Message 1:The Burden of Prayer
Scripture
Verses: Ephesians 1:3-6; 15-23; Matthew 6:9-10; 16:16-18; Luke 11:1-2; Acts 26:18-19; Colossians 1:25
Last
Lord's Day was the get together of all the saints who meet in the three places
in New York City. Please notice that I did not say that it was the get together
of the whole church because the church includes all the born again Christians
in this city, not just those who have seen and have come together for the
oneness of the Body of Christ. Even with the limited number we had, we sense it
is wonderful to be in the Body of
Christ. This strengthens our burden to pray for the Gospel to be spread
to those who have not yet believed, and to those who have received the Lord
Jesus, that they will come to the full knowledge of the truth. This is God's
will and purpose which can only be accomplished through Christ and the church.
We need to pray for God's purpose to be accomplished and furthered this year
and that the Gospel will reach many more in this city.
The
book of Ephesians is simply a continuation of this burden and I want to share
with you "The Burden of Prayer" in Ephesians chapter 1.
To Complete the Word of God
In
Colossians 1:25, Paul says:
Whereof I was made a minister,
according to the dispensation of God which was given me to you-ward, to fulfill
('complete' Darby) the Word of God (Colossians 1:25)
We know here Paul
was referring to the church, to God's purpose and to God's economy. This was
his ministry to the church for God's economy.
I
will use 'complete' in accordance to Darby's translation from here on. I want
to start with this phrase 'to complete the Word of God'. The KJV renders this
word as 'fulfill'. This is the same word used in Ephesians 1:23 which says,
'which is his Body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all'. So 'to complete' means 'to fill', 'to
fulfill', or 'to make full'.
The
meaning here is not that God's revelation was incomplete and it needed Paul's
writings to finish it. Paul's writings were simply to fill up, to make full
what was already revealed. When Paul, wrote these words, he was not referring
to his first six earlier epistles, instead he was mainly referring to his
latter epistles especially that of Ephesians and Colossians. This is very
important.
Ephesians
is a book on the church and Colossians is on the Head, Christ. So in particular
these two books were used by Paul to expound, or make full, or fill up what was
already revealed. When the Lord Jesus was on the earth, He lived a perfect
human life, and He said and did a lot. Although there are four Gospels to
record the Lord's earthly ministry, John concluded in his Gospel in this way:
And there are also many other things which Jesus
did, the which if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the
world itself would not contain the books that should be written. (John
21:25)
In
other words, John realized it was not possible to record, or to understand, or
to explain everything the Lord did and said because it was so profound and full
of meaning that our human mind could never quite fully understand everything at
once. So Paul's revelations were just to explain and expound fuller to us.
Our Father Who is in the Heavens
When
the Lord was on the earth, He lived a life of prayer. That means He was always
in constant fellowship with the Father. There are two examples I would like to
use. The first is in Matthew chapter 6 in which is recorded the Lord's Prayer:
Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy
name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also
have forgiven our debtors. And bring us not into temptation, but deliver us
from the evil one. (Matthew 6:9-13)
This
is also recorded in Luke chapter 11 in which His disciples noticed that He led
a life of prayer, came to Him one day and said, "Lord, teach us to pray, even as John also taught his disciples"
(Luke 11:1):
And He said unto them, When ye pray, say, Father,
Hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Give us day by day our daily bread. And
forgive us our sins; for we ourselves also forgive every one that is indebted
to us. And bring us not into temptation. (Luke 11:2-4)
Some
versions (Young's Literal Translation - YLT, KJV, etc.) you will notice say,
"Our Father who art in heaven"; and so in the Recovery Version there
is a footnote saying some manuscripts say "our Father who is in the
heavens".
This
opening address, 'Our Father who art in heaven' means our Father who is in the
heavens. This address is so profound, so full of meaning and has such
tremendous practical significance. The Lord did not say, "Our heavenly
Father" but He said, "Our Father who is in the heavens". You may
ask what is the difference?
The
'heavenly Father' is in contrast to the 'earthly father'. But 'our Father who
is in the heavens' simply put means 'our Father who sits in the heavens'. In
other words, our Father has the vantage point from heaven. He has a
perspective, not like yours and mine or of our earthly fathers, but His
perspective is from above. It is like a 'skybox view' I mentioned in the past.
