Praying with Paul Chapter 12

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Okay. All right. We are live from Faith Bible Church.
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So this is the last chapter of Praying with Paul. And thank you all for sticking together.
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So after this, we'll meet the first Wednesday of September, and we will go over how to properly interpret scripture.
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I will actually have a PowerPoint slide up there because it's already made.
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For those of you who have been here more than a couple of years, you might have seen the slides already.
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I've presented it during Sunday school. But there are actually a lot of newer people here since a couple of years ago.
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So this might be new for many here. And the reason why
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I'm doing this right before we study Titus is because we're going into studying scripture again.
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And there are a lot of false or inappropriate ways to interpret scripture.
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And it happens so subtly. You might have been part of a
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Bible study where they ask, you know, you read a verse or two, or even a chapter or paragraph.
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And then the Bible study leader says, what does it mean to you? Oftentimes, they usually, you know, most people answer correctly of what the scripture actually said, right?
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Oh, it tells me that, you know, it's compassionate. However, that question,
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I think, is fundamentally wrong. Exactly.
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The meaning cannot come from the reader. Meaning cannot come from the reader.
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And we do not treat basically any books, any emails, any text messages that way.
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Because we don't get to take an email, text message. Let's say if Jim sends me an email or text message or a letter, the meaning can't come from me who's received the letter, who's reading it.
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The meaning has to come from what Jim meant to say. The meaning comes from the author.
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That's what's fundamentally wrong with the question, what does it mean to you? It opens a floodgate of what the author didn't say.
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And it plays out in so many different false teaching, right?
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For example, there are people who say, well, as a Korean American, I read the book of, you know, name it, right?
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Book of Jeremiah this way, which would be different from, you know, a white female.
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But that would be wrong. Because the meaning comes from God. And it can't be different for a
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Korean American than a Caucasian female, right? Meaning has to be what the author intended.
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And the author couldn't have intended one thing for Koreans and then another for the white.
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Same God. Now, the application might be different. How you apply that might be different, depending on, you know, who you are, what you do, right?
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If you're a student, your application of, you shall not lie, looks, may look different from an application for a
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CEO, right? A student might, an application for a student might be, don't cheat on the next test.
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While the application for the CEO would be, don't fudge the number of the business meeting. Still, the meaning hasn't changed, you shall not lie, right?
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So, that's why we're going to go over that after this. I'm not sure,
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I don't think I can make the PowerPoint slides to be online, right?
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I don't think it will be online live. But I can, the PowerPoint slides have been shared, but if you would want it, just let me know,
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I can email it. But I can still say it to the
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YouTube community. But the PowerPoint slides will only be seen people who are here, the live audience, right?
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So, that's what we will do for the next one for sure. Maybe two lessons, but we'll see how it goes, right?
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But the main point after this book, which is ending today, we will have a lesson on how to correctly interpret scripture.
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Okay. Now, I will pray for us. And we'll start.
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Father, we are grateful that we can pray to you and we can pray according to scripture.
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And we pray that your spirit would work in our hearts to pray in line with scripture, not because that's how we get you to answer, but because we want to have the right view of God, the right view of your glory and holiness, and the right view of ourselves, and to know how much you love us.
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And that we would pray according to scripture because that's how we see the holy
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God appropriately and correctly. And help us to continue praying.
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And we ask that you would really grow the culture of prayer at this church, at Faith Bible Church.
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And we thank you that you have been working in so many of our hearts. We pray that we would continue to love you and spend time with you and enjoy your presence every day.
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In Jesus name. Amen. All right. So chapter 12, a rather short chapter, but a good chapter.
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Nonetheless, Dr. Carson is just a great
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New Testament theologian, right? He can unpack just a couple of verses so faithfully, right?
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So, I'll be reading from Romans 15, 30 through 32. Those are the verses we'll discuss today.
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I urge you, brothers, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit to join me in my struggle by praying to God for me.
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Pray that I may be kept safe from the unbelievers in Judea and that the contribution
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I take to Jerusalem may be favorably received by the Lord's people there. So that I may come to you with joy by God's will and in your company be refreshed.
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The God of peace be with you all. Amen. So, he started, he starts with this idea, this concept, right?
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Now, God is unchangeable. He's immutable, right? He's not loving at one point and he stops loving, right?
