Ephesians, 6:18-20
Randy Peterman · Sep 13, 2009
Ephesians (2009), No. 37
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/492614312169

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Alrighty, well, this morning, today, we get to study Ephesians 6, 18-20. Last week, Roger mentioned that Chester McCauley had indicated that this was kind of a seventh piece of spiritual armor. I respect Chester McCauley greatly, but I would disagree and say that I wouldn't call this a the spiritual armor, but I would say that it is the very application of the spiritual armor, at least in part, in verse 18. This is the application of the spiritual armor.

If we've got the spiritual armor, we're going to gird our loins with the belt of, let me just read the text here, Take up the full armor, starting in verse 13, so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, having done everything to stand firm. Stand firm, therefore, having girded your loins with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace. In addition to all, taking up the shield of faith, with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation and the sword of spirit, which is the word of God. With all prayer and petition, pray at all times in the Spirit. And with this in view, be on the alert, with all perseverance and petition for all the saints.

And pray on my behalf, that utterance may be given to me in the opening of my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains, that in proclaiming it I may speak boldly as I ought to speak. So we have the full armor, but again, who is the full armor?

You get two guesses. Jesus Christ. And also we have the sword of the Spirit, which is the Holy Spirit, although it is not armor. It is at least technically a sword. It is a weapon. So we have this armor and we're told we need to stand firm. What does that look like? And how does that work out in our daily lives?

And so Paul actually goes and takes that to a practical application of prayer, which I think is an interesting conclusion. Because, you know, what's interesting is that often when I've heard the spiritual armor taught, the conclusion is not with prayer. The conclusion is that we've got to have these things so that we can be doing something. and it's often not been prayer. But Paul says the thing that we would be doing, or should be doing, is prayer instead of all the other things that I've heard taught disconnected from the context of this passage. So we have the practical application there. Paul brings it in with prayer, but he brings it in with constant, continual prayer. When he says, with all prayer and petition, pray at all times in the Spirit, What do you notice about that word pattern?

Or the pattern of that sentence? Go ahead. It's in my notes, so if you read the notes, then you'll know. It's repeated. It's stated a second time, so it emphasizes it. The interesting thing is that Ephesians is full of Hebrew patterns, and in Hebrew Jewish and Hebrew language you have repetition for emphasis. And in a Greek mind you have something philosophical and you just state it once and that's fine and everybody likes it and then they don't do anything with it. But with the Jew if you have repetition it's emphasis and you do something with it.

Just to add to what you said just previously, I have a note for a previous study of this. Prayer is the use of the armor. Yeah, absolutely. The praying recognizes what the armor is with Christ being our very life. So with prayer, with all prayer and petition, there is repetition there for emphasis. So you can take the the text and look and see. Paul is not messing around. He really wants you to pray.

If you turn in your Bibles to 1 Thessalonians 5.17, you'll notice a similar pattern. He says, pray without ceasing and everything give thanks for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. Do not quench the spirit.

Then he keeps going, they broke up one long run-on sentence into a bunch of little verses. Which makes it easy to teach children short verses when they're first learning Bible memorization. But he says, pray without ceasing. And the thing that I find, that was actually one of the first verses I remember memorizing. Pray without ceasing. And here he says the same thing in Ephesians 6.

You'd kind of think that Paul would think prayer is important. Why is prayer important? What is prayer? Communication with God. If you are coming from a Jewish background, historically how did the Jews view communication with God? in a religious sense, not biblically, because biblically I think there's some clear statements about how we communicate with God. But what did the Jews turn prayer into when we get to the Gospels? When Christ talks about the Pharisees praying loudly in the temple. What was prayer about?

It was really about them getting noticed. Yeah, there could be building yourself up, being noticed, praying more fervently and loudly and more intensely than the next guy so that people will know you're really spiritual. I personally used to think that there was a recipe for prayer. that would help me gain God's attention.

I've got to do this and I've got to pray. First, I'm going to confess any sins I can possibly think of and make sure I get all of them so that God doesn't have anything against me, rather than just simply saying, Lord, you know my sins. I repent of that. And moving straight into communication with God about things.

