Speaking boldly, Eph, 6:19-20

Good before noon. Good morning. Okay. We're getting into the home stretch on the book of Ephesians and the book of Colossians that we've been kind of alternating between and working in parallel. Let's just kind of keep ourselves in context. Where is Paul taking us here?

Paul had made in verse 18 an appeal about spiritual warfare, ending it not with some final weapon, per se, or a piece of armor, but with a request for prayer. And he used the word all four times in that request. And he ended that with all the saints. And so as he turns this around here, he goes from the general appeal for all the saints and focuses instead upon Paul himself. As we look at this, you might find yourself a little surprised at what he requests. But there's a reason for it, and we'll take a look at that.

First thing, of course, he says, and pray. And what I have to tell you is in the Greek text, it's not there about that. What he did here is the same thing he did earlier in chapter 5, verses 21 and 22. In the English, they've kind of rolled over the word. He said, and pray for all the saints, and basically carrying it over, and for me. is the way he spelled it out here.

His request is part of the four alls that we see in verse 18 there. This is one of the alls. Pray for all the saints and me too, he's saying. And me as well. And here's my personal request he's laying out before them. All prayer and petition, all times, all perseverance and petition for all the saints. And he's saying, let me give you a particular Please pray for me in this way." Now, on my behalf is what it says in the New American Standard. The King James has just for me, and it's actually simpler and more direct, and it reflects the Greek text well. He's just saying, pray for all the saints and for me. He requests that they, as a part of the alls that he had laid out in verse 18, pray for him.

He gives them specifics. He doesn't say, just pray for me, but I won't tell you what it is. He says specifically, here is what I would like you to pray for me. He gives them particulars. He says that utterance may be given me. He wants that the Lord would give through him a message. Paul is not concerned that he'd be able to open his mouth or be able to come forth with words. He is concerned that the Lord give him the message. That's his focus. He doesn't want to just say something. He wants to say what God's message is.

Remember, when we were taking a look at the spiritual armor, one of the things we pointed out there is, don't just do something, stand there. In this instance, he's saying, I don't want to just say something, I want to say explicitly what God has for me to say.

In the opening of my mouth. Now, literally, he's just saying, in the open mouth of me. As my mouth opens up, I want God to be the one putting the message in it. As I open my mouth, certainly I can say something, but I don't want to just say something. I want the Lord to be giving that message through me. That's what he's praying.

2 Timothy 4.17 is an interesting verse in this regard. He kind of pulls together some of the ideas from what we see there in Ephesians 6 with the spiritual armor, and he puts it together with this prayer request. Let's see what he says. But the Lord stood with me, and I would point out there This is similar to the request that he made of the Ephesians. In fact, it went beyond request to imperative. Therefore stand, he says, the Lord stood with me and strengthened me. Now, there's a clarification I want to make here of this word strengthened that he used.

It's not the idea that I'm putting forth my all and the Lord gives the extra ten or twenty percent. It's that the power comes from the Lord Himself full on, that it is His empowering full out, complete, that brings the strength. Not just adding to what I've got. The Lord isn't in the business of just helping us, of supplementing where we fall short. The Lord says, no, I haven't come to do that. I've come to entirely empower you.

That's His intent. And that's what Paul's saying here. And finally, through me, and this is God's design. The Lord's design and desire is that He work through us. And Paul's expressing that very same thing in this prayer to the believers at Ephesus. He is saying, I desire that as I go out and speak, that it not just be Paul's words, but that it be the Lord's working through me and His message coming through me.

That's what he's trying to convey here. I'll just pass on here that he ends that verse with, I was rescued out of a lion's mouth. It's a Jewish figure of speech. Conveying the idea of danger. I was taken away from danger. Now, we have these words, and I kind of put them together, even though in the English they're kind of spread apart. One is, make known in mystery. Now, you know what that means, don't you? Of course you do. See, no ritzo? It's not about ritz, okay? None of that. That's not it. are mysterion, and that's the word that we've seen this mystery word come from. These are words that Paul has used previously in chapter 1 and chapter 3 of the book of Ephesians. Both those chapters draw heavily from words in Daniel chapter 2, and in both places the intent is clear.