His is from a different point of view.
So
when the Lord Jesus taught His disciples to pray, He said, "Pray this way,
Our Father who is in the heavens", He has a view that is elevated, not
pedestrian. A pedestrian is one who walks on the ground but our Father is the One
in heaven with a view very different from ours.
When
I said that the Lord was on the earth, He lived a life of prayer always in
contact with the Father, it meant that He always wanted to make sure His view
was from above, not from the earth. Our Father is not only our source of life
and the source of our life supply, but He gives us life and life supply from
His point of view. That is why we say, when we pray, do not just ask for what
you need or for solutions to your problems. That is, pray not from our
pedestrian view but from His heavenly point of view.
In
the Old Testament, the relationship between God and His people was always very
formal, distant, and was one of God the Creator and man His creature. God is
omnipotent, He is all powerful; God is omnipresent, He is everywhere; and God
is omniscient, He knows everything. He is holy, He is righteous and He dwells
in unapproachable light. He sits on the throne and man can never see Him and
live. In spite of His love for His people, the time was not yet come for this to change.
God our
Father
So
very rarely in the Old Testament was the term 'Father' used to represent God's
relationship with His people. Actually there are only three instances in which
God is referred to as 'Father' to His children. One out of the three is Isaiah
9:6 which says:
For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is
given; and the government shall be upon His shoulder: and His name shall be
called Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
(Isaiah 9:6)
This verse is a
prophecy concerning the Lord Jesus so we cannot treat this verse as strictly an
Old Testament verse because it is an Old Testament prophecy pointing to the New
Testament.
Now the Lord Jesus has come. John 1:14 speaks of His incarnation:
And the Word became flesh, and dwelt
('tabernacle' YLT) among us (and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only
begotten from the Father), full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)
Right after His incarnation, John 1:18
says:
No man hath seen God at any time; the only
begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him (John 1:18)
'No one has ever seen God' refers to the
Old Testament in which God dwells in unapproachable light. Now the only
begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, not in the bosom of God, has
declared Him. 'Him' here refers to God the Father.
Throughout the Old Testament, God's
relationship with His people was one between God and His creatures. But He
longed that one day, His people would know Him as the Father. This was made
possible only when the Lord Jesus came. Isaiah 9:6 prophesied of the Messiah,
the coming of the Lord Jesus, and His name was called Eternal Father because He
was one with the Father. He was the 'only begotten Son who is in the bosom of
the Father, He hath declared Him'. No one else has seen Him.
Now when the Lord Jesus was on earth, He lived
a life of prayer always in fellowship with the Father and He longed to make the
Father known to us:
Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, and the
truth, and the life: no one cometh unto the Father, but by Me. (John 14:6)
So
the Lord was happy to teach His disciples to pray and told them when you pray,
pray this way. That is the
way of Matthew 6 and Luke 11.
Matthew 16:16-18
Now I would like to use Matthew 16 to show you
why it was so important for Paul to make full the Word of God.
And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the
Christ, the Son of the living God. (Mat 16:16 )
Simon
was his original name, and Peter was the name the Lord Jesus gave him. When
Peter answered the Lord, he used the phrase 'the Son of the living God'. He did
not say the 'Son of the living Father'. For someone with a Jewish and Old
Testament background, Peter was able to recognize the Lord Jesus was the Son of
the living God.
And Jesus answered and said
unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jonah: for flesh and blood hath not
revealed it unto thee, but my Father who is in heaven. (Matthew 16:17 )
The Lord's reply was 'you are blessed Simon
Bar-Jonah'. Simon was his earthly name. This implies Simon, you are the son of
your earthly father Jonah but it was not flesh and blood that revealed this to
you. That is, the human relationship has not revealed to you that I am the
Christ, the Son of the living God. It is My Father who is in heaven!
Notice the Lord did not say 'My heavenly Father'.
