05-31-2020 (Online Church Service)

All right, I hope you can all see this. This is where I think we left off right there. All right, let's have a word of prayer. We'll get started with our hearing from the Lord from his word today. Lord, thank you so much for protecting our astronauts.

They are truly American heroes, and thank you for each person that's in the space program, both in industry and in government. Bless them, Lord, and we know that you're at work, bringing things to where they need to be for your son, Jesus, to come back.

And Lord, we pray we're in that generation, that we're here when he comes, and may he come quickly. And Lord, we thank you so much for giving us your word, and we will always have it, for it is an eternal book, from eternity out to eternity, eternity.

And you've given it to us in a miraculous way and preserved it for us. Thank you for that, and may your spirit be our teacher today, as always, as we study together. In Jesus' name, amen. All right, so I'm looking at points number three and number nine, because they're going to contribute with point number 10 in our study of prayer.

And today, specifically, last time, we talked about this praying as an envoy, in other words, praying in Jesus' name, praying according to God's will and what that means and how this passage in Romans 8, 24 through 28, contributes to our understanding of those verses.

In fact, just by way of review, and I've cut this down a little bit, we had more scripture than this, but basically, in John 14, 14, where Jesus said, if you will ask anything in my name, I will do it, we talked about how the passage in Romans 8, 24 through 28, shows us how this happens.

Because all of us have had times when we ask for something in Jesus' name, and we didn't seem to get the yes answer, correct? Well, the passage we're studying today, last time and today, shows us how to get in line with God's will in our prayers, and then it does happen.

That's the exciting thing about it. First John 5, 14, talks about praying according to His will, and says that every time we do this, He hears us and we have the petitions, which means we get the prayer answered, yes.

And so, we talked about that last time, and Romans 8, 24 through 28, begin to show us how this can be true. It is not true that when we just ask stuff we want, that it always gets answered, yes, we've all tried that, we know that's true.

Nor is it wrong for us to ask for the things we want, that's normal, the Lord knows that, and we always are going to start there. But I love the fact that Brother Bill mentioned in his Sunday school lesson today, that even though we start there, we need to ask the Holy Spirit to guide our prayer life towards into God's will, I should say, towards it, into God's will.

Holy Spirit, go to the Lord's mind and bring that to me and show me what He's doing tomorrow, show me what He's doing the next day, what is His program? I want to be praying with it, not against it, so please adjust my prayers according to God's will.

And as you begin to experiment with this and learn to do it in practice, it's very practical. As you begin to ask the Lord, Lord, I'm praying for what I want, I want my loved one to be healed, to be saved from potential death or whatever.

Lord, while I'm asking this, adjust my prayers over the next few moments and days so that I'm praying in your will, show me what you're going to do, give me the faith to believe what you're going to do so that I may have a prayer of faith, and He will gradually go to God's mind, come to your mind, and bring God's will to your mind so you can pray accordingly.

It flat works. It's very practical, and this is what this passage in Romans 8, 24 and following is all about. Now, today, we're going to go out to point number nine there, David's prayers, King David's prayers, and some of the promises that we see in his very prayers and how he uses God's promises to coax the Lord into answering prayers.

That's from David's viewpoint, right? But God himself put those prayers in David's heart and mind. It's inspired, right? So we're going to learn a lot about the Romans 8 passage by looking at some of David's prayers today.

All right, so let's review a little bit more, though. Remember, last Sunday, we went to a parallel passage of the Romans 8 passage on prayer, and it was phenomenal because it just, blow by blow, it just teaches exactly the same thing, maybe even goes into more depth of understanding, which things also we speak not in words, which man's wisdom teaches, but with what the Holy Ghost teaches, comparing spiritual with spiritual, and what does all that mean?

Well, we have to remember that that was a parallel passage to our Romans 8 passage. In verse 26, it said this. It said, likewise, the Spirit also helps our infirmities. It means we are weak when it comes to praying.

We're very, very weak. We need help. So the Holy Spirit has to help us when we pray. For we don't even know what we should pray for as we ought to, the Scripture says. We will ask for the wrong things if we don't have help and guidance from the Holy Spirit is what this is teaching.

