The Power of Prayer

We'll remain standing for a moment. We'll be reading from Acts chapter 12,

Acts 12 · chapter mention

much of the exact same passage we read last week with the focus today on prayer.

Acts chapter 12, and do listen and give attention because this is God's holy and inspired word.

Acts 12 · chapter mention

About that time, Herod, the king, laid violent hands on some who belonged to the church.

He killed James, the brother of John, with a sword. When he saw that it pleased

the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter also.

This was during the days of unleavened bread. When he had seized him,

he put him in prison, delivering him over to four squads of soldiers to guard

him, intending after the Passover to bring him out to the people.

So Peter was kept in prison.

But earnest prayer for him was made to God by the church.

Now, when Herod was about to bring him out on the very night,

Peter was sleeping between two soldiers bound with two chains and centuries

before the door were guarding the prison.

And behold, an angel of the Lord stood next to him, and the light shone in the cell.

He struck Peter on the side and woke him up, saying, Get up quickly.

And the chains fell off his hands. And the angel said to him,

Dress yourself, put on your sandals. and he did so.

And he said to him, wrap up your cloak around you and follow me.

And he went out and followed him. He did not know that what was being done by

the angel was actually real, but thought he was seeing a vision.

And when they had passed the first and the second guard, they came to the iron

gate leading into the city.

It opened from within on its own accord. And they went out and went along one

street, and immediately the angel left him.

When Peter came to himself, he said, Now I'm sure that the Lord has sent his

angel and rescued me from the hand of Herod and from all the Jewish people were expecting.

When he realized this, he went to the house of Mary, the mother of John,

whose other name was Mark, where many were gathered together and were praying.

And when he knocked at the door of the gateway, a servant girl named Rhoda came to answer.

Recognizing Peter's voice in her joy, she did not even open the gate,

but ran in and reported that Peter was standing at the gate.

They said to her, you're out of your mind But she kept insisting that it was

so And they kept saying, it is his angel But Peter continued knocking And when

they opened the door, they saw him and were amazed.

But motioning to them with his hand to be silent, he described to them how the

Lord had brought him out of the prison.

And he said, Tell these things to James and to the brothers.

Then he departed and went to another place.

Now, when the day had come that there was no little disturbance among the soldiers

over what had become of Peter, and after Herod searched for him and did not

find him, he examined the sentries in order that they should be put to death.

Then he went down from Judea to Caesarea and spent time there.

Now Herod was angry with the people of Tyre and Sidon, and they came to him

with one accord, and having persuaded Blastus, the king's chamberlain,

they asked for peace, because their country depended on the king's country for bread.

And on an appointed day, Herod put on his royal robes, took his seat upon the

throne, and delivered an oration to them.

The people were shouting, The voice of a god and not of a man.

Immediately an angel of the Lord struck him down, because he did not give glory

to God, and he was eaten by worms.

And his breath breathed his last but the word of the Lord increased and multiplied

and Barnabas and Saul returned from Jerusalem when they had completed their

service bringing with them John whose other name was Mark this is the word of

the Lord you can be seated let's pray.

Dear God, Holy Spirit, come to be with us now as we have read your word.

We hope by your spirit to understand it, to be encouraged by it,

strengthened in it, and ultimately to love our Savior Jesus more than ever.

We pray in his name. Amen.

What role do you think that prayer plays in the kingdom of God?

And perhaps, let me put it to you like this, Have you ever considered that as

the kingdom of God is at war with the kingdom of Satan?

Have you ever considered prayer as one of the primary weapons in this warfare?

We look at this as a key element in what happens in our story this morning.

We looked last week at a lot of judgment and worms and fire and other things.

This week, I want to look at the same story, but look at a part of it that's behind it.

It's behind the whole story. And that is the prayers of God's people,

the prayers of God's people.

The terrible judgment that God brought to Herod and that God always brings to

his enemies, you see throughout the book of Acts.

And I love this as we move through the story of Acts and we'll go back and look

at some of them, always behind and before and during and even after the people

of God are praying and they're praying earnestly.

For God, the exalted Lord of glory, remember we saw the very beginning of Acts,

he's risen and he's exalted and he's enthroned as the King and Lord of glory.

And so the saints of God are lifting up their eyes to him and asking him for help.

