Dennis Tuuri

# SERMON TRANSCRIPT – Reformation Covenant Church
**Pastor Dennis Tuuri**

The serpent in the garden tried to get men to disbelieve about God. He didn’t attack his sovereignty, attacked his goodness. I’m going to talk about prayer today as preparation for Pentecost, Spirit-filled empowerment for ministry. And we’re going to read the first 14 verses of Acts 1. Prayer is enhanced by an awareness of the goodness of God. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. Acts 1:1-14.

The former account I made, Oops, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach until the day in which he was taken up, after he through the Holy Spirit had given commandments to the apostles, which he had chosen, to whom he also presented himself alive after his suffering by many infallible proofs, being seen by them during 40 days. And speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God. And being assembled together with them, he commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which he said, you have heard from me.

For John truly baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit, not many days from now. Therefore, when they had come together, they asked him, saying, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? And he said to them, it’s not for you to know times or seasons which the father has put in his own authority. But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be witnesses to me in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth.

Now when he had spoken these things, while they watched, he was taken up, and a cloud received him out of their sight. And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven, and he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel, who also said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will so come in like manner as you saw him go into heaven.” Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day journey.

And when they had entered, they went up into the upper room where they were staying. Peter, James, John, and Andrew, Philip, and Thomas, Bartholomew, and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot and Judas the son of James. These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus and with his brothers. Let’s pray.

Lord God, we thank you for the wonderful record we have in the book of Acts. The acts really ultimately of the Lord Jesus Christ through his people, those that bear his name as Christians. Father, we want to do things for you this week. We want to be Christians. Not just in our profession but in our deeds, what we say and what we do. Father, we want to be blessed by you. Thank you for this text. Help us to understand from it the importance of prayer to our mission today. In Jesus name we ask it.

Amen. Please be seated.

You know, a lot of times it’s the simplest things in life that sort of hang us up. It’s not usually the complicated things that get us up. I noticed in the back out front we have these little cards from the peacemakers that I’ve talked about any number of times. I think a great homeschool project would be quite easy to do but then you’d have to review it over and over again. On the back of this there are the seven A’s of confession of sin.

Now we were talking about apologetics in our class and we apologize for sin. Well apology means to make a defense of something in its classical terminology. And all too often that’s what we do in an apology. But the seven A’s of confession, excellent. Teach your kids, you know, seven fingers. What are the seven A’s of confession? Very easy teaching device. And as you teach your young children how to confess using this sevenfold manner that they glean from the scriptures, you’ll be reminding yourself what confession looks like.

It’s the simplest of things. We sin all the time. We’re supposed to confess sins and repent from them. And I’m not saying you got to use the seven steps every time, you know, but they do kind of inform us and probably on a regular basis in the Christian life, it’s good to go back to some systematic way of understanding confession so that we can make sure we haven’t sort of lost it in our sophistication as adults, the simple truths of these seven A’s gleaned from the scriptures.

So, I really encourage you each, you know, to get these. There’s some back there, there’s some in this rack out here, and if we run out, we’ll get a whole bunch more. So, I’d encourage you, it’s a simple thing.

Well, today I want to talk about something equally simple, prayer. And we sort of take it for granted. We sort of feel a little kind of know we probably don’t do as much of it as we ought to. Maybe we think it’s a little more complicated than it is. And it kind of gets in our way.

It’s interesting. I did last year almost a year to the day, a year to the Sunday I think I preached a sermon on the Lord teach us to pray. And we have you know, the disciples asking Jesus in the gospels, you know, teach us to pray. And he teaches them the Lord’s prayer as a result of that. Again, it’s, you know, you don’t always have to pray using the Lord’s prayer language, but it kind of informs us. It’s like the basic prayer. That’s why we do it every Sunday. It informs our other prayers. They all can fit under those headings, we could say. And so, he taught them to pray.

We’ve been teaching about this period of time between resurrection and ascension. Ascension Day, I think, is May 1st, so it should make May 4th, Pentecost—Pentecost is the first Sunday after Ascension. Ascension is always 40 days after the celebration of Easter. So, wherever Easter falls, 40 days later is Ascension Day.

I’m going to Poland this Wednesday. Please pray for me. First time we went, we were in Vienna for a night or two. And we arrived there. The next day was Ascension Day. It was a Thursday or something. Didn’t mean anything to us, but the whole city was closed. We couldn’t get water. And in a way, it was a little inconvenient, but in a way, it was really cool that there was enough of a vestigial memory of Christendom in Austria where the whole city, this huge city, would basically close for Ascension Day. And the bells, all the bells were wonderful that rang throughout that day.

Well, in this period of time, we’ve been talking about being with Christ in seminary, so to speak, for 40 days. He does advanced course preparation for ministry. He didn’t just kind of phase in and phase out. He was here in a body 40 days. Showed himself around a lot. We have eight accounts. The eighth is what we just read at his ascension. Seven other accounts that we talked about a week ago. I’ll get back to those in a couple of weeks when I get back from Poland—in three weeks from the day.

So for 40 days, you know, and it doesn’t really—I don’t know. I don’t think it says anything about prayer, but we know from the disciples asking to be taught to pray that this is an important part of seminary training. And I would ask you to remember what we learned last year. You know, we need to be taught how to pray. Otherwise, we just sort of pray in whatever way seems right to us. We end up praying about all kinds of things that have nothing to do with the Lord’s prayer or his kingdom on earth and just becomes our wishes, our wants, our desires, our feelings, our emotions.

The scriptures, you know, particularly the Psalms can be thought of as the prayer book of the savior. He prayed them and in a way they show the heart and character of Jesus Christ and many of them are prayers—explicitly prayers. And so, we don’t shouldn’t think we can figure out how to do it all by ourselves. But the important thing is that we want to understand the importance of prayer.

