| Romans 9-11 continued...
ROMANS 10
Verse 1, "Brothers, my heart's desire
and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved."
Pauls' attitude toward those who hurt him and wronged him,
those of his own race is exemplified in this first verse of
chapter 10. He prays for their salvation. Instead of giving
in to the desire to pound them he prays for them. And he prays
for their salvation. God put a huge desire in Paul's heart
for his people's salvation. The desire turned into a constant
prayer.
Paul understood that his witness would not be effective unless
it was backed by prayer. John Bunyon said, "You can do more
after you have prayed but you can not do more than pray until
you have prayed." Look at the effectiveness of Paul's ministry
in the conversion of whole Churches of Gentiles across the
Roman empire. Prayer changes things. What we learn here
is that prayer must accompany the proclamation of the gospel,
for it to touch hearts. We tend to think that we can get
so much more done in the flesh than we can get done in prayer.
Many times we save prayer for an act of desperation, after
we have done all we can--when we've gone for the first, second
and third diagnosis, and the doctor says "It's in the hands
of God now."
We were created for fellowship with our heavenly Father, and
we can't understand how to live effectively for him, what
he wants us to do--without that fellowship with him. Prayer,
simply stated, "is talking to God like you would talk to a
friend." Throw away your past ideas of prayer.
Many Christians believe they can work for God without having
been with God in prayer. To live without waiting on the Lord
is to embrace humanism and to wrap it in Christian trappings.
The humanist lives as if he was God and sadly, a lot of Christians
are living that way.
God wants to hear about the daily challenges you face during
the day. He cares. He's interested, and as you quiet down
in prayer, you start to get direction from him.
When we pray we acknowledge that we need God, and that there
is an invisible war going on. Prayer keeps you aware that
there is a God and that he loves you. Ordinarily the flesh
recoils from prayer, so that many Christians are prayerless
Christians. But we have a God that is intimately interested
in our lives. He cares and cares and cares so much about us.
We should pray, "Direct me Lord, I want my service to be directed
by you." Prayer is not a bummer. Prayer changes things because
prayer opens doors. Look at Colosians 4:2, "Devote yourselves
to prayer, being watchful and thankful." Paul says pray with
thanksgiving. Christians are people who should cultivate thanksgiving.
Pray for open doors--a door for the gospel--that it will spread.
Once the door opens, we should pray that the gospel spreads
quickly. II Thessalonians 3:1. "Finally, brothers, pray for
us that the message of the Lord may spread rapidly and be
honored, just as it was with you." Spiritual power and victory
are linked to prayer. Joshua prayed for the sun to stand still
because he needed more time to achieve a military victory.
He knew that prayer transcends natural laws. If Einstein or
Steven Hawking were to put it in their language, prayer transcends
time and space, it functions outside time & space, because
God is outside time and space. He dwells in eternity, he inhabits
eternity. He created the space/time continuum and has total
control of it whenever he chooses. God has the ability to
control everything. Spiritual victory and power are linked
to prayer. Acts 4:23-31. "On their release, Peter and John
went back to their own people and reported all that the chief
priests and elders had said to them. When they heard this,
they raised their voices together in prayer to God. 'Sovereign
Lord,' they said, 'you made heaven and earth and the sea,
and everything in them. You spoke by the Holy Spirit through
the mouth of your servant, our father David: "Why do the nations
rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth
take their stand and the rulers gather together against the
Lord and against his Anointed One [Psalm 2:1-2]." Indeed Herod
and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the
people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy
servant Jesus, whom you anointed. They did what your power
and will had decided beforehand should happen. Now, Lord,
consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your
word with great boldness. Stretch out your hand and heal and
perform miraculous signs and wonders through the name of your
holy servant Jesus.' After they had prayed, the place where
they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with
the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly." God
shakes things up when you pray.
Another example of the power of prayer to enable the preaching
of the gospel is found in Acts 16:16-34. "Once when we were
going to the place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl
who had a spirit by which she predicted the future. She earned
a great deal of money for her owners by fortune-telling. This
girl followed Paul and the rest of us, shouting, 'These men
are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the
way to be saved.' She kept this up for many days. Finally
Paul became so troubled that he turned around and said to
the spirit, 'In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to
come out of her!' At that moment the spirit left her.