But the Spirit himself makes intercession for us with groanings that cannot be uttered. Now, you look at what this means in the Greek. It means sighs. It does not mean gibberish, okay? It's not a teaching on tongue speaking or anything like that.

And I'm not, I mean, I have my viewpoint of that after 40 years of study, and it's been a big topic for me to study and to ferret out the proper context of verses that are used to show these things in history of the church and so forth.

That's a whole other subject we can't get into today. But this passage is not speaking on that issue because this is just talking about that what the Holy Spirit is doing is a higher level of language that you and I cannot understand is God's infinite language.

And so what the Holy Spirit does is he takes our feeble little prayers and the few number of adjectives we have to describe how great and how resplendent God's glory is, and he takes that and magnifies it into God's language and takes it up to the Lord in a pleasing way to the Father.

And then he takes the Father's mind and he brings it down and he puts it into our little meager language so that we can understand enough of it to pray with God and be part of God's work in this world.

It's God's family business, and we're his kids, and we're part of everything, and that's why it's true God is sovereign, but it's equally true most of the things God does never get done without answered prayer.

So he has us involved, and he is sending the message to certain of us, those of us who understand the Lord and know God and we walk with the Spirit, he will send the right prayer to us to know how to pray in God's will, and we will be praying for these things that are going to happen, and they'll be answered yes.

And that's powerful and an awesome thing to learn. So the Holy Spirit here, and this is review, but we've already talked about how he comes. It says he knows the mind of the Spirit, that's the Father, the pure Spirit being who created everything, who's in a place that's not a place and he's outside of time, and he takes his mind and heart and desires and his will, both his written will, which is the Bible, but also his secret will, which is what he's going to do tomorrow, that you have no way of knowing unless the Holy Spirit reveals it to you in a subtle way, and he brings that into your heart and mind and begins to adjust your prayers to match God's will.

That is exciting when you see that happen. I've experienced it. And when you see that happen, you're going to get a yes answer because God gave you the faith. It's not worked up human faith. It's God-given faith.

It's a gift that, hey, I'm going to answer this prayer. And you can be bold in it at that point when you know that that is from the Lord. So that's what we've already talked about. Now, in this passage in Corinthians, the parallel passage, we've talked about these several things, about five points here.

Number one, the Spirit searches the deep things of God that's found here in verse 10. He reveals them to us when it's time for us on God's timetable to begin to pray for these events. The Holy Spirit brings it to us, and we do begin to pray.

Why? So that we may know the things freely given to us, the Scripture says in verse 12. These are things God is going to give us anyway. He wants us to ask for it before he gives it. But he's telling us by the Holy Spirit, ask for this.

This is what I'm going to give you. Ask for this. Why would God do this? Well, so that, number one, we can have answered prayers. He's a father. Don't you think fathers love to give to their kids even more than the kids like getting the stuff?

Yes, those of us who are fathers, we know that. Especially with grandbabies, we like to give them things and watch them smile and run off with these little things. God is not all that different. He's using our loved ones to teach us his love for us, only his is infinitely greater than our love for our kids and grandkids.

We find that hard to believe, but it's a fact. Infinitely greater love for us than we can show them. But that's one reason. The second reason is because God loves to work with us in his work and wants us to be part of his wonderful work.

That's why I say most of the things God does, I know he does some things like just totally by himself, defies the laws of his own laws of physics and does things. But the majority of the work God does in this earth, he does it with us and in us and through us because he likes it that way.

And that brings us to the fourth point down there that has to do with verse 13. And that is to get it right, to get our prayers right, we must compare spiritual things with spiritual things. We pray, listen to this, after being spoken to by the word of God, only then can we pray in the right kind of words to speak back to the Lord.

If the Lord had not spoken to us in his word, we would not be able to pray and know how to pray. We would pray totally incorrectly. We would ask amiss. So you see here in 2 Timothy 2, a great key is study of the word of God.

If you're not in the word, your prayers will be amiss. So to have a great prayer life, you have to have a great study life. You have to be meditating on the word of God. You've got to be in the word and you've got to read it slow, not fast.

And you've got to get down into it and let God speak to you in his words so that you have the right words to speak back with him. That's what number four we learned at that point. And then it says down here that you've got to rightly divide the word of truth and to shun profane and vain babbling.