So in preparation for Pentecost, you know, Pentecost is the great day, the Holy Spirit empowerment comes upon the disciples. They then begin to preach wonderful sermons. And it’s important to understand how the spirit doesn’t work. The spirit could take an ignorant person who’s forsaken teaching and make him very articulate. God can do that. He’s omnipotent. He doesn’t want to most of the time. What he wants to do is for the spirit to teach you things of Jesus and bring you to a point where you can make the sort of proclamations that are made in the opening of the Acts account of the acts of the apostles and then throughout that record of what they do.

And you get there through understanding who Jesus is and being taught by him like the disciples. Not just the apostles. The disciples were taught for 40 days were taught by his word. And we get there very importantly today by prayer.

Jesus—you know it’s kind of funny. I got this the first outline point. The first action of a well-taught army is prayer. They’re an army. You know in the Old Testament you have this word host. And originally it’s like the angels the angelic host. But the people of God are a host. A host is a fixed number. An army. Lord, you know God is Sabaoth—doesn’t mean Sabbath. It means host. It means hosts. God is the Lord of hosts. We are the host of the Lord. We’re the army of the Lord.

Jesus, we can think of that 40 days as kind of like officer training. It wasn’t boot camp that had already happened, but it was like officer training, we could say, for 40 days as he’s going to send his army, his host out into the world to convert the world. All the post-exilic prophets ended with promises. Yahweh is going to conquer the world. That’s what’s going to happen after the exile and after you come back. And that’s what happens with Christ.

So, how does he do it? He does it with you and me. He does it with his people, Christians. Jesus—it’s the acts of Jesus that we see recorded in Acts. The title is the acts of the apostles, but it’s not the apostles apart from their union with Christ. It’s Christians doing the work of Jesus. So Jesus’s work is carried out through Christians.

And to do that, we have to have the Holy Spirit. It’s the spirit, Jesus says, that brings us the things of Christ. The spirit doesn’t point to himself. Spirit points to Jesus. Teaches us to be good Christians. We need spirit empowerment. Right? The spirit hadn’t been given until Christ’s ascension. Now, that event has happened once for all. But what it teaches us is that for effectiveness as the army of Christ, we need to have the work of the Holy Spirit empowering our understanding of the world and how Christ would have us teach of his him and his word in what we do and say.

This is how God will conquer the world. In a very simple way, one of the post-exilic prophets says, The way you’re going to be a light to the world is to exist. It doesn’t say you’re supposed to evangelize your neighbor. It doesn’t say you’re supposed to cross oceans and be missionaries. Doesn’t say you got to go to Bible school. It says live faithful lives. That’s how the light of Christ shines into the nations.

So this isn’t, you know, the preparation is so that you can be faithful Christians. And a faithful Christian is a praying Christian as we’ll see throughout the book of Acts. It is absolutely essential.

But right here at the beginning, right, the first action of this well-taught army lived with Jesus 3 years, 40 days of resurrected power. Now he begins to explain all the Old Testament how it points to him. The whole plan is laid out in some detail. Man, they are well taught. And the first thing he tells them as he’s leaving is wait, which I think is just wonderful. Wait. We tend to be impatient. That was the first problem with Adam in the garden, right? He wanted do things too quick. Wait. And you’re to wait for the spirit.

Now, he didn’t command them to pray. He commanded them to wait. But how did they wait? Well, the text tells us. It says that he told them to wait and they got together and began to pray. They were waiting. They were waiting for something that had been promised.

What do you do if you know a check is in the mail? You know it’s promised. And let’s say you know that the post office for this particular letter is controlled by the sovereign omnipotent God. It’s not going to get lost. It’s going to be delivered. It’s promised. Well, the Bible says, I think what you ought to do is pray that you get the check. That’s what they did. They had a promise. He’s going to send the comforter of the Holy Spirit to teach them things and make him powerful for witness, effective army. But they didn’t just wait twiddling their thumbs or playing, you know, foosball or whatever it is, you know, or going to the movies. They could have hung out that way. But they waited with prayer.

You see, I think that’s very significant. Prayer is the first action of, you know, Delta Force before they swing into action, right? Before the crack troops are going to go out there and do their thing, they prepare for that through prayer. That should say something to us.

And this is not the only—by the way, we noticed last week that there’s an explicit mention of how they pray. The disciples, the apostles are named who were gathered together. These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus and with his brothers. So, you know, Jesus had taught them about the place of women in the role of the church and they’re right there in the prayer meeting praying.

I asked Abigail L. this morning to close our Hope—she doesn’t get embarrassed. Ah, she’s kind of like me. Doesn’t bother her. To end our Sunday school classroom prayer today. Why not? The prohibition against women praying in the worship service doesn’t apply to a Sunday school lesson. I don’t think most of us know. I you know, we know that we shouldn’t have female pastors and women shouldn’t lead in prayer and lead in the service. Do we have any idea why? Probably some of you do. But I’ll bet you that most of us have the wrong reasons why or at least we sort of think of the wrong reasons.

Got nothing to do with ability. It’s got to do with calling and representation.

Well, anyway, so this prayer meeting involves women and specifically now Mary, but Mary, the mother of Jesus. Now, this is how it starts and it’s very significant. We love Pentecost, love the mission to the world, all that stuff which we’ll do again at our church and celebrate. But understand that it begins with a prayer.

I go off on Wednesday, charity night of Poland. Pray for me, please. Direct application of the sermon. But it isn’t just at the beginning of Acts. This is true. On your outline, you know, I could have just listed the citations. I know it made it two pages long or three or whatever it is, and I know that’s awful long and it looks real bad and everything, but sometimes when you got a whole bunch of verses, it’s just easier to print them out. And I would have had to cut them out from the references. Anyway, I didn’t. I just did a little study on in the book of Acts, looked for used concordance to search for praying or prayed and I probably didn’t find all the places. I certainly didn’t find the places where the word prayer isn’t explicitly used and yet that’s what they’re doing. But I found some places.