And Paul, he uses an interesting pattern here. He says, with all prayer and petition, pray. or praying at all times. So he says prayer, but then he says petition is a separate thing. Again, that's part of the emphasis, but prayer in general is communication with God. It could be about anything. It could be about thankfulness. I think that the first Thessalonians passage, he says being thankful for all things, and I think that's an important thing.

My three-year-old Evelyn, every morning when I take Abby to school, Evelyn comes with us in the car. And we pray on the way to school for part of our time. And Evelyn prays like this. She says, thank you for the Lord. Thank you for this day. And thank you for something, when she picks something that is going to be her prayer for the day. Because what can we pray for today? And we list something. So it may be a thank you that grandma and grandpa have a new house, or whatever the thankfulness is. But everything that she prays starts with a thank you. she's young and so that's kind of, you know, part of it. But the Lord really has kind of taught me something from that.

And that is that do we pray with thankfulness? What things in our lives that we think to pray for, usually it's a struggle or it's something where there's a deficiency, where we don't also have an attitude of thankfulness. I was convicted at least in my own life, but I'm not always thankful for the trial. I'm not always thankful for those opportunities to be going to the Lord for everything.

But Paul says they need to be praying. And then he says also petitioning the Lord. And so when we talk about petitioning the Lord, what does that mean? It's asking Him for something. It's usually about people or an event or something that we're praying about.

The first time I met my wife's grandmother on her mom's side was on a Thanksgiving. It was so long ago. It was before we were married. I can't remember which year it was. I want to say it was 1997, but I could be wrong. I had heard stories about her grandmother and the kind of spunky person that she was that had me very nervous.

And I prayed all the way from Carson City, Nevada, across the Sierra Nevada mountains over into Sacramento, just incredibly nervous because of meeting this whole new family. And I was so worried that something disastrous or strange or life-altering would happen in Sacramento instead of just trusting the Lord.

But there's nothing wrong with that kind of prayer, to ask and bathe something in prayer and asking for whatever it may be. Another drive over a hill more recently in my life was the drive between my grandparents' property in Philo to the hospital in Ukiah in July when we found out Jessica had a miscarriage. All the way over the mountain, or the hill, it's not quite a mountain, not like the Rockies at least, I was praying, Lord, please let the baby inside of my wife's belly be okay. Just be okay. I have faith that you can make sure the baby's okay. It's going to be awesome. We're going to get there. Everything's going to be okay. Jessica's just going to be paranoid. And we got there and Jessica wasn't paranoid.

We did have a miscarriage and it was really tough. But I was petitioning the Lord. I'm going to go before him in faith that whatever he has planned, is adequate. Not only is it adequate, it's just what I need for growth. We want to talk about tough things in life. I'm sure we all have stories. Did we go before the Lord with prayer and petition? Often we do.

Now there's polar opposites with this petitioning thing. I've heard some people preach, you need to just claim anything in Jesus' name and God will give it to you. Just name it and claim it, is the way I've heard it said over and over again. And then the other polar opposite of that is what I consider to be kind of a hyper-Calvinistic view, and that is that you shouldn't pray for anything, really, because God's going to do whatever He wants to do. Which one of those is represented in this text? Neither one of them is. Tom?

It's kind of like, if God has an emotion, too, then He delights in the prayers of those whom He has saved. The importance is to recognize that if prayer is intimacy with God, then going to Him and having fellowship with Him is why we're doing it. He wants to know our hearts. How do we know His heart? through His Word. And also sometimes just in spending time praying, He will bring peace, He will bring joy into our lives in prayer.

So that prayer in intimacy and fellowship with Him is a tremendous blessing and a tremendous opportunity. But the petitions, on the bottom of the page, the last paragraph, I start off with, how do we reconcile the unanswered petition? Is there such a thing as an unanswered prayer? Not really. On a technical level, God answers all of our prayers.

It may not be the way that we had intended. It may not be the time that we intended. Coming back to the miscarriage and the pregnancy, the pregnancy was not on purpose. We had an accidental pregnancy. And we did not pray for a pregnancy. In fact, we got pregnant and then we began to pray because we had the pregnancy. Lord, how do we deal with this? Instead, the Lord put in our hearts a joy for the pregnancy. There was no lamenting. There wasn't an, oh no, what are we going to do with this? This is God's plan. And we could rejoice in that.