The revelation Peter received was not through
some earthly or pedestrian teaching. Actually the first time Andrew introduced his brother
Peter to the Lord, he said to Peter, "We have met the Christ". But at
that time Peter did not see that
Christ was the Son of the living God. Now, Peter received this revelation from
heaven while he was on earth, that is, he received a heavenly view. The Lord
continued:
And I also say unto thee, that thou art Peter,
and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades shall not
prevail against it. (Matthew 16:18)
Peter was the name the Lord gave him when He said, "Upon this
rock I will build My church". This shows the revelation was not from an
earthly relationship, it was from a heavenly view; not a pedestrian view but a
view from the Father who is sitting in the heavens. Matthew 16:16-18 are so
important because they speak of the revelation of Christ and the church given
to Peter and not to Simon Bar-Jonah.
Now for Paul to 'fill up' the Word of God, it
was for him to 'fill up' both the opening address of the Lord's Prayer as well
as the revelation in Matthew 16:16-18 concerning Christ and the church. So in order for us to receive the
revelation concerning Christ and the revelation concerning the church, we need to receive it from the Father
who is in the heavens. So before Paul could mention anything about the church
to us in Ephesians, he first had to present our Father who is in the heavens.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly
places ('in the heavenlies' Darby)
in Christ: (Ephesians 1:3)
Even as He chose us in Him before the foundation
of the world, that we should be holy and without blemish before Him in love:
(Ephesians 1:4)
Having foreordained ('predestinated' KJV)* us
unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto Himself, according to the good
pleasure of His will, (Ephesians 1:5)
To the praise of the glory of His grace, which He
freely bestowed on us in the Beloved: (Ephesians 1:6)
*Grk “by predestining.”
Verse 5 begins with an aorist
participle dependent on the main verb in v. 4 (“chose”).
In
the past, we usually pay attention to the heavenly blessings but we do not pay
attention to where it is coming from. Our heavenly blessings mean they are from
God's point of view. He wants to give us what we need, not from our pedestrian,
earthly view, but from His point of view. The heavenly blessings are not a
result of asking my heavenly Father because my earthly father cannot give them me.
No, we ask of our Father who is in the heavenlies because He has blessed us with
every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ.
His
eternal purpose, His selection, His choosing, His predestination, is far beyond
what we can imagine. We really do not know what we need, but like Peter, the
Father wants us to see His point of view. Once you see this, whatever the
situation you are going through, you will be fine. Our prayers for ourselves
and for others need to be uplifted. So every time we come to pray, we need to
realize not just the source of what we need is from heaven, but also the source
of our seeing is from heaven. We need a 'sky box view'.
We were predestinated before the foundation of
the world, long before Ephesians was written around A.D. 64-65. But if we have
a heavenly view, we will realize what God has determined and chosen is still in
operation today. Our view, our prayers have to be from a heavenly view point
and we have to believe that God's predestinating is still ongoing today.
In Luke 11:2, 'Hallowed be Thy name' simply
means Our Father who is in heaven, let His 'name be sanctified' or 'made holy'.
Paul in Ephesians 1:4 explains what 'Your name be sanctified' means. He chose
us before the foundation of the world to be holy and without blemish before Him
in love. Holy means to be sanctified. To be holy or sanctified is not to be
common or have a pedestrian view, it is to have our view uplifted.
The Vision from Heaven
In Acts chapter 20, when Paul could not go to
Ephesus so he called the elders of the church there to Miletus. Back then he
was worried that with his departure wolves would come in and not spare the
flock. Without criticizing Paul, actually that view back then was somewhat narrow.
But after those 4½ years, arriving in Rome and writing those prison
epistles, his view was different. There was not a trace of that 'flavor' of concern
as in Acts chapter 20.
Some saints have mentioned that Paul must have
spent much time in prayer during those two 'uneventful' years he spent in
Caesarea. I am sure he did. When he appeared before king Agrippa saying that
the Lord had sent him to the Gentiles:
To open their eyes, that they may turn from
darkness to light and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive
remission of sins and an inheritance among them that are sanctified by faith in
Me. (Acts 26:18)
Wherefore, O king Agrippa, I was not disobedient
unto the heavenly vision ('vision from heaven' NIV). (Acts 26:19)
How
did Paul pray? He must have prayed to our Father who is in the heavens. When
your point of view is earthly, you do not see God, you are in darkness and
under Satan's authority. When you see God's point of view, you are in the light
and you see God is in control instead. His purpose has to be accomplished and
therefore he could say to king Agrippa that he was not disobedient to the
heavenly vision.