There’s just some listing and just by looking at the number of verses, you can tell this is an important deal. Am I right? I mean, look at all those times they’re praying. The book of Acts is filled with the prayers of this army, this Delta Force. They don’t just start at the beginning. Throughout what they’re doing. They’re praying.

Now, this is like the accounts of Christ’s seven or eight post-resurrection appearances. This isn’t exhaustive obviously, but this is given to us. These particular things in the book of Acts for particular reasons by God. And so, the prayer accounts I think are can be seen as somewhat significant. These aren’t just so we don’t have a whole record of what happened. We’ve got specific stories that God wants us to focus on. And many of these stories have to do with prayer.

And so God is teaching us still, Jesus is teaching us through the Holy Spirit’s inspiration of this book, the importance that well begun is half done prayer. But throughout the rest of it, you got to be praying also.

Okay, let’s just look briefly at them. You see, in Acts 1:24, they’re going to choose the replacement for Judas. So they’re going to pick the other of the 12 apostles. Pretty important deal. And they probably have pretty good qualifications to pick things. They knew who the guys were and all that stuff. But what did they do? They prayed and said, “You, oh Lord, know the hearts of all. Show which of these two you have chosen.”

It’s so important. You know, if we got to pick officers in the church or whatever it is here in the church. God knows the hearts. We can’t know the hearts. We see each other dressed up in our Sunday best mostly for the most part and trying to live like right on Sunday and that’s. It’s okay. Don’t think of yourself as a hypocrite. Think of yourself as taking the small baby steps if you’re having trouble during the week. This is what it’s supposed to be. You’re supposed to be better today than tomorrow, you know, because God’s eyes on us particularly special. The other people are looking at you. But we see all that and we don’t really know the hearts of men.

So, you know, do we know really what’s in the heart of Howard L. or Dave H.? We have a pretty good indication hearts are knowable by fruits. But ultimately, they acknowledge that only God really knows the hearts. Only God knows what’s going on inside there. So, selection of officers, this pretty important picking of the 12. This is going to be, you know, the 12 generals to command the army. And it begins with prayer. And notice that it’s a prayer that acknowledges their lack of ability to make good choices without the guidance of God.

You know, you pray about things in terms of people and you’ll be surprised sometimes when interesting events start to shake out. That’s what they wanted. They wanted it to be made known clear. They weren’t asking necessarily for just the assurance, but they were saying, you know, these are the wrong guys. Show us something. You know, we need we need to know. God will answer those kind of prayers.

Acts 2:42. The general description here of the church. They continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine, fellowship, breaking of bread, and in prayers. This is on our announcements, right? We take this kind of a lot of churches take this as a central discussion of what churches are and one of the four things that they’re supposed to do that characterizes them. Do you like teaching and fellowship and the Lord’s supper? Yeah. Well, right up there is bread or prayer rather. Right next to the breaking of bread is prayers. So, prayer is an essential part of the church. Our service is filled with prayers. Many of the songs we sing are prayers.

Acts 4:23-31. This is kind of a longer account here. Verse 23. And being let go. Who was let go? Well, Peter and the guys were preaching and the Pharisees called them together and said, “You can’t preach this stuff anymore.” And they said, “Well, you decide whether we can obey you or God. We’re going to obey God.” So the gospel was being impeded. So when there’s impediments to the gospel of Jesus Christ, what do they do?

Verse 24. So when they heard that they raised their voice to God with one accord and said, “Lord, you are God who made heaven and earth and the sea, and all that is in them. Who by the mouth of your servant David have said, ‘Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot vain things?’ The kings of the earth took their stand, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against his Christ. For truly against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate with the Gentiles and the people of Israel were gathered together.”

This is great, isn’t it? It’s like a little mini exposition of Psalm 2 and a very important one to help us understand what’s going on. And this is in their prayer. This is also you know a long prayer or not a long prayer but a fairly, you know, several verse long prayer and we look at these prayers and we see how the spirit empowered them to pray and it can inform our prayers.

Going to be a prayer meeting for North Korea this Friday night. This would be the sort of prayer you’d want to pray—this kind of prayer you’d want to pray rather, right?—in a case of opposition from those that are gathered against Christ in Korea.

“Truly against you your holy servant Jesus whom you anointed both Herod and Pontius Pilate with the Gentiles and the people of Israel were gathered together to do whatever your hand and your purpose determined before to be done. So in their prayers, we have one of the strongest cases for the sovereignty of God that even the opposition to Christ is only according to the decree of God. Okay?

Now Lord, look on their threats and grant to your servants that with all boldness they may speak your word.” There’s the prayer. There’s acknowledgment. They’re praying what’s happening. They’re praising in God. They’re not saying you’re out of control. You’re sovereign. You decree whatsoever come to pass. Now, please on the basis of our understanding of who you are, give us boldness.

Now, imagine there are times in your life when this is what you’d want, right? You want to be a little bolder in talking to your friends about Jesus or your neighbors or the civil government or whatever it is. Well, here’s a prayer. Don’t think there’s something wrong with you if you don’t have boldness. We tend to be fearful. You know, fear isn’t a bad thing. It’s letting it control your actions. It’s bad. Bravery isn’t the absence of fear. There’s nothing brave about not knowing the dangers. Bravery is knowing the dangers, being fearful, and doing the right thing.

So, they’re praying for bravery that they would have boldness to speak the truth of God’s word “by stretching out your hand to heal and that signs and wonders be done through the name of your holy servant Jesus.”

And when they had prayed, the place where they were assembled together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and they spoke the word of God with boldness. Second Pentecost. So what I said was that the opening Pentecost is the picture of how it always works.