God is the one who reveals truth. God is the one who deliberately and by His ability reveals truth. And this word mystery, which we're often inclined in our English sense of it to think of something that remains shrouded in lack of clarity or lack of understanding, lack of insight, this in contrast is something that was like that previously, but is now revealed and understood. God revealed the truth.

And he did so through Daniel and now through Paul. Now, true truth, that is absolute truth, truth with a capital T, doesn't originate from human beings. Various human philosophies all start with the assumption that the origination of truth and the measure of truth is found in mankind. And what Paul is laying out here Using these words is true truth is something God reveals, it originates in Him and not in us. We are not given the facilities to originate truth or to create it or bring it about. There's nothing in scientific investigations or human rationality that's going to come up with that.

True truth is revealed by God and God has revealed true truth. And that's one of the things that scripture declares, Jesus Christ Himself declared it. You shall know the truth, truth with a capital T, truth with a definite article, and it will make you free.

Without this true truth having been revealed, we are left groping. Lacking that truth, all we're going to do is to have some variation on ignorance. You can be optimistic about it, you can be pessimistic about it, but you're still going to be ignorant, unless we have God's revealed truth.

And that's what Paul's making abundantly clear here. He has been talking about truth and the revelation of it by God, and the revealing of something that was previously unknown, now made known deliberately by God. He has been talking about it in chapter 1, again in chapter 3, and now here's the final point that he's making, underscoring that God is the one who reveals truth.

Human beings, we have limited lifetimes, we have limited perspectives, all the advanced information processing and storage technology that we have. And frankly, from a human standpoint, it can be impressive. None of that will bring us to a place of answering the kinds of questions that human beings ultimately are brought to ask. Because of this, there's a whole spectrum of human philosophies, none of which recognize true truth. but which ultimately end up with some kind of despair, even if they appear to be optimistic. They despair knowing true truth. They despair being able to answer absolutely the ultimate questions.

But what Paul is laying out here is an eternal God who is omniscient, omnipotent, He is all-powerful, He knows all things. He isn't limited in His ability to reveal things to us. And that's the difference, that's a key distinction. All the world will try, by every means possible, to try to find truth and will grope, and some even admit it, that they're left groping. The God who made everything, and this is what Paul presented to the philosophers in Athens, the God who made everything is the one who has revealed truth to us. Our human role then is not to create truth, it's not from start to finish to discover it as if it were ours to do, but to look at the truth that God has revealed to us. There are places we don't invent truth, we don't create it, but there are places where we can verify it, and that's the capability that we do have. Not to generate it, not to be the final measure of it, but to validate it, to verify it.

Look at what Peter does as he speaks to the believers there on the day of Pentecost. Men of Israel, listen to these words, Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you, he's pointing to them, by God, with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through him in your midst as you yourselves know. He said this at a time, it had not been two months since Jesus Christ was crucified and buried and resurrected. and there were, of the resurrection alone, 500 witnesses. Of the miracles, many more than that.

He could appeal to this group of people based on that. Here is the likely location of where Peter was standing, probably with a number of people just outside of here, and telling them these very things. You yourselves know. You have been here. You witnessed these miracles.

It says in Matthew 21.14, just the week before Jesus died, right there in that courtyard, He performed miracles. That was less than two months before Peter said this. Hundreds of people saw it. As Peter spoke, he didn't appeal to, you know, believe me when I tell you. He said, you yourselves know it.

Here is this place at one corner of Jerusalem where he's speaking this, and he said, we could take a walk We could take a walk and we could go to see the place where Pilate condemned Jesus. We could go see the place where Jesus was crucified. It's only been a couple of months. We could see the place where he was resurrected. Interested in seeing the empty tomb? I could take you to the place where he was ascended just days ago. Want to see it? We can walk to a mall.

Got hundreds of witnesses right here. You know how many people contested what Peter said? Zip. Nothing. They were stung to the heart and said, what must we do? Peter went on there and says, David died and was buried and his tomb is with us to this day. They could see that. This Jesus God raised up again. To that we are all witnesses. Present testimony, anybody who wished to refute it could easily have done so had they the facts.

