Holy Violence in Prayer

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The title of my sermon today is Holy Violence and Prayer. If you look at the bulletin, you'll see the outline.
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It's right here. Thank you, Miss Linda, for always faithfully putting these together. It looks great. So solar flares are large discharges of energy that can be observed coming off our sun and other stars in outer space.
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Like the Earth and all other planetary bodies, stars possess an invisible magnetic field.
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If you look in your bulletin, you'll see the blue one is an illustration of magnetic field. These lines run from north to the south poles.
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Sometimes these lines get tangled up and no longer point the correct direction. Imagine inserting a pencil into a rubber band and twisting it.
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And then when you pull that pencil out, all that energy is released and the rubber band snaps back into place.
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This is a simplistic description of what happens with a solar flare. The result of this phenomenon is the magnetism of a very small section of the planet is violently realigned to match the magnetic field of the entire planet.
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The tension from this misalignment is released in one giant burst of energy, and the planet's equilibrium is restored.
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If you look in the second picture, you'll see what a solar flare looks like. We can draw a parallel from this scientific process to our prayer lives.
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Prayer is difficult because we must struggle to align our sinful wills with God's holy will. I'm not referring to God's revealed will here, the scriptures.
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As I believe, that occurs in the process of our sanctification. True Christians always accept the
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Bible as God's word. Aligning with God's decreed will or the will that he's decreed, the secret will, that's much more difficult.
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There's a lot of unknowns there, and it requires more faith from us. The timing, location, method, and the earthly results of God's decreed will are usually a mystery to us.
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And that is why violent or purposeful prayer must be a habit for the Christian life.
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When a solar flare encounters the Earth's upper atmosphere, one of the things you see is the northern lights because the atmosphere is the thinnest at the
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North and South Poles, so the northern lights are the result of that. It is glorious to see an earthly saint who has completely relinquished control and leans in faith on the excellency of God's sovereign will.
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These Christians are beautiful displays of God's redemptive work, and like the northern lights, they display the glory of our
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Redeemer. Offering violence through continuous prayer is how Christians, such as ourselves, can achieve lasting peace through the changing circumstances in our world.
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Did you like that spiritual paradox? The Christian life is full of them, isn't it? There's a lot of paradoxes in them.
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My two main points today also form a seeming contradiction. Violent prayer is simultaneously aggressive and it's submissive.
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The old man makes us slothful or indifferent when we should offer correct prayer to God. Additionally, it incites us to pride or willfulness when
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God gives us an answer that we do not like. We must be aggressive in the frequency, the passion, and the purpose of our petitions.
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God despises lukewarm requests like he despises lukewarm believers. Prayer attempted in this manner will result in your petitions being spewed out of his mouth, as he says in Revelation.
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Listen to what Thomas Watson says of passionate prayer. He says, prayer without fervency and violence is no prayer.
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It is speaking, not praying. Lifeless prayer is no more prayer than a picture of a man is a man, right?
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A picture of a man is not a man. Lifeless prayer is not prayer. Conversely, on the opposite side, we should be submissive to the circumstances, the timing, and the ultimate result of God's will that is revealed in answer to our prayers.
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This submission is not like the fatalism of the agnostic or the atheist, but is a quiet assent to the purposes of God.
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I like what Moses says here in Deuteronomy. He says, Deuteronomy 22, verse five, he says, he is the rock, he referring to God.
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His work is perfect, for all his ways are justice. A God of truth and without injustice, righteous and upright is he.
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There is no better pattern of prayer in the Bible than that of Messiah, and there is no better example prayer than Jesus' penultimate or second -to -last prayer in the
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Garden of Gethsemane. For the remainder of this morning, I want to turn your attention to the prayer life of our
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Savior. Please turn with me to chapter 22 of Luke. We'll read verses 39 through 45 together.
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And I'll be reading from the LSB version. And he came out and went as was his custom to the
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Mount of Olives, and the disciples also followed him. Now when he arrived at the place, he said to them, pray that you may not enter temptation.
