Emmanuel Baptist Church of Nipawin Sermons

We’ve been hearing much in recent weeks about different aspects of the Christian life—marriage and spiritual warfare and prayer—and how these aspects of the Christian life are impacted by our understanding of the big story.

Today we come to perhaps the biggest question of all: what is the purpose for the Christian life in the first place? Why is there such a thing as the Christian life? Why are we here right now? What is the reason for this stage in the biggest story ever told, and what is the part that we’re supposed to play in it?

The answer to those questions is that the church has a mission. We’re not just here passing time; we’re here because we have a job to do. And that job, that mission, is to bring glory to God by proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ to, and making disciples of, all nations. In other words, that passage we just read from Matthew 28. The Great Commission is not a side project for some Christians to engage in. It is in fact the mission which all of us have a part to play in fulfilling.

The Mission in the Old Testament

Now as we begin to explore these things, let’s remind ourselves that this mission did not come from nowhere. As we’ve walked through Scripture this year we’ve seen that God’s concern has always been global. God commanded Adam and Eve and then Noah after them to fill the earth and subdue it. And God revealed His concern for all the peoples of the earth when He made His covenant with Abraham, promising that “in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed” (Genesis 22:18).

Abraham was chosen and blessed for the sake of the nations. This global mission was fulfilled partially in God’s covenant with Israel. At the foot of Mt. Sinai He told them, “Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:5–6).

Israel was to be a nation of royal priests, representing God to the nations. That’s the reason for the patch of land they were given, which was right at the crossroads of the major superpowers of the ancient world. People were passing through there constantly for trade and communication.

And so Israel was on display for all the nations to see. Everyone saw them. And their mission was to obey God and enjoy His blessing so that the nations around them would see and be drawn to become worshippers of God themselves.

This global mission is celebrated several times in the Psalms. Just listen to these words from Psalm 96:

“Oh sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth! Sing to the Lord, bless his name; tell of his salvation from day to day. Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all the peoples! For great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; he is to be feared above all gods. For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols, but the Lord made the heavens. Splendor and majesty are before him; strength and beauty are in his sanctuary. Ascribe to the Lord, O families of the peoples, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength! Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name; bring an offering, and come into his courts! Worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness; tremble before him, all the earth! Say among the nations, ‘The Lord reigns! Yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved; he will judge the peoples with equity’” (Psalm 96:1–10).

Or think about Psalm 67, which we read this morning and sang together in that new song. Did you notice how verse 1 & 2 connect together? Verse 1 comes right out of the blessing that the priests would speak to the people. “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you” (Numbers 6:24–25). These words sum up all of God’s covenant blessings for them.

And what was the point of this blessing? Why was God blessing them? Verse 2: “that your way may be known on earth, your saving power among all nations. Let the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you!” (Psalm 67:2–3).

Those aren’t just nice religious sentiments that don’t really mean anything. Nothing in the Bible is. This is articulating the truth at the heart of God’s purpose in the world. Israel’s mission was to glorify God so that real people from all nations would praise their God. And we know that many times, this happened—with Rahab and Ruth and the Queen of Sheba and Naaman the Syrian. 

And yet, for the most part, Israel tended to ignore this mission. Like we heard last week in Ezekiel, instead of glorifying God among the nations they profaned His name among the nations. And so God promised a New Covenant in which all of His promises would be fulfilled and His glory would be vindicated in all the world.

Christ, the Offspring of Abraham

And so we come to Jesus, High Priest of the New Covenant and promised Offspring of Abraham who brings blessing to the nations. And like we saw back in December, the blessing that He brings is the blessing of the gospel. The blessing of being justified by faith and adopted into God’s family. The blessing of the Holy Spirit coming to us through the death and resurrection of Jesus. These are the blessings that He brings.

Galatians 3:14 says that Jesus died “so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.”

Now this verse reminds us of something important: the blessings of Jesus don’t flow to the nations automatically. People need to receive these blessings through faith. Which means that the nations need to hear about Jesus and believe in Him to experience these promised blessings.

Like Romans 10 says, “…there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For ‘everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’ How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent?” (Romans 10:12–15). 

The Great Commission

If the nations are going to be blessed in Jesus, then they need to be told about Him. And so that’s why, shortly before ascending into heaven, Jesus stood on a mountainside in Galilee and said to His disciples, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:18–20). 

There’s three important things we need to notice about these words of Christ called the Great Commission. 

1) First, in the old covenants, God gave Israel some land at the crossroads of the world and invited the nations to come and see. But in the New Covenant, Jesus sends us out to go and tell.

2) Second, we need to notice that this phrase “all nations” is a direct quotation from Genesis 22:18, where God promised Abraham that “in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.” It’s the identical phrase in the Greek versions. And so the Great Commission is the way that the promises to Abraham get fulfilled. The nations of the earth are blessed in Jesus when we go and make disciples of them.

3) Third, this word “nations” does not refer to political nations, like Canada and Ukraine and Zimbabwe. The word is ἔθνη, and a different way to translate it would be “peoples.” “Make disciples of all peoples.” Revelation 5:9 says that Jesus “ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.” That rounds out the meaning of “nation” a little better. This isn’t talking about lines on a border but about language groups and people groups.

And when we clarify this, we realize that the Great Commission hasn’t been finished yet. There are about 6,500-6,900 language groups in the world. And right now, it’s estimated that about 2,500 of those language groups have no access to the gospel in their language. There’s other ways of defining people groups puts the number of unreached people groups at over 7,000. And of those 7,000, over 3,000 are unengaged—in other words, it’s a whole distinct nation of people with no missionaries attempting to connect with them.

