple form, holy simply means to be separate or to be separated.
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So we are separating this bread from all the other bread.
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We are separating this wine from all the other wine.
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And we are saying this bread represents Christ's body.
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This wine represents Christ's blood.
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And we pray a prayer of consecration.
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God, separate out these things.
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That's the elder who comes and prays over the bread and the cup.
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Separate these things out for the purpose of use for your holy will.
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And that's a special important prayer in the service.
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Lord, separate these things.
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Consecrate these elements.
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Make sense? Alright.
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I'm not trying to go super fast.
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But I do have my gas pushed in a little bit tonight.
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The next one is the prayer of dedication.
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The prayer of dedication.
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We could call this the offertory prayer or a prayer of oblation.
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We could call it anything.
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It's the prayer of the giving.
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It's the prayer over the offering.
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That which we are offering up to God.
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So, we pass a plate on Sunday.
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And we invite people to worship through giving.
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As a regular part of worship.
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But before we pass that plate, we pray a prayer.
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God, dedicate the gifts that are being given to your service.
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Dedicate the gifts that are given to minister Your Word in this world.
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This is why we're specific, by the way, about what we want prayed at certain times.
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You know, Jack and I, we've talked about this.
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And we've talked about this among the elders.
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At certain times, we pray for certain things.
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This is not a time to pray for a whole bunch of different things.
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This is a time to pray for God to take this offering and dedicate it to His work.
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It doesn't have to be lengthy.
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It doesn't have to be complicated.
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But it does have to be intentional.
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Because that's what we're doing.
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It's an intentional prayer.
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We're asking that God use these gifts for His work.
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Some churches have taken out the plates.
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And removed them.
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And instead replaced it with offering boxes in the backs of the church.
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What do you think about that? I mean, do you think there's benefits and detriments? What would you think? And I promise you, I'm not going to say, oh, you're wrong.
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I mean, unless you're wrong.
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No, but I mean, this is an opinion question.
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And you're fine.
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What do you think are the reasoning for that? Taking away the plates and adding the box.
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Yes, sir? Privacy.
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Yeah, that's a good one.
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What else? Okay, and you'd say that's a detriment.
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It's just you feel like it takes away.
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And that's kind of what I was wanting to say.
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Because I visited a church during my sabbatical this year.
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And while I was there, I noticed they didn't take an offering.
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And they had boxes in the back.
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And so I went to the pastor and I said, you know, why did you do this? And he, kind of like Richard, mentioned the privacy thing.
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He even said that the guys who were taking offering oftentimes were having issues.
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Because they would see people put money in or not put money in.
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And they would have a bad soul about themselves.
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Like, oh, they would judge people not want to.
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But it was just so natural to judge someone.
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So they just stopped.
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And they put the little offering box in the back.
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Yeah, well, I think that by having the plates passed.
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As Lee said, it does offer up an opportunity to worship through giving in the midst of the service.
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That it's not something we just drop off in a box on the way in.
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Or drop off in the box.
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A lot of churches have gone that way with communion too.
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The communion is just set up in the back.
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You take it as you leave.
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Kind of like an aspirin.
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You just pop it in.
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You take it and go on after communion.
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Or after service.
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The bags.
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Yeah, I like the bags.
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I like the bags for several reasons.
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Number one, I think they look nice.
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And they don't make noise.
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The plates ding, ding, ding as we get them.
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But I don't know if you guys remember when we were there.
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They were handled bags that you just passed.
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Yeah, nice felt bags.
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Maybe that will be something we talk about in the future.
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But the plates have always.
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They make the ding, ding noise.
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And we've had them be dropped.
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And it's.
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Yes, sir.
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Well, there are.
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You know, we have to be careful looking at biblical narrative as being.
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As being something that is.
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Is telling us something that happened or telling us something that should happen.
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Yeah.
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Well, I think there.
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You know, there are times in scripture where offerings are given in different ways.
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Bring your.
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Bring your grant into the storehouse.
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Bring your offerings to the storehouse.
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So there's certainly different ways in scripture.
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But I do think.
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I think Lee hit the nail on the head, though, with the issue of.
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When it's not a part of the worship service.
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It sort of removes that element from the.
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The action of doing it in the midst of of worshiping.
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But.
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Oh, yes.
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Well, the way that this church did it was just before or after the service.