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At another. What he's trying to say is, Dr. Carson is saying, is it's impossible to figure out everything about God and his ways.
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You can't know 100 % of who God is. And that's even true when you see
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Jesus face to face, whether you go to heaven after death or he comes back and you see him face to face.
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There's really no guarantee that you will fully understand God. And the reason is he's infinite and we're finite.
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That we can experience that is infinite from past to future.
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Right? Only God is the example of the infinite being. And because of that, we can't try to piece together who
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God is and try to say, yes, now I fully know God. On the other hand, this is not to say that God is unknowable in terms of you can't ever know anything about God.
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That's also not true because he's the
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God who speaks. And that's even true from the first chapter, right? In the beginning, God created.
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That's right. That's right. He's transcendent in a way that he's very unlike us.
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He's holy, yet he's also imminent, which means he's also personal.
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His presence is everywhere. He interacts with his creation.
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He's involved in history, right? He's active in our lives. So, it's both.
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There's a tension there. But we can't 100 % figure
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God out because he is God. He's the infinite God. We're not God. Only God can figure himself out 100%.
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Now, sometimes we want to form a system that works and apply it in every way.
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Yeah. Now, I'm not against denominations, right?
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I mean, certain ones I am because they're just plain heretical. But there are denominations.
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There are theologians, and they have a system. And you know what? Some systems work pretty well.
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Some systems not as well. But in the end, there's no system that works 100 % of the time to figure
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God out and figure his way. There's always going to be some mystery to it, right?
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There's always going to be some sort of tension. Now, I'm not saying everything about God is unknowable, but there are certain things.
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And the Bible tells us that, right? On page 185, first paragraph,
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Deuteronomy 29 .29 says, The secret things belong to the Lord our
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God, Moses tells us, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever.
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So, what God has not let us know, that is unknowable.
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We don't know. You know, there have been really great questions during Bible studies like, what does
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God think about this? You know? But if it's not in Scripture, I don't know.
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I can't let you know. Because I don't want to misrepresent God. Or like, how come
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God, you know, God exists as three persons, but he's one
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God. He's always one God, but three persons, right? I don't know.
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But that's how he's revealed himself, right? All right. Now, that means, this is
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Carson's words, that means that we will always have gaps as we construct the puzzle.
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It means that clumsy players will try to force some pieces into slots where they do not belong and may be tempted to leave some pieces out because they cannot see where they fit in.
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Our job is to be faithful with the pieces that we're given, and if they don't fit, we just leave them unsolved.
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But we're faithful with everything God has given us and revealed to us, right? Now, what is the result of trying to force consistency into God?
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What happens when we try to fix things? Like, just, okay, let's smooth it out, resolve the tension, resolve, try to solve the mystery.
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What happens when we try to do that? Yeah, right.
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In one sense, we're trying to be God, right? Carson says the same, similar thing here on page 185, the last sentence of the second paragraph.
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God himself becomes domesticated, neat, controllable, right?
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The transcendence of God, his holiness, he's utterly unlike us, is precisely the fact that we can't control him, he can't be controlled, right?
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Idols are controllable. You get to place it wherever you want, you get to pray to it whenever you want, you get to hold it in your hand, you get to touch it, you get to feed it, you know, those are idols.
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But God is not like that. Now, why does he start with this such a complex topic, right?
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I have to read that a couple of times, like, where is he going with this, right?
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And the reason is, at one level, many biblical prayers are consistent, right?
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There are various human authors, different human authors, they pray the same, pray to the same
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God, and they ask for the same goal in mind, right? They ask with the same goal in mind, for example, the apostles,
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John, Peter, and Paul, they all pray with the same prayer of Jesus, please come back soon, right?
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With that eternal perspective in mind, when Jesus comes back, right?
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Come Lord Jesus, right? They do pray that. However, there are some tensions in prayers.
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There are some tensions that Carson actually admits he doesn't go through all of them in his book.
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His book is not supposed to be treated as a manual for all sorts of prayers.
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It's just a limited sample of Pauline prayers, how Paul prayed.
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And he agrees, he says, you know what, it's limited in scope. I don't go through the
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Psalms, but the Psalms have the full range, full spectrum of human emotions and experiences, right?