And this is the unfinished task before us. This is our mission at our stage in the story. This is why this stage in the story even exists. Because there is a 4,000 year old promise waiting to be fulfilled, and the risen Christ has told us to go.

And if this is true, then I think you will agree with me that reaching the unreached peoples of the earth with the good news of Jesus is not just something the church happens to do. It is the whole reason we exist. It is a task of the highest stakes and the greatest rewards and the utmost urgency.

And all I’m really going to do in the rest of this message is ask you two questions: do you believe that this is true? And if so, what are you going to do about it?

Do You Believe This Is True?

Let’s begin with that first question. Do you really believe that all of this is true? Do you believe that the purpose for the creation of the world and the purpose for your life are one and the same: the glory of God? Do you believe that you are alive at this moment to make God look great?

Do you believe that all these stories we’ve been hearing about are real? Do you believe there was a real man named Abraham who wandered around the Middle East 4,000 years ago, and that the Creator of the Universe really met with him and promised him that all nations would be blessed through his offspring?

Do you believe that this offspring did come—a real Jewish man named Jesus, who really walked around the Middle East 2,000 years ago, and who really was executed by the Romans on a hill called Golgotha?

And do you believe that this Jewish man was the Son of God Himself, and that as He died He was paying for the sins of His people from every nation on earth? That He was literally buying people for God like Revelation 5:9 says?

Do you believe that this Jesus walked out of His grave three days later? Do you believe that God has made Him both Lord and Christ, and He been given all authority in Heaven and on Earth? That all the peoples of earth owe Him their allegiance? That He has authority over kings and prime ministers and premiers and mayors? That all authority here in Nipawin, in every civic dealing and in every business and behind every closed door of every home, all authority rightly belongs to Him?

Do you really believe that this Lord Jesus Christ is alive today, and He is really going to come back like He promised? That there is really going to be a day when the trumpet really sounds and He really rides across the skies on a horse and every eye of every skeptic and sinner is going to see Him?

And do you believe that Jesus was telling the truth when He told his disciples that “this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come” (Matthew 24:14)?

Do you really believe those words we sang earlier—that Christ must have the prize for which He died, an inheritance of nations?

Do you believe that?

What Are You Going to Do About It?

Now it’s time for my second question. If you believe all this is true, then what are you going to do about it?

What are you going to do about it?

Because we have to do something about it. If we believe it, then we must act.

So what are you going to do about it?

Some of you have an answer to that question already. Some of you are working on your answer to that question already. I praise God for that. 

But let me suggest the answer that many people should have to this question. “What am I going to do about it? I’ll go. I’ll go, just like Jesus said. I’ll pack up my things and move to another part of the world, and bring the gospel to people who don’t have access to the gospel. I will actually go.”

That is the answer that many people should have to this question. That is the answer that I’ve been praying numbers of you in this room would have to this question. That you would actually go.

You don’t need to be a special kind of person to be a missionary. I thought that way for years. I thought that the Great Commission didn’t apply to most people. Most of us just get to carry on with life as normal and die in the country we were born and leave this Great Commission work to the missionaries.

Because missionaries are a completely different breed of human, a set of highly spiritual super Christians. You know you’re a missionary because at some point you received a supernatural, unmistakable call from God, and at that moment He gave you the special ability to live off of $500 a month and to write cheery email newsletters.

And if you are one of those really special people, then the Great Commission applies to you and you should go be a missionary. But if you’re not one of those people, if God hasn’t personally descended from on high to invite you to be a missionary, then the Great Commission really doesn’t apply to you, and you can just carry on with your life as normal.

And like I said, I kind of grew up with this idea and just assumed it to be true. But it’s not. It’s not true.

Missionaries are not a special kind of Christian. I know this by experience. I’ve spent a lot of time with a lot of different missionaries over the years. Missionaries are profoundly normal, weak people, just like the rest of us. They are just ordinary Christians who said “ok” when Jesus said “go.” And we know this biblically. Who did Jesus choose to be his apostles? Fishermen. A government employee. Normal guys.

Maybe a couple of hundred years ago, when you had to ride on a boat for three months and there were no Malaria pills, and missionaries needed to basically be explorers, maybe then you had to be a special kind of person to actually go. But today, most of that does not apply. Anybody can buy a plane ticket and be almost anywhere in the world by the next day.

And in today’s global economy, it’s never been easier to go. Anybody with a trade or a marketable skill can go almost anywhere in the world and just set up shop. If you’re a computer tech or a car mechanic you can go be a computer tech or car mechanic in some city where people don’t have access to the gospel. You don’t even need to raise support. You just do your job and become a part of the community and get to know people and tell them about Jesus.

Almost anybody can be a missionary. I know that in talks like this the young people are often targeted. And that’s good: you are making major life decisions, and so often in the past it’s students whom God has used in missions. So kids and high schoolers and 20-somethings, I’m talking to you this morning. 

But I also know people who moved to Thailand when their children were in high school. I’ve heard of many couples who have taken retirement from their first careers and shooed their adult children out of the house and are going to unreached peoples as second-career missionaries. 

There are so many reasons why you should not count yourself out.

And don’t wait for God to “call” you. That’s another idea that’s not in the Bible. Nowhere does Scripture say “wait for a second personal invitation from God before you obey the Great Commission.” Jesus already called us to go right here in Matthew 28. And we need to obey.