We find ourselves in situations. We pray for boldness. God gives us a further empowerment of the spirit to do things and the world is shaken. You know the world is shaken. Everything that can be shaken is being removed. The preaching of the gospel. That’s what history is the shaking out of rebels. And so we want to have boldness. And here right away we’re told that prayer is important in the evangelistic mission in the discipling of the nations. And we’re explicitly told that prayer is answered and the world continues to change the way it did on the day of Pentecost.

So we have confidence that our prayers support our battle plans as we swing into action and they will be effectual.

Acts 6:6. When they had set before the apostles as the deacons and when they had prayed they laid hands on them. So I’m sorry—verse four but we will give ourselves continually to prayer. So the purpose of deacons is so the elders could pray more. So we do have a differentiation they’re supposed to be praying more and they’re to be so the guys that pray the most in the army are the generals and the generals want to pray a lot and so to take care of some of the financial matters of the church we have guys like Jeff C. run financial reports and this is to the end that we won’t be distracted the elders from a very central concern of your officers of the church which is to pray.

Then not only do they say this is the purpose but then again when they get these deacons they pray and lay hands on the deacons. So again establishment of officers in the church. If you’re going to have an army then all the officers in the army must be in seen in relationship to the mission. And so prayer is an important part of developing the officer corps and then actually commissioning them to what they’re going to do.

Acts 7:59. Steven is calling on God and saying Lord Jesus receive my spirit. So this isn’t you know this is calling on God a prayer to Jesus. And so at our—at Steven’s death he calls on God to receive him. That’s not a prayer of unbelief. That’s a prayer of belief. Again he knows it’s going to happen. Check in the mail. He’s praying for it. That’s the way we’re supposed to be.

Acts 8:14. Now when the apostles who were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent Peter and John to them who when they had come down prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit. So they had, you know, it’s a particular time in redemptive history. And the point is that as we see Christians coming to faith in other parts of the world, we’re to pray that they would mature in their commitment to Christ. So this is prayer now for maturation and we’re not going to have that apart from the prayers of the church.

In Acts 8:22 a sinful man is being addressed. “Repent therefore of your wickedness and pray to God if perhaps the thought of your heart may be forgiven you.” So here we’re supposed to pray for forgiveness and pray for more mercy that we would be that God’s grace would come to us that we’d come to deeper repentance for our sins. So again in the life for the church. Sin blocks us up. The removal of sin is seen in relationship to prayer explicitly.

Acts 9:11, the Lord said to him, “Arise and go to the street called straight. Inquire there at the house of Judas for one called Saul of Tarsus. Behold, he’s praying.” Saul, Paul, the great evangelist of the Gentiles. How is it that he’s helped along?” Well, Jesus appears to him first, but he prays. And in response to the prayers, God sends a Christian man to him to mature his faith. See, so apart from prayer, Paul’s not going anywhere in his faith.

And secondly, our prayers are effective. Prayer changes things. It says specifically that from this perspective and nothing really has changed. God decrees everything that comes to pass. But if you think that somehow is the end of the story, you’re wrong because God speaks in this covenantal language that he does things in reference to the prayers of his people. And the implication is surely don’t pray. It’s not going to happen.

Now, how do you put those two together? I got no problem. The you know, God has decreed whatsoever comes to pass and he’s decreed me praying and my prayers are effectual and he’s decreed his answer to them. So that’s okay. But the point is, you know, that prayer is effective. The ministry of the Apostle Paul, you know, begins with Christ converting him, but then it continues with his prayer and God’s response to that prayer and sending men to mature him.

Acts 9:40, Peter put them out all out and knelt down and prayed and turning to the body, he said, “Tabatha, arise.” And she opened her eyes. So again, prayer is necessary for these signs that will accompany the apostles during that 40-year period leading up to AD 70 in Jerusalem. Prayer is a big part of this thing.

Acts 10:2, devout man of one feared God with all his household and gave alms generously to the people and prayed to God always. This is a gentile not a Jew. Cornelius and so gentile God-fearers and in a way that’s what we most of us are they’re characterized as people that give alms and that pray continually. So prayer is seen as part of the average life of the normal gentile God-fearer.

And then verse four when he observed him he was afraid that an angel comes to him. Cornelius what is it Lord. So he said to him your prayers and your alms have come up for a memorial before God. So God is moved to action because of the prayers of Cornelius. So if you’re not praying, God isn’t moved to action relative to you. Okay? In terms of this story. And so again, prayer is absolutely important in seeing our lives mature and asking for what we need, what we think we need. God will hear our prayers and he will send people as a result of it to mature us.

And then in chapter—then verse 9, the next day as they went on their journey and drew near the city, Peter went up on the housetop to pray. So you know, Cornelius wants a delegation sent to him. They send Peter. Peter on his way starts to pray. Okay. So what do we got? Prayer. We got the contact between the Jews and the Gentiles here in. Spends a whole chapter talking about this. And underneath it, undergirding the whole thing, this missionary endeavor is prayer. Prayer. The part of Cornelius being answered. Now Peter on his way there goes up to the top of the house at the sixth hour to pray. So he’s going to pray regular times of prayer. Peter engaged in 30 and 31.

Later in the account, Cornelius said 4 days ago I was fasting until this hour and at the 9th hour I prayed in my house. He also had regular hours of prayer both Jews and Gentiles regular hours of prayer. We should have regular hours of prayer.

“Behold a man stood before me in bright clothing and said Cornelius your prayers have been heard. Alms are remembered in the sight of the Lord.” And then 11:5. Peter says, “I was in the city of Joppa praying and in a trance I saw a vision, an object descending like a great sheet.” And we know that story. So Peter is praying. Cornelius is praying. God uses the whole set of events here to mature the Gentiles in their appropriation of the faith.