But the timing wasn't the timing we would pick. The circumstances weren't the way that we would have necessarily put in place, but God had a perfect timing in that. But when we talk about unanswered prayers, we remember first again that it's an act of intimacy. Praying with God is an act of intimacy, and that by itself is valuable. It's an act of faith. We need to operate in faith in who God is.

What kind of God do we have? What kind of Father is He? Matthew 7.11, if you'll turn in your Bibles there, Christ is talking about the Father.

Matthew 7.11. If you've hit Malachi, you've gone too far.

Matthew 7.11.

Well, I'll start with 10. or nine here, or what man is there among you when his son asks for a loaf, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, he will not give him a snake, will he? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask him?

And then he goes on, Christ goes on in 12, and everything therefore treat people the same way you want them to treat you, for this is the law of the prophets. So we have a context there. This is an Old Testament law statement. But there's a principle that carries on. I want to make sure that anytime we teach out of the Gospels, we understand the context for that, because some interesting theology can be brought out of the Gospels if we don't have context.

But we have a principle there that God the Father is a benevolent God and a loving God. All the way through Ephesians, especially the first chapter, the richness of who God is and His character and His love is tremendous. If we go back to the beginning of the book and take a look at verse 5, He predestined us to adoptions as sons through Jesus Christ. So we're adopted to Him. to the praise of the glorious grace which he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. If we keep reading through chapter one we have to rehash all the things that we've been over in past lessons, but we have a tremendous loving God the Father who gives benevolently and lovingly to us.

So praying and asking for things and petitioning for things is not a problem. It's going to bring about joy and encouragement. Paul didn't just write that the believers pray. You guys should be praying. Come on everybody, pray. He did it himself. If we turn to Colossians chapter 1 and look at 9-12, would somebody mind reading that out loud? Colossians 1, 9-12. For this reason we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will. worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God, strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, for all patience and longsuffering with joy, giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints and the like.

Awesome, thanks April. Paul, how often is he praying? continually. He's praying. They did not cease to pray for you. And I think that's just a tremendous thing. He's not just saying, hey, you should pray. He was doing it as well. So we have an example in Paul as well as the commandment. then he says that we should be praying in the Spirit. Praying in the Spirit is one of the most important details of this passage because it's one thing to say pray, it's another thing to say pray in the Spirit. What does pray in the Spirit mean?

I used to think it meant something that was really different than what I think now. Anybody want to venture a guess? and we depend on Him to reveal that to you. Praying in the Spirit, I understand that now to be walking in fellowship and abiding with Christ, so that when you pray, you're praying with the influence of the mind of God the Father, like Jack said. I used to think that meant praying in tongues, which I don't think this teaches. But it's one of those things where We're called to be praying in the Spirit. When the Holy Spirit is directing your prayer life, what does that look like? How are you praying?

In alignment with the will of the Father. Tom, is that what you were going to say? When you're praying in alignment with the will of the Father, I like how you said that, Mom. When you're praying in alignment with God's will, is that something that God is surprised by? Is it something when we pray that he's surprised by? When I see that, Ian, I think in terms of we pray in our position. We pray in who we are. Absolutely. So it shouldn't be surprising to God or even us if we're walking in fellowship. Yeah.

The kind of prayer that... Oh, Tom? I keep thinking of a major league ball player making a really bonehead maneuver run scores or something. And then I say to myself, can I play your position? Here we are, stumbling, bumbling believers. Count me, we need to pray our position. Yeah, that's well put. As we look at this, if I'm praying the will of God, that's He's already going to do it, and that's great. But He puts things on our hearts and minds in a perspective.

See, when I'm praying in a selfish, fleshly way, I'm going to be praying for things, I don't know, to pick a silly example, am I going to be praying for a new Ferrari or something? Because God wants me to have this really ridiculously expensive car. Or am I going to be praying for the needs of those who are in the body? We didn't cease to pray for you in Colossians for the needs of the body, for the needs of the believer, for the growing up and the building up of the saints.

So it's interesting to see how those vary. If I'm being carnal, I'm going to pray about superficial things and my motivation is going to be wrong and my prayer is not going to be... the word that comes to mind is effectual. Were you going to say something? Actually, I have a question. Sure.