So these people, the Eastern people who think that prayer is just closing the eyes and swaying back and forth and repeating a mantra and just blanking your mind out and just being one with God, that is not prayer.

Because the Bible says prayer is getting into the word of God and hearing the words and using words back like God taught us with his word to speak back to God with words rather than with vain and profane babblings.

And babbling is an interesting word in the Greek. It can mean gibberish, by the way, just thought I'd throw that in. But I mean, that's not what it's about. It's not about some unconscious prayer. It's about a conscious prayer of words after he spoke to us in his word.

And that won't happen if you're not in the word. And then if you're being taught by false prophets about something that's not even to be experienced today, according to Hebrews chapter 1, verses 1 through 3, he no longer speaks to us in these ways as he did our fathers, but now he speaks through his son and through the written canon that his son gave us of his own words, something's wrong there because the Holy Spirit won't go against his own words.

So there is some counterfeit stuff happening. Don't be a part of it. Take the time to search it out. Like, just study, okay? Study the scripture. Study history. You can go out and read around 200 AD to 250 AD, a man named Christ Ostrom wrote.

He wrote a commentary on Corinthians. And when he got to the part on tongues, he said, here, I cannot instruct you on what this actually means because this is no longer happening in the church today. That was around 200 years after John, maybe about 100 years after the Apostle John went to heaven, he wrote that.

So Paul said these things would cease, and mentioned tongues, and it did cease when the perfect came. And what is the only perfect thing? By the way, it's in the neuter in Greek, which means it's a thing.

It's not a person. What's the only perfect thing we have on this earth? The Bible. So when the Bible was canonized, and we had it fully, this is my viewpoint. You can debate it, but at least go study it.

Don't just take your people, your denominations word for it. You need to study it. But we see in history that when the Bible, when the churches had the full New Testament and Old Testament, those kinds of signed gifts began to cease.

And their purpose was over. They had authenticated the message of the messengers of the Apostles and Jesus with signs, and that's what signed gifts are for. It happened with the prophets in the Old Testament, with Moses.

It always happens to authenticate the message. But once the message has been authenticated, those things cease. Their usefulness is gone. This is an age of faith, not sight. The Word of God is the important thing, and you're getting your prayers answered, not some spiritual feeling that you have.

And I know you won't like what I'm saying, and it's okay. You don't have to like it. You don't have to agree with it. Just study. My job is just get you study. Don't be so complacent as to believe everything you've been taught.

Like I have had that problem in my life, and I guess when I turned about 45, I started saying, you know what? How do I even know that's true just because I've heard these preachers say it? I'm going to look and see.

You know what? A lot of it's not in the Bible. A lot of it is not taught correctly in context. It's not even what it means. Check that stuff out. But one thing I know this is teaching is that you have to be a spiritual person in order to receive the ability to pray.

So that tells us we have to be born again, right? Now, will God hear the prayers of a lost person? Yeah, there's examples of that in the Bible. So yeah, he can hear anything. What about Nineveh, for example?

But the point is, if you want to have a powerful prayer life, you need to not only be saved, you need to be walking with the Lord, and that's not enough either. It's not enough just to feel it. You've got to be in the Word.

Why? Because the Word is Him talking to you and me. And it's more important what God has to say to us than what we have to say to Him. And I know our humanism doesn't like to hear that, but it's true.

So if we're not letting Him speak to us, we don't even know how to join the conversation, so our prayers are just asking amiss. They're futile. They're not going to be answered, and we're going to feel like, well, where's God?

And it's not that God's missing at all. It's just that we're not listening to Him. Okay. I'm done preaching, at least on that topic. All right. Now, let's compare this, 1 Corinthians, in this parallel passage.

But as it is written, I have not seen nor ear heard, neither has entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for them that love Him. You see, there are answered prayers out there for us that God already knows He's going to do.

It hasn't even entered into our heart or mind yet, but it will when it's time for us to pray for it because the Holy Spirit knows the mind of God, and He knows our mind, and He brings it to us so that we can work together with God because that's God's will.

But God has revealed them. Look at this. God has revealed these things that we can't even comprehend or think of. He has revealed them and will reveal them unto us by His Spirit, for the Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God, and the implication is here and brings those things to us.