I like the Chinese translation which says 'I
have not been disobedient to the vision from heaven', similar to the NIV's. There is a big
difference. Because just like the difference between 'the heavenly Father' and the Father who
is in heaven', Paul was not disobedient to the vision from heaven. Paul himself
had turned from darkness to light, from the authority of Satan to God to enjoy
the inheritance. This was how the book of Ephesians was written.
The
book of Ephesians is on the church. But we must see it first from the point of
view of Father who is in the heavens who has blessed us with every spiritual
blessing in Christ. There is no portion richer in description of the
Triune God in the New Testament than in Ephesians chapter 1. The Lord Jesus
commanded His disciples to:
Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the
nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the
Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19)
But He did not explain
too much. Now Paul spends time in Ephesians 1: 3-6 to elaborate on what the Father has done;
Ephesians 1:7-12 on what the Son
has accomplished; and Ephesians 1:13-14 on the Spirit's sealing and pledging.
This
is for the church. For this we need a heavenly view. Hence we need to pray,
"Our Father who is in the heavens, may Your name be sanctified. Deliver us
from having a common, pedestrian view; uplift us to a view so that we see
things from where You see things, and what You want to accomplish".
And what the exceeding
greatness of His power to us-ward who believe, according to that working of the
strength of His might (Ephesians 1:19)
Which He wrought in Christ,
when He raised him from the dead, and made Him to sit at His right hand in the
heavenly places (Ephesians
1:20)
Far above all rule, and
authority, and power, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in
this world, but also in that which is to come (Ephesians 1:21)
And He put all things in
subjection under His feet, and gave Him to be Head over all things to the
church (Ephesians 1:22)
Which is His Body, the
fulness of Him that filleth all in all (Ephesians 1:23)
Without
these verses, our understanding of many things the Lord Jesus said in Matthew
16:16-18 would be very limited.
Finally, this phrase, 'Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth' (Matthew 6:10) means it
has been done in heaven already. This is the heavenly view. We need to pray
that it be done on the earth as it is in heaven. God is eternal and infinite,
not limited by time. Therefore He has already accomplished His will and we need
to have this connection between time and eternity. That is, we need to have a
heavenly view while still on the earth.
Every single item in Ephesians on the church
needs to be seen from a heavenly perspective. The seven aspects - the church is
the Body of Christ, the New Man, the kingdom, the household of God, the
dwelling place of God, the bride and the warrior must be seen from a heavenly
perspective.
In Paul's experience, he first saw the Body on
his way to Damascus. He only saw that in persecuting the Christians (the
members of the Body), he was persecuting Christ (the Head). But that was only
in his then limited experience. But by the time he wrote the book of Ephesians
that the church is the Body of Christ, the difference in view was tremendous.
It was like heaven and earth. Now he had the perspective that God wants the
church to have Christ to head up all things with all the members connected to
the Head. This is what is meant by to 'complete the Word of God' (Colossians
1:25 Darby), or to make full the Word of God. This is the real meaning of the
Body of Christ. All this was because Paul received the revelation from the
Father who is in the heavens.
For this cause I also, having heard of the faith
in the Lord Jesus which is among you, and the love which ye show toward all the saints
(Ephesians 1:15)
Cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers (Ephesians 1:16)
That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father
of glory, may give unto you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge
of Him (Ephesians 1:17)
If
you put this prayer together with what the Lord said to Peter in Matthew 16,
you see the Lord could not say much to Peter because of time and because of Peter's
limitations. But now Paul has opened up this heavenly view to make full, fill
up, what the Lord Jesus had already said. The spirit of wisdom and revelation
in the knowledge of Him is to have a heavenly view of what the Lord Jesus
already said.
Even
though Ephesians has only six chapters, I believe we need much prayer for
ourselves and for each other that we may have the view to appreciate the
church, to see it from the view the Father wants to show us. May the Lord be
gracious to all of us.
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