You oftentimes see, I know some of you still aren't quite used to lifting your

hands up, but it's a good practice.

I know some of you just have trouble, especially you guys, I know,

but they lift up their hands.

Empty hands is usually the posture, and they are asking the Lord to fill them.

They have nothing, nothing to offer, nothing to give, particularly nothing to

wage war against their enemies.

And God is waging war through Christ our King. Listen to what our shorter catechism says.

It asks the question, how does Christ execute the office of a king?

And the answer says, Christ executes the office of a king in subduing us to

himself, in ruling and defending us, and in restraining and conquering all his and all our enemies.

But how does he do this? We should know right away that he doesn't do it with

a normal army in the sense that we see today.

We don't see, you know, when God declares war on Satan, we are not able to see,

which is pretty cool to see.

When I saw the pictures on the news of the Armada,

you Navy guys out there, I'm sure are super proud of this war,

but this Armada is going, there's an aircraft carrier, there's destroyers,

they're all sort of pointed in a wedge, and behind them is this magnificent.

White foam coming out from behind them, and they're on their way to Iran.

I thought to myself, anybody in Iran would be thinking, this is not going to go well for us.

I mean, I think there's three full aircraft carriers there right now.

That's like three cities, floating cities of destruction.

One of them sitting off your shore would be enough to be alarmed.

But God doesn't wage war in exactly the same way.

And I think it sometimes fools us because I think sometimes when we see those

aircraft carriers and we see those F-18s flying off of it. We see all these jets and these bombs.

And of course, if you're like me, I love to see the Tomahawk cruise missiles

just blast out and shoot off towards the enemies.

We sometimes think that that's where the real power is.

Now, in our days, we would talk about Tomahawk cruise missiles,

aircraft carriers. In the ancient world, they would talk about horses and chariots and soldiers.

And it's clear in the scriptures that horses and chariots, God doesn't take

any pleasure in the strength of the horse or the chariot when it comes to winning

his battles, because our battle is different.

Listen to what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 10.

He says, For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh.

For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal.

But mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every

high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of the Lord,

bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ and being ready

to punish all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled.

One of the central parts of this warfare, this non-carnal or this spiritual warfare is prayer.

And I know I've said it in different ways off and on throughout the series,

but I really wanna hunker down today and just encourage us to open our eyes

to see the setting before us that we don't often see. It's here already.

I mean, angels are coming and going and prison doors are bursting open on their

own. And this is not normal. This is spiritual power that God brings.

And you'll notice in our context, we have a story where you seriously have Herod

on one side and the church on the other.

Herod has set himself directly against the church.

He has killed James and he loved it. And he's about to kill Peter and he puts

him down in this dungeon in order to release him out and kill him on behalf of the Jews.

So the stage is set for a battle.

This is warfare that's going on. We need to think about this when we pray.

So this warfare is set and the apparent strongman is Herod.

That's the apparent strongman. Because you see the church in contrast is almost

hiding in a house in darkness praying.

It doesn't seem like it's a fair match, does it?

Who would you be wagering on? Herod with all his armies and all his power and

all his sentries and his dungeon and his castle, his money, or a small group

of people huddled in a house praying?

Who don't even, this is so funny, they don't even apparently believe when it

happens that they have any sort of influence on this warfare.

They're astonished by it, they're amazed.

But what we need to see is what they didn't see, and we're not gonna see this,

we don't have an Elisha to come along and illuminate us, but we do have stories

in the Bible that give us confidence that when we pray, the Lord God is pleased

to engage the heavenly hosts of angels.

There's a super cool story from 2 Kings chapter six.

And it's a good story. Verse 14, here's what it says. This is Elisha going into

the city with his servant and is surrounded by an army.

It says, therefore he sent horses and chariots and a great army there.

And they came by night and surrounded the city.

And when the servant of the man of God arose early and went out,

there was an army surrounding the city with horses and chariots.

This is like so many stories in the Bible. You can see the guy,

oh, he sees that. He's running around.

As soon as he says, alas, my master, what should we do? What do we do?

And so he answered, do not fear

for those who are with us are more than those who are with them. What?

What? No, because I can see right here the Assyrians. And from our studies in

Jonah and other things, we know the Assyrians are not nice people.

Understatement. They're the people that skin you alive and hang you over the,

they're not good. And so now they're surrounding the city.