Acts 12:5, even when people are in prison, Peter was therefore kept in prison, but constant prayer was offered to God for him by the church. So you know terms of persecution of the of God’s people. Verse 12 when he had considered this he came to the house of Mary the mother of John whose surname was Mark where many were gathered together praying. So upon Peter’s release he finds them all praying together.

Acts 13:3 then having fasted and prayed and laid hands on him they sent them away. This is this commission of Paul and Barnabas again commissioning these missionaries. 14:23 when they had appointed elders in every city and prayed with fasting. They commended them to the Lord. So this is given to us time after time after time officers, special troops are set aside. They’re selected through prayer and they’re commissioned through prayer.

Acts 16:13 on the Sabbath day we went out of the city the riverside where prayer was customarily made. So you know the Sabbath day rest of the day there are times of prayer during the rest of the day as well. Verse 16. It happened as we went to prayer that a certain slave girl possessed with the spirit. They’re going to a prayer meeting and they are able to deliver a woman possessed by a spirit. All happening because they’re attending to prayer.

Verse 25. But at midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing. They’re in prison. What do you do when you’re put in prison and have to wait? You pray just like the apostles did praying for the Holy Spirit. That’s what they do.

Acts 20:36 when he said these things, he knelt down and prayed with them. Well, this is Paul talking to the Ephesian elders and after he meets with them, you know, I should when I come back from Poland, I meet with the elders from Poland and I should pray with them, right? That’s what it says here. And it doesn’t just say it once. Says in verse 5, they came to see Paul off. We departed and we knelt down on the shore and prayed. So, they’re all praying together. Prayer is part of this leaving of people behind. You pray for them.

And then 22:17 and 18. It happened when I returned to Jerusalem and was praying in the temple. So in the temple, temples be a house of prayer for the nations. Here we got the apostle to the nations. That’s undoubtedly what he’s praying about. And God speaks to him in the midst of that prayer. Goes into a trance. God speaks to him.

Acts 27:29, fearing less we run ground on the rocks. They dropped four anchors from the stern and prayed for day to come. Pray for deliverance when tough times come upon us.

And it happened that the father of Publius lay sick and a fever of dysentery. Paul went into him and prayed laid his hands on him and healed him. So healing whether it’s physical healing or working with people to get them to become better fathers or mothers or children or workers or do better with their job better with their you know to heal them from sloth to heal them from profligacy to heal them from all kinds of illnesses we could say. Prayer is an essential part of that project.

Okay, itself. You see, over and over and over again, the army of God progresses with prayer. We want to get more and more kids out of the Oregon City public schools. Pray for it. Pray for the mission. Pray for the guys that would be kind of overseeing that, right? We want to talk about North Korea this Friday. Prayer is what we should do relative to that. Everything that this church puts our hand to do.

Already several of you today have told me you’re going to pray for me, you know, in charity as we go to Poland this Wednesday. Prayer is absolutely critical in the ongoing work of Jesus Christ to make manifest his kingdom.

I want to mention, okay, so what kind of prayers? Well, there’s a book called All the Prayers in the Bible, and it’s a good book to get. I mean, that it’s nice, you know, it’s all systematized, cheap, no copyright on prayers, you know. So, it’s got all the prayers in the Bible. It doesn’t really have all of them, but it’s got a lot of them. That’s really useful for praying, you know, to see what kind of prayers are in there.

And I took a little time and went through the opening chapters of Genesis. And I mentioned this before. I thought the first reference to prayer is people calling on the name of the Lord in the end of chapter 4. Then people begin to call the name of the Lord. So what is prayer? It’s just calling on God. In its simplest form, it’s calling on him. It’s calling praises to him. It’s calling on him for help for you, help for others, to change the world, to enable you to witness whatever. It’s calling on God. It’s that simple.

But my wife pointed out, as she often does, I was wrong. The first prayer isn’t referred to as a prayer, but it’s an obvious prayer. You know what it is? Abel, Abel is killed and his blood cries out to God. That’s prayer. And God hears this prayer and he moves in terms of the prayer. I think it’s interesting that the very first prayer in the Bible then—now we could say, well, Adam and Eve talk to God. But the very first kind of crying out to God is a crying out for what? Justice. Justice.

When those that are here Friday night meet and cry out for justice in terms of North Korea, you’re going back to the original primordial prayers of the Bible. You’re on good firm standing. That’s how it starts. Our prayers must have as one of their preeminent concerns. I think based on this first use of prayer here justice.

Uh you know then we have the generalized term our prayers our desire for justice which is in us should take its expression in crying out to God in prayer calling on his name because that’s the next expression at the end of four they call the name of Jesus the call the name of God rather. Through Christ we pray to the Father. So we cry out for justice the third use of this term calling out to God is in chapter 12 and they call on his name at an altar. So you know Abraham builds an altar and there he calls on the name of God.

So our prayers are kind of informed by work at this altar at the worship of God on the Lord’s day. So there’s a formal aspect to our prayers.

The fourth use of prayer that I could find is in chapter 15. And Abraham who’s been promised decades earlier that he’d have children hasn’t got them. And he’s waited and waited and waited. And in his waiting, he prays. He prays for the future. He prays for an heir. Not so much, you know, personally, I gee, I’d really like to have a son. He wants an heir to receive the covenant promises and move into the future. He desires to see God’s kingdom made manifest.

So, these opening prayers tell us we’re to call to God for justice and we’re to call for God for the future of the world to make manifest his blessings. We’re to pray kind of postmillennial we could say pray in terms of the future and of course by way of application for our own children. So there’s justice, there’s a future being prayed for.

In verse 16, Hagar is cast out by Sarah. And while it doesn’t say God hears her, it says he sees her. God sends an angel. He sees her affliction and sends an angel to her in her affliction. So Hagar is what we could say crying out because of personal affliction.

So, one of the, you know, so we got justice, we’ve got the future, we’ve got personal affliction that we’re going through, crying out to the God who hears the seas, and we can count on God to answer those prayers as he did for Hagar.