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And he withdrew from them about a stone's throw, and he knelt down and began to pray. Saying, Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me, yet not my will, but yours be done.
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Now an angel from heaven appeared to him, strengthening him, and being in agony, he was praying very fervently, and his sweat became like drops of blood falling down upon the ground.
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And when he rose from prayer, he came to his disciples and found them sleeping in sorrow. Luke records the verbal submission of Jesus to his father's will first, and then details his aggressive posture in praying.
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Jesus is both violent and meek in this scenario. As I examine this test, I like to look at it backwards, and I wanna discuss the aggressive prayer in verse 44 first, before we go back and look at the submissive part of the prayer in verse 42.
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Ordering points alphabetically is a common mnemonic device, so I think aggressive -submissive works better. And also,
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Jesus was truly man, but Jesus lacked the Adamic nature that we possess in our attendant or intrinsic fallenness.
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Therefore, Jesus could submit to God's will before he had fervently prayed. Since we are battling sin, and we are created beings,
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I believe the delivery of the petition would be looked at that first, and then we'll talk about submission to decision, as is befitting us as citizens of the king.
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So my first point is violent prayer is aggressive. For our prayers to be effective, they must be fervent.
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I like what Thomas Watson says here. He says, prayer is the duty that keeps the trade of religion flowing. When we join in prayer with others or pray alone, we must use holy violence.
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Not eloquence, but violence in prayer carries it. The Puritans frequently compared prayer to the metaphor of suing
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God in the heavenly court and calling upon him to fulfill his promises. You can see strands of this in most of the
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Puritan authors, but especially in Thomas Goodwin, and of course, Thomas Watson. I like what Thomas Goodwin says.
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Here he is talking about prayer. He says, sue him for it. Sue him for it. Do not leave God alone.
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Pester him, as it were, with his own promise. Tell him what he has said he is going to do. Quote scripture to him.
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It pleases him. The child may be slightly impertinent. It doesn't matter. The father likes it in spite of it.
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And God is our father, and he loves us, and he likes to hear us pleading his own promises. He likes to hear us quoting his own words to him and saying, in light of this, can you refrain him from answering me?
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It delights the heart of God. Sue him. That is, demand that he answer you because he has promised to do so.
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At first glance, this may seem very impertinent and disrespectful. Can a sinful man really hold a holy
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God to account? I believe there is biblical warrant to do so. Although, like the road of life, the application is very narrow.
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God commands us to pray and to trust his promises. When we aggressively petition
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God to fulfill his promises, we are not asserting our own will there. We are violently prosecuting his.
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That's the difference. So when you petition God and say, you said this, that's God's will. That's not your will. God's means may be nebulous at times.
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You know, we can't see them. But his will for our spiritual life is not. He desires for us to be holy and to become more and more conformed to the image of his beloved son.
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I like what John MacArthur says here. He says, God's will is that you be saved, spirit -filled, sanctified, submissive, suffering, and saying thanks all the time.
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That's the Christian life. You can find all of these traits in the life of our Savior, either by his divine nature,
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I mean, obviously he didn't be saved, but saved, spirit -filled, sanctified, saying thanks, or through his experience.
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He learned through submission and suffering, he learned that. That was something he had to learn in his human nature.
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Praying for the Lord to increase these qualities in your life should be prosecuted boldly. You should aggressively petition
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God as they are God's requirements for his followers. If we follow Christ, praying for sanctifying grace, it won't be a one -time action.
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It'll be a lifelong pursuit. Therefore, my first point is Christians must be frequent in prayer, aggressive in frequency.
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I like, if you look at 2233, that's received the frequency. Let's start with frequency in practice.
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Jesus' prayer in the garden was built off the foundation of all the prayers throughout his earthly life. How often do we see him in the gospels?
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He woke up early, he left his disciples to go and pray. If you never unsheath a sword, it's gonna rust in the case, and when you go to use it, it's gonna get stuck and you're gonna get killed.
