Theologically Rich Prayer
Acts: The Mission of God • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
The diamond-mining capital of the world is Botswana, Africa.
The Jwaneng mine in Botswana is the most fertile mine in the world today.
It has consistently produced a significant number of valuable and notable diamonds.
The nation is politically stable. They have efficient mining operations. They have strict regulations and revenue-sharing programs in place to keep things functioning healthily.
70-80% of the country’s entire earnings come from diamonds.
The Jwaneng mine produced the 1,109 carat Lesedi La Rona diamond that is worth $53 million
The Letseng Legacy diamond, which weighed 493 carats.
The rare pink diamond as the Jwaneng Pink, also came from that mine
In effect, if you had endless funds and you wanted the most beautiful diamond in the world to be mined just for you, you would go to the Jwaneng mine in Botswana, Africa.
Well when it comes to your prayer life, the Word of God, the Bible, is the Jwaneng mine.
The Old Testament and New Testament, spoken and given to us by the living God is the Botswana, Africa for your prayer life.
Do you want glorious prayers? Do you want weighty prayers? Do you want prayers that are effective? Do you want to rend heaven with your words?
Do you desire a prayer life that is saturated in truth? A prayer life that is consumed with veracity concerning the character of God?
Do you want to talk to God in heavenly language? Do you want your heart to experience the gracious splendor of heavenly conversation?
Do you want to pray with confidence that you are saying things to God that are in line with His will?
Well then, you must pray with your Bible open.
It is the mine for your prayer life.
The prayers we mine from the hills of Scripture are diamonds of glory that refract the light of Christ’s brilliance.
And that is right where you want to be.
Mining the hills of Scripture and bringing diamonds of glory before your God.
We see the early church doing that this morning.
They are saturated with the Word of God and they take that Word to His throne.
It’s powerful. It’s effective.
And it is a form of prayer available to every child of God.
Let’s pick up where we left off last week and read the text.
In this passage, Peter and John have been released and charged not to preach and now they are coming back to their friends and telling them what happened.
We see them respond in Bible-born prayer.
When they were released, they went to their friends and reported what the chief priests and the elders had said to them. And when they heard it, they lifted their voices together to God and said, “Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them, who through the mouth of our father David, your servant, said by the Holy Spirit,
“ ‘Why did the Gentiles rage,
and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers were gathered together,
against the Lord and against his Anointed’—
for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place. And now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness, while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus.” And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness.
UNDERSTANDING PRAYER BORN FROM THE WORD
UNDERSTANDING PRAYER BORN FROM THE WORD
Before we dive into the verses, I want to establish this concept that our prayer lives should be born from the Word of God.
More than that, I believe the theology of the Bible shows us that our prayers lives truly are born from God’s Word.
In 1536, John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion was published.
It was a work that set Europe on fire theologically.
And the man who produced it was only 27 years old.
Whatever you may think of all of his theology, he offers up a gem that all Christians can agree on when he says:
Prayer is the chief exercise of faith.
John Calvin
Let me show you why 27 year old Calvin was spot on about this.
So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.
Faith comes from hearing the Word of God.
And what Calvin was teaching us is that prayer is the most basic and primary act of faith that comes from the hearing of the Word.
Is this not how we repented of our sins?
At some point, if you are a born again Christian, you heard the Word of God, and then you responded to it in faith by praying to God and confessing your sin and asking for forgiveness.
And then, having been made right with God and adopted into His family and having Him as a Father, you have continued to pray in faith, responding to the Word as you receive it.
Can you imagine a person who says they read their Bible every day and believe, but they never pray?
You would say, “That is inconceivable. It cannot be.”
Can you imagine a person who says they pray every day but they never read their Bible?
You would say, “How do you even know who you are praying to?”
So then, we must agree with the young French Reformer—
Prayer is indeed the chief exercise of faith.
True prayer is exercising the faith that comes from hearing the Word.
True prayer is born from the Word of God.
Understanding that this morning, we have three teaching points to draw from this text.
Three reasons it is important for us to connect prayer to the Bible.