This won't be the first time, by the way, that the angel of the Lord strikes

down the mighty armies of Assyria.

So Elisha says, and he prayed, and he says, Lord, I pray, open his eyes that he may see.

Then behold, the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw.

And behold, on the mountain, it was full of horses and chariots of fire around Elisha.

All of a sudden, it's as if Elisha prayed, and the Lord said,

let me open up to you the spiritual realm, The real reality behind what you

see, but what you can't normally see.

And then Elisha prayed to the Lord and said, strike these people,

I pray, with blindness. And he struck them with blindness according to the word of Elisha.

And they took off. It's awesome.

Struck them with blindness. We see this also, angelic hosts striking in Sodom

and Gomorrah and many other places, striking them with blindness,

striking them with confusion.

Elisha wanted his servant to see and wanted us to see also what's really going on in this world.

And it's not just the aircraft carriers and the Tomahawk cruise missiles and

the ballistic things that are blowing up everywhere.

Even in Matthew, Jesus himself says, 18 says, take heed that you do not despise

one of these little ones.

For I say to you that in heaven, their angels always see the face of the father

who is in heaven. It's a cool passage.

Some people derive from this, you know, that guardian angel idea,

that we all have a guardian angel, because this story says, Jesus is warning

people, do not set yourself against my people, my little ones. I love them.

Because if you do, you risk engaging the heavenly host that I will send to defend them.

Now, do we each have a guardian angel? My mom used to think so.

My mom said that there was about three times in my life, according to the stories,

where really, I should have died. There was this horse incident.

There was a car accident.

And my mom always said, you keep your guardian angel busy, young man.

Your guardian angel is constantly watching out for you.

Now, we don't know from this passage or others. I mean, Jesus says that there

are angels that do my bidding and they watch on my behalf.

It doesn't mean that we all have a guardian angel. And particularly.

I don't know if you like, it's a wonderful life, but it's a fun story.

But we can be sure that our angel is not like that one.

Not trying to earn his wings by doing some good deed. But the picture that Matthew

gives is like a warrior angel waiting there with one eye to the Father and one eye to the scene,

almost as if he has his hand on his angelic sword, ready to unsheathe it on our behalf.

If the Father says, go, you do not want to be in down where that angel,

that warrior angel is heading.

That's an angel that the Lord engages on our behalf. And you'll notice in our

story in Acts, these are warriors engaged on behalf of God's people when they pray.

When they pray. Because we are at war with Satan as much now as we were in the book of Acts.

And though he is defeated, he's still a dangerous foe. I can keep piggybacking

on the present day with Iran.

Again, three aircraft carriers, ballistic missiles, Israeli defense forces bombing.

And it looks by all accounts that Iran is completely defeated,

but it doesn't mean they're not still dangerous.

UAE just found that out. They have many ballistic missiles. A defeated enemy

can still be quite dangerous.

They can still wage warfare and they can wound people and they can engage in terrorist activities.

So don't think because that the kingdom of Satan has been defeated by the cross

and the resurrection, that there's not still warfare going on.

Well, how do we engage in this warfare? What do we do? It could be,

I actually toyed with doing like a quick mini series on the spiritual warfare,

but I think we'll just let it unfold in the book of Acts.

But Paul says that we're engaged in spiritual warfare that Elder Micah read

earlier, Ephesians 10, it says, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might.

Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.

And the word stand, and you'll see it several times, is not just a regular stand,

like stand straight or tension.

It's a military term from the Roman army where it looks like one left foot is

pointed slightly forward, back foot is slightly sideways, so you're prepared for an attack.

You're prepared for someone to hit you if they come into your shield.

So he says, stand firm, for we do not wrestle against flesh and blood,

but against the rulers and the authorities, against cosmic powers over this present darkness,

against spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places, everywhere,

all the time, even though we can't always see them.

Therefore, take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand

in the evil day, and having done all to stand firm, stand, be ready for battle.

Therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth and put on the breastplate of

righteousness and the shoes of your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel,

in all circumstances, take up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish

the fiery darts of the evil one and take the helmet of salvation and the sword

of the spirit, which is the word of God.

And listen to verse 18, because we often, whenever you hear a sermon series,

there's a lot of emphasis on each armor, what the helmet does,

what the shield does, what the breastplate does.