Would you say that then when you are praying in the Spirit that it allows you to know the Lord more because you're knowing His mind? I would certainly say that that is an implied connection there. The work of the Holy Spirit is to show us God the Father and to show us Christ. So if we're praying in the Spirit, we're going to see God the Father, and we're going to see Christ, and we're going to see them glorified, and we're going to see our attitude changed towards things. I picked a Ferrari as an example, but the truth of the matter is that whatever we're praying for, we want to pray for it in the context of what God is doing for the growth of our lives, and for our families, and our friends, and the church as a whole. for whatever Paul is going to continue on here. He keeps going on.

He says, Be on alert with all perseverance and petition for the saints. And that for me is an important thing that ties in with the spiritual armor. He says be on alert or be on the alert. So being on the alert is what? If you're supposed to be standing firm. in the spiritual armor? What's being on the alert? Being awake, being there, to be watching. If you are called to be an alert believer, what is it that you're going to be alert for and be aware of?

There's probably not a wrong answer to this one. Needs and opportunities. Needs and opportunities. The thing is that as an alert believer you're going to recognize the advance of the enemy when that comes. You're going to recognize that in your own life and in the life of those around you. It's not going to be a surprise.

I don't do PowerPoint slides, otherwise I'd show you the slide that my dad has of the picture of the soldiers in formation where they have the shields covering the front, the sides, and the top. They worked in a formation so that everything was covered And everybody was alert. But if something's happening in your troop or your group, you're going to know about it. And you're going to all be working together to make sure everybody's OK and everybody's safe. Because if they're not OK, you're not OK, because they've got your back. If somebody's not got their shield in place and that fiery arrow comes down, who gets hit? Could be anybody. And if they get hit, that might be one less shield. So being on the alert mattered in a spiritual warfare sense in the armor. But he says to be on the alert with perseverance to endure. Yesterday I had a really bad example of perseverance.

I had to go up into our attic to do some wiring as we knocked down a wall between the kitchen and the living room. And the attic Height is about two and a half, three feet. It's not really tall. And I'm obviously not good at guessing the height of things.

But I had to be squatted down. I'd show you, but I don't think I could stand back up again for about an hour and a half, I think. If you asked me yesterday, it was at least three hours. But I think looking back, it was probably closer to about an hour and a half of being squatted down. And your muscles, unless you're a baseball catcher, probably are not designed or used to that kind of motion.

And I'm incredibly sore in my lower half right now. But I had to persevere because if I didn't do it, I wasn't going to be able to turn on the lights. And if I didn't do it, I wasn't going to be able to plug in things into the outlets and therefore you know, allow my family to have food, other things that were important due to our use of electricity in our home. So I had to persevere. But the thing is that if you're in a battle scenario, as Paul has just painted in the earlier verses, you can't just say, oh, it's time for a coffee break.

Well, there's a war going on. We actually had a funny story at work. Our company is international. We deal with people selling our software all over the globe. And one time, my bosses called up a guy overseas. And the phone call was interrupted by a loud bang, just a big explosion sound. And the guy on the other end of the phone said, you'll have to pardon me. There's a war going on over here. Which is not what you're used to on a business phone call.

But the thing is that you get to persevere and you get to endure and you get to, as a believer, you get to do that. But what's the part about being in a formation? Do you do it by yourself? Are you persevering alone? No, you're persevering together. What does that start to bring into your mind when I say you get to persevere together? What would you have to have to persevere together? Intimacy, okay? I think intimacy together as a body is one of the crucial elements as we talk about prayer. How are we being intimate? Are we persevering alone or together? Obviously, we're called to persevere together.

And then he closes off the sentence with petition for the saints. Having perseverance and petition for the saints. It's one thing to say, oh, I'll pray for you, and you walk off and you pray once, And it's not on your mind until the next time you see the person and you're like, oh, I was supposed to be praying for him. How did that thing go anyways? Because you just totally disconnected.

But perseverance and petitioning for the saints and going before the Lord. As soon as I found out that, and Brad, I'm going to share some of your dirty laundry. As soon as I found out that Brad had one of his jobs fall out from underneath him, I thanked the Lord for that because that meant I could see him a little bit more, but then I began immediately praying that the Lord would open up another job opportunity. They've got enough going on in their life that that's probably an added stress, but it's something where I'm humbled that I can go before the Lord for Brad and April and their two kiddos. But we can have perseverance and petition. Now I've got some questions for discussion here and we are starting to run out of time, but we'll go through them anyways.