1 Kings 2.10 says that David was buried here in this area just south of what is currently the Temple Mount. There was all the possibility of disproving it right then and there. No one did. Instead, 3,000 came forward and believed that day.

This is why Paul wants to say, I wish to testify with boldness. With boldness. It might be a little bit of a surprise to us, however, that he asks this. Paul had been speaking boldly regularly. In Acts 9, Paul had just become a believer. So he's a little timid, right? No. Paul had just become a believer.

And here it is, it says, in Damascus, the very place where he had become a believer, he spoke out boldly in the name of Jesus. Then he comes to Jerusalem where a lot of people are wondering, is this guy really a Christian or are we just about to get tricked? He spoke out boldly in the name of the Lord. He has a pattern of boldness from the outset.

We go on to Acts 13.46. Here's Paul and Barnabas. First missionary journey. What does he do? He speaks out boldly. Same missionary journey. Here's Paul and Barnabas spending a great deal of time. And what do they do?

Speaking boldly with the additional qualification with reliance upon the Lord. And finally, the second missionary journey, and he, Paul, entered the synagogue and continued speaking out boldly for three months. Can there be any doubt that Paul had a pattern from the outset of speaking out boldly? It's very clear that he's been bold all the way along.

Now, we're going to return to that question here. Right now he's got the word gospel showing up here. Now this is a good message, good news sometimes that's carried over. And one of the things to kind of get clear in our minds here as we look at this Here is the Gentile population. They have been accustomed to an assortment of gods. And while those gods had different characteristics, we can generalize here. All the Gentiles were constantly trying to earn favor with their pagan gods, trying to get their attention.

What can I do? Some of the writings of the time, the pagans would write in despair, I don't know what the god wants. I don't know what the goddess wants. They didn't understand. They tried to gain life from these pagan gods. Their eternity was not certain. Even after people died, they had all sorts of things that they went through, rituals and special groups that you would consult to make sure that your loved ones went to the right place in the afterlife. We mentioned before in our study of Ephesians and Colossians, the pagan gods and goddesses never blessed the humans and certainly never loved them.

What Paul had to share here was exceedingly good news, very good news. It was eternally good news, and that's not just marketing spin. This isn't like coming to you and saying, I've got good news, like I've saved $200 on my car insurance. This is far better than that. This is eternally good news.

Remember when we studied Ephesians 3, 4 through 7, He also spoke of this mystery. He also spoke of the Gospel. To be specific, that the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body, fellow partakers of the promise in Jesus Christ through the Gospel. That was breakthrough news. Breakthrough good news. Because the Gentiles were then able to be brought in on the same level as the Jews, no longer to be thought of as second-class citizens, even if they believed.

Here we see, and I show this only for the sake of continuity, he's going to say, for which, and we want to know what the for which is for. Boy, don't get confused by that. The gospel for which, so when we skip to that. For which I am an ambassador. Now this is a word that only is used one other place in the New Testament. Presbeuo is from presbuteros, which means elder. So it has the idea of a senior ambassador. Here's Paul, he's been on at least three prior missionary journeys, as we have the account in the book of Acts there.

And in 2 Corinthians 5.20, here's Paul writing, therefore we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us. God making an appeal through us. Isn't that what he's asking for here? He's asking that what he says be God's message and not his own.

He's an ambassador in chains. The King James has bonds and certainly both ideas are indicated there. He's not just in raw chains, he's just got chains that are designed to keep him hooked up to a Praetorian guard all the time. He calls himself, earlier in the book, a prisoner of Christ or of the Lord. He is restrained for the Lord's sake.

That's what he spelled out here. Now, he says proclaiming. Interestingly, I'm telling you some things that may be a little surprising. This actually isn't in the Greek text either. Paul literally wrote that in it I may speak boldly, so that the proclaiming is added just for the sake of clarity. So the reference is to proclaiming. Then the speaking boldly, this is one word in the Greek.