ADDRESSING GOD RIGHTLY (v. 23-24)
ADDRESSING GOD RIGHTLY (v. 23-24)
The first is this:
1. Prayer born from the Word addresses God rightly (v. 23-24).
1. Prayer born from the Word addresses God rightly (v. 23-24).
When Peter and John are released, they speed to their friends and tell them what was said to them.
And Luke is specifically referring to the charge that they were given to stop preaching in Jesus’ name.
We know that because that is really what the prayer is about.
They want to continue to speak the Word with all boldness (v. 29).
The authorities say, “No more preaching.”
Peter and John are letting the church know that persecution has arrived on their doorstep.
The resistance that Jesus promised has come.
The time for resolve and steel has arrived.
The season for bold witness is upon them.
And so they pray. You see that in verse 24.
And when they heard it, they lifted their voices together to God...
Is that what you do when catastrophe strikes? Is that your inclination?
When you are doing work for God and opposition comes, is your habit to commune with God or complain to men?
I know what my habit has been far too often.
Oh to be the sort of people who hear reports of opposition and immediately fly to the Lord’s throne.
Before whining. Before venting. Before screaming.
Praying. Entreating God. Petitioning God.
And when they address God, notice that they do not jump straight to the need.
They don’t fly to their feelings as they come before the throne—not right away.
Before they address their circumstances and their desires, they tell God who He is.
They address Him as Master and as Creator.
First, they call him Sovereign Lord.
Sovereign Lord is two English words that come from one Greek word.
The Greek word is despota. It means “Master of a Servant.”
So that is what they are calling God— “The Master of Servants”
And then you see them talk to Him with this in mind throughout their prayer.
They consider how the nations conspired against King David and they call him “our father David, your servant.” (v. 25)
They consider how the authority of Israel conspired against King Jesus and they call Him, “your holy servant Jesus.” (v. 27)
And as they ask God for the boldness to continue to speak, they refer to themselves as, “your servants.” (v. 27)
Where would the apostles and the early Christians get the idea that God is a Master of Servants?
Behold, as the eyes of servants
look to the hand of their master,
as the eyes of a maidservant
to the hand of her mistress,
so our eyes look to the Lord our God,
till he has mercy upon us.
O Lord, I am your servant;
I am your servant, the son of your maidservant.
You have loosed my bonds.
They got this from the Word of God.
Because faith comes from hearing the Word and the Word teaches us that God is a Master of Servants.
Therefore, as they exercise their faith in prayer, they address God in the way that the Word has informed them to.
They also give glory to God as the Creator of the universe.
He is the One who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them. (v. 24)
This too, is truth that they heard from the Word of God.
O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory above the heavens.
The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof,
the world and those who dwell therein,
Faith comes from hearing the Word. The Word reveals God as the Creator worthy of worship.
So as they exercise their faith in prayer, they address God as the Word has informed them to.
APPLICATION
APPLICATION
This is how it must be when we come to God in prayer. It is how it should be.
Before we ask for our daily bread and forgiveness for ourselves and others...
Before we ask for protection from temptation and the Evil One...
We say, “Hallowed be Your Name.”
This is how Jesus taught us to pray.
Pray then like this:
“Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
This is how prayers of faith begin—by coming to God and addressing Him as the Word instructs us to.
A sign of our prayers being disconnected from the Word of God would be if we are constantly breezing past God’s praise to get to our petitions.
This is simply not how the Lord taught us to pray.
This is not how we see people pray in the Bible.
And it is not how we should pray.
In fact, we could say the most important part of your prayer is your address to God because we must understand who we are bringing our requests to.
Two years before the great Bible commentator, Matthew Henry, died, he wrote a book on prayer called A Method for Prayer.
Henry was fifty years old—middle-aged in our time, but playing with house money in the 1700’s.
The book reflects the prayer life of a seasoned Christian. A faithful pastor who inquires of God often. A plain-spoken, serious preacher who doesn’t trust himself.
It is the advice of a man who has wrestled with God in his prayer closet for decades and he has come out limping.
Henry assumed that every day, every Christian will pray and spend time:
Adoring God
Confessing sin to God
Petitioning God
Thanking God
Interceding for Others
As Henry coaches a Christian on how they would address God, he says:
We should first come before Him and just be silent and speak to our own souls a bit.
Remind your own soul who you are about to draw near to.