In 17, Abraham is told that Ishmael will not be his heir. But Abraham, you know, we could it’s sort of Abraham says, “Well, couldn’t Ishmael be my heir?” And it could just seem like a little thing off to the side, but God answers that prayer. He says, “No, but I am going to make a great nation of Ishmael. I’m going to bless Ishmael. He’s going to be okay.” So God heard Abraham’s prayer that we might not hear in that short little prayer of his, but God saw Abraham having personal concern for another. Okay? Not in terms of, you know, the manifestation of the kingdom just because he loved Ishmael.

So prayer is intercession. It’s for other people. It’s crying out for justice. It’s hoping the kingdom of God is manifest. It is also, you know, our own personal affliction. And it’s crying out for other people that we love the way Abraham cried out for Ishmael. And we should cry out for all of our children. So, it’s praying for our children. It’s praying for people that we love.

And that’s in chapter 17. And then in 18, the next prayer, Abraham is interceding with God for Sodom and Gomorrah. Well, if there were 50 righteous, well, if there were 40, now he’s sort of got, you know, particular guy in his mind. But he’s interceding for the cities. Okay, this becomes a theme. The next time we see Abraham, he’s dealing with uh nations. In chapter 20, God tells Abimelech, he’s a prophet, he’ll pray for you as the king of the nation. So, intercessory prayer for the cities we live in, for the nations of the earth are also one of the earliest prayers for the kingdom of God.

And then finally, the next one is chapter 24. A servant prays for a wife for Abraham’s son. Praying for marriages. And so we want your child married. Pray. Pray a lot. Pray all the time. Ask God to show things what will happen.

So these are some of the early prayers of the Bible that should help inform our prayers. I think justice, growth of the kingdom, and then personal stuff, right? Affliction when we’re hurting, when we have concern for somebody else like Ishmael, and then we intercede not just for those that we know, but for the cities in which we live and ultimately the church is interceding both personally and corporately for the nations of the world as well.

So in the opening prayers of the Bible, the school of prayer that we see in the opening chapters Genesis, they tell us, I think, some pretty important themes and subjects for our prayers. Okay? So, hopefully you got all those. If not, let me know and I’ll I’ll repeat them for you at another time. But I think those opening prayers are given again. We don’t know how to pray. We don’t know what to pray for. God says, “Well, here’s some things you should pray for you.”

And you know, number one, at the top of the list, pray for justice in the world because things are bad out there, you know. And number two, pray for the future that Christ came can be manifest. And then remember to pray. If you have troubles, you pray for yourself. You pray for those you love. You pray for the broader cities and the nations as well. God says that’s what calling on him is all about.

All right? So, let’s be wise men and not foolish men. The wise men built his house on the rock. What’s the rock? The word of God? No. Wise men, foolish men both hear the word of God. They both understand the word of God. They both say, “Yeah, yeah, we’re supposed to pray. Yeah, we see the importance of prayer. Yeah, we want to be effective. We see prayer.” The wise man does the things the word of God commands. The foolish man doesn’t. The foolish man, his house is built on sand. It’s destroyed. The wise men built on the rock which is Christ. It stands not because he understood the scriptures, but because he obeyed the scriptures.

So, will you be an obedient church? Will you be an obedient Christian? Will you try hard if you’re not doing regular prayers now to pray more? Will you try to pray?

And I’ve got some real practical things right away to help you to put this into practice. A lot of us are going to third Sunday fellowship meetings today. Pray a little bit with each other. Pray about these things. Pray for justice and the expansion of the kingdom and your personal problems, the problems of those you love and the cities that we live in. Pray. Pray at the fellowship meetings. They’re not prayer meetings, but they ought to be meetings where we pray. Nothing wrong with prayer meetings, but prayer, as we see in the book of Acts, penetrates every little endeavor they’re doing. Everything they’re doing is done in the context of prayer.

So, if you have a fellowship meeting, some prayer ought to be part of it.

Secondly, family prayers hard to do as families get older, easy to do when they’re little. Try to get together and pray together as a family. Build habits into your children and prayer. It’s important for their effectiveness as Christian warriors.

See, Friday evening, this Friday evening, Esther P. is organizing a prayer meeting for North Korea. A horrible oppression going on there. One of the worst tyrannies in the face of the earth right now. Terrible persecution of Christians and the rest of the population. Mad crazy idolatrous dictator. So we should be praying for the nations. That’s what Abraham did. That’s what the church is to do and that’s what we’re to do. So go to the prayer meeting this Friday night, 7:00 here in Ararat. On the back of your outline sheets, there’s a little blurb about it. Some of the requests to be prayed for, a little reminder to you might want to take it off. Put it in your pocket. Maybe you don’t know if you can go or not. You’ll forget about it. Put it in your pocket. Put it someplace you won’t forget. Put it in your wallet.

So, try to if you can make Friday evening’s prayer meeting for North Korea.

Fourth, prayer partners and trios. I’m working on something yet. Haven’t really, it’s mostly an idea. I got I got a little bit of stuff. My wife is helping me with it. Many years ago, we went to a conservative Baptist church and they assigned prayer partners to people. You don’t have a prayer partner. Here it is. And my wife was assigned a particular woman and didn’t know her. It was quite uncomfortable for a few months, but they turned into fast friends. One of the best friendships my wife has had over the years, Christian women. And so all because you know the church encouraged highly the assignment of prayer partners to one another. I think we ought to do that at this church.

I think we ought to have prayer partners. Some of you do already. Most of you don’t. In reality, I know cuz I talk to you. Most of you don’t. Prayer trios might be even better. Two or three gathered together. Three kind of helps hold things accountable rather than just two. So, you know, I’m going to try to work up some formalized plans for this. Has some sheets. You can sign up if you want a prayer partner. That kind of stuff.

