Ephesians 6:18-20
All right, hear God’s word. This
is Ephesians chapter six, beginning at verse 18. It says, praying
at all times in the spirit with all prayer and supplication.
To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication
for all the saints and also for me, that’s Paul, that words may
be given to me and opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the
mystery of the gospel for which I am an ambassador in chains,
that I may declare it boldly as I ought to speak. Amen, that’s
the Lord’s word to us. You would think that after reading
through the very beginning of the book of Ephesians, particularly
chapters one and two, with all the spiritual blessings that
we have in the heavenly places being dead and now brought to
life, being of this earth and now being raised up with Christ
and seated in the heavenly places, you would think that there would
not be a need to have a vigilant, persevering, knuckle, knuckle,
what would you call it? Well, holding on tight for dear
life, prayer life. But that is how the Apostle Paul
ends this study of the whole armor of God, spiritual battle,
being prepared for spiritual warfare. He begs the people to
pray with everything they have. Now this stands in stark contrast
also to our very self-sufficient culture. We pray in the Lord’s
Prayer, give us this day our daily bread, and you know, have
the ability to earn money here in the United States. We have
the ability to go to the grocery when we need to. If we don’t
have it, we can get it on credit. It’s hard to do without. It’s
hard to do without. And we can very easily become
self-sufficient, self-satisfied. And so it’s a good reminder at
the end of this chapter. at the end of this little book,
to be a people who are dependent on the Lord. And so I want us
to look at verses 18 through 20 from the four perspectives,
the four thoughts that are in the passage. I’ve kind of jammed
a few together. You could probably get seven or eight out of it,
but that would take too long. I get in trouble and I already
went over this morning. So some of you noticed, huh? Ellen Huffman
threatened to whistle on me next week, but I told her I wouldn’t
hear it. I just keep on. So the first
little section is prayers and supplications. He says in verse
18, praying at all times in the spirit with all prayer and supplication. This is in the English standard
version. And then he says, to that end, keep alert with all
perseverance, making supplication for all the saints. So twice
he uses that word supplication. He uses the word prayers. What
does prayer look like in the Bible? If you scan the Bible,
what does prayer look like? Well, in a lot of cases, it may
not look like the way we pray. A lot of people in the Bible
cry out to the Lord. I mean, cry out. Not these little
quiet whispers. A lot of people are on their
faces before the Lord. A lot of people in their petitions
and their posture and in their emotional state in the Bible
are not people who pray like we do. But we find in the Bible
all kinds of ways that people pray. And we find in the Bible
all kinds of ways that people pray, and we don’t find the Bible
saying, pray like him, pray like her. And we find some bad examples,
like the Pharisees. What does Jesus say? Don’t be
like them, for they just want to be heard. And we do have an
example of Christ who says, when you pray, pray like this. He gives the Lord’s prayer. But
we find all kinds of forms, all kinds of postures, all kinds
of subjects, all kinds of places, all kinds of voices. And this
little section of Ephesians teaches us to pray, to be a people of
prayer and to offer our supplications. And we often pray very generally. And that’s what he means by prayer.
But when he gets to supplications, he really means pray specifically. Sometimes we pray like this,
dear God, help all the people in the world. Well, since he
has the whole world in his hands, he can do that, right? And, you
know, another little cliche, so to speak. And God can hear
those general prayers, but isn’t it better to say, dear God, help
this specific people in the world who are dealing with this specific
problem, this specific issue. We pray and we offer our supplications
for them. So prayer can be very general,
but it can be also very specific. Think through the categories
of adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication, and then think
through the words of the Lord’s Prayer and put them in those
categories. For adoration, our Father in heaven, hallowed be
thy name, for yours is the kingdom, the power, and the glory. Confession,
forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Thanksgiving, well,
there’s actually not really Thanksgiving. in there, but count your blessings,
name them one by one. We sing that from time to time,
and it’s a good thing. How about supplications? Give
us this day our daily bread. Lead us not into temptation.
Deliver us from evil. Thy kingdom come, thy will be
done. And so we have in the Bible all
kinds of ways people pray, all kinds of things they say, all
kinds of postures, all kinds of voices. And prayer and supplications
are what God calls us to. It’s what the apostle is speaking
to us about. I don’t know how you pray. I
mean, I do, at least the ones I hear. But I don’t know how
you pray outside the church. Maybe you pray as you go through
life. Some of you have read that book
that was written a number of years ago called A Praying Life
by Paul Miller. And that’s a wonderful book that
reminds us that we should be praying all times and in every
place. And we don’t always have to be
in a closet. We don’t always have to be on our knees. We can
pray with our eyes open. I’ll tell a story. A little fib
on my wife. She was praying before we left
on our trip to Tennessee and she had her eyes closed and she
was the driver and the light turned green and she got beeped
at. So sometimes you shouldn’t have your eyes closed. The kids
thought that was pretty funny. That was you, wasn’t it? I’m
not making that up. Okay, good. I told a real story. Yeah, but
thankfully she wanted to pray for the trip, but her eyes should
have been open. But we wanna offer to God prayers
and supplications. The second thing he goes through
after prayers and supplications, I’m gonna jumble a couple together.