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Oh, I thought this was funny. On page 186, first paragraph, one of the reasons why elderly people appreciate the
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Psalms more than young people is because they have lived longer and experienced more, and therefore they can resonate with a wide range of experiences reflected there.
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I was going to ask, you know, like, Victor, if he had been here, like, is that is that why you show up to Sunday school?
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But he has so many hats he's wearing. Maybe if Victor is watching online, he could type that.
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But it's true, Sunday school, we've been going through, I mean, before the apologetic session, we've been going through the
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Psalms, right? And we got to over 100. But if you take the average age,
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I'm sure it's greater than 50. Right? Right. Maybe like only young person who shows up consistently would be like Dexter.
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Right. And then my wife, Lauren, and because I'm here too.
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That's it. But but yeah, Psalms are deep and God provides a full experience of human.
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You know what I've read through the Psalms? Yeah. Yeah. You basically touch almost every emotion.
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Oh, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
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Right. Right. Thanks. And all of these particular situations that he gets into, because I am too, you know,
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I see that as a way in which I myself am able to cope and also learn.
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Yeah, it helps, you know, like people who are experiencing grief, depression, you know, anxiety, like there's a
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Psalm for that. And there's it's like even different types of grief. There's there are
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Psalms where grief and then it gets resolved into joyful praise. There are Psalms where it's just like just grief.
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There's no joyful, happy ending. And there's just a Psalm for every human experience, betrayal, doubt, facing death.
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I mean, all of it, many of which we may churches normally don't talk about or sing about.
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Right. When's the last time you've lamented as a congregation? Right. So for sure.
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Now, he says it again, this book that we're finishing, it's not a manual for prayer.
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It's not a prayer manual because prayer life must not be like a recipe book.
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He says it must not be a step by step. If you do this. Then God will answer. Right.
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It cannot be a magic spell that you say the right thing at the right time and expect
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God to answer. Right. On page 186, the third paragraph, he says, that is why this book has tried to stress the relationship we must nurture as we pray to the living
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God. And in the ninth chapter, we worked our way through some of the mysteries of praying, acknowledging, so to speak, the areas where there are large numbers of puzzle pieces missing.
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So for this chapter, D .A. Carson chooses a prayer that was not answered the way that Paul wanted.
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And I think that's really important. There were prayers in which Paul prayed and in which the answer was not how
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Paul asked the answer to be. And that really shows that prayer is not a magic spell.
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Right. What's what's wrong with treating prayer as a magic spell? If I say,
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OK, I'm going to pray in Jesus name and God has to answer. What's wrong with that? Right.
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So you take it for granted. If you pray, everything will happen the way that you ask. Right. And he's not spiritual.
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He's not God. Yeah. Right. If he has to be if his arm is twisted every time
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I say something like a magic word, like in Jesus name, even. And he's not
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God, then I get to control God again, goes back to idolatry.
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Right. But God is uncontrollable. He's not tameable.
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Right. That's right.
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Yeah. I mean, that's why satanic rituals and incantations, magic spells. That's why that's evil witchcraft.
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That's why they're all evil, because you're trying to control God. Right. Yes.
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He's he's fully sovereign. Right. He rules over all things. Right.
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And there's there's like no there's no atom that that goes against his will.
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Right. Even the smallest to the biggest, they're all going according to God's plan. Now, let's talk about this.
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Romans 15, 30 through 32, Paul is asking the church to pray for him.
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So this is actually different from the prayers we've seen as well. Right. Instead of Paul praying for the church, which we've been seeing over and over again, this time
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Paul's asking the church to pray for him on.
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And specifically, it's about Paul's ministry, it's not something about, you know,
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Paul's private life of, you know, I'm going through this illness. No, no. It's about his ministry specifically.
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So here are some, I think, four requests for things that we need to take note of.
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First, Paul wants this prayer to be offered with earnestness, urgency and persistence.
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During this prayer, Paul actually has very strong emotive words, very expressive words.
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Right. I urge you to join me by praying to God for me. Right. It's expressive.
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It's personal. It's intimate. And if you know the book of Romans, has
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Paul visited the churches in Rome? No, he didn't.
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Right. When he's writing to the Romans, he has not visited. And he actually discloses that in chapter one.
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I hope to see you. Right. I don't think he went to Spain either. No, he didn't go to Spain.