When the owners of the slave girl realized that their hope
of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged
them into the marketplace to face the authorities. They brought
them before the magistrates and said, 'These men are Jews,
and are throwing our city into an uproar by advocating customs
unlawful for us Romans to accept or practice.'
The crowd joined in the attack against Paul and Silas, and
the magistrates ordered them to be stripped and beaten. After
they had been severely flogged, they were thrown into prison,
and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully. Upon
receiving such orders, he put them in the inner cell and fastened
their feet in the stocks.
About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns
to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them [kind
of hard not to listen. A captive audience at midnight when
everyone is trying to sleep!] Suddenly there was such a violent
earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken.
At once all the prison doors flew open, and everybody's chains
came loose. The jailer woke up, and when he saw the prison
doors open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself
because he thought the prisoners had escaped. [This became
the jailer's worst nightmare. This is the jailer that beat
Paul and Silas. Roman law stated that if one prisoner escaped
the jailer paid with his own life. This earthquake and Paul's
Christianity shook up this jailer's life. Look at what took
place next.] But Paul shouted, 'Don't harm yourself! We are
all here!'
The jailer called for lights, rushed in and fell trembling
before Paul and Silas. He then brought them out and asked,
'Sirs, what must I do to be saved?'
They replied, 'Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be
saved--you and your household. Then they spoke the word of
the Lord to him and to all the others in his house. At that
hour of the night the jailer took them and washed their wounds;
then immediately he and all his family were baptized. The
jailer brought them into his house and set a meal before them;
he was filled with joy because he had come to believe in God--he
and his whole family."
As you can see, prayer can arrange things in a certain way
so that people are boxed in, and brings them face to face
with the issues of life. And it's all because someone is praying
for them--just as Paul and Silas were praying for this jailer.
The effective fervent prayer of a righteous person does much.
God moves heavenly armies into place in answer to some of
our prayers. Elisha had been giving the movements of the king
of Syria, his army and chariots, to the king of Israel, telling
the king whatever God told him to. It was God passing military
intelligence to the king of Israel through Elisha. The king
of Syria didn't know how Elisha was finding out these things
but set out to capture Elisha and stop him. This is an interesting
story of the kind of power and spirit military force God surrounds
us with at the beck and call of our prayers. Let's pick it
up in verse 12 of II Kings 6. "And one of his servants said,
'None, my lord, O king; but Elisha, the prophet who is in
Israel, tells the king of Israel the words you speak in your
bedroom.' So he said, 'Go and see where he is, that I may
send and get him.' And it was told him, saying, 'Surely he
is in Dothan.' 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. And his servant said to him, 'Alas, my master!
What shall we do?' So he answered, 'Do not fear, for those
who are with us are more than those who are with them.' And
Elisha prayed, and said, 'Lord, I pray, open his eyes that
he may see.' Then the Lord opened the eyes of the young man,
and he saw. And behold, the mountain was full of horses and
chariots of fire all around Elisha. So when the Syrians
came down to him, Elisha prayed to the Lord, and said, 'Strike
this people, I pray, with blindness.' And He struck them with
blindness according to the word of Elisha. Now Elisha said
to them, 'This is not the way, nor is this the city. Follow
me, and I will bring you to the man whom you seek.' But he
led them to Samaria [the capital of Israel where the king's
army was based]. So it was, when they had come to Samaria,
that Elisha said, 'Lord, open the eyes of these men, that
they may see.' And the Lord opened their eyes, and they saw;
and there they were, inside Samaria!" (II Kings 6:12-20.)
You know, if the Church [and I dare say, the collective Church,
the body of Christ] fully understood the power of prayer,
nothing would be impossible for her. Listen to what Andrew
Murray says, "We must begin to believe that God in the mystery
of prayer has entrusted us with a force that can move the
heavenly world and bring its' power down to earth." God must
wonder why we pray so little. Listen to what the former missionary
to India, Dr. Wesley Duall had to say about prayer. "Prayer
is a form of spiritual bombing to saturate any area before
God's army of witnesses begins their advance. Prayer is the
barrage to drive back the demon hosts who are determined to
stop the triumph of Christ. Prayer is the invincible force
to break down every opposing wall and open every iron gate,
and fast closed door. Prayer penetrates every curtain of darkness,
crumbles every bastion of darkness. Prayer demolishes every
fortress of hell. Prayer is the all-conquering invincible
weapon of the army of God."