Does praying enough or having enough people pray force God to do what we ask? No. I have actually heard that taught on multiple occasions. Well, you just need enough people, two or more, or they'll pick some other number. And if you pray, then God will do it. You've just got to do what you can do. The thing I think about is when Verma was teaching on this, Tony and Isaiah, talking about how God answered the prayer before it was even asked. God wanted our participation, but it wasn't so He could do something. Yeah. On multiple occasions I've received prayer request emails from various people where it's like, I just need more people to pray. Then God will do this. Now I'm not against more people praying, because I think there's value in our prayer.

Not only that we're told that we should be praying for one another, but there needs to be an understanding that it's not that we're twisting God's arm. It's kind of like a democratic vote. Enough Christians have voted that we deal with this problem, so God's going to do it. I just wanted to say that certainly I totally agree with what you just said, that we're not twisting God's arm.

But for me as a believer, when I know multiple people are praying for something, there is an encouragement in that. Absolutely. There's an absolute peace that I know people are going before God on my behalf when you had meningitis as an infant. I don't remember that, by the way. Well, I do.

But, you know, we were praying. Our church was praying. Someone in the church knew someone overseas and It was literally around the world that people were praying for you. And they didn't even have email. No, we didn't have email. I'm not even sure we had home computers at that point in time. Thanks, I've been feeling that way.

Either that or I am. It was amazing to me that the Lord had people all over the world praying on your behalf. It is a tremendous thing. The internet does make that a little bit easier with email, but it is amazing to see how the concerns and needs of the body can be global.

The next question I have on there is, how can I be praying for you? Obviously, I ask for prayer requests, but one of the things that I want to encourage everybody in this room to do is when you end a conversation with another believer, when it comes to a close and you've got to go, you've got to go to work, you've got to get off the phone, whatever it is, ask, how can I be praying for you? That's not a command, but it is a suggestion, a very strongly stated suggestion. Ask the other believers, how can I be praying for you?

Because you know what? It is amazing the kind of intimacy that comes together for the body as well as our relationship with the Lord when we have things that we can be praying for one another about. If I know you're praying for me, I'm going to keep you updated. Hey, that interview did go well. Hey, that one thing didn't turn out so good, but that's the way the Lord saw fit to deal with it right now. And I'm going to be in fellowship with you. And again, more intimacy. So, strongly recommended. How can I be praying for you? Next, what matters are too small to pray for? Anything too small, God doesn't, He's like, okay, that doesn't fall in on my scale of things that matter.

At Bible study on Tuesday nights, I'm always humbled by the requests that I get from the high schoolers. We have two high schoolers that are in Bible study. It's about stuff that when I was in high school I would have never brought up. But it's a concern on their hearts and minds and they ask for prayer and I am so glad to pray for it. I have prayed for this one science teacher so many times, it's ridiculous. I've never met the science teacher, I don't even care. I'm grateful that I can go before the Lord for this science teacher because it's a concern of my sister in Christ. And that's really cool.

Were you going to say something, Mom, or okay? So, we'll keep going because we have two more verses and I've got about 15 minutes. Ephesians 6.19, And pray on my behalf that utterances may be given to me in the opening of my mouth, and make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel. Alright, what did we notice in verse 18? We noticed repetition. He said pray and pray. In verse 19, he says, pray on my behalf that the utterances may be given in the opening of my mouth.

He could have just said that the utterances would be useful, but he says the utterances, in the open of my mouth, he's got this, again, this sense of repetition that comes in the verse. Utterances could also be translated to just the words that I have. It's the Greek word logos. So it's not, I thought maybe utterances might have been something really special or unique. It has nothing to do with cow udders.

But it is special and unique in the sense it's the words of Paul. But he says pray on my behalf. Now this is the Apostle Paul commissioned by God to go out and do something. Why does he need our prayer? Or the Ephesians prayer. He's gone to be with the Lord now so I don't think he needs our prayer. But why does he need their prayer?