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It wasn't in the midst of the service.
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It wasn't like they created a line and came up.
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We do that.
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We do a special offering a couple of times a year where we'll have people come up.
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And give offerings.
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But that's.
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That's like our manger offering.
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We set up a manger at Christmas.
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And we have a special time for people to bring their offerings up.
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And that always goes to some type of a missions project.
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Or something that's going out of the church.
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It's a special offering.
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Done in a special way.
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Because we want to kind of sanctify that out.
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And make it different.
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But I just.
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You know.
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That really was.
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I just kind of wanted to hear your thoughts.
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Because over the summer.
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I saw a church do it different than ours.
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I knew other churches did it differently.
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And I just kind of wanted to throw that out there.
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And since this is part of worship.
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You know.
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I appreciate everybody's thoughts.
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So we pray to dedicate the offering.
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Now.
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The next one.
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Is the prayer of benediction.
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The prayer of benediction.
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Latin.
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It comes from the Latin root.
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It's decere.
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Which is to speak.
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And bene.
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Which is blessing.
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Or to speak well.
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At the end of the worship service.
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I ask everyone to stand.
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I raise my hands up before God.
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And I do what? May God bless you.
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May God lead you.
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May God take the message that has been preached to you.
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And apply it to your hearts.
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May we follow what we have been commanded in Scripture.
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Amen.
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It's always a little different.
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But it's effectively that.
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It's a blessing.
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And a commission.
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And it's a speaking well.
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To the people of God.
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Well.
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I look forward to it too.
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The most famous benediction in Scripture.
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Is number 6.
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24 to 26.
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This is the one that I give.
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If we're doing a high church service.
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Or if I'm preaching a funeral.
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May the Lord bless you and keep you.
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May the Lord make his face shine upon you.
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And be gracious to you.
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May the Lord lift up his countenance to you.
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And give you peace.
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Amen.
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That's the one that's kind of the.
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It's the staple among benedictions.
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It's a blessing from Moses to the people.
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And it's a very common one.
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That you'll hear in high church liturgies.
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So that's one.
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Another one that you might find interesting.
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Is in Philippians chapter 4.
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Very simple one.
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But it would still be considered a benediction.
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Philippians chapter 4.
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And verse 23.
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The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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Be with your spirit.
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That's simple isn't it? But that was Paul's benediction to the letter.
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To the church of Philippi.
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May the Lord be with your spirit.
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Amen.
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So they can be longer or shorter.
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But the intention is what? Sending you away with the blessing of God to do His will.
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So this is the key word tonight.
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Intentionality.
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We pray with intentionality.
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We don't just pray haphazard prayers.
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We don't just pray prayers that are not thought through.
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But we pray with intentionality.
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With purpose in our prayers.
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I think that's a valuable thing that is often...
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You know, because I know pastors spend hours and hours and hours on sermons.
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And spend no time considering their prayers.
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You know? Should we consider what we're going to say before the people of God in prayer? I think so.
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I think so.
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Alright, so what prayers are traditionally offered? Prayer of invocation.
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Prayer of intercession.
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Prayer of consecration.
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Prayer of dedication.
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And prayer of benediction.
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That's the five.
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And they're traditionally found in your traditional liturgies.
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You know, a lot of those are left out in some of the more contemporary services.
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But we see this in more traditional liturgies.
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And I think that each one has an appropriate intention.
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Now, what additional prayers? This is Roman numeral two.
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What additional prayers are appropriate for corporate worship? Well, let me make a spot on the board here.
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I want to write these for you.
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The first one would be prayers of protection and conviction.
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Now, I want to be clear.
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These are not the traditional names of these prayers.
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I don't know that there are traditional names for this particular thing.
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These are additional prayers.
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But I call it the prayer of protection and conviction.
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Does anybody want to try to guess where those are? Before I preach? And after I preach? You notice when I pray, at the beginning of my prayer, what do I say? God, protect me from error.
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God, put a hedge of protection around Your people, that they would not be influenced by error.
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May it be that their minds are clear and ready to receive Your Word.
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It's a prayer of protection.
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I don't want to mishandle God's Word.
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I would rather fall under serious injury than to spiritually imperil myself by mishandling the Word of God.
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And that's the prayer.
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It's a prayer of protection.
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And that begins the sermon.