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If you have not been diligent in praying during your life, how do you expect to watch and pray in the hour of your death?
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You don't wait till the end of your life. You start praying now. Fools believe that lack of practice is no hindrance to success, but Christians should not fall for this delusion.
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Scheduled private prayer, sporadic prayer, and group prayer should all be included in our prayer diet.
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Are the sons of the heavenly kingdom to be less shrewd than those that labor for earthly riches? May it never be.
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God's mercies are new to us every morning, and our prayers should be too. Frequency is not simply the practice of praying, like as we talked about before.
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It can also denote or lay out the differences between petitions and the same prayer. If you look at our passage again, verse 42, verse 41 says he began to pray, and then verse 44 says he prayed more fervently, right?
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This can represent both an increase in urgency and a re -presentation of the same exact request.
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These ideas are not mutually exclusive. You can do them together. Consider the parable of the neighbor who had midnight guests and he asked his neighbor for loaves to feed them.
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Did he win his case because he increased his urgency or by persisting in the same request? I think the answer is both.
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Urgent issues may require us to present the same petition multiple ways in the same prayer.
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There's a middle ground between, you know, the Roman Catholics have the foolish, repetitive babble of prayers. There's a middle ground between that and the fire once and forget mentality that is prevalent in evangelical circles.
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We should be somewhere in the middle of that. We can design ways to say the same thing three different ways in our resume.
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We're trying to impress people. Why can we not do that with God? You can ask God the same petition, but change it up and ask it to him again.
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That's what Jesus is doing here. Consider how many ways David expresses his love for God's law in Psalm 119 and let that be the pattern for our prayer.
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You see that Psalm 119. There's 158 or 62 verses, but think of all the different ways
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David does that. That should be the pattern for our prayer. Finally, we should be frequent about bringing the same requests to the throne of God.
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If God delays his reply, then we should increase the volume of our petitions. Keep petitioning him.
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This behavior would vex sinful man, but God is altogether unlike us. He is not wearied by our entreaties.
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He doesn't get weary like we do, and he desires us to be constantly at heaven's door. If we flip back to Luke 18, we find the parable of the persistent widow.
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Was the widow certain of the law or the uprightness of the judge? Well, the fact that she had to constantly apply for this judge to give her justice, it showed the judge didn't have morality.
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It wasn't that the judge was on her side. She knew the weight of the law was on her side. That was her sole ally.
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However, with only one thing in her favor, she kept persisting until that judge dispensed justice and said, all right, you're gonna weary me to death.
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I'll give you justice, right? In Heaven Taken by Storm, and that's a great book. If you guys don't have it, I recommend getting a copy and reading it.
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Thomas Watson wrote the following. He said, no mercy can be bestowed on us, but by way of prayer.
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Mercy is purchased by Christ's blood, but it is conveyed through prayer. All promises are bonds over us, or like a legal obligation to pay, but prayers put those bonds in suit.
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As believers, we don't just have God's law on our side. We have a sinless judge, and he's the greatest advocate that anyone can ever have.
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And Jesus daily is interceding for us in the throne of grace. We have an advocate. He's more powerful than the
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US president. He's richer than all the billionaires put together, and he's more willing to help us than our own parents, our spouse, or our children.
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With all these advantages, should we not be daily visitors to the court of heaven? Lord, forgive us for not wearing a path to the seat of mercy with all these advantages.
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We have all these advantages, and we don't use them. Here are the exhortation that Jesus uses when he ends the parable of the persistent widow.
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He says, and shall God not avenge his own elect who cry out day and night to him, though he bears long with him?
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I tell you, he will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he really find faith on the earth?
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The issue is not God's response. The issue is, are men praying? Do men have faith?
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Persistence in prayer is very important, right? We just talked about that. But passion is vital.
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If you're looking at the two, persistence is important, but you must have passion. 1 Samuel, I believe it's 1
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Samuel, says man looks at the outward appearance, God looks at the hearts, right? One roaring fire in the winter is much better than five or six beds of simmering coals.