So, I think we need to do that. Last year, I shared that I think it’s really important to make prayer an increasing part of what we do at Reformation Covenant Church. We had Peter Leithart teach on prayer at family camp last year and I’m back again and I’m going to be kind of a this is one of the various notes on my little ukulele I’m playing but I’m playing the same note I played last year and I’m going to keep playing it until we get a little better at praying.

So I think the prayer partners and prayer trios hopefully that’s coming. Summer RCC staff prayer meetings—this is what changed in my life last year in the summer. You know Kings Academy starts at 8:00 so we didn’t start you know at 7:30 but in the summer hours we’re going to pray from 9 to 9:30 here the staff and anybody that wants to show up. I loved those times last year. So we’re going to do that again this summer.

Soon as Kings Academy is over, we’ll start praying 9:00. You know, I’ll be here Tuesday through Friday. I take Mondays off, but some might be here on Monday as well. So, prayer meetings this summer.

Finally, small groups, closed or open, but praying. I talked about the importance of small groups here at Reformation Covenant. They’re very important, and they don’t have to be small groups for prayer. You know, and they don’t have to be open to everybody. What we’d like to do is have some person here be small group coordinator for us and they would be responsible just for knowing what the small groups are at Reformation Covenant Church, publicizing them and you can say on the website we would have this small group is closed presently, but I think you should know that they’re groups meeting and be praying for those groups. You don’t have to be open to anybody that wants to come to your group.

One of the values of a small group as you feel comfortable with those men or women or mixed whatever it might be to share things that are personal. You wouldn’t feel comfortable sharing in front of me or somebody else. That’s okay. It’s okay to be exclusive in the sense of keeping a small group small or it’s certainly okay if you have a small group you want more people to come let people know.

Small groups are Bible studies or going through a book. You can meet a small group could be a foosball small group. It could be a video game small group. Something that Christians like to do. But whatever small group it is, whatever the topic is, whatever you’re doing together, if some people are reading through books, not, you know, not necessarily Christian books, whatever it is, pray a little bit at it. All small groups, Christians gathering together should emulate what went under the book of Acts. Prayer undergirded everything.

So pray a little bit. Doesn’t got to be a big long time. But if you’re not praying at all with your small group, I begin to wonder as your pastor where the that small group’s going and its purpose. Is it really a kingdom small group? Everything you do ought to be kingdom oriented. Kids played in the streets in Jerusalem. Play is good. Recreation is a great thing. Nothing wrong with that. But any activity that somehow finds itself drifting away from prayer binding the people together. I’m a little suspect of it. Maybe not now, but what it could become in the future.

So finally, there is some a lot of other things you could be doing, but here’s some practical applications of this sermon. Now, finally, I want to share and I did this before, but I want to do it again briefly here. Some practical things.

You know, one of the reasons why we don’t pray in groups is because we’ve prayed in groups in crummy ways. And you know, who likes to do that? It’s really hard to change the dynamic of small group prayer.

Here in Oregon City, we had D.D. Duke speak to a joint worship service, Oregon City churches. You remember that a year or so ago? I went to it. I went the special pastors meeting with D. He pastors a large I think it’s conservative Baptist church in Jefferson, Oregon. They almost have as many people in their churches live in the town. 1,600 or something. And I you know I was sort of you know I don’t know if the guy’s any good or not. I thought I know maybe he’s but he’s a solid guy. I was really appreciative of what he shared and prayer turned his life around.

He was going to quit as the pastor of this church in Jefferson. Kept having splits. Previous pastor said You got to go ask the people what the problem is. You go ask the people and they say the problem’s you every time. That can be discouraging. Well, it was for him. And he was going to stop pastoring. He got a invitation to a prayer meeting. I’m not telling anything out of school. He’ll tell you this if you ask him. He got invited to one of these Portland area pastors meetings that they do sometimes or at the coast. He thought, “Well, before I retire and quit as a pastor, maybe I can have a little free paid vacation at the coast here.” And so he went with wrong motives.

Well, the purpose of course was prayer and he was just going to skip out of the prayer meetings. But he went to the first one and somehow this is different and he stayed and it completely transformed his ministry. He went from, I don’t know, 50 people, 100 people, 1,600 people and growth isn’t always good, but it’s all also not always bad. He built it on prayer. I imagine this season leading up to Pentecost, I think they usually have vigils. Maybe the whole 40 days they have special prayer meetings and I think the day or two prior to ascension or Pentecost, they actually have 24 or 48 hour prayers at the church. It’s not difficult to do. Got a lot of young people be willing to sign up for a 3 to 3:30 shift in the morning, right? That’s what you got to do. It’s not that tough.

So, he prays a lot. And here are some suggestions from me. He’s got a book on this. And I think most of these are really sound and actually scriptural. And he and he says that, you know, he quotes the verse in Matthew 18 that when people agree together and ask God, there’s power in that God will answer their prayers then. And I think that’s true. I think that agreement in prayer is an important thing.

And so here are some things. Pray short prayers. Nothing worse than long prayers. I know we had prayer meetings for 20 years at this church. And boy, you know, sometimes that’s what really made it tough is people just praying way too long a prayers. Don’t pray long. You’re in a group. You’re not in your prayer closet. Okay? It’s different. It’s different.

Jesus says, you know, the Pharisees think they’ll be heard for their much repetition. Big long prayers, same thing over and over again. Forget it. He said, “I can hear you. You don’t got to pray length, you know, relative to me. Pray short prayers in group settings particularly.

Pray loud enough for all to hear. Nothing worse than being at a prayer meeting and somebody’s mumbling and you’re all got your heads down and you’re on your knees and you’re talking into the chair anyway, which already makes it tough to hear if that’s the posture you’re using. And you can’t hear somebody’s praying. It really hard to come to agreement with somebody if they’re praying so long you don’t know what they’re really asking. And it’s impossible to come to agreement in praying with somebody if you can’t hear what they’re saying.