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But then later in the sermon, when it's concluded, after we have given the concluding words, and we've brought to bear all that has been said in this sermon, and we finish the sermon, we say, Let us pray.
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And we pray what? God, apply the words of this sermon to the hearts.
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If it be unbelievers, convert them.
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If it be believers, convict them.
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But ultimately, it's always a prayer of conviction.
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Convict the unconverted to new life, and bring them to Yourself.
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Convict the converted to live a life of holiness, closer walk with Christ.
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All those things.
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So we begin with a prayer of protection.
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We end with a prayer of conviction.
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H.B.
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Charles, who is actually a local pastor, but he's getting some notoriety.
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He's a Reformed guy.
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And he said this.
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He said, I need God to help me speak.
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The congregation needs God to help them hear.
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He said, I need God to help me speak.
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The congregation needs God to help them hear.
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So I pray before I preach, and I pray after I preach.
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And then my prayer is bookended.
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My sermon, rather, is bookended with prayer.
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Now, the next one is a prayer of supplication.
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Prayer of supplication for an individual, which would include the elders laying on of hands.
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Turn in your Bibles to James 5.
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By the way, the word supplication means literally asking or begging for something.
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We're asking on behalf of a person for something.
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We're asking for something.
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So we go to James 5, and we see what we're commanded in this Scripture.
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Look at verse 14.
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Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.
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So, many of you have seen this happen.
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After I'm done preaching, I pray my prayer of conviction, and then I walk down and I say, if anyone needs prayer, now is the time.
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It doesn't happen every service, but there will oftentimes be a person who is ill, or they're going through something in their life for which they want the elders to pray.
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And they'll come to me.
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Sometimes it's private.
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Sometimes they'll come up and they'll put their shoulder against my shoulder, and they'll whisper in my ear, and I'll know this is not something I want to announce to everybody, but I'm going to pray right now.
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But then, there'll be that person who comes up that I know is just diagnosed with cancer.
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Or I know just found out that they're sick of some other disease.
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And I'll look to Jack, and I'll look to Richard, and I'll look to Byron, and I'll say, and I'll just do this.
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Come.
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And we all come, and we all lay hands on this person, and we pray, and we beg and beseech, and seek God on their behalf.
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We pray a special prayer of supplication for that person in the midst of the congregation.
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You've all seen it, right? You've all been here and we've done that? Now, part of this Scripture that often raises the most questions is you'll notice that James said to pour oil on them and pray.
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We'll read it again.
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It says, if there's anyone among you sick, let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.
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Now, I don't want to get into a long discussion on this, because it is certainly one that could take us on a major rabbit trail.
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But, there is a question among theologians as to what James means by putting oil on someone.
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Because in this particular time in history, oil had a medicinal value.
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Meaning that anointing someone with oil was often the way that you helped with their physical ailment.
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That if they were sick, you would anoint them with oil because it would help them feel better.
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It was as close as we have today as giving someone medication is the way that they would take medication in would be to rub oil on them to help them feel better.
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That's one way to interpret this passage.
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The other way is that oil represents the presence of the Holy Spirit.
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And by pouring oil on a person, you are symbolically expressing the Holy Spirit's watch care over that person.
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Now, I'm not going to tell you either one is necessarily right or wrong.
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I will tell you this, if a person comes to me and says, Mr.
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Pastor, I am sick and I want you to put oil on my head, they're going to get oil on their head if they feel that need for that.
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If they want to be comforted in that way.
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I certainly can't look to this verse and prove them to be in error.
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I do believe that there was medicinal value.
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And I tend to think that that's what James meant in this passage.
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However, I do keep a bottle of oil in the pulpit.
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Most of you don't know that.
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But if you walk up and look in the pulpit, there's a little bottle of olive oil there.
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Because I don't want to be without if a person were to ask.
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You know? So that's where I am.
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I'm at a point where I can't determine just from the text the exact meaning.
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I know what I think it means and I know what I would teach on it.
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As I'm teaching tonight, I would give you both views and say this is what it could mean.
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But at the end of the day, if someone is convicted, that would encourage them to know that the Spirit is with them and to have that symbol of the Spirit, which is the oil, is symbolic of the Spirit all throughout the Scripture, the Old Testament.
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They would pour oil on a person's head whenever he would receive the Holy Spirit as a symbol of that.