Put yes, He does have to translate it to our feeble language and put it in our minds in words, and we don't know that many words, but the Holy Spirit, part of His role in life, His ministry to us is to take the will of God from the massive, we can't even talk about it, infinite mind of God, and to put that in our little language and put that in our hearts and minds because God sees us as His little children, and He wants us to pray and ask for the things He's going to do and be part of it in that way.

I've never seen that like this in my life until these last few weeks of studying this, and I've studied it so many times, God's just showing me more than I've ever seen that just like God usually likes to use us in doing things in the physical world to get His work done, it's all His business, it's His kingdom, He also wants us to be part of it through prayer.

In other words, could sovereign God just do all this without us ever praying? Of course, He could, but will He? No, He won't because He doesn't choose to. He choose to do a family business, and we're His kids, it's His business, we're part of it, and He enjoys it that way, and He's going to do it this way, and He sends us the information we need to be part of this business by His Holy Spirit, and that's when our prayer lives are powerful, and He wants us to be praying about the things He's about to do.

How many of you were praying for the safety of those astronauts? Well, did that prayer get answered? It absolutely did. All right, Psalm 40 and verse 5. Many, O Lord, and here's where I want you to make the comparison.

We had a parallel passage in the New Testament. Now, let's start to bring in some of the understanding of King David's praying, his prayer life, and see how it matches. So, here it says, God reveals God's will to us through His Spirit.

He sends His will to us, His secret will, into our hearts by His Spirit who searches even the deep things of God, and He brings it to us so that we can be part of it and be praying about it while God is doing it.

Look what David understood. By the same Holy Spirit, many, O Lord, my God, are the wonderful works which thou hast done. Does that not kind of fit verse 9 up there where it says, eye has not seen nor ear heard, neither has entered in the heart of man the things that God has prepared for them that love Him, and King David, who I think had the best New Testament mind of anybody in the Old Testament, he had an understanding of New Testament truths that hadn't even been revealed yet, not in God's Word yet, and he sort of could see into these things a little bit better than the average person.

Many, O Lord, my God, are thy wonderful works which thou hast done, and thy thoughts which are toward us. Why? Because He wants us part of everything He's doing. They cannot be reckoned up in order unto thee.

We can't even count the wonderful things God's doing and is about to do. If I would declare and speak of them, they are more than can be numbered. Sounds like to me the same Holy Spirit that taught Paul what he wrote in 1 Corinthians 2, 9, taught David what he wrote in Psalm 40, verse 5, and we're getting the same message.

The Holy Spirit, Prayer, and the End of Sign Gifts

Now, let's continue to look at some of David's prayers. Look at Psalm 42, 7. Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy water spouts. All thy waves and thy billows are gone over me. So, David recognizes God controls the weather.

He controls the forces of nature. He controls armies' movements. He controls everything. He controls whether a king has control over his people or not, or whether he loses that control. And David in this particular Psalm is kind of in darkness worried about some things and has a burden of weight upon him where things aren't going well.

But he goes on and says in verse 8, yet the Lord will command His lovingkindness in the daytime. So, when I wake up and it's daytime, all these fears I'm having tonight while I'm trying to sleep, David is saying, God's going to bring light.

And in the night, His song shall be with me. I know His word. I know the principle that He will never let me be ashamed, but I'm still fearful and that's despicable. I shouldn't be that way, but I am that way.

Lord, help me. I know Your promises. I know You've promised that I'm the king. I know You promised that my progeny will be on my throne forever. And I know that, but I'm still fearful yet I know that in the morning, the light's going to come and I'm going to have the fortitude to move forward.

And David always did, and you will too. That's what we're seeing here. And in the night, His song will come. What does that represent? His word. Like, even when you're in the fear in the darkness of night, you still have His word and it will pop in your mind and you'll feel like, well, it's not helping me that much, but imagine a person who doesn't have His word.

Where is that person when he has those fears? Entrepreneurial fears, whatever, fears of health or lack of health, fears of illness, sickness, death. Where are they? They don't have the song in the night.

We do. And David said, I also have my prayer unto God and He is the God of my life. Don't you like that phrase? Is He that way to you? Do you feel that way, that He's the God of your life and you can come to Him in the darkest fears of the night and His song will be there.