But you'll notice verse 18, all of these elements listed, verse 18 says,

praying at all times in the spirit with all prayer and supplication.

It appears from Paul's statement that every bit of the pieces of armor that

are put on are held together in prayer, are founded in prayer and stay together in prayer.

Prayer seems to be the before and during and after and constant activity of

the kingdom of God in all of this warfare.

Prayer is the oxygen that the church breathes in the midst of these kingdom

battles and kingdom victories.

Prayer is the with, under, and around of the blessings of the kingdom.

Prayer is the foundational activity of the kingdom. Have you heard me?

How many different ways can I say it? Everything is tied together.

Everything is situated in the context of God's people lifting up their hands and praying.

It's the primary kingdom activity.

Paul says that prayers of all the saints will affect the preaching of the word.

Later he says that. Prayer is involved in healings and demons scattering and

salvation. It's not merely the background.

When you read these stories in Acts, you might be tempted to say,

oh, they're praying. Oh, look at there again. No, it's not just a background.

It's the very foundation of what happens.

When Paul goes out later, and we'll see in his missionary's journeys,

the church at Antioch doesn't just lay hands on him and say,

see you later, alligator.

They lay hands on him, and they're praying. And as they pray,

it's behind the mission of Paul to go out and take the gospel to the nations.

The church of Acts and the church today should be a church at prayer.

I didn't plan this, by the way. It's good timing, thank the Lord.

But we have our first prayer meeting this Wednesday.

It's significant. I'm excited that we're having it. We just chose one,

one day a week, one day a month.

Now, when you look at the book of Acts, I hope you'll all be so convicted.

Like, well, they were praying all the time. They were hiding out. They were.

So one day a week, not a big deal, right? I didn't hear any amen. Amen.

So this prayer meeting we're having is not just a get together,

although it will be nice.

It's our attempt to model the church of Acts and what we want to do here.

If you want this preacher to preach effective sermons and the Holy Spirit to be at work, pray.

That's what Paul said. Pray for me as I preach that I may be able to know what

to say, how to say it, and how to be persuasive.

If you want people to be healed that we're listening on, pray.

If you want this church to grow and new families to come, pray, pray, pray.

Everything we do is situated at prayer. That's what we see in the book of Acts.

Before they began any part of the apostolic mission, they prayed.

Acts 1 verse 12. Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mountain called Olivet,

Acts 1:12

which is near Jerusalem. And when they'd entered, they went up to the upper

room where they were staying, Peter and John and James and Andrew, all the rest, verse 14.

All of these were with one accord and they were devoting themselves to prayer.

Before they chose the new apostle, Acts 1.24, it says, they prayed and said, Lord, help us.

Before the blessed coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, they prayed.

Acts chapter 2, when the Pentecost day of Pentecost arrived,

Acts 2 · chapter mention

they were all together in one place. They were one accord.

Peter's healing of the lame man at the temple. See, you might have missed it.

That's what I'm here for.

You might have missed it and said, oh, look at that. They prayed before this,

they prayed before that. And look at what's happening. What a surprise. It's not a coincidence.

Before Peter healed the lame man, it says in Acts 2.42, they devoted themselves

to the apostles' teaching, the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and the prayers.

The church is always praying. And we see this here when Herod takes Peter captive.

He's already killed James and he takes Peter captive. And it's interesting,

there's a strong contrast and I think it's meant to be humorous.

That's why I think it's okay to be funny in a sermon sometimes,

not silly, but it's humorous here to see what they're doing.

They are in this house earnestly praying, it says.

And it's a Greek word that has to do with earnestly, constantly,

fervently straining for something.

There's even a word that's a similar word, ectenos, which is used of muscles,

where it talks about a muscle that's strained to the point of snapping or tearing.

It's strained. Luke uses the word when he describes Jesus' prayers in the Garden of Gethsemane.

He says, and being in agony, he prayed earnestly, all the more earnestly,

so that his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground.

Jesus is pictured here straining earnestly, and the word there is used,

straining a muscle like to the point of snapping or tearing intensely.

You ever prayed like that? Now, again, I don't expect our once-a-month prayer

meetings to be like a revival meeting where every one of us are like, you know, like that.

Every time you pray, it's not possible. But have you ever prayed like that?

Just really prayed earnestly like that. Like, for instance, when Hannah prayed.