It's not the 100%, it's the intimacy. Do you think that the people in Ephesus recognize their co-ministering with Christ? Do you recognize your co-ministering? I'm sorry, not with Christ, with Paul. Do you recognize your co-ministering in this body? It's not just the elders. It's not just, you know, oh, I've got this ministry job, or that person has this ministry job, and so it's not my responsibility. I love that. Instead, we're called to recognize, like Paul did, that there is a co-ministry there.

I am a co-seminary operator out of South America. not by participation directly, but by prayer and by financial support. I am so excited to be able to let an indigenous dispensational Christian seminary in South America get started to be spreading the gospel and equipping saints in South America. I can't go down and teach. I don't speak Spanish. I barely know the English language. And yet, I can give financial resources, a small amount, but some, and I can be praying.

I'm a co-minister in South America. That's awesome. Wherever I know believers, and I'm so honored to meet Ada and Winnie, and I've got to spend a little time with them over the last week, and I'm so excited that God is doing amazing things and has done amazing things in their lives. And so I can be praying for them. So I can be a co-minister in Uganda through praying for them and their life and other opportunities the Lord may bring.

That's awesome. Are you a co-minister? Yes. Do you always recognize it? Maybe not so much. But Paul says, hey, pray because you're a co-minister. Be praying. That the utterances may be given to me in the opening of my mouth. Now why would Paul be concerned about what came out of his mouth? What does Paul have on the line? Anyone? Guesses?

He's got the truth of the gospel. But he's been commissioned by God as an apostle, which puts him in a really, really unique scenario. We don't have apostles now, unless you go to the church down the street. It's that direction. They have an apostolic church. I'm joking.

But the thing is that Paul had a special ministry. What would happen if Paul blew it badly? and was found to be in an adulterous relationship or something. What if he started teaching heresy? Basically, in the end, he's saying, pray that my words would be the words of God. The words to minister to people.

If you turn to Acts 2.42-47, and you don't have to do it because I just recited it off the top of my head, but the church, the first church, this is like, they're day-old Christians. The first church, They devoted themselves to the Apostles' teaching. What are we doing? We're devoting ourselves to the Apostles' teaching.

But being the Apostlement, he had the authority of God's Word he was delivering, and he better make sure that it's right on. So pray that I would constantly be teaching just what God wants me to teach. And the whole point is, the letters that God intended to survive are there in our intestine. Yeah, well it is awesome that God preserved what we needed to have carried on for our growth. So Paul, he says pray for these utterances and these words and these things that he's going to say.

Because he needs to make bold or make known the boldness, with boldness, the mystery of the gospel. Boldness, we're going to get into in the next verse. But mystery is an important one. Again, if my dad were here with a slideshow, we'd have a moose go across the screen because of the Greek word, musterion. But the mystery of the gospel. Why was the gospel a mystery? Anyone have a good guess? It hadn't been revealed yet. To who? To the Jews. What about the Gentiles? What did the Gentiles have? The Jews. No, what was the Gentile religious system?

Paganism. Okay, mythology, paganism, a lot of mystery religions. One of the reasons I think the gospel took off like a wildfire in Southern California is... Sorry, that was a bad joke and inappropriate. Apologies. I shouldn't have said that. I was not the Holy Spirit. The reason that the gospel took off in the Roman culture is they had a lot of mystery religions.

They had these religions that were part of little cults and you would have your own special guru, kind of like Oprah or whoever else it was, and you have your special guru and that special guru tells you what you need to believe and you go do it. But it's a collection of mystery ideas that you can't tell anybody. They're part of your group. you might be part of one guild that does one thing, and you've got your own mystery religion, and no one else can know what it is unless they join your guild. But Paul is proclaiming the mystery boldly, broadly, across to anyone who will listen. So if you're hungry and you're curious about these mysteries, then suddenly somebody comes to tell you openly about this mystery of Jesus Christ, and then there's grace, and then there's the power of God, that's going to get your attention. So Paul wants to boldly proclaim the mystery of the gospel.

Are we still to pray for Paul? Do we need to pray for Paul still? No. How about, how can we pray about Paul? Slightly different worded, different meaning sentence or question. How can we pray about Paul now? We can pray about what he wrote that we would understand. We can be thankful. We can thank the Lord for the Apostle Paul. I'm thankful, otherwise I would have a lot more questions than I do. But the Lord gave us clear revelation through Paul. So we can not be praying for Paul, but we can be praying in thanks for Paul's ministry. We do still have that opportunity.