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Certainly there's a lot of symbolism in that and I don't have any problem with that at all.
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So, just so you know, that is a question that comes up at times.
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In some churches, oil is huge and they use it all the time.
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And they base it on this Scripture.
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And anytime someone is sick, they come up and rub oil on their head.
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That's their conviction.
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That's fine.
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Any questions on that? Anybody wondered about that before? You guys are awful quiet tonight.
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I feel like...
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That's okay though.
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So, we would have the elders come and lay hands on someone who is sick.
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Now, the next one, there's three blanks.
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The next one, there's three blanks.
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We have prayers of commission, ordination and installation.
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Commission, ordination and installation.
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This also includes the laying on of hands.
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I'll just read these to you.
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If you want to write them down, Acts 6.
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When the first deacons were chosen, it says, these they set before the apostles and they prayed and laid their hands on them.
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So, they brought these men, the six, to the apostles and the apostles laid hands on them and they prayed and they commissioned them to the duty of deacon.
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And that laying on of hands was part of the expression of that service.
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We also see this in Acts 13.
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It says that when Paul was getting ready to go out and do his ministry work with Barnabas, it says in Acts 13, verse 3, after fasting and praying, they laid hands on them and sent them off.
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So, here's two guys that are going on a missionary journey.
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Saul and Barnabas are going out to missions work and so the church comes around them and the elders lay hands on them and they pray God's Spirit over them and send them off to their work.
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So, very quickly, I made a distinction between commission, ordination and installation.
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Can they be used interchangeably? Sometimes, yes.
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But typically, when we talk about commissioning, that is a duty given to a person or a group.
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For instance, we talk about the commissioning of deacons because it's a servant position.
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We commission you to the role of servant within the church.
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Ordination, typically, refers to holy orders.
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Meaning that this is a ministerial office, someone who's going to be handling God's Word.
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So, typically, we talk about ordaining elders and commissioning deacons.
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There's a little difference there.
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Not exact.
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I mean, they could be interchanged.
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say you're a pastor, but yes, you're in the military.
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Commissioning, we're very familiar with that term.
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Installation is what we do when someone already has a particular title, but not among us.
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When Richard came, he was already an ordained minister.
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So we didn't have to ordain him again.
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But he wasn't an elder here.
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So we installed him as an elder.
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He already had the title.
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He already had the position that he'd been ordained in another church.
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If I were to be called to another church, they wouldn't have to reordain me to the gospel ministry, but they would have to install me to the service of that congregation.
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Don't get excited.
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I'm not leaving.
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But I'm saying that's where we would make a slight differentiation between commissioning, ordination, and installation.
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And all of them would include or could include the laying on of hands and the praying over that person for that particular duty.
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Make sense? Okay.
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Now, last question.
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What should be included in corporate prayers? What should be included? We've said, what are the traditional prayers? Then we've asked, what are the additional prayers? But we ask this final question.
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What should be included in corporate prayers? The first one is a recognition of the holiness of God.
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Huh? You knew that one, huh? You knew that one was coming.
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Well, that's true though.
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Prayer should never be entered into flippantly or lightly.
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This is especially so in corporate worship, because this is a reverential time.
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It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Almighty God.
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You know, this is real life stuff.
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So when we come around to pray, the first thing we need...
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What did Jesus say? Our Father Who art in Heaven, hallowed be Your name.
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That hallowed, holy is Your name.
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And when we pray, we need to remember to whom we are praying.
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Jesus is not our homeboy.
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I've said that before.
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We don't need to have that flippant attitude in worship, in prayer.
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It doesn't need to be flippant.
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It needs to be reverential.
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That's number one.
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The second thing that should be included in corporate prayer is a recitation of the attributes of God.
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The attributes of God.
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Worship is meant to glorify God.
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And prayer is worship.
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So prayer is meant to glorify God.
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That's a syllogism.
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Now, I just want to read you one prayer from the Bible.
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1 Samuel 2 This is the prayer of Hannah.
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And I want you to hear what she says in the prayer.
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My heart exalts in the Lord.
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My horn is exalted in the Lord.
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My mouth derides my enemies, because I rejoice in Your salvation.
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There is none holy like the Lord, for there is none besides You.
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There is no rock like our God.
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Talk no more so very proudly.