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And we'll go over that. Yeah. Right. Right. So it's interesting that he didn't really get to the reason why he went to the
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Romans. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. It's like, he's enjoying being out in there.
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Right. Yeah. So he has strong words. Right. I urge you, brothers and sisters, by our
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Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit to join me. Right.
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By praying to God for me. So there's this, there's this very much one anothering.
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Right. Paul's not doing this by himself. He's even requesting people he doesn't know personally, just because they're connected by what?
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By God. By God's son, Jesus Christ. Because of their allegiance to Jesus, Paul wants them on his team.
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Right. I like what Carson said in page 187, second paragraph.
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What does that mean? Right. What does what does Paul mean to brothers by our
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Lord Jesus Christ? What does it mean by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the
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Spirit? What does he mean by that? He says he gives a tremendous number of examples.
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So what does it mean by our Lord Jesus Christ? If you truly confess Jesus, the Messiah is Lord, I urge you in his name to pray for me.
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Right. If you are one of those, if you participate in the salvation Jesus has gained for you, if you submit to him who has taught us to pray, if you have tasted his redemption and long to see his kingdom extended in the world, then
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I urge you to pray for me and my ministry. If you know anything of the love of the
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Spirit, which in this context refers not to our love for the Spirit, but to the love with which the
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Spirit fills us and empowers us, then demonstrate that love in this ministry of intercession to which
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I'm urging you. If the Spirit is working in you, how can you not love? If you love me, how can you not pray for me?
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For you must always remember that your prayers reflect the grasp of who Christ is and how well you love.
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Right. Very, very deep and rich here. Right. If you identify with Christ and the
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Spirit has filled you and is working in you, then you please pray for my ministry.
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That's what Paul's saying. Right. And oftentimes I think a similarity is our church.
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We do receive missionary letters. Some of the missionaries
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I've never met. Because I'm new. Right.
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Some of these missionaries have been serving for decades and it's hard for them to come every year.
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It's hard for them to even come every couple of years because it's expensive. You have to take time off of your own ministry.
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But they always have prayer requests. Right. And on days when
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I do open them, I sometimes remember to pray. I don't pray often enough, but that's kind of the same idea.
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The reason why we pray for our missionaries, even many of you might not have met many of them that we support, it's because we're united in Christ and the same
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Spirit who works in them works in us. We're on the same team. Right.
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Now, what does it mean by joining my struggle? Join me in my struggle.
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This verb is only used once and Carson goes deeply into the
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Greek of it and he says it's similar to like wrestling or contending. What does that tell us about prayer?
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Yeah. Right. Yeah.
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In one sense, yes, we do submit to the Lord. Right. But it's not just passive submission.
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No, it's an active contending. Right. I liked what he says on page 188 when he quotes a.
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When he quotes a missionary to the Muslim lands, Samuel Zwemer, and that's this is the third paragraph, he says prayer is the gymnasium of the soul.
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Prayer is the gymnasium of the soul. Right. For those of you who like to work out, you know, it's it's it's hard.
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It's arduous. I guess even those of you who don't like working out, maybe those of you who don't like working out, maybe it's even harder.
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Right. So what it's saying is don't expect prayer to be just the simple one sentence.
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You know, don't don't expect when you pray for someone just once.
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It's like, OK, that's it. Right. Sometimes it's a struggle. Right.
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Right. Right. And he says in page 188, what what what does that mean?
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The idea rather same paragraph is that Paul understands real praying to include an element of struggle, discipline, work, spiritual agonizing against the dark powers of evil.
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It's a battle. Right. I think prayer, prayer, prayer works.
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When you when you meet like new Christians and, you know, you might have remember when you became a new
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Christian, you know, fighting against sin is hard. Fleeing temptation is hard.
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But it's possible with prayer. Oh, yes, Jim. Oh, OK.
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But the thing is, Christian life is a battle until Jesus comes.
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It's a it's a it's a battle. It's agonizing. It's violent.
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It's violent. And when you pray, you know that you you are really fighting against evil forces.
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If you talk to like some of the older states and you know that they have deep prayer life, you'd be shocked to find how not straightforward, how
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God traumatic even and difficult their lives have been.
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Right. It's just like they but but they'll they'll like share it as if it was just like, oh, it was
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OK, you know, like, but it's like, what? You know, it's just like, well, what kind of life did you live?