He continues on his sentence in Ephesians 6.20.

He says, For which I am an ambassador in chains, that in proclaiming it I may speak boldly as I ought to speak. He's an ambassador in chains. Most of us are probably familiar with the diplomatic immunity that's commonly operating in our world today. As long as you can get back to your embassy, you can get away with murder. I mean, literally. But diplomatic immunity is not what Paul's talking about here. He's not talking about just being a diplomat. He's being an ambassador. What is an ambassador, again? A representative that goes on behalf and in the name of the person. In this case, it's the person of Jesus Christ.

And he's in chains. Why is he in chains? Anybody remember from Acts why he's in chains? Okay, he's in house arrest, but why is he in house arrest? Okay, yeah, the Jews wanted to persecute and try him and he said I want this case to go to Caesar and in Roman law if you said I want to go before Caesar you could go before Caesar which to me sounds insane.

That'd be like me saying I want to have court with the Supreme Court of the United States of America because I stubbed my toe at a store. you're going to be waiting for decades, because they're not going to see that case. We have a totally different way to deal with it. But Paul said, I want to go to Caesar. And in Roman culture, you could go to Caesar. So Paul's in chains. And now what's interesting about being in chains for Paul? He's got to be under house arrest. What's awesome about that?

He's hooked up to another, to a Roman soldier, and had to keep his contact They change off every 8th shift, however long it is. But he has to be in continuous, locked down contact with the Roman soldier until that hearing takes place. Yeah, so basically it's forced evangelism time. Which is okay. Paul is alright with that. But he wants to speak boldly in this situation.

He's an ambassador in chains. In the church, and it's in other letters and you'll have to forgive me, I've forgotten the address already, Paul talks about people slandering Paul for being in chains. Oh, man. But they still, you know, that, oh, that Paul guy, he's really dragging Jesus' name through the dirt because he's in chains.

No, no. It's just a new opportunity to evangelize. And we know from Philippians, chapter 4, verse 22, Did that being in chains have an impact? Yes. Paul sends greetings from the house of Caesar. Had a little impact there. Reached the house of Caesar with the gospel of Jesus Christ. So he says, hey, greetings from the house of Caesar when we get to his letter to Philippians. So there was an impact there. He says that in proclaiming it, I may speak boldly.

In Romans 1.16, Paul said that he was not ashamed of the gospel. So we know that's not a concern. But why is he concerned about speaking boldly? What would be the impact of speaking boldly or not speaking boldly when he's chained up like that?

If he speaks boldly, it has increased influence than just plain mystic religion. Sure. He has that opportunity. The other thing is that there is a chance that the guard could be a little chapted him and make his life a little bit more irritating if he does things that are irritating to the guard. But he's so concerned about the salvation of the world, of every person he comes in contact with and has an opportunity to speak to, that he's going to speak boldly.

Pray I would speak boldly, not because I'm worried about myself. Hey, I'm chaining him in prison, whatever. God's going to use me here. But he says, you know, pray that he might speak boldly. And then he said, as I ought to speak, he knows that he ought to speak boldly.

In our own lives, let's bring this down to a personal 2009 scenario, how do we feel about speaking boldly about the gospel? How well is that received in our American culture? Not well. Has anybody been anywhere where everybody gets really excited when you're out in public speaking about the gospel? I think that time might be gone. Hey, that's tremendous. See, I always love it when I hear that I'm wrong. I like being wrong in that case because in most first-world affluent atheistic agnostic societies, that's not the case.

But I'm glad to hear that the gospel of grace is so exciting. But Paul knew it needed to be spoken boldly. I have found that when I speak boldly about the gospel, people are willing to listen When I talk about grace, because, see, when they've heard the gospel before, they've just heard that they're sinners, and that's the only part they hear, for some reason. When I talk to people, they've heard the sinner's part, which is true.

I don't want to muddy that up and say, oh, you're not sinners. You're just not good. But when you talk about grace and you say, this is the love of God, and it's sufficient That kind of gets people's attention because they've usually heard legalism or they've usually heard things like, well, you could probably lose your salvation. So then I've got to start keeping track of this list and that list and the other things.