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Let not arrogance come from Your mouth, for the Lord is a God of knowledge, and by Him actions are weighed.
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The bows of the mighty are broken, but the feeble bind on strength.
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Those who were full have hired themselves out for bread, but those who were hungry have ceased to be hungry.
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The barren has born seven, but she who has many children is forlorn.
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The Lord kills and brings to life.
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He brings down to sea, oh, and raises up.
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The Lord makes poor and makes rich.
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He brings low and He exalts.
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He raises up the poor from the dust.
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He lifts the needy from the ash heap to make them sit with princes and inherit a seat of honor.
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For the pillars of the earth are the Lord's, and on them He has set the world.
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He will guard the feet of His faithful ones, but the wicked shall be cut off in darkness.
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For not by might shall a man prevail.
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The adversaries of the Lord shall be broken to pieces against them.
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He will thunder in heaven.
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The Lord will judge to the ends of the earth.
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He will give strength to His King and exalt the horns of His Anointed." What do we hear through that prayer? The Lord is this.
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The Lord is that.
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His strength, His mightiness, His power, His virtue.
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All of these things are recited in the prayer.
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And that's what I mean when I say the recitation of the attributes of God.
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O God who made the heavens, who formed all things by simply speaking them into existence, who brought man out of the dust of the earth and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.
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O God who has created universes unknown and a world to house Your person, man who beareth Your image.
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I'm not just doing that to be fancy.
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When you pray like that, you're praying to recite the attributes of God because God is glorified when His attributes are exalted.
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God is glorified when His attributes are recited among His people.
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So that's what should be included in corporate prayer.
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Third, a saturation of the Word of God.
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A saturation of the Word of God.
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Oftentimes, you might notice that when I'm praying, I will begin to just simply quote Scripture.
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Why? Because those quotes that I'm quoting are either recitations of God's attributes or reminders of God's promises, or they're examples of God's fidelity.
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They're for us, but they're also, as we're speaking to God together, reminders of His faithfulness and reminders going upwards, saying, God, remember Your promises to Your people.
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You might say, God never forgets His promises.
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Why do we have to remind God of His promises? Well, we don't necessarily have to remind God of His promises.
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But in praying God back His promises, we show our trust in His promises.
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All throughout the Bible, we see, Moses, God, remember Your promises to Your people.
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We see this all throughout the Old Testament and the New Testament.
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The Psalms.
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What are Psalms? Psalms are songs, sung among the people of God.
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The Psalm book, the 150 Psalms, is God's inspired psalm book.
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But they're also prayers.
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Because what is a hymn or a spiritual song? What is a psalm? It is a prayer to God.
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It's singing to God.
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So, when we pray, I tell you honestly, if you want to learn to pray in such a way that your prayers will be manifestly deeper, wider, and broader, begin to commit to memory the Psalms.
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Portions of God's holy inspired hymnal.
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Commit them to memory and pray them in your prayers.
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And you will see a depth and a breadth in your prayer life that you may not have seen before.
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So that's just part of when we pray, we pray God's Word back to Him in trust that His Word is in fact what it claims to be.
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Alright, finally.
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What should be included in corporate prayer? An instruction for the people of God.
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So we've said, a recognition of the holiness of God, a recitation of the attributes of God, a saturation of the Word of God, and finally, an instruction for the people of God.
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Many people do not know how to pray.
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And I say this only because Jesus' disciples, after Jesus had been praying, He came to them and what did they say? Teach us to pray! Right? So when the pastor or the elders stand up before God's people in times of prayer, certainly we're focused on God, but there's also a didactic element in corporate prayer.
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Because we're teaching God's people how to pray.
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We're teaching God's people, through example, what prayer looks like.
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You might say, well, prayer is simple.
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It's just talking to God.
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Yes, but as I mentioned already, we can go deeper in our prayer life.
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We can expand our prayer life to include the attributes of God, to include the Word of God, to expand out our understanding of God and reciting those things back to Him.
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And all this is done as we learn to grow deeper in prayer.
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Yes, sir? That one? Yes.
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The acronym which Richard is referring to is ACTS.
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If you want to learn a very basic way to pray, it is this.
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Adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication.
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Did I get that right, Richard? It's been a while since I taught on that, but yeah.
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Adoration is what? To adore God.