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If you have five or six beds of simmering coals out there, it might keep you a little warm, but one roaring fire is much better. It has more utility.
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Therefore, multiplying prayers without a lack of fervency is no substitute. You must have fervency in your prayers.
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If you return to our passage, let's look at verse 43, and we'll go into 44.
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It says, now an angel from heaven appeared to him, strengthened him, and he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat became like drops of blood falling down upon the ground.
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We see here, the Lord is modeling passion in prayer for us, right here.
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It says his sweat became like great drops of blood as he poured out his heart to God.
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Luke is the only gospel writer that records this aspect of Christ's suffering. Luke was a physician, so perhaps it's not surprising he took interest in the medical note here.
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The medical, sorry, the medical details here. Isn't it amazing how the Holy Spirit uses the interests of the gospel author to bring us this unique insight to the life of our
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Savior? Luke was a physician, that interested him. He recorded it. The other gospel writers did not. Whether or not this blood was, well, before the cross,
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Jesus was losing blood in the garden due to the intensity of his pleadings with the Father. So even before he got to the cross, he was shedding blood.
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Now, whether or not this blood is part of his atonement is inconsequential. I'm not gonna sit here and say, was it part of his atonement, was it not?
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The important thing is, he was so passionate, it was like drops of blood were coming out. This private or semi -private shedding of blood was preparation that was preparing him or sealing him for the next morning on the cross, when he's gonna shed his blood publicly for the sins of the world.
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God the Father did not overlook this wondrous display of devotion from his Son. What does the text say?
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It says he sent an angel from heaven to attend to Christ. This angel, I believe, was giving
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Jesus supernatural strength for the trial he's about to undergo. It is very, it's noteworthy if you look at it,
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God sent angels to minister to Jesus at the beginning, when he was in the wilderness, and then you see at the end, right before the cross.
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These, the circumstances were different, but the temptations were identical, right? Skip what the
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Lord set up for you, skip the cross. The Lord sends his angel. They're ministering spirits. That's why they were coming to strengthen Jesus.
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The text doesn't specify exactly how Jesus was strengthened, so I'm not gonna go beyond that and try to guess what they gave him or what they did, but we know
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God has the best prescription to give his suffering son. God knew exactly what he needed. Let this be an encouragement to you.
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The Lord will quickly succor or aid those who pour out their hearts to him. If you pour out your hearts to God, he will answer.
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He will send, you know, he may even send an angel. I don't know how he'll do it, but he may even do that, because Hebrews says they are ministering spirits.
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They are sent forth for those of us that inherit salvation. That's what they're sent. I like what
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Octavius Winslow says here. It's, again, very similar to Thomas Washington. He said, believing prayer is prevailing successful prayer.
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It assails the kingdom of heaven with holy violence and carries it as a storm. It believes that God has the hearts and he has the arm, both the love that moves him and the power that enables him to do all and grant all that his pleading child requests of him.
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So God has a heart and God has the arm. So don't stay away from the throne of prayer. Don't stay away from the throne of grace.
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Go pray there frequently. Jesus, in his prayers, he could be very earnest, because if you look at his life, he devoted his whole life to one single purpose.
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What is purposeless prayer like? It's like a prairie tumbleweed. Have you guys ever watched Westerns growing up?
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You see a tumbleweed just tumbling around, rolling around? It blows one way and then the other way. It's got no fixed resting place, right?
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If you want to be violent in prayer, you must have a fixed purpose. You must not be like a tumbleweed. Look in the life of Jesus, what do we see?
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He's aggressive in purpose. So the reason for Jesus' incarnation, the focus of his ministry, and the topic of his prayer in Gethsemane all converged on the cross.
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Everything converged on the cross. Was there ever a prayer ever prayed that was more single -minded and focused than this one?
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He was focused on the cross, single -mindedly. In professional football, for those of you who like it, the ball travels furthest and with the most accuracy when the quarterback's hips, shoulders, feet, and wrists are all aligned in the direction of the throw.