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Right. But that's that's that's what prayer life is. People who pray, knowing that it's a battlefield, they've gone through a lot.
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Right. But they've seen victories. People who don't have a great prayer life haven't seen much victory.
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Yeah. Right. Right.
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Yeah. Pray without ceasing. Yeah. It's it's a continuous life style. Right. And my question is, have you have any of you experienced prayer like that where it's just agonizing?
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It's difficult. It seems like you're stuck, but that's the only thing you can do at this moment.
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Right. That's that's the type of life that we live. That's that's what prayer looks like.
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Oftentimes we think of prayer is just a short sentence, although sometimes that's true.
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Sometimes you have to force yourself to do it. Yeah. Sometimes you have to force yourself to do it. Right. And Paul makes another metaphor in Ephesians six.
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It's a it's a war metaphor. Put on the whole armor of God. And if you go over each armor, it's like, oh, you're in the battle.
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Right. And you're relying on God's armor. He's the one who equips you.
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And you have to put all of those on. And that's necessary. That's the necessary preparation for our prayer.
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Right. Because at the end of all in chapter six, it's pray. That's the command. Now, the heart, if you've been to like an ethnic church, you would notice that they're like prayer meetings multiple times throughout the week.
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And I'm not saying that's like that's the standard. Right. We all need to wake up at 6 a .m. Monday through Sunday.
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Let's all gather here in the fellowship hall and let's pray. I'm not saying I'm not saying that, although if you want to, we can't.
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Right. But a lot of ethnic churches, a lot of ethnic churches, a lot of.
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Missionaries, they have that kind of life. And the question is, why don't the
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Westerners pray with struggling like that? What do you think? What is it?
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Yeah, not a priority. What is it? Right.
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Right. Right. And Carson argues that one of the one of the reasons is because of the
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Western culture has really lost this idea of the spiritual realm.
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Right. So we being in the culture, we're influenced by that. And, you know, we don't see the spiritual reality behind our lives.
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Right. However, Carson does talk about in the West, there is a rise of spirituality still.
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Right. It's not just secular. It's not just atheistic. Rather, there's a cultism, witchcraft, satanic rituals.
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Right. Page 189. Third paragraph, the rise in general, a general interest in the occult sometimes explodes into a horrible media account of satanic rituals, even murder.
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Demonic powers may also unload massive doses of guilt and despair and shame on us.
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Right. Sometimes you hear about like serial killers, and you have to come to the fact that this couldn't have been just purely human.
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You know, there's got to be some spiritual darkness behind this that stands behind it. Right. When you see atrocities against humans, it's just like this.
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This is more than just, you know, killing for vengeance. Yeah. Yeah.
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Right. I like that. Right.
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Paul's immediate solution is I'm going to go to Jesus. I got to go to Jesus presence.
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Now, our goal in ministry, what that means is not an intellectual debate.
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It's not a musical wooing. Right. This is what he talks about on page 189.
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It's not about, you know, having the best arguments. But rather, but page 190.
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A first paragraph. But even if all this dark power is against us, none less than Jesus is for us.
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Right. Lest we get to bogged down in in in the end, we are out to win people to Jesus Christ.
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That's the purpose of ministry. Ah, so that souls are saved for Jesus.
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Because when you talk to people who are nonbelievers, oftentimes you hit a wall.
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It's just like, how come you can't get that right or understand it? Paul says they're veiled by Satan.
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What's the solution? What do you do when you keep hitting walls?
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You got to go to God. You got to ask Jesus. Jesus is stronger than Satan. And it's not just once.
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Yeah, biblical prayers are important to go to. But again, it's not a formula.
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Um, it's it's it's a relationship. When when we look at the biblical prayers, we get to find out what kind of God we're praying to.
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And that gives us the confidence and trust to rely on him for answers and keep going to it.
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All right, number two. Paul solicits solicits prayers, pray for itself in connection with his own ministry.
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So what does that mean? This is the first time that Paul asks for prayer in the
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Book of Romans, right in the letter to the Romans. And in fact, this is not the only time right in Ephesians 6, 12 and 18 through 20, 2
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Corinthians 1, 8 through 11 and Philemon 22. He does ask for personal prayers.
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And so personal prayers are not bad things. They're not evil, right? Ah. Here, the prayer request is regarding Paul's ministry as he is headed to Jerusalem with donations from churches around Macedonia and Achaia.