So yes, I am saying that lots and lots of ordinary Christians—including some of you in this very room—need to obey Jesus by going to unreached peoples.

“Take Up His Cross”

Now I know that this sounds scary. It sounds terrifying. It’s one thing to be excited about missions as long as it’s someone else’s job. But really, me? This just sounds too radical. And maybe you’re tempted to dismiss what I’m saying this morning for that reason.

But I would remind you of the words of Christ: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 16:24–25). Being a Christian, by definition, means that we are willing to do absolutely anything King Jesus asks us to do, up to and including death.

Because that’s what “take up your cross” means. People took up their cross when they were going to die on that cross. Jesus invites us to die with him. And many Christians throughout history have done this literally—literally died on literal crosses for the sake of Jesus.

So if you have signed up for that—if you are willing for that—then moving across the world is no big deal. Because to be a Christian is, by definition, to be willing to do anything for Jesus.

And we should have more than willingness. If we really understand the glory of Jesus and the truth of Scripture and if we really believe everything we’ve heard this morning, then our default position should be a desire to go serve on the front lines. Every follower of King Jesus should want to do as much as they can to finish the mission. That should be what our hearts are drawn to.

So the question is not “has God called me to be a missionary?” The question is, “how can I play my part in the mission? What can I do to be a part of finishing the task?” The question is not “Should I go?” The question is, “Why should I not go to the front lines? Why not me?”

Not Everyone Should Go

Now I want to acknowledge this morning that there’s some really good answers to that question “why should I not go?” Factors like age and health might make it impossible.

And also, we need lots of good Christians here in Canada. We need people here to serve and represent Jesus in our homes and neighbourhoods and workplaces and in civic life and in ministries and Bible camps and all of the good work that needs to be done here on the home front.

And we also need people to earn good incomes so that we can support those on the front lines. If Emmanuel Baptist Church is going to send out missionaries at the rate that we are supposed to, we will need lots of generous givers who reject materialism and free up significant portions of their incomes to support those on the front lines.

But please don’t think “Whew! He took the pressure off. Yay, I get to stay with a clear conscience.” Because I really believe we each need to ask the question “why not me?” We each need to ask the question, “Where I can I be most strategic for the cause of Christ?” And each of us must be willing to go. 

If you’re not willing to go, if you think that the Great Commission is just someone else’s job, and if you think that staying put is your right, then it will just be too easy for you to settle in to a nice, comfortable North American life full to the brim with hobbies and entertainment and luxury.

You will not be effective at staying until you are willing to go. And if you’re willing to go, you won’t stay by default. You’ll be staying on purpose. Strategic staying. You’ll stay because you believe that staying is the way that you can best contribute to the mission. Like the citizens of Canada and the United States during the great wars, who couldn’t go serve in the trenches, but would have if they could, and so they played their part in the great conflict, adopting a wartime lifestyle, rationing food and gas and trimming their lifestyles and shaping their whole existence to serve those on the front lines.

Conclusion

So to sum it all up, the question I beg each of you to ask this morning is “Where and how can I be most effective for the cause of Christ? Given who I am, given how the Lord made me, the way he’s equipped me and shaped me, where can I serve most effectively and strategically? How can I do as much as I can to finish the task of reaching the nations with the gospel?”

And I pray that as you ask this question, numbers of you to say “Here am I. Send me. I will go.”

We’ve been hearing much in recent weeks about different aspects of the Christian life—marriage and spiritual warfare and prayer—and how these aspects of the Christian life are impacted by our understanding of the big story.

Today we come to perhaps the biggest question of all: what is the purpose for the Christian life in the first place? Why is there such a thing as the Christian life? Why are we here right now? What is the reason for this stage in the biggest story ever told, and what is the part that we’re supposed to play in it?

The answer to those questions is that the church has a mission. We’re not just here passing time; we’re here because we have a job to do. And that job, that mission, is to bring glory to God by proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ to, and making disciples of, all nations. In other words, that passage we just read from Matthew 28. The Great Commission is not a side project for some Christians to engage in. It is in fact the mission which all of us have a part to play in fulfilling.

The Mission in the Old Testament

Now as we begin to explore these things, let’s remind ourselves that this mission did not come from nowhere. As we’ve walked through Scripture this year we’ve seen that God’s concern has always been global. God commanded Adam and Eve and then Noah after them to fill the earth and subdue it. And God revealed His concern for all the peoples of the earth when He made His covenant with Abraham, promising that “in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed” (Genesis 22:18).

Abraham was chosen and blessed for the sake of the nations. This global mission was fulfilled partially in God’s covenant with Israel. At the foot of Mt. Sinai He told them, “Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:5–6).

Israel was to be a nation of royal priests, representing God to the nations. That’s the reason for the patch of land they were given, which was right at the crossroads of the major superpowers of the ancient world. People were passing through there constantly for trade and communication.

And so Israel was on display for all the nations to see. Everyone saw them. And their mission was to obey God and enjoy His blessing so that the nations around them would see and be drawn to become worshippers of God themselves.

This global mission is celebrated several times in the Psalms. Just listen to these words from Psalm 96:

“Oh sing to the LORD a new song; sing to the LORD, all the earth! Sing to the LORD, bless his name; tell of his salvation from day to day. Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all the peoples! For great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised; he is to be feared above all gods. For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols, but the LORD made the heavens. Splendor and majesty are before him; strength and beauty are in his sanctuary. Ascribe to the LORD, O families of the peoples, ascribe to the LORD glory and strength! Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name; bring an offering, and come into his courts! Worship the LORD in the splendor of holiness; tremble before him, all the earth! Say among the nations, ‘The LORD reigns! Yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved; he will judge the peoples with equity’” (Psalm 96:1–10).