Now, you know, you might say, well, we're Presbyterians. We don't strain like

that, but this is biblical stuff, okay?

When Hannah prayed in the Old Testament, she prayed so earnestly that,

remember, the priest Samuel thought she was drunk.

It says, and it happened, this is 1 Samuel 1, as she continued praying before

the Lord that Eli watched her mouth.

Now, Hannah spoke in her heart, only her lips were moving, but her voice was not heard.

Therefore, Eli thought she was drunk and he rebuked her. He said,

how long will you be drunk? Put away your wine.

And she said, no, my Lord, I am a woman of a sorrowful spirit.

I have drunk neither wine nor intoxicating drink, but I have poured out my soul,

to the Lord, strained earnestly, wracked by pain and sorrow and her great concern

to have a child. She was barren.

This is the context of someone straining. David, another dramatic example of

this, he sinned against the Lord and his fellow man.

He'd become an adulterer and a murderer.

His son was about to die and he fell down and he prayed day after day after day.

So much so, they were afraid to tell David, your son's died.

They thought he would kill himself.

Why? Because he was laid out on the ground prostrate, praying earnestly, straining.

Abraham, when he prayed for Sodom and Gomorrah, stood before the Lord's coming

wrath and said, would you save them for this?

Would you save them for that? He's earnestly pleading with the God.

Moses acted as a similar intercessory when he stood before the wrath of God on multiple occasions.

This is the Israelites. We talked about this in Sunday school,

stubborn people. It would be saved. As soon as they would be saved,

it was like, where's the food?

Where's the water? We had it better in Egypt.

Multiple times, the making of the golden calf, the sons of Korah,

all these things where Moses stood in front of the Lord and pleaded with him

earnestly, don't destroy the people on behalf of your promises, so forth.

The church cried out now for Peter's safety and Herod's judgment.

Is it not similar in our day? You might say, well, that was the old,

that was the apostles. They had a lot bigger. We have some problems in our day.

We have people who love killing babies.

We have people who would like to take our children against our will and mutilate them.

I'd say we have some serious enemies, some reasons to strain and ask the Lord, help us.

Help us to have safety from these evil people.

We sometimes, again, I voted Tuesday. I had my little sticker.

I hope you voted. I hope you vote coming up. But sometimes we put the cart before

the horse in terms of elections.

We need to pray earnestly, lift up our hands, save us from these people.

Save us from the confusion. Save the innocent people who might be confused.

Save the children who might be confused.

There's much to pray for, even in our day. Help the innocent not to be killed.

It's worth lifting up our hands and straining to the Lord. They saw the wrath of Herod.

They saw him kill James, and they knew that Peter was next. Peter was there

in that dungeon as good as dead.

We need to pray in our time that the Lord would raise up, help us in ways that

we don't. The thing is, you don't always see it.

In fact, usually we're like the servant of Elisha. We're like, no, we're not gonna win.

There's too many of them. But we look at the stories of scripture and we realize

that there are mighty armies of the heavenly host on our behalf and we pray.

And the church here, by the way, prayer makes a difference.

Prayer changes things. Now I feel like a bumper sticker or something.

Prayer makes a difference. It does though. That's what, I mean,

we say it all the time and I'm sure you've heard it and I'm sure you believe

it, but maybe you're a little bit like the church here when you're surprised.

Prayer makes a difference. Let's pray. And they're like, wait,

what? He healed him? Wow.

I've been in situations where there have been times where we prayed for something

that came up at the moment. We earnestly prayed for the Lord and he fixed the problem.

And then when you think you're like, wait a minute, He fixed the problem at this point, point A.

But in order for the problem to have been fixed so dramatically,

you can zigzag your way back into history, and you find out God was already

working years in advance to answer that particular prayer question.

And here we have basically the church asking God to resurrect Peter,

bring him back from the dead.

We saw the stories chained on both sides. There's multiple gates.

There's a huge iron gate.

It's a dungeon. He can't get out.

And yet, what does the Lord do? He does just what he did with Jesus.

When Jesus was entombed and put in the grave, Pilate set a guard over it,

said, go your way, make it secure as you know.

So they went and made the tomb secure, sealing the stone and setting the guard.

On the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to the

tomb and behold, there was a great earthquake for the, oh, here's our friend,

remember? The angel of the Lord.