The scriptures you've studied will come to mind and give you some peace. And when the morning comes, the fear will be gone. Look at Psalm 63, 1. Oh, God, thou art my God, the God of my life, right? Early will I seek Thee.

My soul thirsteth for Thee. My flesh longeth for Thee. Now, look at this for a minute. We talk about the fact we're a body, soul, and spirit, right? And that when we got born again, God didn't save our flesh, the old man, right?

It's still a burden. It's going to drop off at the rapture, right? And we get a glorified body that doesn't pull against us. So we talk about the flesh in a negative sense all the time. But you do realize that God had an order for Adam and Eve in the garden before they fell, that we can join into that order on this side of the fall because we have the indwelling of the spirit and we're saved now.

And that is that you can have a spirit-controlled soul-controlled body. If you start with the top down where you have God and your spirit become one, that's called being spirit-filled, by the way, and it's a moment-by-moment decision you make.

But when you make that moment where your spirit and God's spirit become one, then your soul, which is the interface between your spiritual being and your physical, able to...physicality to work in this physical world, that soul becomes under the right order of control of your spirit and the Holy Spirit, and the soul comes...it can be soulish.

It can go fleshly, too. It can go either way, but it brings it into order of your spiritual being and the Holy Spirit as well, your spirit and the Holy Spirit. And then that soul controls the body, which is called flesh here, and all of a sudden, your flesh longs for God.

Now, tell me that's not a miracle because the old man tends to pull away from God. But listen, you live in this body until he comes back. And I know that academically, we can study body, soul, and spirit and say, well, I'm a spirit.

I'm not really the body. I just live in it like a tent. But you know what? You don't want to separate your spirit from that body, do you? You want to think of yourself as one person, just like God is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but one God.

Sometimes we break that up and need to study the parts and understand the different ministries, but we also need to know God is one God, right? Well, we're like that. Yeah, we can blame the flesh for anything we do that's sinful, and certainly, it is the flesh that causes it, or Satan, or both working together.

But we need to not take that so far that we don't understand that the flesh can serve God as long as it's under the control of a soul, which is under control of the spirit of the man, which has been born again, is now one with the Holy Spirit.

That's what spirit-filled means. And I know we're indwelt always, so we're not always spirit-filled. We're always indwelt, but we're not always one with the Holy Spirit. But when we are, we will not sin because the spirit of God is one with our spirit.

It controls our soul, which then controls our body, and our body becomes the temple of the living God. Stay, it remains the temple of the living God, but it becomes useful, a living sacrifice in the Lord's hand to accomplish His will on this earth.

Now, He'll accomplish His will in us even when we're in the flesh. We'll just probably end up getting a whooping because of it, but it's not like we can stop His will from being done, but we can sure enjoy His will a lot better when we're in the spirit and we're walking with Him.

So, look at David while he's in the spirit. He says, my soul thirsts for you. My flesh longs for you in a dry and thirsty land where no water is because he understands the cursed world we live in, and even this body can pull against us.

But right now, I've got my body under submission. Now, you know another man that knew how to do that was the Apostle Paul. He said, look, all things are lawful for me. I'm not under Jewish law. I'm free from the law.

He said, but not all things are expedient. And he said, I'll tell you this. I won't be brought under the power of any of it. So, see, he was not a legalist, but he said, but I'm not going to let the lust of the flesh control me if I start loving something too much.

I'll just stop doing it because I'm going to love the Lord. If the Holy Spirit doesn't want to do this with me, I won't do this, Paul said. That's what David is saying. He's saying right here at this moment in my life, I'm so much walking with the Lord right now that even my flesh longs for God in a dry and thirsty land.

And yes, that's what Romans chapter 8 was talking about right before this prayer passage where it said we groan while we're in this body. Why do we groan? Because the body pulls against what we actually want sometimes.

We want to be one with God with all of us, not just my spirit. I want my body doing what he wants me to do. Well, it can, and this proves it, but only if we're spirit-filled. Isn't it wonderful to know, though, like Rocky Freeman used to say, my wonderful mentor that you hear me talk about from time to time, he said, David, can you show me in the Bible where it says you couldn't walk for many hours in the spirit and not sin?