Or think about Psalm 67, which we read this morning and sang together in that new song. Did you notice how verse 1 & 2 connect together? Verse 1 comes right out of the blessing that the priests would speak to the people. “The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you” (Numbers 6:24–25). These words sum up all of God’s covenant blessings for them.

And what was the point of this blessing? Why was God blessing them? Verse 2: “that your way may be known on earth, your saving power among all nations. Let the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you!” (Psalm 67:2–3).

Those aren’t just nice religious sentiments that don’t really mean anything. Nothing in the Bible is. This is articulating the truth at the heart of God’s purpose in the world. Israel’s mission was to glorify God so that real people from all nations would praise their God. And we know that many times, this happened—with Rahab and Ruth and the Queen of Sheba and Naaman the Syrian. 

And yet, for the most part, Israel tended to ignore this mission. Like we heard last week in Ezekiel, instead of glorifying God among the nations they profaned His name among the nations. And so God promised a New Covenant in which all of His promises would be fulfilled and His glory would be vindicated in all the world.

Christ, the Offspring of Abraham

And so we come to Jesus, High Priest of the New Covenant and promised Offspring of Abraham who brings blessing to the nations. And like we saw back in December, the blessing that He brings is the blessing of the gospel. The blessing of being justified by faith and adopted into God’s family. The blessing of the Holy Spirit coming to us through the death and resurrection of Jesus. These are the blessings that He brings.

Galatians 3:14 says that Jesus died “so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.”

Now this verse reminds us of something important: the blessings of Jesus don’t flow to the nations automatically. People need to receive these blessings through faith. Which means that the nations need to hear about Jesus and believe in Him to experience these promised blessings.

Like Romans 10 says, “…there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For ‘everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’ How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent?” (Romans 10:12–15). 

The Great Commission

If the nations are going to be blessed in Jesus, then they need to be told about Him. And so that’s why, shortly before ascending into heaven, Jesus stood on a mountainside in Galilee and said to His disciples, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:18–20). 

There’s three important things we need to notice about these words of Christ called the Great Commission. 

1) First, in the old covenants, God gave Israel some land at the crossroads of the world and invited the nations to come and see. But in the New Covenant, Jesus sends us out to go and tell.

2) Second, we need to notice that this phrase “all nations” is a direct quotation from Genesis 22:18, where God promised Abraham that “in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.” It’s the identical phrase in the Greek versions. And so the Great Commission is the way that the promises to Abraham get fulfilled. The nations of the earth are blessed in Jesus when we go and make disciples of them.

3) Third, this word “nations” does not refer to political nations, like Canada and Ukraine and Zimbabwe. The word is ἔθνη, and a different way to translate it would be “peoples.” “Make disciples of all peoples.” Revelation 5:9 says that Jesus “ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.” That rounds out the meaning of “nation” a little better. This isn’t talking about lines on a border but about language groups and people groups.

And when we clarify this, we realize that the Great Commission hasn’t been finished yet. There are about 6,500-6,900 language groups in the world. And right now, it’s estimated that about 2,500 of those language groups have no access to the gospel in their language. There’s other ways of defining people groups puts the number of unreached people groups at over 7,000. And of those 7,000, over 3,000 are unengaged—in other words, it’s a whole distinct nation of people with no missionaries attempting to connect with them.

And this is the unfinished task before us. This is our mission at our stage in the story. This is why this stage in the story even exists. Because there is a 4,000 year old promise waiting to be fulfilled, and the risen Christ has told us to go.

And if this is true, then I think you will agree with me that reaching the unreached peoples of the earth with the good news of Jesus is not just something the church happens to do. It is the whole reason we exist. It is a task of the highest stakes and the greatest rewards and the utmost urgency.

And all I’m really going to do in the rest of this message is ask you two questions: do you believe that this is true? And if so, what are you going to do about it?

Do You Believe This Is True?

Let’s begin with that first question. Do you really believe that all of this is true? Do you believe that the purpose for the creation of the world and the purpose for your life are one and the same: the glory of God? Do you believe that you are alive at this moment to make God look great?

Do you believe that all these stories we’ve been hearing about are real? Do you believe there was a real man named Abraham who wandered around the Middle East 4,000 years ago, and that the Creator of the Universe really met with him and promised him that all nations would be blessed through his offspring?

Do you believe that this offspring did come—a real Jewish man named Jesus, who really walked around the Middle East 2,000 years ago, and who really was executed by the Romans on a hill called Golgotha?

And do you believe that this Jewish man was the Son of God Himself, and that as He died He was paying for the sins of His people from every nation on earth? That He was literally buying people for God like Revelation 5:9 says?

Do you believe that this Jesus walked out of His grave three days later? Do you believe that God has made Him both Lord and Christ, and He been given all authority in Heaven and on Earth? That all the peoples of earth owe Him their allegiance? That He has authority over kings and prime ministers and premiers and mayors? That all authority here in Nipawin, in every civic dealing and in every business and behind every closed door of every home, all authority rightly belongs to Him?

Do you really believe that this Lord Jesus Christ is alive today, and He is really going to come back like He promised? That there is really going to be a day when the trumpet really sounds and He really rides across the skies on a horse and every eye of every skeptic and sinner is going to see Him?

And do you believe that Jesus was telling the truth when He told his disciples that “this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come” (Matthew 24:14)?