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Brother Keith would know all about this. So right, you gotta be aligned. If your hips or shoulders are in different directions, the ball's gonna wobble and fall, right?
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When even one of these body parts are out of alignment, that's when the ball starts wobbling, you see an interception, batted down pass, bad play, right?
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Everything about our Lord was aligned toward the goal of the cross. Everything was in perfect alignment. Right? Is it any wonder that his prayers were so powerful?
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I like the messianic prophecy in chapter 50 of Isaiah. I think this paints an incredible picture of Jesus' dedication to the goal, to his goal.
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Isaiah 50, verse seven says this. He says, for the Lord God will help me, therefore I will not be disgraced.
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I have set my face like a flint and I know that I will not be ashamed.
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Flints, I don't know how much of you, many of you know about flint. If you're campers, you may. It's a very, very hard variety of quartz.
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When you strike a flint with steel, it produces sparks and then you can use those sparks to start a fire.
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When the steely tribulations of this world strike, does our heart race to send up sparks of prayer to God?
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If a flint cannot start a fire, it's useless to a camper. It's just a piece of stone, toss it out, right? Similarly, if trials do not bring us to our knees, then we lose the benefit that might be achieved in praying for deliverance.
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What good are trials if they're not causing you to pray? Right, you need to pray. That's why trials come to make you go to God.
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There's, on the moss scale, which measures hardness, flint registers a seven out of 10. 10 is a diamond, so the very hardest is diamond, so flint is fairly hard.
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Can we truthfully say that our prayers have a purpose that is hard as flint? Or are they soft and flimsy like a sponge?
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You just sort of squeeze them or like Play -Doh or putty. Which type of prayer do you think God's gonna honor?
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You think he's gonna honor a hard prayer with a hard, fixed purpose or a flimsy prayer? Hardness in sin is iniquitous or sinful.
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You don't wanna be hardened in sin, but unyielding prayers are the fruits of a righteous life.
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You should be like a flint in your prayer. We see the fulfillment of Isaiah 57 and Jesus' life in the following verse.
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Luke 9, sorry, Luke 9, 51, if you turn a few chapters back, it says, now it came to pass when the time had come for him to be received up, that he steadfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem.
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Same thing, steadfastly. When we pray to God, we need to set our face towards him.
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Setting our face involves more than a direction, it also involves determination, so there's a dual application here.
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A wicked man can occasionally pray in God's direction, but only a Christian can pray with purpose and determination, so you must be determined.
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Vital prayer will not just be importune or persistent, it will also be submissive.
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So for my second part, let's talk about how is violent prayer submissive? When you think of the words what, how, when, these three interrogative words, or question words, are the main questions we ask when we search out the will of God in prayer.
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What is gonna happen, how is it gonna happen, when is it gonna happen? As time -bound creatures, we cannot see these answers until we look back, we see in retrospect, we don't see looking forward, only
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God sees that way. Jesus was the God -man, so his knowledge was only limited by his choice to lay the prerogatives of his deity aside.
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The only limiting that Jesus had was the limits he placed on himself. Implied, when
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I say the phrase that says take this cup away from me, in verse 42 it says, as he was withdrawn from a stone's throw, he knelt down and said, father, if it's your will, take this cup away from me.
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Nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done. Jesus had no confusion about the manner or timing of his atonement.
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He knew what he was about to go through, that he wasn't confused here, right? Unlike Jesus, we lack perfect knowledge of our future, we don't know what's gonna happen.
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Our prayers must be characterized by increasing submission to God's decision, to his circumstances, and to his timeframe as we grow in sanctification as children of God.
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In his morning thoughts, Octavius Winslow said this, he said, submission is another attribute of the prayer of faith.
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Its utmost range of request is bounded, and the deepest fervor of its spirit is chastened by submission to God's will.
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It presumes either to dictate to God or to counsel him. It leaves the mode of answering his petitions, the time, the place, the way, with God.
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So you aggressively petition God for what his will is in the Bible, but his answer, you submit to it, his time, his place, his location.