If some of you couples with problems would start praying together
you'd need less counseling together. If families would pray
together they would stay together. There's power in prayer.
Why is it any surprise then that Satan attacks us during our
prayer time? Prayer is our weapon, not talk, not meetings,
not boards, not counseling...prayer is where the power is.
Again, why is it any surprise then that Satan attacks our
prayer time? And he gives men especially a repulsion to prayer--men
are just scared to death to pray. Why? Because Satan knows,
'the righteous fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.'
'So keep em off their knees at all costs.' 'Make em embarrassed'--that's
Satan's reasoning. Because when people pray the kingdom of
darkness starts shaking. Prayer is the power behind ministry.
You see great churches and ministries--they're not great.
But what might be great is the prayer-force behind them.
William Carrie is known as the father of modern missions and
God used him in mighty ways to bring the gospel to India.
[Families, by the way, kill any of their members who try to
become Christians in India.] People credit Carrie with a lot--but
do you know what? It wasn't Carrie, and he knew that. What
a lot of people don't know is that he had a bedridden sister
who prayed for him for fifty years. She was paralyzed. All
she could do was lie in bed and pray. That's all she could
do. It got the job done. Without prayer the Church is nothing,
just sickly and dying.
Many of us get so busy for God that we don't spend any time
with God anymore. But prayer's power is not limited to time
or natural law. Remember what Samuel Chadwick said, "The one
concern of the devil is to keep the saints from praying. He
fears nothing from prayerless studies, prayerless work, prayerless
religion. He laughs at our toil, mocks at our wisdom, but
trembles when we pray."
Remember the example of Moses, Aaron and Hur on the mountain
top praying for the victory of Israel over the Amalekites.
There are two levels here. 1) What is happening on the Mount
of Prayer, 2) determines the outcome in the valley. Why do
you fail in your Christian life? Because you have ceased to
pray. Pray on. [This is a word for word transcript taken from
a sermon by Pastor J. Mark Martin of Calvary Community Church,
Phoenix, Arizona.]
Romans 10:1-4, "Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer
to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved. For I
can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but
their zeal is not based on knowledge. Since they did not know
the righteousness that comes from God and sought to establish
their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness. Christ
is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for
everyone who believes." Many people are religiously sincere,
but sincerely wrong. You can be sincerely wrong. The
people in Waco Texas were sincere and they had a zeal for
God, so much so that they would shoot themselves in the head
and then burn themselves up. Now that's zeal for God if I've
ever seen zeal, but it was wrong. They were sincere, but sincerely
wrong. Now before they got that weird they were still sincere.
Before they got so weird and socially unacceptable, nobody
would say "they're wrong!" Everybody would say, "Oh they're
sincere, leave them be." But wrong thinking will lead you
to wrong living. We see people today who are religiously sincere.
They go by two's, they knock on our doors and they hope to
earn heaven by the hours they turn in. They hope that by what
they're doing they'll be right with God, and nobody's ever
been made right with God by what they do.
The first thing that enters your mind when you realize that
you're not right with God is that you think, "I'll do
something, I'll make God a promise, I won't do that again."
God must laugh! What you do on the outside can't earn God's
favor, but the first thing we think when we realize we're
not right with God is "What can I do?" This goes back
to Adam and Eve our original parents. After they sinned, suddenly
they realized they were naked. All of a sudden they felt very
naked and exposed. They did what God said was wrong. They
knew it was wrong, they felt guilt, they felt shame--they
felt naked before God who's Holy. Ever have "Naked"
dreams where you are in front of a bunch of people and you're
doing your thing, giving the business presentation?? Every
preacher understands this dream because they've all had it
at least once. It's a preacher's nightmare. Everyone's had
it at least once, every pastor I've ever known. You're standing
up here and you're in your shorts, hopefully.
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