Do you really believe those words we sang earlier—that Christ must have the prize for which He died, an inheritance of nations?

Do you believe that?

What Are You Going to Do About It?

Now it’s time for my second question. If you believe all this is true, then what are you going to do about it?

What are you going to do about it?

Because we have to do something about it. If we believe it, then we must act.

So what are you going to do about it?

Some of you have an answer to that question already. Some of you are working on your answer to that question already. I praise God for that. 

But let me suggest the answer that many people should have to this question. “What am I going to do about it? I’ll go. I’ll go, just like Jesus said. I’ll pack up my things and move to another part of the world, and bring the gospel to people who don’t have access to the gospel. I will actually go.”

That is the answer that many people should have to this question. That is the answer that I’ve been praying numbers of you in this room would have to this question. That you would actually go.

You don’t need to be a special kind of person to be a missionary. I thought that way for years. I thought that the Great Commission didn’t apply to most people. Most of us just get to carry on with life as normal and die in the country we were born and leave this Great Commission work to the missionaries.

Because missionaries are a completely different breed of human, a set of highly spiritual super Christians. You know you’re a missionary because at some point you received a supernatural, unmistakable call from God, and at that moment He gave you the special ability to live off of $500 a month and to write cheery email newsletters.

And if you are one of those really special people, then the Great Commission applies to you and you should go be a missionary. But if you’re not one of those people, if God hasn’t personally descended from on high to invite you to be a missionary, then the Great Commission really doesn’t apply to you, and you can just carry on with your life as normal.

And like I said, I kind of grew up with this idea and just assumed it to be true. But it’s not. It’s not true.

Missionaries are not a special kind of Christian. I know this by experience. I’ve spent a lot of time with a lot of different missionaries over the years. Missionaries are profoundly normal, weak people, just like the rest of us. They are just ordinary Christians who said “ok” when Jesus said “go.” And we know this biblically. Who did Jesus choose to be his apostles? Fishermen. A government employee. Normal guys.

Maybe a couple of hundred years ago, when you had to ride on a boat for three months and there were no Malaria pills, and missionaries needed to basically be explorers, maybe then you had to be a special kind of person to actually go. But today, most of that does not apply. Anybody can buy a plane ticket and be almost anywhere in the world by the next day.

And in today’s global economy, it’s never been easier to go. Anybody with a trade or a marketable skill can go almost anywhere in the world and just set up shop. If you’re a computer tech or a car mechanic you can go be a computer tech or car mechanic in some city where people don’t have access to the gospel. You don’t even need to raise support. You just do your job and become a part of the community and get to know people and tell them about Jesus.

Almost anybody can be a missionary. I know that in talks like this the young people are often targeted. And that’s good: you are making major life decisions, and so often in the past it’s students whom God has used in missions. So kids and high schoolers and 20-somethings, I’m talking to you this morning. 

But I also know people who moved to Thailand when their children were in high school. I’ve heard of many couples who have taken retirement from their first careers and shooed their adult children out of the house and are going to unreached peoples as second-career missionaries. 

There are so many reasons why you should not count yourself out.

And don’t wait for God to “call” you. That’s another idea that’s not in the Bible. Nowhere does Scripture say “wait for a second personal invitation from God before you obey the Great Commission.” Jesus already called us to go right here in Matthew 28. And we need to obey.

So yes, I am saying that lots and lots of ordinary Christians—including some of you in this very room—need to obey Jesus by going to unreached peoples.

“Take Up His Cross”

Now I know that this sounds scary. It sounds terrifying. It’s one thing to be excited about missions as long as it’s someone else’s job. But really, me? This just sounds too radical. And maybe you’re tempted to dismiss what I’m saying this morning for that reason.

But I would remind you of the words of Christ: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 16:24–25). Being a Christian, by definition, means that we are willing to do absolutely anything King Jesus asks us to do, up to and including death.

Because that’s what “take up your cross” means. People took up their cross when they were going to die on that cross. Jesus invites us to die with him. And many Christians throughout history have done this literally—literally died on literal crosses for the sake of Jesus.

So if you have signed up for that—if you are willing for that—then moving across the world is no big deal. Because to be a Christian is, by definition, to be willing to do anything for Jesus.

And we should have more than willingness. If we really understand the glory of Jesus and the truth of Scripture and if we really believe everything we’ve heard this morning, then our default position should be a desire to go serve on the front lines. Every follower of King Jesus should want to do as much as they can to finish the mission. That should be what our hearts are drawn to.

So the question is not “has God called me to be a missionary?” The question is, “how can I play my part in the mission? What can I do to be a part of finishing the task?” The question is not “Should I go?” The question is, “Why should I not go to the front lines? Why not me?”

Not Everyone Should Go

Now I want to acknowledge this morning that there’s some really good answers to that question “why should I not go?” Factors like age and health might make it impossible.

And also, we need lots of good Christians here in Canada. We need people here to serve and represent Jesus in our homes and neighbourhoods and workplaces and in civic life and in ministries and Bible camps and all of the good work that needs to be done here on the home front.

And we also need people to earn good incomes so that we can support those on the front lines. If Emmanuel Baptist Church is going to send out missionaries at the rate that we are supposed to, we will need lots of generous givers who reject materialism and free up significant portions of their incomes to support those on the front lines.

But please don’t think “Whew! He took the pressure off. Yay, I get to stay with a clear conscience.” Because I really believe we each need to ask the question “why not me?” We each need to ask the question, “Where I can I be most strategic for the cause of Christ?” And each of us must be willing to go. 