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Let's figure out the most obvious application here. Effective prayer submits to God's decision.
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That's the heart of effective prayer. When you see God make a decision, you submit to it. The Athanasian Creed states that Jesus is equal to God in regards to his deity, and he's less than God in regards to his humanity, or he's one person with two natures.
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You cannot divide the will of God up, otherwise you're becoming a polytheist. God has one will. But as a second member of the
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Godhead, Jesus shares the same will with the other two members. The coven of redemption, if you think about eternity past,
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God's will is for us to be saved. That's one will of God. It was made between all three members of the Godhead. In these verses,
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Christ is submitting his human will to the will of the United Godhead. So he's not submitting his will of God because his will is united with God.
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He's submitting his human will. I believe Hebrew says he learned obedience to what he suffered, so his human will is what he's submitting here.
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In the same way we do. We submit our human will to God too, right? We're not deity, but we do have a human will to submit.
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Jesus laid a pattern for us to follow here. We are to submit our human will to the will of God. I like how
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Hebrews 5, oh, and Hebrews 5, 8 says this well. It says, though he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered, right?
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I just mentioned that verse. If Christ learns submission as the perfect God -man, how much more do we need to adopt submissive posture in our prayers?
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We need it much more than Christ because we're not God and we're not perfect. David fasted and prayed earnestly for God to spare his infant son, but when the child died, what did he do?
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He got up, he washed his face, and he ate food, right? He recognized that continued praying after God had rendered his verdict is foolish at best and it's rebellious at worst.
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He said, God's given his verdict. I'm gonna wash my face and go about my life. Jesus qualified his continued petitions to the
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Father with this phrase, not my will, but yours be done. Remember the magnetic field misalignment that creates solar flares?
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We talked about this in the introduction. Should a small section of a planet dictate the magnitude of the entire planet?
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Should this small section say, I'm gonna reverse the polarity? No, it shouldn't do that, right? As members, that would be foolish.
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That'd be foolish for a small section of the planet to have its own will and do that. As members of Christ's body, we must align our hearts with the will of God.
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Let's hear how Jesus' submission is characterized in the epistle of 1 Peter. 1 Peter 2, 23 says, who when he was reviled, did not revile in return.
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When he was suffered, he did not threaten, but he committed himself to him who judges righteously.
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In this case, him as God the Father. Although the principle in this verse is non -retaliation, right, that's the main principle here,
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I believe this can be applied to our prayer life as well. Do we commit ourselves to only just and righteous judge when we pray?
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Or do we submit our case to God while saying, we're gonna work our, we're gonna maintain my agency, I'll work around that answer,
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I'll figure a way to get around it if God answers that I don't like, right? So you should submit everything to him. I like what
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R .C. Sproul said here. He said, the real prayer of faith, trust God regardless of whether the answer is yes or no.
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You trust him all the way. Obedience to God's decision though, it goes beyond merely agreeing with God's answer to our prayer.
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We must faithfully accept the circumstances that he ordains as well. If you submit to God's will and you question the circumstances, that's partial obedience, right?
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As Christians, we must faithfully submit to all aspects of God's plan. Let's think about naming the leper, right?
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He was fine with bathing in the river, but what was he irritated with? I want the rivers of my home country,
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Syria or Damascus, give me a different river, the Jordan's dirty, right? He became angry at that. If he didn't heed the counsel of his servants, he would have died a leper.
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Like if he hadn't, the Lord said this river, not your rivers, this river, right? In the verse we are considering, the cup of wrath was the circumstances of our redemption.
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That cup of wrath is how we were redeemed. Christ's prayer was his verbal acceptance of the task that God had ordained for him.
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In the text, Christ compares his future sufferings to drinking a cup of wrath. During the Lord's supper, right?
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We did that last week. We can drink the cup in a cheerful manner because Jesus drained the cup of curses for us.