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Our prayer should begin Our Father in Heaven, hallowed be Your name.
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Lord, forgive us of our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.
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It's really in there.
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Thanksgiving.
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And we request, we make our petitions to God through supplication.
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We call this the ACTS of prayer.
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It is a simple and helpful acronym.
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And I try to model that when I'm praying.
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And why do you think we pray the Lord's Prayer every Sunday? Because it has a didactic element in it.
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You know, when I was a kid, and when some of you guys were a kid, there was a time where they actually prayed that prayer in school.
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They don't do that anymore.
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And some people don't pray that prayer any time except for on Sunday morning when we do.
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So why is that prayer part of our liturgy? Because that prayer is a holy didactic, didactic, by the way, the word didactic means teaching, it is a holy didactic prayer.
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The disciples said, teach us to pray.
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And Jesus said, this is how you pray.
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Here are the elements that should be included.
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Here is how you do it.
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So we do it so that our people, old and young, will learn how to pray.
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Okay? Alright, so let's finish up with our last questions here.
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Why do you think so little thought and time is given to prayer within the body? Why do you think that that is so? I think that's a good answer.
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Yeah, that's what she said.
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Yeah, Ruthie said people get in a rush, people get in a hurry.
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We allow the prayer time to be the hanging chad of the worship service.
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It's just the thing that's just kind of there.
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That was a nice little political reference since yesterday was voting day.
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It's the hanging chad.
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It's that one part that's just sort of there.
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It's not the most precious moment of the service.
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It's just the necessary have to to get to the next thing.
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I think that's a good answer.
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I think that's right.
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And also I think too that people have become so caught up with the idea that everything is supposed to be extemporaneous and that just simply means to be off the cuff.
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That everything is supposed to be extemporaneous now that the concern is that if I actually sit and think about what my prayer is going to be, if I actually write out a prayer, that's too high church.
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That's too old school.
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That's not hip.
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That's not cool to actually think about.
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I need to just come right up.
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But what you know happens with prayers like that? They become very repetitious, very cliched because there's not a lot of thought that goes into them.
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So that's...
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I'm not against written prayer as long as we're putting thought into it.
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We're thinking about what we're doing when we're writing them out.
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do you think an entire service dedicated to corporate prayer would be appropriate? Yes.
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Okay.
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Good.
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Lorena made a good point.
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That it would not take the place of Sunday Lord's Day worship because that includes all the elements, but a special prayer service.
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I think so.
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I think it's one of the things that we often miss out on is taking times where we just dedicate ourselves.
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Do you know why most churches don't offer prayer service? Because they are the least attended services.
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Isn't that sad? People won't come just to pray.
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They won't come just to pray.
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That's why they're least attended so they go the way of most everything else that's badly attended.
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It's got to go away.
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Yeah.
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And a lot of times that willingness to be open with others because in prayer times and services like that it's often the time to open up.
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People don't want to open up.
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Yes.
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Yeah.
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It's six people, eight people.
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And you know, it's a shame.
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And I speak, you know, we don't have a dedicated prayer service, but at the same time I think looking at what prayer ought to be it might be something in the future we need to look at because I think the corporate body gathered to pray together is a precious time.
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It's a precious time.
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All right.
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Yes, sir.
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Saul and Barnabas.
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Yeah.
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Yes, you're praying a blessing over them.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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It could be.
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Yeah.
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But that's what I was saying is that's commissioning them or sending them out.
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But they're certainly sending them out with the blessing of God.
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So yeah, it would have a benedictory element to it.
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Absolutely.
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Absolutely.
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Yes.
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Yeah.
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It's hard to get this.
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It's hard to get the students silent for anything.
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And I speak empirically on that because I work at a school.
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They do.
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That's fantastic that they do it.
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A lot of coaches and a lot of teachers go beyond what necessarily the school would do and they incorporate those things in.
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That's great.
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That's excellent.
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That's excellent.
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All right, guys, let's pray and I encourage you whoever can stay to help set up.
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That would be wonderful.
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Father, thank you for this time to study together.
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I pray that it has been fruitful for your people, that we have a better understanding of prayer in our own prayer life and what it means to pray corporately as the body of Christ.
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Use this lesson to help us have a stronger appreciation for coming into the corporate body of Christ and worshiping through prayer.
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In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.