1 Thessalonians 2.2 is the only other place where it's used.

He says that he spoke boldly in Philippi. He's asking here for prayer to continue to speak boldly. So here's Paul. Luke records multiple times that he spoke boldly. He records in 1 Thessalonians 2 that he spoke boldly. But he's asking to speak boldly. And he's asking that they pray for him to speak boldly. Can't he just assume it? Why does he have to ask for prayer to do what he's already been doing for years?

He finishes off that verse with, I ought to speak. Now, this isn't an ought by the imperative mood there in the verb, but it's a specific verb there, day, which means ought or must, so they're carrying it over into English that way. not just by reason of his position in Christ, but why should Paul speak boldly? He should do so because that's his commission as an apostle. That's his commission as an apostle in the Gentile lands where he speaks to both Jews and the Gentiles. Now, we've got a question. The question comes like this.

Why is Paul, who's always been bold, after all, we've got the record from Dr. Luke, We have Paul's own testimonies. I wrote to the church at Thessalonica. Hey, Paul's been bold. Why would he be concerned about it to the point of asking for prayer? Couldn't he just assume it? Let's think about that. Paul was in a different place. Have you ever been in a situation in your life where you say, well, I can trust the Lord for this, and I can trust the Lord for that, and the Lord puts you into something new? And then the question, can I trust the Lord for this? You've been there? Paul's in a different situation.

He had not, from any record we have, been in Rome before, and now here he was at a place that was the heart of the Roman Empire. Yes, he'd been in Antioch and Ephesus, a quarter million people or roughly in each one of those. Now he's in Rome, four times that size, and it's the center, the center, of all decision-making in the Roman Empire, and he's appealed to the emperor himself as a Roman citizen. He was shortly going to present his case before Caesar, before the emperor of the entire empire. Caesar could say, Paul, you're free. Or Caesar could say, Paul, you're dead. All out of the pronouncement of Caesar. There was a lot at stake here. It was the end of something, but Paul wasn't sure what it was the end of.

There was a lot to consider here, perhaps something that he might have on his own, apart from the Lord's strengthening, felt threatened by. Paul's personal history in proclaiming the Gospel was obviously marked by repeated boldness. We see that pattern. However, Paul, even though he had been a believer, For 20 years, the Lord had brought him into new situations. You may well have seen that in your own life. The Lord brings you in a new situation and all of a sudden you have to learn the lesson. Can I trust the Lord in this kind of a situation? This is an order of magnitude that I haven't faced before. Can I trust the Lord in it?

And Paul is obviously wanting to do just that. This message comes through in Hebrews 12. I won't read the whole thing, but he says, Let us run the race with endurance. Let us run with endurance the race set before us. Continuing on. Are you off to a good start? Great. But continuing on with that race.

When we were studying Philippians 3.12-14, one of the points we made there is that Paul was speaking in the context of the Romans, who, as one Roman historian put it, there are two things that the Romans just absolutely love, and one is food and the other is chariot racing, and it's real hard to determine which one's first. And so Paul writes to the Philippians, which is a Roman colony, And he says, ìForgetting what lies behind and reaching forward of what lies ahead, I press on towards the goal.î Thatís the mindset that he has. Until he reaches that goal, he doesnít stop pressing on. And he says, ìThe boldness characteristic with which I give the message is no less necessary now than it was before.î They would press on towards the goal and these markers you see vertically would be the goal markers and you notice the contestant here is leaning forward and pressing towards the mark.

Let's give an example in our own era, okay? Here's Lance Armstrong who has taken the Tour de France race several times now. Now, one of the things you notice is, yeah, you'll see him in that pose, but does he do that 100 feet before the finish line? Stop and say, yay, okay? Not really. He waits until he gets done, then he does it. Paul's of the same mindset. He's not going to stop even though he says, all right, I've been at this for a while, obviously I've been bold before, but I'm not quitting until I'm at the finish line. I'm not quitting until I'm done.

The example he gave in Philippians is, at the end I'll know because I'll go up to, in the upward call, was the term in that culture for being called to the judge's table to get your award. There's no time when a living believer has depended long enough. Oh, I've depended on the Lord long enough. This ought to be good, shouldn't it? No. Dependence upon the Lord is something that the Lord intends right down to the very last.