Be bold enough. I know it’s tough. Some of you never prayed in groups before. You’re going to be reticent at first, but you know, steel yourself. Be men, right? We’re the Marines. We’re the crack troops. That’s what they say about it. Some people here at RCC. Be that. Stir up your guts. Get some stamina, some bravery. Speak prayers, loud prayers, so people can hear them. Don’t mind shouting if it might come out as a shout sometimes. That’s okay. They can hear you at least.

A lot of us are getting older and have a hard time hearing each other. Don’t go to sleep. Obvious. If guys are playing louder on you, you probably won’t.

Work hard at agreeing. This is a key, I think, particularly in relationship to the next one. Stay on one topic at a time. You have prayer meetings, you got 10 things you’re praying for, and people are popcorn praying is what Duke calls it. They’re praying all over the place. And you’re really not trying come into agreement. I think he’s right that what we should be doing in our prayers with other people is listen to them. Try to build off their prayer. Try to develop a sense of consensus while you’re praying about a particular topic and a particular need or whatever it might be. Try to come to agreement.

God wants us to agree and approach him in agreement. So if you stay on one topic for a round, right? Try to pray about that. Not the same thing the last person said, not just wrote repetition. Competition ain’t helping. Add your little flavor to the, you know, to the sausage. They’re all mixed together, but add your particular flavor.

So, work hard at agreeing and stay on one topic at a time. No popcorn praying, okay?

You can apply this today in the fellowship meeting if you do it. Try to connect with the person who prayed before you. That’s part of this agreeing thing, right? So, we’re trying to do that. We’re trying to have agreement amongst us in the unity of the Spirit.

Listen to your thoughts and take a notebook along. I did this at the staff meetings. I was amazed. Sometimes we’d be praying and I’d get an idea. I don’t know. Is it me? Is it God? I don’t know. But I’d write it down. You know, prayer isn’t me and having your eyes closed and your hands put together and your head bowed and can’t move. What does it say in the Psalms? It says, you know, in the Psalms and a lot of other places, I prayed by looking up. Our prayers can become quite gnostic and removed from reality.

And sometimes, not all the times, but sometimes it’s helpful to open your eyes up while you’re praying. That’s a novel idea. But clearly they did in the Bible. They prayed with their eyes open. Not all the time maybe, but a lot of times you’re seeing the people. It’s easier to listen to them sometimes. It’s easier to understand what you’re getting at. It’s stir your prayers. If you’re praying for people in the group particularly, you’re connected to them. You see, when you pray, I did this in the Oregon City pastor’s prayer meeting sometimes, not all the times. I get a little self-conscious sometimes. I have my eyes open. I want to see I want to stay connected to these guys. We’re praying together. You see? Now, the Bible says that’s what they did. And it says they looked up. Not all the time, but our prayers should be confident prayers approaching the throne of God expecting an answer. Okay.

So, D says this. Pray silently as long as necessary. Press on becoming a vocal participant. Already mentioned that. Don’t pray private prayer needs in larger groups. Don’t gossip or slander as you pray. Don’t preach as you pray. Excellent observations and practical suggestions. Some of those things are, you know, well, gossip is never appropriate, but remember your context is another way to say it. What are you there for? We’re there to come in agreement as we pray about a matter to God. That means I’m not going to get off my own thing. I’m not going to preach to the people, you know, we’re going to pray to God and we’re going to try to come to agreement with the other people on a topic before we move on to the next one.

At our last pastor’s prayer meeting, somebody said this again, right? Cuz we’ve been trying to do this for a year. They said, “Now remember, we’re not kind of popcorn pray, we’re going to stand with it.” And sure enough, you know, one or two of the pastors, somebody bring up a topic and boom, they’d go off on another topic or, you know, it’s really it’s really hard to do.

And don’t feel bad about it if you, you know, mess it up. But I do think it’s it’s significant because again, Jesus says that he went to the father and the father was going to send a helper. Our help comes from the direct results of the prayers of the Lord Jesus Christ. And he wants us to be like those men in the book of Acts. He wants us to be effective in ministry. He wants us to have Pentecostal empowerment of the spirit and victory, have success, and you take some losses along the along the war, but you’d have a lot of successes and those successes are dependent upon us doing just what Jesus did. Praying to the father.

That’s another thing. Praying to the father. Jesus, as you do, pray to the father. Don’t pray to me. Don’t pray to the holy spirit. Occasionally, yeah, Stephen called out to Christ. Okay. But Jesus told us time and time again and in terms of how we pray, pray to the father through me, empowered by the holy spirit. The father is the one you’re dealing with in prayer.

So Jesus says that’s the way it’s supposed to be. Pray this way. Come to agreement as you pray as you pray as my body come to agreement with one another. And then the Lord God will bless your prayers and you’ll be effectual in that prayer. Simple. Simple as confessing sins. But we forget how to do it. Need to memorize the seven A’s. At times prayer is simple but we need to remind ourselves of its importance and the book of acts shows us from beginning of the project through to the end of the project that prayer is essential to the effective work of the church.

Let’s pray. Father we thank you. We bless your holy name Lord God for the importance of prayer as revealed to us in the scriptures. We thank you for each and every person here and we do pray that we would become more effective, more efficient and just more often praying to you, Father, for the things that we try to accomplish in our life. Forgive us our lack of prayerfulness and make us a people of prayer.

Bless our prayer meetings, our fellowship meetings this afternoon that there might be prayer in them. Bless Lord God Esther as she arranges this meeting for Friday night. Bless myself and the other elders as we think through ways to encourage and exhort people to have prayer partners or trios. Bless us as a congregation. Father, we want to be effective for you. To that end, help us to pray in Jesus name we ask it.

Amen. Amen.