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What marvelous love the Savior showed in our behalf to drain that cup of curses to the bottom. The wine cup of wrath, it's a very frequent example in the
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Old Testament. If you read the Old Testament, you'll see it a lot. Men, especially the major and minor prophets, men under the weight of God's judgment, they stagger and reel like a drunk whose wits have deserted him.
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Listen to what the prophet Isaiah says about this. Awake, awake, rise up Jerusalem. You have drunk from the hand of the
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Lord the cup of his wrath. You have drained it to its dregs, the goblet that makes people stagger. That's Isaiah 51, 17.
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Jesus not only took our punishment, but he drank it to the very dregs or leftovers for his sheep.
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Dregs are basically the leftover grape solids and yeast that gather at the bottom of a wine barrel or a jar.
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So when you have wine that comes to the bottom. People usually discard the last bit of wine in a barrel or a bottle to avoid drinking this debris, right?
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Who could have blamed Jesus if he said, you know what, I'm gonna submit to 95 % of what the Lord has given me, but I'm gonna leave the last 5 % out.
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It's often the most temptation to quit is when you're right about done, right? When you're right there, it's like now's the temptation to quit.
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This would be entirely fair from a heavenly or earthly standpoint, right? Oh, Jesus is God, he can do what he wants. However, Jesus didn't take the easy route out, right?
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He submitted absolutely to his father's will. And he was in the circumstances and even the timeframe for his sacrifice.
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So he took the cup of wrath down to the dregs. When you have a unpleasant experience or task coming up, what do many people try to do?
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They procrastinate, they delay it. Put it off, put it off, put it off. I'll keep putting it off and maybe it'll go away. If you cannot change the outcome, why not try to arrange the most opportune time to face the task?
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Maybe I'll feel better next week and I'll do it then. This phenomenon is very common in our culture. I read a
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CNBC study that said procrastination costs employers around $10 ,000 a year per employee.
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So it's a pretty, it costs employers a lot of money. This is an inconvenience for companies, but when this is done against God's decree, this is rebellion, right?
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It rebels against God. Faithful man fights, faithful prayer, sorry, fights the old man's efforts to try and resist
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God's will in the timing of his decrees. Why was the timing of Jesus' death important, right?
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Was the time that important? A lot of times, could he have died at any time? If he left
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Gethsemane and he hid himself, he'd have a few more days of freedom before his execution. He knew they were coming to find him.
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Why not just run off and come back a week later? We don't know the temptation that Jesus faced during these times, but it's very likely that the devil brought this exact temptation to Jesus' mind.
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Just leave Gethsemane, go hide, come back a week later when you're feeling stronger. Obey the
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Father's will, but do it later. I can just see the devil whispering this to Jesus' ear. Surely delaying the cup is not a sinful thing.
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You're still gonna take it just a few weeks later, right? The Bible's very clear that delayed obedience to God's will is disobedience, right?
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You delay your will, you delay the obedience, it's disobedience. Let's read the example of Moses in the book of Exodus.
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In Exodus 4, verses 24 to 26, it says, and it came to pass on the way at the encampment, the
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Lord met Moses and sought to kill him. Then Zipporah took a sharp stone and cut off the foreskin of her son and cast it at Moses' feet and said, surely you are a husband of blood to me.
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So he let him go. He, in this case, is God. Then she said, you are a husband of blood because of the circumcision.
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That's from Exodus 4 there. God had commanded the Israelites to circumcise their male children as a sign that Israel was
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God's covenant people, right? This preceded the Mosaic law. Abraham was the first person to circumcise this kid.
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So before most even gave the law through God, circumcision was a thing. There's no indication in the text that Moses was actively rebelling against the word of God, right?
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It doesn't say he was rebelling, but he was living with the uncircumcised Midianites. The Midianites were also descendants of Abraham.
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They were from his concubine, Keturah, and they were uncircumcised. And so you can imagine, living with the uncircumcised
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Midians, I'll just delay circumcising my own son. I mean, everyone else is doing it, right? As we can see from God's threat, this is a serious sin in God's eyes.