But when you just talk about grace and relationship with God, I had a friend who I believe is an agnostic. And he was really shocked to hear about grace. And he actually lives in Canada. He actually said, sometime I'm going to have to come down and stay with you and spend a week and you're going to have to explain this to me because this is not what I've heard before." I was like, awesome.

He hasn't come down yet, but someday I'm hoping he gets on an airplane or gets a driver's license and drives down or something. So anyways, speaking boldly may not be the thing that wins friends and influences people in a secular social way, but it can win people to Christ. Eternity is a lot more important than this earthly conditional state.

That passage you mentioned earlier in Acts 2.7, the result of that is the Church. God adds to the Church daily such as should be saved. Yeah. That's an important detail. We've got a few more questions and then we'll close. Do we speak boldly? Do we proclaim the gospel lovingly, graciously, but boldly? That's rhetorical. But think about it. Ask that the Lord might help you evaluate that. I know that for myself, that's something that, hey, if you think of, how can I pray for Randy? Pray for Randy that he speaks boldly. Because I do tend to be a little shy in my basement. I don't see a lot of people outside except for when I go to the grocery store.

How do we do that in a world so blatantly offended by the gospel? How do we boldly speak in a world that's so blatantly offended? Speak the truth in love. Okay, speak the truth in love. Any other thoughts? I think that you made a point earlier when you were saying that it's not just telling people they're sinners. It's presenting the fullness of the gospel. It's telling them about God's love and grace. How about the difference today between street or door-to-door evangelism versus getting to know somebody? In the United States at least. Now I have a bunch of questions about Uganda. I want to know.

But in the United States, how do people respond to door-to-door evangelism now because of certain groups like the Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses? If somebody shows up with any religious idea at my front door, I'm automatically a skeptic. I think this guy's a liar or he's trying to bring me into a cult. I had a young teenage kid from a Baptist church that meets at a rec center near our house show up at my house a couple years back while I was cleaning out my garage.

I was looking pretty awesome and smelling pretty awesome, too. But he came up and gave me a little pamphlet, said, I want to tell you about my Baptist church that I go to. And I said, well, I'm already part of a church. But I thought about that. I thought, man, I saw him walk up with paper in his hand, and I was just ready to just send him packing.

Get out of here, kid. I don't care what you have to say, because I know it's full of cult weirdness. And it wasn't. But I was just immediately skeptical. But if I get to know you and you get to know me, there's going to be a different opportunity that might be there. They're going to see probably that we screw up, but we move on, and we have grace. That's pretty important.

I've gone to my not-believing friends, my lost friends, and apologized to them when I've screwed up. That's an ego blow in a secular social arena. You did what? You apologized? No, no, you need to rough it out, tough it out, be cool, don't admit your faults. No, you got an opportunity to represent grace and forgiveness to this person. I embarrassed somebody by asking for forgiveness. He's like, what are you doing? I'm being real. I've been forgiven. I want you to understand that.

In closing, Paul wants us to understand that prayer should be part of our daily lives. that speaking the gospel boldly should be part of our lives in general. I won't say necessarily daily, but if you come in contact with people, it's probably going to be daily and there may be those opportunities. We need to recognize that spiritual warfare exists, but that's not the focus. The focus is not the spiritual warfare. What's the focus?

The Lord Jesus Christ. We're going to stand firmly in our position and we'll have the most impact or the greatest impact due to the gracious work of God by abiding and focusing on Him and setting our mind on things above and being intimate. That being said, let's close in prayer, but I want to remind everybody today after church or after we have Sunday School mingling Ask people. I can be praying for you. Do it. Not legalistically, but do it. Just see what happens. See how it changes your daily prayer life.

Alright, Heavenly Father, we come before you. Thank you so much. for sending Paul with a message, for redeeming him from the legalism of Judaism on the road to Damascus and getting his attention. Thank you that he was such a bold speaker and a bold writer. And thank you that we have your word preserved for our reading and understanding. We ask that you would open our eyes to opportunities to speak boldly, open our eyes to opportunities to pray for one another, and Lord, we just pray for further intimacy with you as well. In Jesus' name, amen.