If you’re not willing to go, if you think that the Great Commission is just someone else’s job, and if you think that staying put is your right, then it will just be too easy for you to settle in to a nice, comfortable North American life full to the brim with hobbies and entertainment and luxury.

You will not be effective at staying until you are willing to go. And if you’re willing to go, you won’t stay by default. You’ll be staying on purpose. Strategic staying. You’ll stay because you believe that staying is the way that you can best contribute to the mission. Like the citizens of Canada and the United States during the great wars, who couldn’t go serve in the trenches, but would have if they could, and so they played their part in the great conflict, adopting a wartime lifestyle, rationing food and gas and trimming their lifestyles and shaping their whole existence to serve those on the front lines.

Conclusion

So to sum it all up, the question I beg each of you to ask this morning is “Where and how can I be most effective for the cause of Christ? Given who I am, given how the Lord made me, the way he’s equipped me and shaped me, where can I serve most effectively and strategically? How can I do as much as I can to finish the task of reaching the nations with the gospel?”

And I pray that as you ask this question, numbers of you to say “Here am I. Send me. I will go.”

(Unfortunately, audio for this message was not recorded.)

As we continue to explore our place in the big story of the Bible, today we come to the topic of prayer. In some ways, this message is a continuation of last week, where we considered spiritual warfare from Ephesians 6. And you might remember that after describing all of the armour of God, last week’s passage ended by telling us to be “praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints” (Ephesians 6:18).

Prayer is a major part of spiritual warfare and thus a major way we participate in the work of God in the world today. And so today we’re going to be digging in to what prayer is and how prayer works and how the big story of the Bible impacts why and how we pray.

Before we go any further, I just want to say that I know what happens when a pastor gets up into the pulpit and says that he’s preaching about prayer. I know that feeling of guilt that may have already set in for some of you. Because you know that God tells you to pray, and you probably feel guilty for not doing it enough.

And so a message on prayer can feel like a trip to the dentist. “Yes, I know I’m supposed to floss. Yes, I know it’s important. No, I don’t want gingivitis. Yes, I’ll try to do a better job of it this year.”

And after a while, prayer guilt can do one of two things. It can cause you to just tune out anything you hear about prayer. Like when your dentist tells you to floss, you nod your head, but you’re not really listening because you’ve tried doing that and it just doesn’t work for you.

Another dynamic I’ve seen is that prayer guilt can also make you vulnerable to unbiblical teaching on prayer. I’ve been in settings where someone who obviously prays a lot is saying or teaching something about prayer which is totally unbiblical. 

And nobody says anything. They just nod, taking it all in. Because if that guy prays for five hours before I even get out of bed, who am I to criticize his theology of prayer? At least, that’s the thought.

And it’s a vicious cycle. Because now you’ve picked up some bad theology of prayer on top of your prayer guilt, and now you’re going to be even less likely to pray the way that God intends.

Now maybe none of that is true for you. Maybe you’ve never been exposed to unbiblical teaching on prayer. And maybe you don’t feel tempted to tune out my sermon this morning. But I suspect it is quite likely that many of us in this room today are not fully satisfied with how and how much we pray.

And that’s why I’m so excited to dig in to the big story of the Bible once again today. Because I believe that the big story of the Bible can completely transform how we understand prayer, and more importantly, how and when and how often we pray. And so, let’s dig in together.

“The Day Prayer Began”

We’re going to begin by asking a question: where does prayer begin in the Bible? Where do we find the first example of praying? In the early chapters of Genesis, we read about Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel communicating with God. But none of that is described in the language of prayer, and none of that really fits what we see concerning prayer in the rest of the Bible. 

The first place where we encounter prayer for the first time is in the first passage we read together today. “At that time people began to call upon the name of the Lord” (Genesis 4:26). 

Let’s explore the background of this passage a little bit. We know that in Genesis 3, Adam and Eve fell into sin and experienced God’s curse. And in the middle of those words of curse, God made a promise that an offspring would come from Eve who would crush the head of the serpent who had tempted and deceived them.

And if you put yourself in Adam and Eve’s shoes, it’s not hard to see that they would have been expecting one of their own children to be this serpent-crusher. They would have had little clue that this offspring was a long way off.

And so when Eve bore Cain, she said, “I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord” (Genesis 4:1). She would have been hoping that he or maybe his brother was the One. But then all of their hopes are dashed. Abel is murdered by Cain, who is cursed by God and sent away into exile. And so Adam and Eve would have been asking, “where’s the offspring God promised?”

Keep that question in mind as you read Genesis 4:25. Because they have another son, and Eve says, “God has appointed for me another offspring instead of Abel.”

So maybe Seth is the promised offspring! Maybe he is serpent-crusher. But what does verse 26 tell us about Seth? Nothing really. He has a son of his own, and that’s it.

And we should recognize that if we were reading this story for the first time and were following things closely, then verse 26 would be a major letdown. Seth didn’t turn out to be the serpent-crusher after all. And neither did his son, Enosh. They were just normal people.

And so what would have been the big question on people’s hearts, as they dealt with this disappointment? “God, when are you going to send the promised offspring? When will the serpent-crusher come? God, when are you going to keep your promise?”

And so we read, “At that time people began to call upon the name of the Lord” (Genesis 4:26). Do you get the picture? After being let down by Cain and Abel and Seth, people start to pray. They call on God, asking Him to keep His promises and do what He promised to do.

Gary Williams, in his excellent book entitled “Calling on the Name of the Lord,” describes Genesis 4:26 as “the day prayer began.”