Then we speak to God and Henry calls on us to be exhaustive in our praise of Him.
We must reverently adore Him
Acknowledging His existence to be unquestioned
Confessing His nature to be beyond comprehension
His perfections to be matchless
Counting to be above and beyond all things
We must acknowledge that He is:
Eternal, unchanging, everywhere at once, perfect in wisdom and knowledge, unsearchable, incontestable, irresistible.
He is perfect and pure. He is just and fair in all He does. His treasures are good.
And then, when you have nothing else say—Henry says, “Tell God you fell short in your estimation of Him, despite your best efforts—because you are a finite sinner still being sanctified.”
But Henry isn’t done. We also must praise God as:
the Glorious Creator
The Triune God
The One we depend on
The One who owns us
The One we pray to because of His favor
The One we are unworthy to draw near to
The Fountain of all life
Our Hope and our Confidence
The One who helps as we pray
The One who deserves the highest glory we could give in our prayers
The One who accepts us in Jesus Christ
All that before you even ask for a thing.
Church—let me ask you—do you pray this way? Do you seek God in praise before you seek Him in petition? Do you seek Him in adoration before you seek Him in asking?
If you want that to change, I can tell you that it will take two commitments from you:
Your Bible and your time.
It is not a coincidence that a man like Matthew Henry would pray this way. He was commited to his Bible.
He ransacks the Scriptures for references to God’s attributes and turns them into matters of adoration.
Ligon Duncan
Henry knew his God in praise because he found Him in the Word.
He was a Bible man and that made Him a praising man in his prayer life.
If you want more praise in your prayer life, spend more time reading about who God is in His Word and then your prayers of faith will be born from what you hear.
But that will take your time.
Christian consumerism is obsessed un-devoted devotion.
“5 Minutes with God a Day” devotional and prayer books became popular in the the last thirty years and it has taught us that this is all we need to give to God to be healthy.
We have bought the lie that a little bit of God is all you need to do all of life.
In reality, He is your life.
And His Word is your authority.
And you should be making the time you spend Him a priority over the time you spend with anything or anyone else.
A vibrant prayer life doesn’t happen on accident.
It happens when we submit our hearts to the hearing of God’s Word.
And then, as our hearts soak the Word up, they are wrung out in prayers of praise, returning God’s revelation of who He is to Him in worship.
SEEING THE WORLD RIGHTLY (v. 25-28)
SEEING THE WORLD RIGHTLY (v. 25-28)
Let’s move on in the passage to verses 25-28.
First of all, their prayer gives us a wonderful picture of the doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture.
They say the Sovereign Lord spoke by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of David.
Psalm 2 are David’s words.
But Psalm 2 are the Lord’s words by the Holy Spirit.
That is divine inspiration.
And that is important, because they quote a text that is both about David and Jesus.
It is about how the Gentiles nations raged and the peoples plotted against David in his day.
If you know anything of King David’s life, it was filled with adversity.
From Saul’s jealous conspiring to try and kill David...
To Absalom, David’s own son, who tried to lead a rebellion against him and take the throne...
To the Philistines who were a constant thorn in his side...
David knew what is was to have the kings of the earth and the rulers come together and set themselves against him
But it is also a Messianic text that is fulfilled in the Lord Jesus.
In the same way that Saul and Absalom and the Philistines conspired against David, Herod, Pilate, the Romans, the religious authority of Israel and all the people who shouted, “Crucify Him,” conspired against Jesus.
But is God moved by these earthly conspiracies in the sense that He is worrying or panicking?
Well, of course not.
He is Master of Servants.
He is the Creator of worlds.
He who sits in the heavens laughs;
the Lord holds them in derision.
And verse 28 reflects this confidence in God’s governance.
When they pray about what happened to Jesus, while they recognize the actions and choices of man were real, they also know that their conspiracies happened according to whatever God’s hand and whatever God’s plan had predestined to take place (v. 28).
Predestined is a word that means to ordain beforehand.
This is what we know of God’s governance—that He has decreed the end from the beginning.
declaring the end from the beginning
and from ancient times things not yet done,
saying, ‘My counsel shall stand,
and I will accomplish all my purpose,’
And yet, we see that human beings conspire. Human beings rage and plot.