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Now, commentators, some say he was gonna put Moses to death, some say put the son to death. We don't really know, right?
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But either way, there's gonna be a severe consequence for delaying this. And it was delayed because it was supposed to be done,
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I think, at the eighth day, I believe, or ninth day, something like that. True prayer meekly acquiesces or submits to God's timing as he is the only one that possesses perfect wisdom.
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The Bible says Moses was the meekest man on earth during his time. He was the absolute meekest. Jesus is the new and greater
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Moses. Where Moses failed, Jesus succeeded through meek prayer, right?
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Jesus succeeded through this. The timing of Jesus' death had been prophesied by the Old Testament prophets, and it was foreordained from eternity past.
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So there was no delaying it. If you delay it, you ruin the prophecy. The prophecy is part of God's plan. The timing is part of God's plan as too.
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Jesus' sacrifice must occur during the Passover. He must remain in the tomb three days, like Jonah and the whale, and then he must rise again on the
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Christian Sabbath. God is a God of order. God is not a God of confusion. The chronology of Jesus' atonement is as crucial as the act itself, so he must follow the chronology.
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Moses delayed giving the symbol of God's covenant to his son. Christ, through prayer, provided the substance of God's covenant at the perfect time.
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Let's turn to Proverbs and see how important timing is in delivering to the truth. Proverbs 15 .23
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says the following. A man has joy by the answer of his mouth, and a word spoken in due season, how good it is.
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Accepting that God's will always occurs in due season is our duty, right? God is never early, and God is never late.
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If we are late to accept God's will, then our spiritual life will suffer for it. Lincoln was assassinated because his bodyguard went to a bar during the intermission and was late to return to his post to the presidential box.
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I was in D .C., I think in January, about a year ago, and I went to see the Ford Theater where Lincoln got shot.
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You can go walk up to the box. You can walk across the street to, I've read the name of the house, but the house where he laid and died.
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Well, his bodyguard was some Capitol policeman that was notoriously drunk. He left during intermission and came back an hour later when
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Booth had killed him. If he had been at his post with his pistol, Booth would have shot Lincoln, right? So we see what severe consequences that guy had by not showing up on time.
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We have assurance God is omniscient, and no variable, he knows all things, and no variable or consequence has escaped his eye.
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As the church militant, we are the church militant, we are on earth, we must fight for, we must fight against sin, we must fight against the world, the devil, right?
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We fight small -scale spiritual battles, and we can't see the master plan of our heavenly general. That's what's tough. We can't see the full plan.
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One day when we get to heaven, we'll see the full plan and it'll make sense, but now we can't. From his throne in heaven,
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God oversees the war against the forces of darkness, and the church triumphant up there can see his wisdom on perfect display, because they can see stuff.
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Now, I'm not saying they know all the future plans, but they had a better view of what's going on than we do down here.
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But saints in heaven talk to God, they can talk to God directly. I mean, the Bible will say that, but I'm pretty sure they probably can.
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Below, we can't talk to God face -to -face, we can use prayer, right? So we can still intercede.
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We must use prayer, the means that God has given us. My prayer for everyone in this congregation,
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I pray that you will go home and put these principles in practice. God desires that all Christians should be aggressive with the frequency, the passion, and the purpose of their petition.
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Likewise, when we receive his answer, we must be submissive to his decision, his circumstances, and his timing.
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Only then, we'll be able to live a victorious Christian life that walks by faith and not by sight.
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Please bow your heads and pray with me. Dear Lord, I thank you for this text today.
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I thank you for your perfect example in the garden. I pray that we would be like that, Lord, that we would be aggressive in our prayers to you,
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Lord, and submissive when the answer comes. Lord, our wills are often like cats,
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Lord, they don't wanna go in the right direction. Lord, we must use holy violence to hurt our wills in the right direction and say,
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Lord, we wanna submit to your will, Lord, because if we submit to your will, Lord, it's gonna be the best for our spiritual benefit here, and Lord, it'll be the best for us in the future as well.