At all times, be alert and with perseverance. So he says in verse
18, pray at all times, pray with all, or he says, keep alert with
all perseverance, And so this speaks a little bit about the
frequency and the attitude we have in prayer. In the Bible, you find a lot
of times people were praying at certain hours. You know, the
sixth hour, the middle of the day, at the end of the day, in
the night. You read the psalmist, I prayed in the morning, I prayed
at noon, I prayed at night. We understand Jesus in his life
and ministry prayed at certain times of the day. And there’s
a good pattern for that. It might be actually good for
us to, you know, we carry these gadgets around to put a little
thing in there that’s a little alarm that says prayer time and
do it at, Say seven in the morning when you’re up. Put another one
for 1230 when you’re on your lunch break. Maybe another one
in the evening. And just a reminder for you to
stop and pray. Life gets very busy. But you
know, you drive down the road and you see an ambulance go by. Dear Lord, help whoever that
is that needs help. Keep those EMTs safe. May traffic open up for them. You know, you see some horrible,
terrible things. You see difficulties as you watch
the headlines in the news. And it’s good for us to pray
at all times in every place, to have a praying life and even
to have set hours. It’s been said that our prayer
life shows what we are made of. And so a strong Christian is
a praying Christian. A praying Christian is one who’s
discipline themselves to be a man or woman of prayer, to be devoted,
to be constant. in prayer. You’ve heard us make
mention, maybe several weeks back when we looked at the means
of grace and prayer, how when the Israelites were fighting
the Amalekites back during the exodus from Egypt and when Israel
was in the wilderness, and so long as Moses kept his hands
up in the air praying, they prevailed over the Amalekites. And when
his arms went down, the Amalekites prevailed. And so Aaron and Hur
sat Moses on a rock and each one stood on either side and
held up his arms. And as long as those arms were
up, the people of God prevailed. And sometimes we need to be in
prayer at all times, alert and praying with perseverance with
the help of other saints. That’s surely what has needed
to take place for our brother, Andrew Brunson. But a lot of
time we just live life on autopilot. We don’t really pray until, as
we might say, it’s come to that. life has gotten so bad, or things
are out of our control, or our checkbook can’t take care of
it, or some form of self-reliance and self-sufficiency can’t take
care of our problem. And so we finally resolved that
maybe it’s time to pray. And for sure, God uses life circumstances
to get us on our knees. But we should always, we should
always be on our knees. We should be living a God-conscious
life, rather than an uh-oh, We better pray attitude. In a sense,
our incense, our offerings of prayer should always be burning
and rising up to the throne of grace. You remember the story
that Jesus tells about the persistent widow. She kept going to the
judge and saying, I want justice. She kept going to the judge and
saying, I want justice. And that judge, who was not a
Christian man, he was not a worshiper of God, finally says to himself, I’m going to give this woman
justice because she’s going to wear me out. She’s going to drive
me crazy. And so he gives her justice.
And then Jesus says, and how much more the heavenly father,
if we persist in our asking, uh, we read words in the gospels
about our prayer life. We should ask, we should seek,
we should knock, we should be constant in our prayers. So we’re
to offer to God, our prayers and supplications at all times
to be alert and to have perseverance. The third aspect of prayer we
find, we should pray in the spirit. Verse 18 tells us, praying at
all times in the spirit with all prayer and supplication. What does it mean to pray in
the Spirit? Does that mean we’re supposed
to speak in ecstatic words and, you know, say things nobody else
understands and sound super spiritual? No, it means we join the work
of the Holy Spirit who is already praying, who is already interceding,
who is already speaking, in a sense, God’s words to him, and we join
in that work of the Spirit. Think about Romans chapter 8.
The Holy Spirit helps us when all we can do is lisp, all we
can do is stammer and stutter. The Holy Spirit helps us in our
weakness, taking our sighs and groans, which are too deep for
words, and taking them up to the throne of glory. When we
live in step with the Holy Spirit, when we live a life that is in
step with the Holy Spirit, we serve, we pray, and we speak
to God in that vein. We pray, as we pray, we call
to mind the truth of the spirit of the living God. And that’s
where our power comes from. And then finally, the fourth
thing, who are we to pray for? We’re to pray for the saints.
at least in Ephesians chapter six here, and for the apostle
Paul. He says at the end of verse 18,
making supplication for all the saints and also for me, that’s
Paul, remember, he’s in prison. He wants prayer that he can boldly
proclaim the mystery of the gospel for which he is an ambassador
in chains. He wants to declare it boldly
as he ought to speak. You would think that after all
this wonderful, glorious truth about who the saints are and
what they have in Christ, they wouldn’t need prayer. They could
just live out of the resources of heaven. But God says, no,
it’s a dark world out there. It’s a satanic world out there.