They have real choices they make with real consequences in a real world.
How God’s foreordained plan and man’s choice reconcile is something that I leave to the wisdom of the Potter.
And when you really stop to take it all in, it leaves you in a place where you can only praise the Lord for His inexhaustible brilliance.
You join in with Paul, who after explaining God’s sovereign plan of salvation for Jews and Gentiles in Romans 9-11, concludes by saying:
Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!
“For who has known the mind of the Lord,
or who has been his counselor?”
“Or who has given a gift to him
that he might be repaid?”
For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.
But this doctrine of God’s sovereignty over the actions of human beings that we see expressed in this text is not just something we leave in the clouds.
We don’t just praise God for His wisdom and then leave the doctrine in the classroom.
No—it is so practical.
For when we understand how God rules the world, we will see the world rightly.
We see that God planned the suffering of Christ, so it is not hard to imagine that God will work good from the suffering of the church.
That keeps us from frantic panic over opposition.
When we read the Bible and we become convinced that God is in control and mocks the conspiracies of the world, we will stop praying like frantic people and we will start praying like faithful people.
Christ is not frantic. And if we would reflect the Lamb who stands on Zion, we should not be frantic.
He is faithful in character. And prayers born from His Word will not be frantic, but faithful.
2. Prayer born from the Word sees the world rightly (v. 25-28).
2. Prayer born from the Word sees the world rightly (v. 25-28).
This is why it is so important to submit your clock to God and give time to the Word of the Lord.
Because your worldview is being shaped with every word you take into your heart.
A lot of people don’t think about that.
It is just like food.
If I eat nothing but fruit for the rest of my life, my body will reflect that.
If I eat nothing but grilled chicken and raw eggs for the rest of my life, my body will reflect that.
If I eat nothing but beef jerky and jelly beans for the rest of my life, my body will reflect that.
Well if you listen to nothing but angry political commentary all day, what do you think will be the state of your heart?
If you scroll Facebook and inundate yourself for 2 and 1/2 hours (the average amount of time an American spends on social media each day) with pictures of dogs and food or you spend hours watching Reels on Instagram, 99% of which have absolutely zero eternal value, what do you think will be the state of your heart?
If we listen to nothing but podcasts about movies and sports and media, what do you think will be the state of your heart?
See, God MADE your heart to believe His Word.
He DESIGNED the human heart to hear His Word, believe His Word and love Him through obeying His Word.
Do you know why people are so eager to find an ideology to grab on to? To find a talking head to tell them what to believe? To find a book and make it their own personal Holy Bible?
Because God made their hearts to be knitted to His Word, but in their sin and lostness they are knitting their hearts to other messages and messengers.
Brother and sister, it should not be this way for you.
You know better.
Where do you go to be taught as a child of God?
Where do you go for your rebuke when your soul is feisty?
Where do you go for your correction when your understanding of the world and your reaction to the world has become un-Christlike?
Where do you go to be trained in righteousness?
Christian—you know.
All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
Your favorite news commentator will not make you complete.
The Office will not make you complete.
Social media influencers won’t make you complete.
That fantasy football podcast won’t make you complete
I’m not telling you lock yourself in a room and do nothing but read the Bible and pray all day.
I am telling you to at least do that for thirty minutes.
Brother or sister—Jesus grieves how you have ignored Him.
He grieves how worried and frantic you have become in this world.
How scared you are of the enemies of truth.
How unsettled you are and how you lack peace over earthly matters.
But He is not disappointed in you.
He waits to meet with you.
He waits for you to take your hardened clay and come to Him.
He will make it soft and moldable again.
And He will form you into a picture of Him.
Will you read your Bible tomorrow?
Will you see the world the way He tells you to?
Will you obey Him in it?
Will you stop living frantically, and pray faithfully?
Will you lay your heart bare before His Word and then pray to Him with the faith that comes from its hearing?
Will you meet with God tonight before you even go to bed?
And then ask Him to now allow the parenthesis of sleep to break the communion you have with Him.
And then when you wake, you bear down upon the throne of grace after bearing down upon the Word of truth.
These early Christians see the world rightly because they read the Word rightly. Their prayers come from it.