And what we find in 2 Timothy 4.17 that we just quoted before, That's the last chapter of the last book that we have in Paul's life. He's right down to the end. Right down to the end.

Here in Acts 14.3, there's another one we quoted, speaking boldly with reliance upon the Lord.

At every step, dependence upon the Lord is called for, and not partway through. We've got a couple of slides entitled, That's Not My Job, Frequently, we can be called upon in our own mind to think, oh, I've got to come up with these right words. I've got to say the right things. And they've got to be impressive. The Lord is not just looking for a set of nice words from us. The Lord isn't just looking for the words that we can conjure up. The message that Paul has here in this passage, as he says elsewhere, is he desires that we are the instruments through which he speaks. the instruments through which he lives. We're to live there while he lives here, okay? We're to live there while he lives here. We're seated there while he's living here. I've died here, okay? That's the picture.

The gospel message through us by his life, as evident in our life, is a high priority, even more so than the content of what we say. Paul was saying one step beyond that. He says, for me, boldness is necessary. Absolutely necessary. One of the other lessons that comes out of this is that there's no place for coasting on the momentum of our spiritual path.

Ever been tempted to do that? Oh, I walked with the Lord a little while ago. I'm fine because I did it then. The truth is that each moment Each moment is the moment in which the Lord desires that we walk with Him. We've been crucified, buried, raised, ascended, and seated. Why? So that our history is His history. We don't have our own history anymore, and our own history, even in walking with the Lord, is not sufficient.

The Lord desires that we walk each moment, each day, based on His history. It's this moment is the very one in which I am called to walk with Him. The Lord desires that we be used today, and I put this little kind of weekly time schedule there on the bottom half with the idea that we can't take last Friday's walking with the Lord and walk with the Lord today based on last Friday. We walk with the Lord now.

And Paul's doing that very thing. He says, look, I know I've spoken boldly, and I've written to churches, Dr. Luke's recorded that I've spoken boldly, but from right now, I need to be talking boldly and carrying that out because that's what the Lord's called me to do. Paul had requested prayer there, and it's in a passage following spiritual warfare. For him, as the Lord had called him to speak boldly, not standing, in the spiritual warfare wouldn't necessarily appear tumultuous. Have you noticed that?

Sometimes spiritual warfare looks calm on the outside, whether we're standing or whether we're running. Spiritual warfare can look calm on the outside, even if we've capitulated, or it can be tumultuous when we're standing. The outside appearance isn't necessarily an indicator, is it? At this point, in this juncture, failing to stand would look like he's just kept his mouth shut, and it would look fairly calm.

Now, another point here to be made, spiritual maturity is not marked by independence from the body of Christ. I've heard it said one time, Oh, what we want to do is to have believers become independently dependent upon the Lord. But that's not the picture that Scripture lays out, is it? Certainly, we need to have our personal relationship with the Lord. That's not being crossed off the list. But notice the focus here that he's already told them in chapter 4. that spiritual growth is characterized this way, and I'm starting at verse 15, but speaking the truth in love where to grow up in all aspects into him who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies according to the proper working of each individual part causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love. Spiritual maturity does not grow us towards independence from one another, but interdependence while each of us is depending upon the Lord.

Now here's a question. So what do we pray for? Each of us can call to mind, I'm sure, some family members, maybe co-workers, friends about whom you're concerned. Never had that? You may be in that spot right now. Somebody you care about dearly doesn't know the Lord. And their fuse might be right towards the end. Sometimes our fuse is close to the end and we don't even know it. But certainly, each of you can think of those things and sometimes those concerns can get down to the wire. Ever notice that? We're oftentimes inclined to pray for those resistant holdouts, especially when they get down to the wire. We want the Lord to work on their hearts. Isn't that true? And isn't that really a biblically valid thing?

We point out here John 16.8, the Holy Spirit does have a ministry with unbelievers.