And what we should recognize is that from this point forward, prayer in the Bible follows this pattern. Almost every time without exception, this is what biblical prayer is: asking God to do what He has promised. Calling on the Lord to do something He has already told us He is going to do.

Prayer in the Old Testament

Let me give you some examples. In Genesis 24, Abraham’s servant has travelled to Mesopotamia to find a wife for Isaac, which he needs if God’s promise of making Abraham a great nation are going to be fulfilled. And Genesis 24:12 shows him praying, “O Lord, God of my master Abraham, please grant me success today and show steadfast love to my master Abraham” (Genesis 24:11–12). Isaac needing a wife, steadfast love to Abraham—these are all things God had already promised. And so the servant prays and asks God to do them.

We hear it in 1 Samuel 12, when the people are fearful of God’s judgement, and they ask Samuel to pray for them. And Samuel tells them not to be afraid, “For the Lord will not forsake his people, for his great name’s sake, because it has pleased the Lord to make you a people for himself. Moreover, as for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord by ceasing to pray for you” (1 Samuel 12:22–23). God has promised not to forsake you, and so I’m going to pray.

And we see this same thing over and over in the pages of Scripture. One more example from the Old Testament: Daniel chapter 9. This chapter begins with Daniel in exile, reading the prophet Jeremiah, and discovering that God had promised to bring His people back from exile after 70 years.

And Daniel realizes that this is soon. And so what does he do? He prays, asking God to keep His promises. “Now therefore, O our God, listen to the prayer of your servant and to his pleas for mercy, and for your own sake, O Lord, make your face to shine upon your sanctuary, which is desolate… O Lord, hear; O Lord, forgive. O Lord, pay attention and act. Delay not, for your own sake, O my God, because your city and your people are called by your name”” (Daniel 9:17,19). 

This prayer is moving and dramatic but it’s also profoundly simple. Daniel is doing what Genesis 4:26 described. He is calling on the name of the Lord, asking Him to do what He promised. 

This is just the briefest of surveys. I wish we could spend all morning looking at more and more examples. But if we did that, we’d just see more of the wonderful same. People asking God to unfold His plan of redemption and keep His covenant promises.

The Lord’s Prayer

We are going to look at one more Biblical prayer today, and this is the prayer we read together earlier (Matthew 6:9-13), what we often call the Lord’s prayer. Given to us by the Serpent-Crusher Himself, the One that people had been praying for since Genesis 4. In this passage, Jesus tells us how to pray and what to pray for. And what He tells us to pray for is that God would continue to unfold His plan of redemption and continue to keep all of His covenant promises.

And to see this more clearly, we’re going to walk through this prayer, line by line, and consider what Jesus is telling us to pray for, and how this prayer connects up to God’s promises and big plan of redemption.

“Hallowed Be Your Name”

Let’s begin by considering the first thing Jesus tells us to pray for. “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.”

Jesus tells us to pray that God’s name would be esteemed and honoured and kept holy.

God’s name is an expression of Himself. When Genesis 4:26 speaks about “calling on the name of the Lord,” it means calling on the Lord Himself. So here, Jesus tells us to pray for God Himself to be publicly honoured and glorified.

This request is based on a promise from Ezekiel 36. Ezekiel 36 is one of the central passages where God promised the New Covenant.

In that chapter, God told His people that He was going to redeem them and forgive their sin, and He said this in verses 22-23:

“Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord GOD: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came. And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, and which you have profaned among them. And the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Lord GOD, when through you I vindicate my holiness before their eyes” (Ezekiel 36:22–23).

This is what the New Covenant is all about: God upholding the holiness of His name. God’s glory. 

And God’s glory isn’t just what the New Covenant is about. It’s what everything is about. We saw this back in September: the whole plan of redemption, this biggest story ever told, is all about God bringing glory to Himself through His son Jesus (John 17:24).

And that’s the first thing Jesus tells us to pray for. For God’s name to be kept holy. For God to be glorified. For this great purpose and great promise to be fulfilled.

“Your Kingdom Come”

Next, Jesus tells us to pray for God’s kingdom to come. God’s kingdom is another idea we’ve seen a lot in this series. From Adam and Eve onwards, God’s plan has been to rule over planet earth as king. And this idea came to the forefront in God’s covenant with David, where He promised he would have a son who would reign over the world as God’s representative forever. 

And that’s why when Jesus came, He said, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 4:17). Jesus was the Son of David. And His kingdom didn’t come all at once, like people expected. His kingdom came wherever people believed in Him and bowed their knees to Him. If you know Jesus as your Lord, then you are a part of the kingdom. It has come to you.

So this prayer—“your kingdom come”—is a prayer for the spread of the gospel. It’s a prayer for more and more people to bend their knees to the Son of David. And yet is it not also a prayer for the fullness of the kingdom to come—when Jesus returns, and all of His enemies are put under His feet, and He reigns forever and ever with no contest?

So Jesus tells us to pray for the spread of the gospel and for His return.

“Your Will Be Done, on Earth as It Is in Heaven”

In the third request of this prayer, Jesus tells us to pray that God’s will would be done on earth as it is in heaven.

This is a request I misunderstood for many years. Because doesn’t Ephesians 1:11 say that God is the one “who works all things according to the counsel of his will”? Isn’t there a sense in which God’s will is always done?

Yes. God always does what He has decided to do. But the phrase “God’s will” can apply in another sense as well. It can refer to the things that God has told us He wants us to do. We sometimes call this God’s revealed will. The things He’s revealed to us that He wants us to do.