They aren’t frantic.
They are faithfully trusting the Lord.
And that brings us to our final teaching point...
TRUSTING GOD RIGHTLY (v. 29-30)
TRUSTING GOD RIGHTLY (v. 29-30)
3. Prayer born from the Word trusts God rightly (v. 29-30).
3. Prayer born from the Word trusts God rightly (v. 29-30).
If you look at verses 29-30, notice what they don’t do.
They ask the Lord to look upon the threats
They ask for a continued boldness to witness to the truth of the Gospel
They assume God will continue to stretch out His hand and confirm that Gospel witness with signs and wonders performed in the name of Christ.
But not once do they ask for the persecution to relent.
They might keep getting persecuted, but they aren’t so concerned with their comfort or safety.
They are only concerned about the Gospel witness continuing to advance.
But while they may not be asking for the persecution to relent, if you look, you will see that there is a sense in which they asking God to uphold his Word.
It goes back to their address of God as the Master of Servants. The Sovereign Lord.
If He watched over David and brought His purposes to pass through him for the glory of Christ...
If He watched over His Son and brought His purposes to pass through Him for the sake of the Kingdom...
Then won’t He watch over the church—the Body of Christ— and ensure that His servants would be able to do the work He called them to do for the Kingdom and for His glory?
In quoting Psalm 2, they are not making a statement about how the Lord rules the world, but about how they trust Him to rule it.
This is what we are doing when we pray God’s Word back to Him. We are saying to Him, “You said this, and I trust You to keep your Word.”
We’ve seen the early church praying this way.
We also see Daniel do it as he reads Jeremiah in Babylon.
In the first year of Darius the son of Ahasuerus, by descent a Mede, who was made king over the realm of the Chaldeans— in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, perceived in the books the number of years that, according to the word of the Lord to Jeremiah the prophet, must pass before the end of the desolations of Jerusalem, namely, seventy years.
Then I turned my face to the Lord God, seeking him by prayer and pleas for mercy with fasting and sackcloth and ashes.
Great voices from the church encourage us along these lines as well:
Turn the Bible into prayer.
Robert Murray M’cheyne
Prayer is nothing but the promise reversed or God’s Word formed into an argument, and retorted by faith upon God again.
William Gurnall
In His sovereignty, God has bound Himself by the promises He has made to His church. If Christians would be effective, they must show God His own handwriting in prayer.
Joel Beeke
Read your Bible. Believe the promises. Then bring them before the throne of God and say, “Lord, in your grace You said this us. Now Father, in your grace, bring it to pass.”
This is not us making demands of God or holding Him to the fine print of the contract.
This is us trusting that God keeps His Word.
God doesn’t need us to remind Him to keep His Word.
But in prayer, we are telling Him that we believe He will.
ILLUSTRATION
ILLUSTRATION
It is like a little boy who comes to his father and says, “Dad—do you remember when you said you would get us donuts next time the hot light is on?”
And his dad says, “Yes.”
And the boy says, “Can we go see if the hot light is on?”
If that is a good father, he is eager to keep that promise.
God is a good Father.
You should turn every one His commitments to you into a prayer of commitment back to Him.
CONCLUSION
CONCLUSION
These types of prayers...
The ones that are the chief exercise of a faith born from the Word of God...
The one that address God rightly
That see the world rightly
That trust God rightly
These sorts of prayers are effective.
You see in verse 31 that the place they are in is shaken and they are filled with the Spirit and they continue to speak in boldness.
They ask for boldness—they are given boldness.
They make a request of God and God answers their request.
We know our answers to prayer are not always this way.
Sometimes they are small answers that we miss and weeks later we look back and go, “Oh. He already took care of it.”
Sometimes the room shakes.
Last week I was in my garage starting my Saturday, reading Ezra 1. I had no intention of leaving the house.
But I said to God, “I want to do something for You today though. Even though I plan to stay here all day, I’d like to answer your call like .”
An hour later I had two Jehovah’s Witnesses show up at my door for the first time in my decade of living in the parsonage.
Open the Word. Pray it back to Him.
There are diamonds of glory in those hills, waiting for your mining.
Bring His diamonds to His throne and watch Him beautify your life and your church with His grace.