I like this guy, at least if you're on the right side of him.

The angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone.

The guards went to sleep. His countenance was like lightning,

as white as snow. And the guards shook with fear and became like dead men. That's powerful.

That's the power of God working and sending his angelic host.

And when you study through the book of Acts, we are impressed with the church's response.

But in this very story, you also should be encouraged that they're weak, just like us.

They're not perfect. The apostolic church, sometimes when people look and say,

we want a church just like the days of the apostles. Yeah. But they also had weaknesses.

And this is one of the things we see. We'll see in Acts, they fight with each other.

They split, they separate, they have to rebuke each other. They have problems in the church.

And I think this story, part of the story is here as a humorous picture to remind

us that the church's strength was not the church itself, but Jesus Christ.

Because in this humorous picture, and it is funny, Luke tells us the church

had been gathered at Mary's house praying.

And here again, there's an interest or an emphasis on constant effort in prayer.

The verb used here is perfect passive participle, which means it's started in

the past and the power of it is ongoing.

Might've been days. It might've been days and nights, which shows you again

how powerful the church was in prayer.

But then it's funny because then when Peter comes to the door, this is just hilarious.

Knock, knock, knock. I mean, you can imagine it can't be Peter.

Be quiet. We're inside praying that the Lord would take him out and release

him and bring him to us. So it can't be Peter.

Imagine the church saying that. No way that happened.

Remember? And the first one, the poor Peter's out there and the girl,

it's almost like she looks out, slams the door and runs away.

He's like, are you guys praying for me in there or what?

What's happening? And then they try to convince her, no, it's just an angel.

You don't know what you're talking about. You're going crazy.

It can't be that because that's the precise thing we're here praying for.

That's the church, brothers and sisters. That's us. I don't know about you,

but it's happened multiple times where we have been, sorry to admit it,

but we've been surprised by answers to prayer.

And over and over you think, I shouldn't be surprised. I shouldn't be surprised.

But oftentimes we are, just like the church was.

It couldn't possibly be Peter because we're in here praying that the Lord would release him. Go away.

Go away, Rhoda. We're trying to pray for Peter. And there he is.

Imagine their astonishment when Peter walks in the room. I mean,

it must have been spine tingling like, whoa, it was Peter.

And they're astonished, but the Lord answered our prayers. And then they realized

God had answered the prayers beyond what they had even imagined.

And this is great because we've already described The intensity of their prayers

They were earnestly praying And the Lord answered their prayers And they were surprised.

We should surprise the Lord for his kindness and mercy in this passage to remind

us we share the same weakness.

And I'm not here to promise you that when we start out our prayer meeting on

Wednesday this week, that suddenly the church will be flooded with thousands

of visitors and we'll need to be building a new building and the Lord will just

pray for it and the Lord will provide millions of, I have no such promises for you.

But I do promise you that if we pray like the church of Acts was praying,

the Lord will bless us, always does.

Because, as I said, prayer makes a difference.

God is sovereign, yes, but he has ordained prayers to be the means by which

he moves things in this kingdom warfare.

There's no conflict between the sovereignty of God and the need to pray.

God in his sovereignty has ordained prayer as the means by which he engages

his angels. Yes, send down the angel of the Lord.

Open the tomb and let Jesus walk out. Open the prison and let Peter walk out.

Heal the lame man. Cause your spirit to descend on your people at Pentecost.

The thing about prayer that's so confusing is that it's an apparently weak thing.

Have you ever heard someone say, or maybe you've said it, it depends on how

you say it, but sometimes we say like, well, there's really nothing we can do except pray.

Except pray, as if, well, I mean, I wish I could do something real.

I wish I could do something important to change this matter,

but all I can do is pray. Oh, well, this is the primary instrument.

And it's ironic because it does seem weak. And I think it seemed to be weak.

It appears to be weak because we're supposed to understand ourselves in our weakness.

We don't have anything to offer. We don't have anything we can do.

We don't have tricks up our sleeves.

We don't have ways to manipulate the world. We don't have armies.

And so we pray. And in our prayers, we're reminded that the victories of God

come through precisely this kind of weakness.

All of the great victories in the Old Testament are reminders that the people

of God do not win their battles because of their might or their horses or their

chariots or their swords or their armies, but because the Lord sends his angels to do the work.

Old Testament victories like Gideon, 300 men.