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And it was a gift to the Christians in Jerusalem because they were suffering. Christians in Jerusalem were suffering.
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So churches from really at that time all over the world, right, just the known world, they collected money and sent it to Paul because Paul was visiting them and said, please give it to our brothers and sisters in Jerusalem.
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Now, the prayer here is specifically
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Paul asks prayer for that he might be kept safe from unbelievers in Judea.
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That's the first request. What does that mean? There were unbelievers in Judea who did not like Christianity and who did not like the apostle
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Paul. And if you read the book of Acts, and I think we will go through the book of Acts after we go through Habakkuk.
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And Habakkuk comes after Luke in terms of the sermon series, not the
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New Testament order. Habakkuk is an Old Testament book. Yeah. No. For the Faith Bible Church, Habakkuk will be the next book we cover for the sermon.
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But we'll go through Acts too. I think it's fitting after Luke. Acts is kind of long.
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Acts is kind of long. I know. Now, Paul knew that there would be opposition in Jerusalem from the
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Jews. And they saw Christianity as a threat and Paul as a traitor because remember,
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Paul's background is he's a Jew, too. He's a Pharisee, was a Pharisee, right? In fact, he persecuted the church, too.
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He didn't care for circumcision. He did not make Christians get circumcised, which is a very important covenantal sign in Judaism.
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Right. And and not only that, he's preaching Jesus Christ as the main focal point, the main location for sinners to meet with God.
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It's no longer the temple. It's Christ. If you trust God, if you trust Jesus that he died for your sin and rose from the dead, well, you can meet
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God through him. You don't have to go to Jerusalem. And in Acts, the
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Hellenistic Jews, Hellenistic means Greek Jews, like Greek influence. Remember, Alexander the
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Great kind of conquered the known world. Greek culture kind of spread.
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That's that's why there are Jews in first century, you know,
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Israel with names like Philip. Right. It's like that's not a
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Jewish name. Well, it's Hellenistic Greek, right? It's Greek influence.
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Hellen means Greek, right? Now. The Hellenistic Jews, they try to kill
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Paul because Paul keeps. Preaching Jesus Christ and he was gathering up a crowd because they wanted to know about Jesus Christ and these
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Jewish leaders persecuted Paul and other Christians, and he was attacked many times, he was stoned.
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Right. And of course, this is not anti -Semitism because, in fact, not all Jews opposed Paul. Right.
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It was mainly the religious leaders. And we would actually argue the early
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Christians were actually converted Jews. So ethnic ethnically in the first century, most of the
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Christians, the earliest ones were Jews. Right. So Christianity is not against Jews.
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It's that some of the powerful Jews did not like Christianity. In fact, the apostles often went to the synagogues to convert the
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Jews. All right. And in fact. There were pagans who wanted
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Christianity stopped, too. It's not like only the Jews hated Christians, pagans, too.
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Right. Act 16, Paul's jailed in Philippi. That's not a
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Jewish town. What that shows is that the gospel naturally offends all sinners from every background.
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That's that's the gospel. Now, the unbelievers in Judea are basically what the
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Greek word is. They're rebels. They're not just. Oh, they have a different view. Right.
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Belief is more than a private matter in the Bible. What it's saying is
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Jesus is the only way to salvation. And if you reject Jesus, you have committed treason against God.
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It's not a different opinion. It's not the matter of having a different opinion regarding, like, you know, your favorite ice cream flavor.
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Oh, but when you reject Jesus Christ, you're rebelling against God. That's what
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Paul's saying. Now, the second prayer is that his service in Jerusalem may be acceptable to the
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Lord's people there. Here is Paul's pastoral sensitivity. He believes that all the believers.
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Oh, we're basically Jews in Jerusalem because it's Jerusalem, it's the capital city of Israel.
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And what he's saying in page 193 here, there is there is a chance that the
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Jewish Christians in Jerusalem may not favorably receive the gifts from other churches.
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Now, what does that mean? Imagine receiving money from non -Jews.
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That would that could be difficult for Jewish Christians because culturally non -Jews
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Gentiles, they're kind of dirty. Right. That was kind of the first like argument in the church.
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Right. The first problem in the church was Judaism, cultural
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Judaism and Gentiles. Can they be together? Right.