It’s a wacky world out there, and you need the whole armor
of God, and you need to pray without stopping for me and for
the saints. And so he says to pray for those
who are in the battle fray. And here’s a question for you.
Do you have a circle of people for whom you pray? Maybe you
start in your own household. Maybe you start with your circle
of friends. Maybe you’ve stretched it out to your kith and your
kin, your children, your grandchildren, your aunts and uncles and cousins
and close family members. Maybe it’s a college roommate
and their family that are on your list. But do you have a
circle of friends that you pray for? For sure, God has put people
in your lives that you love, people in your lives, maybe your
fellow church members, and you love them and you want them to
live well in the world and for God’s glory, and so you pray
for them. We’re a very self-centered world.
We’re very quick to say, pray for me. You know, my second toe
has been aching. I’m making something really big
up. Your second toe may be aching,
and Lord bless you. But we want prayer for ourselves, and that’s
not a bad thing. But do we have our minds and
our hearts on others, and particularly think of the application this
way, for those who preach and teach the gospel, like the Apostle
Paul, and who are in chains for it. but we’re very often self-centered. We very often want our own needs
met, and it’s very often not our spiritual needs, right? If
your second toe hurts, Lord bless you if it does, that’s important,
God cares, he made your toe, but what should we really be
praying for? Your growth in grace, your growth
in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus, your coming to the measure
of the stature of Christ that we read of in chapter four. of
Ephesians, that’s the big stuff to pray for, that we would become
more like Christ Jesus. But you know, one of the great
practices and principles of prayer is this, we should pray with
and for people. I was speaking with somebody
the other day about something they were facing, and they were
talking about the different things people said to them. It makes
me smile because I’m laughing as I think about this. And they
were talking about how their non-Christian friends said, we’ll
be thinking about you. And that’s a demotion, because
what do most people say? Our thoughts and our prayers
are with you. Now, this person who offered
only their thoughts was at least being honest because this person
they were saying was not a Christian and their prayers wouldn’t reach
too far past the first layer of the stratosphere. So they
were kind of laughing about this. But we should not just say, my
thoughts and prayers are with you, Lord be with you. What should
we do? We should sit and we should pray with. and we should pray
for others. That is the ministry of Christian
to Christian. Do you know in the Associate
Reform Presbyterian Church, in our form of government, the whole
chapter on pastors, it is the duty of pastors to study and
pray and visit. That’s kind of it. I got an easy
job. Study, pray, and visit. Study
the word, pray the word, and visit with the word. It goes
on to say you’re to pray with and for your people. Pretty basic. This day and time when pastors
are celebrities, pastors are CEOs, it doesn’t say anything
about blogging and Twittering and building up a media empire
and all the rest. Ministry, whether it’s the pastor’s
ministry, the ministry of the elders, or the ministry of Christian
to Christian, it’s pretty simple. It’s pray with and for one another.
You can’t get much easier than that, can you? Pray with and
for, and that’s what the Apostle Paul is telling us here. Pray for those who suffer for
the gospel. Pray for those whose words matter. Pray for those who are in the
midst of spiritual battles. We’ve been talking in our house
about how everything in the church matters. Everything in the church
matters. And we’re talking about how our
church presents itself. really has an impact in the community. When people drive by, when they
say we know our people, or when so-and-so finds out that so-and-so
goes to your church, all these things really matter. And it’s
a very serious world. It’s a world with eternal consequences. And we ought to be praying for
the little things. We ought to be praying for the big things.
We ought to be praying for everything matters. Eternity is at stake. And so our prayers ought to be
for the saints. It ought to be for Paul. It ought
to be for each of us as we serve the Christian life in this world
and as we desire to proclaim goodness to others. So, how’s
this going to change your prayer life? Are you going to be more
vigilant? Are you going to be more persevering in your prayers?
Are you going to pray specifically? Are you going to be alert? Are
your prayers going to be in the spirit? Will your prayers be
with and for the other saints? Well, I pray that that would
be true for you. For God promises to bless as
we ask and seek and knock. He gives to his children. Let’s
pause and pray together. Our Lord, we thank you for this
challenge, this reminder to be a praying people. We’ve heard
it often. We’ve heard it many times. We pray that it would be new
and fresh and that it would challenge us and that it might change our
way of the Christian walk or encourage us all the more in
it if it already is there. Hear us now. Bless us in Christ.
We pray in his name. Amen.