I said, no, it certainly shows I could do that. He said, well, then why couldn't it be many days? And I said, well, it doesn't say we can't. He said, why not weeks or months? I said, well, it doesn't say I couldn't.

And he said, but you probably won't, right? Because we let the flesh come back. But while we are spirit-filled, you want to talk about power. That rocket was powerful, wasn't it? That's man harnessing a good deal of God's power according to God's will.

And that's a beautiful object lesson. But the power that you and I have when we lock into this prayer life that I'm talking about and that the Apostle Paul was given inspiration to talk about in Romans 8 is far more powerful than that because it controls the people that control that power.

Now, you think about that for a minute. My soul thirsts for God and my flesh longs for thee in a dry and thirsty land where no water is. I want to see your power, your glory. So as I have seen you in the sanctuary, we've all had times, sometimes at church, together with our brothers and sisters, when God's power comes down and we sense it and feel it, we can't even keep from crying and laughing all at the same time.

I hope you've experienced that. That power is there, but we enjoy it briefly sometimes and momentarily. And David's saying, I've seen this power, Lord. I want to feel it now. I'm by myself now. I'm at night.

I'm frightened. I've got fears coming on me. I want to see that power right now. And you can. And he says, because thy loving kindness is better than life itself, my lips will praise you because of that.

Thus will I bless thee while I live, Lord. I will lift up my hands in thy name. My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness and my mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips. That's part of his body.

His lips is part of his flesh and they're praising God. Hallelujah. That's where we're supposed to be. Under submission, the body is supposed to be under submission to a soul, which is under submission to your spirit and the Holy Spirit conjoined.

Verse 6, when I remember thee upon my bed, see, late at night when the fears come and meditate on thee and the night watches, because thou hast been my help. Therefore, in the shadow of thy wings will I rejoice.

My soul followeth hard after thee, thy right hand upholdeth me. I don't know many scriptures I love more than that one. Especially late at night. But now I want to go into Psalm 86 for just a little bit here.

And I want you to see how David applies this knowledge of prayer that we've been studying because he had this knowledge. And I want you to see this from a practical viewpoint of David applying this very truth of prayer in his life, the Holy Spirit bringing him the knowledge of what to pray for, David praying for it, and then what the result was.

All right. So, he says, all nations whom thou hast made shall come and worship before thee someday, O Lord, and shall glorify your name someday. And that's the millennial kingdom he's looking forward at.

So, David had a foreview of the end times and beyond the end of this age, into the millennial kingdom when all nations would come to the temple in Jerusalem and worship God. For thou art great and doest wondrous things.

Thou art God alone. There is no other God. Teach me your way, O Lord. I will walk in thy truth. Unite my heart to fear your name. This has to happen before we can learn to pray properly. We have to have God teach us his word.

God has to teach us his way in words. He uses words. The word, Jesus is called the word. You can't tell me words are not important. All the Eastern religions are based on getting rid of words. Have a mantra and just say a nonsense word enough so that your mind clears of all words and you're just one with some energy force out there that's not God, by the way.

That is not how we're taught to know God and to pray. We're taught to use words because God used words to create everything that exists. Everything was created by the word of God. In the beginning was the word, and the word was God, and the word was with God.

And without him was not anything made that was made. Jesus Christ is known as the word, and without him was not anything made that was made, and he spoke the worlds into existence with his words. And he gives us the word of God, which is an eternal from a place, is not a place, brought into time and space and preserved here for you and protected so you would have it.

And he expects us to read it and study it and meditate on it and teach us his ways so that we can not only walk in truth, but also unite our hearts with him and begin to learn to pray. Because it's not supposed to be a one-way conversation.

It's not just supposed to be us thinking up stuff we need and asking for it, but neither is it supposed to be just Bible study all the time. It's supposed to be Bible study and meditation so that we hear him speak, so that we can speak back to him in a knowledgeable and way that makes sense and that matters.

And that's what this is about. So Bible study is huge in this, but it all makes our prayer life fall in line with the Lord's will. And then we have to have the Holy Spirit as a component of this formula, don't we?

Because if he doesn't bring the mind of God to us, we can't know it. So I will praise thee, O Lord, my God, with all my heart. I will glorify thy name forevermore, for great is thy mercy toward me, and now has delivered my soul from the lowest death and hell.