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If you're curious about that, it's a recallations. Right. And Paul says, no, you don't have to convert to Judaism in order to believe in Christ.
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You don't have to do Jewish rituals in order to serve Christ. Right. Right. Right.
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No, for sure. Right. Right. Right.
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Right. Right. Paul, right. Page 193.
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Third, fourth paragraph. Christians, after all, are often influenced by the views of unbelievers around them.
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Paul is a realist. He does not expect all the Christians in Jerusalem to understand, let alone approve all that he has done.
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Right. Paul went out really to the Gentiles. And then the very next paragraph, it takes grace to receive gifts in the right spirit every bit as much as it takes grace to give them in the right spirit.
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Sometimes some people, it might look like humility to reject gifts like, oh,
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I can't take that. Sometimes it's like a cultural thing. Right. Asian culture is like, oh, you have to refuse at first.
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Right. But yeah, you can. But but it takes humility to receive gifts.
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Right. And the fact that you're not paying for it, you're not paying back for it.
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It's a gift. You're not earning it. Right.
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And of course, he talks about the applications for today. Right. They're not the same, so to say, because there's there's not
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Paul going around giving money from different churches to a church that's struggling right now.
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He says, pray that Christian ministers are delivered from the outside opponents who would try to destroy their ministry.
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Right. I think that's a very, very important prayer. Christian ministers are under attack.
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I'm not just saying for pastors, but anyone, anyone who's ministering, they're under attack from outside influence, social pressure.
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Right. Oh, yeah. I mean, like even your nephew.
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Right. That's a that's that's a social pressure. Yeah. Pray for him. Right. Oh, familial influence.
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Right. If you have nonbelieving family and they ask you to do things that, you know, God would not want.
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Media attack. Oh, nowadays, I don't know when this book was edited for second edition.
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Nowadays, it's happening in the Western world. Right. Franklin Graham was banned in England.
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Franklin Graham's the son of Billy Graham. And because he was preaching the gospel, they won't give him the visa.
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I know. Right. Yeah, he was banned. Right.
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Oh, I think he did get it later. Oh, did he? I don't I haven't been following.
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Oh, really? Oh, no. I mean, I think it's a recent thing.
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I think I thought it was a recent thing. Yeah. Yeah. It's not not. No. Yeah.
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This is a recent thing. Yeah. Like his visa. Yeah. It's a new thing.
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Yeah. Yeah. No. Before I'm sure he was there, but it's under a new it's a new parliament right now.
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Right. The Labor Party won. On page one ninety five third paragraph, we should pray that Christian leaders might find that their
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Christian service is acceptable to those to whom they minister. That's that's another application.
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And that's because our culture of one paragraph down again, many in our generation attend church to find peace and happiness, not pardon and oneness.
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They're asking for different things. You know, I wonder how many churches are faithfully preaching and teaching from the
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Bible and people who check out those churches and they leave just because, you know, it wasn't fun or, you know.
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Yeah, I didn't like the choir. I didn't like the song choice. I didn't like the instruments.
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Right. The prayer is these people would actually check out these churches for the right reason.
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If it's good quality teaching and preaching from God's word.
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You know, consider staying, pray about it, but don't leave because you didn't like how the pastor dressed or, you know, things like that.
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Third, for Paul, prayer for his ministry envisions further ministry.
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Pray that I may be kept safe from the unbelievers in Judea. We went over that and that the contribution
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I take to Jerusalem may be favorably received by the Lord's people. They're just talked about that.
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So that when you see so that that's the purpose. I may come to you with joy by God's will and in your company be refreshed.
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He is thinking beyond his immediate stop in Jerusalem. He plans to go to Rome to have support and then to Spain to preach the gospel, where the seed of the gospel has not been sown.
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Right back then, Spain didn't know the gospel. They were all pagans. His prayer is beyond the immediate need, and it's more than just the deliverance of the needs now.
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But what comes after. Now, how are some ways we can be praying with a vision of the future of the church?
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What are some ways we can pray beyond the immediate needs? We could.
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Yeah. You know what? If Cassandra said, is there where church planting comes in?
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That could be a great prayer. God, please grow our faith. Please grow.
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Please save more people and bring them here or we get out and evangelize so that this church is so big that we have to plant another church in Sacramento.