You're like, yeah, but they were commandos. But imagine their confusion when

Gideon says, all right, we're going to win this battle, guys.

Got a good plan. What is it?

Flank them? No, we're going to blow trumpets and break lamps open. What?

Okay. And so behind those were the prayers of God's people that through this

weird situation and thousands of the enemies were destroyed by their own sword.

David and Goliath, we know the story. We sometimes fail to think of the overwhelming

odds that David faced against Goliath, 10 feet tall, a giant with a sword,

probably taller than David, battle-hardened giant.

And the Lord's people prayed. And you'll notice David did not say,

I'm going to kill you because I've been trained.

He said, the Lord God, right?

The Lord God gives the victory.

Yeah, thank you, whoever's saying that. The Lord God gives the victory through

spiritual warfare, and such is the way of those who follow Jesus.

Sennacherib, another story. I love these stories. Sennacherib was a terrifying

king of the nation of Assyria, of course.

He came up against the fortified cities of Judah, where Hezekiah was the king.

And again, from a human standpoint, there was no way almost 200,000 Assyrian

soldiers were going to be stopped by anything that Jerusalem had to offer.

And as it goes back and forth between Sennacherib and his Rabshakeh or whatever

his name was, the deliverer of the message, Hezekiah received the letter from

the hands of the messengers.

He read it and he lifted it up before the Lord, again, in weakness and in submission.

And Hezekiah prayed to the Lord, O Lord of hosts, God of Israel,

who is enthroned above the cherubim, you are the God and you alone of all the

kingdoms of the earth have made the heavens and the earth.

And so he says, incline your ear, O Lord, and save us from his hand.

And in the next section, it says, then Isaiah, son of Amos, sent to Hezekiah,

saying, thus says the Lord God of Israel, ready?

Because you have prayed, because you prayed concerning Zanachrib,

the Lord says, therefore, thus the Lord, concerning the king of Syria,

he shall not come into this city or shoot an arrow or come before it with a

shield or cast at siege mounds.

By the way he came, for the same he shall return. He shall not come into the

city, declares the Lord, for I will defend the city.

And guess what? He sent the death angel, the angel of the Lord.

And that night, 185,000 Assyrians dead for the arm of the Lord.

Why? Because Hezekiah prayed.

Well, ultimately now, behind our prayers, and particularly as we come to the

Lord's Supper, it's not just our prayers per se that do this,

like our intensity, our earnestness, our humility.

It's the prayers of Jesus Christ.

He is the one who makes our prayers effective. And that's why now in the New

Testament church, in the New Covenant period, we should be praying more earnestly

than any other time in redemptive history.

Romans 8 tells us, What shall we say then?

If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his only son,

but gave him up for us all, how will he not along with him graciously give us all things?

Who shall bring a charge against the elect? Notice the warfare context.

We have an enemy that wants to destroy us and wants to hurt us and wants to

condemn us. Who is it that condemns?

Christ Jesus is the one who died back to the cross.

More than that, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God,

who indeed is interceding for us now.

That's it. The reason the prayers of the church are so effective and so powerful

is because we pray to the one who's already praying for us based on his own

sacrifice and his own blood.

Then it says, who shall separate us from the love of Christ?

Tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, a sword, nothing.

Nothing, why? Because of the prayers of Jesus Christ.

Ultimately, the cross of Jesus Christ, which were brought back to,

the good news of the gospel is why we as a church need to be prayer warriors,

placing our church in a prayer mode, as it were.

Will you pray like this?

It's a rhetorical question, but I hope in your heart you're saying,

yes, pastor, we will, for sure.

This is how we need to pray. Again, all the things that you want,

all the things that we desire as a church, we need to pray for them like this.

So that our church will be, as what Christ said, a house of prayer for the nations.

That's the church. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we thank you, Lord, for the gift of prayer The power of prayer,

Lord We thank you that we have a great high priest Who has passed through the heavens, even Jesus,

And we don't have a high priest who doesn't understand Or isn't able to sympathize

with us and our weaknesses When we're ill,

when we're sad, when we're betrayed When we lose our jobs, when things don't

go well But we have one who in every respect has been tempted Just as we are, yet without sin,

So, Lord, let us therefore with confidence draw near to the throne of grace,

that we may receive mercy and find help in our time of need.

We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.