There is a convicting that needs to take place. What's interesting though, this is one example of a number of places as you look through the New Testament epistles, where boldness on the part of believers seems to be the focus. All right, what am I saying? I'm not saying that don't pray for unbelievers. Please do. But the focus of the New Testament seems to place the emphasis upon praying for the boldness of believers in people's lives for them to come to a knowledge of Christ.

Isn't that interesting? Let me give you a personal instance. This is my dad's mother. Obviously, earlier years. This is my dad's mother, and she had grown up and spent her life as an unbeliever. There's lots of trauma in her background. I won't go on to describe it. But as she was getting close to the end of her life, the family knew that she had been diagnosed with cancer. And it did not appear that this was going to be turned around.

Family members kept praying for it. We'd get together and pray for it. We'd pray separately. We'd talk about it. The family kept praying for it and praying for it. And family members, numerous family members, came to her and said, look, you've got a very important decision to make about Jesus Christ. You need to be putting your trust in Christ here while you still have time. We don't know how much time you've got left." Many family members talked to her, and her response? Zip. Didn't say a thing. Wouldn't respond in the least. Very closed mouth about the whole thing. We did, however, pray that the Lord would reach her however He saw fit. And unbeknownst to any of the people in the family, there were some neighbors who came over.

Yes, helping her, because she definitely needed help. But about three weeks before she died, they talked to her, and it was the Lord who used them to bring her to a place of recognizing her need for the Savior. And we got to see her once after that. And she was in obvious pain, but there was a peace on her face I'd never seen.

It was great. One of the other points that comes out here too is certainly Paul was praying for boldness. That was his commission as an apostle to the Gentiles. But the other thing is the question, do you see what I mean? People need to see the Lord.

And even to the point here, and we looked at this some weeks ago, 1 Peter 3, here is an unbelieving wife married Unbelieving husband married to a believing wife. What's the instruction? Does the wife try to cram the gospel down his throat? Does the wife nag him and remind him at every turn? No. The instruction of scripture is don't say a word, but preach the gospel every single minute with your life. They will see your behavior. Not because you kept pouring the gospel out with your mouth, but because you poured it out with your life. Peter's urging in the chapter right before that for all the believers, regardless of their situation, is that the very life of Christ may be shown through the believers, and the unbeliever will see that, and their hearts will be turned.

If we were to take Paul's request for prayer, and let's do some, I think, appropriate adjusting to Galatians 2.20, what does it look like? I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who speak, but Christ who speaks boldly through me. The words of the gospel which I now speak from the body, I speak boldly by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me. You see the point there? Paul is desiring that the bold speech not just be because Paul's a bold guy, but because it is indeed the Lord's life that is being bowled through him.

So as we look at this passage here, one of the things that strikes me, as we look at Philippians 4.22 also written, did Paul speak boldly? We have that kind of a test question. How did this work out? How did this work out since he asked the believers to pray? Did Paul just say, well, pray for me, but then he just kept his mouth shut? Is that what happened? No. He turned around and as we studied in Philippians chapter 4, the very last verses include this.

All the saints greet you, and this he wrote while he was still chained to a Praetorian guard, especially those of Caesar's household. Paul did speak boldly as an ambassador in chains. The Praetorian Guard took shifts being locked up to him, and Paul didn't keep quiet. They might have wished that he did at times, but he didn't keep quiet.

And that's, I think, a marvellous thing. Paul did not coast on his prior boldness and say, of course I'm bold, I'm just that way naturally. God was not interested, and frankly, Paul was not interested in doing what came naturally. He says, I want to do what comes supernaturally. I want to speak boldly because it's God's message through me. It is Christ's life lived out through me, even if I am chained 24-7 to a Praetorian guard.

Let's pray. Lord, Paul's calling here was to speak boldly, and even times we may be called to keep our mouth shut, but whether we speak or are quiet, thank you, Lord, that our life is not ours to live on our own, of our own, that you're not there to assist us or to complement our efforts, but to live your life through us. And as we see Paul's specific request here, We see the particular application in his life and in our own as well. Lord, we ask that you would teach us in our hearts and in our lives the depth of this marvelous truth that's been brought up here in these two verses. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.