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Right. That is a great prayer that's beyond our needs. I think the
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Russian church did something like that. I got to ask Victor. The Russian church has been here for decades, too.
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So they've got they've gotten big and then came back.
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Yeah. It's a whole there's a whole history. Yeah. The community to nurture through, you know, activities.
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Yeah. And then, you know, slowly addressing scripture and things that might suddenly get them interested in reading the
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Bible. Right. Yeah. And, you know, I think that's a great prayer. Right.
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When we were praying for the roof to be fixed and, you know, it was it was expensive.
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Right. Only God was a you know, was able to finance that because it was a lot of money.
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But oftentimes the prayer was mainly beyond the roof. You know, it's it's it's it wasn't just that we wouldn't get raindrops right this winter.
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Of course, there's that. But it was so that this building would be maintained so the next generation could worship
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God here. Right. It's something beyond just the immediate need of the roof fixing.
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Right. But again, that's those are some things we need to dream about and pray about.
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Right. I like that. I don't know. I don't know if this church has planted another church.
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I don't know. But wouldn't that be a prayer that is worth praying on struggling every night?
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God, please work through this church that there might be a revival, that dead souls are saved.
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I mean, you know, you see all these neighbors with like rainbow flags and whatever flags and like maybe those people would be saved and then we could plant another church in the neighborhood or, you know, because this building can't hold that many people.
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Right. Do they go out and actually try to start churches or, you know, just basically small groups so that eventually the church will evolve?
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Yeah, I think it depends. We we we we support financially and prayerfully different missionaries and through different organizations.
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As far as I know that some of them do or have planted a church and they're ministering through there and training of the locals, which
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I think is very important. So the ones that we support, they do do that.
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Some of some of them translate the Bible into a language that has not. And I think that's important, too.
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So there are various different depending on the organization and the different nation they're in.
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It looks different. We will have a missionary to Japan visiting us in a couple of weeks and he'll share what he's doing, too.
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Yeah, I think the 8th of September. Well, page 198, third paragraph.
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I like this one. Paul wants his way to be smooth so that he can get on with the next phase of outreach.
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He cares about the gospel. He is passionately committed to its extension. That is what drives his prayer.
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He wants to see more people saved. Finally, it is important to realize that some of this is the fourth point is important to realize that some of Paul's prayers were not answered as he would have liked.
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Even the apostle, even the one who was I mean, probably one of the greatest evangelists of church history,
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Paul, right? That you couldn't shut him up. People try to kill him multiple times, right?
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But he just had to speak of Jesus, right?
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When you read the book of Acts, the unbelievers do arrest Paul. Yes, he did get to Rome, but not in a way to be refreshed and supported, but because he had to be tried in chains.
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And as far as we know, he never got to Spain. There's just no record of it.
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And the question and the point is, if our prayers are all answered according to our hopes, our way, how we ask, then again, then
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God would cease to be God. Then we would be gods. And this is why, again, we talked about magic.
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That's idolatry. It domesticates God, right?
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Now, I recommend all of you to read the afterword. It's only like a page, right?
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And the key point of the afterword is that when we read this book, it's not about just the information and the formula, right?
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It's this is not you didn't read this book so that all you just have the right words to say, right?
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But we may. But but so we ask you for your blessing for the power of the spirit that we may know you better.
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It's about the relationship with God and grow in our grasp of your incalculable love for us.
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It's to know God better. And this in itself is a prayer.
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That we would increase in reflecting our
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God's glory in Jesus Christ. He ends with this made the
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God of peace who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead arch
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Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep equip us with everything good for doing his will.
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And may he work in us what is pleasing to him through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever.
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Amen. Yeah. Thank you all for joining.
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And I think the most important thing is we read this and yes, apply it.
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But so that we get to know God better so that we talk to God in a deeper way and so that we commune with God, we come face to face with God.
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Right. And pray according to his will for his glory.
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And I hope you were all. Blessed by it and even transformed by praying according to what scripture teaches us.
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All right. Let us pray. Father, we're grateful that prayer is not a formula.
01:00:06
It's not a recipe, but rather a way of talking to you and help us to grow closer to you.
01:00:13
Help us to know you better and fill us with your spirit so that we may mature and we may become more like your son,
01:00:22
Jesus Christ and live according to the way that pleases him so that we glorify you.