And just think about how this will of God, this revealed will of God, is done in heaven. It’s done perfectly. The angels obey God from the heart. Nobody complains or disobeys. Everyone cheerfully does exactly what God wants them to do.

And Jesus tells us to pray for this to happen here on earth. That people would obey God with the same delight that the angels in heaven do.

And once again, this was one of the great promises of the New Covenant. God promised in Ezekiel 36, “And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules” (Ezekiel 36:26–27).

That’s another way of saying that we will do God’s will on earth the same way it is done in heaven. From changed hearts that delight to honour Him.

And so once again, when we pray this prayer, we’re praying for God to do what He promised by spreading the gospel and causing people to be born again.

And yet this prayer also points us towards the day when Christ returns and makes all His people perfect, and there will be no difference between heaven and earth.

“Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread”

Next, Jesus tells us to ask for our daily bread. And we don’t have to look far to see the promise attached to this, because just a little bit down in Matthew 6, Jesus tells us not to be anxious for what we will eat, because God knows what we need and will provide for us. And He promises, “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (Matthew 6:33). 

God has promised to provide for what we really need. So pray for it.

“Forgive Us Our Debts”

The next request is that God would “forgive us our debts.” Isn’t this one of God’s most precious promises to us—that He will forgive our sin? This is again one of the central promises of the New Covenant. In Jeremiah 31:34, God promised the New Covenant and said, “For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” And doesn’t this promise come to us again in 1 John 1:9? “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

And so once again, Jesus tells us to pray for God to fulfill His great big New Covenant promises.

“Lead Us Not Into Temptation”

Finally, Jesus tells us to pray, “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil” (Matthew 6:13). And there are wonderful promises attending these requests. “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it” (1 Corinthians 10:13). “But the Lord is faithful. He will establish you and guard you against the evil one” (2 Thessalonians 3:3).

These are things God has promised to do for us here and now. And they are also things that He will do for us finally and perfectly when Jesus returns. We read in Revelation 21 & 22 how there will be nothing sinful or evil in the New Creation whatsoever. So we pray for God to keep His promises today and ultimately in the New Creation.

Two Questions

Now for the sake of time this morning, we need to stop there. There is so much more we could see. We could trace out prayer across the rest of the New Testament but we’d just see more of the same. Prayer mainly consists in asking God to fulfill His great big covenant promises. Asking God to keep unfolding the great story of redemption. Asking God to do what He’s already told us He’ll do.

Now there’s a question that’s very tempting to ask at this point as we survey all of this truth. And it’s an important question for us to deal with as we figure out how to wrap our heads and hearts around this truth.

The question is: why pray? If prayer is just about asking God to do what He’s already going to do, then what’s the point? Why ask for it if He’s already going to do it?

This question is easy to ask if you have generally assumed that prayer is about telling God what we’d like Him to do. If that’s what prayer is, then we need to pray, because how else is God going to find out what we want Him to do?

But when we discover that  Biblical prayer has its centre of gravity in a totally different place—that it’s mostly about asking God for what He’s already promised—then we can be tempted to ask: “Why pray?”

I see three answers to this question. The first is that we can’t help it. The people in Genesis 4 didn’t need to be told to pray. They just knew what God had promised and they wanted to see it happen and so they called on Him to do it. It’s like when kids ask their parents about supper. They know it’s coming, and so they ask. It’s just what we do.

The second answer is this: God has decided that very often He will keep His promises when we pray for them. God does what He’s promised to do as His people pray.

Jesus taught us this in the parable of the persistent widow, a story he told about a lady who pestered a judge until he heard her case. And Jesus finished that parable up by saying, “And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily” (Luke 18:7–8).

Many times in Scripture God has promised to give justice to His people. And so Jesus tells us to pray for this—to cry out to Him for this justice day and night. And as Luke wrote, the point of that parable is that we “ought always to pray and not lose heart” (Luke 18:1). 

So God has decided that much of the time, He will keep His promises in response to our prayers. And that means that our prayers matter. Our praying plays a part in the biggest story ever told. We play a part in the promises being fulfilled.

There’s a third answer to the question, "why pray?" When we pray for what God has promised, it changes us. It rescues us from selfish and shallow praying. It reshapes our desires and trains us to think and to feel like God. You’ve heard the phrase “prayer changes things,” and one of the main things that prayer changes is the one praying.

Now there’s one more question I want to ask this morning: is it ever okay to ask God for things that we want? Is it ever okay to tell God what’s on our hearts and ask Him to do something about it?

The answer is “yes.” 1 Peter 5:7 tells us to cast all of our anxieties on Him, because He cares for us. So when there are things burdening you, cast them on the Lord. Tell God what’s on your heart and mind. There is a place for this kind of praying.

But we also need to acknowledge that most of the time, according to the Bible, our praying should be bigger than this. Most of the time we should be praying the way Jesus taught us to pray—for the purposes and glory and covenant promises of God.

D.A. Carson said it well: “A great deal of contemporary Christian praying is centred on individual anxieties, needs and preferences, and not on the purposes and promises of God. This is not so much wicked… as horribly imbalanced.”

So yes, tell God what’s on your heart. But be biblically balanced. Spend more time learning from God what’s on His heart, and then asking Him for that. And I think you know how we learn what’s on God’s heart. He’s told us in the pages of His word.

And that’s one of the best ways to put this all into practice. Just do what Daniel did. Read the Bible to find out what God has promised to do, and then pray it back to him. Your Bible reading and your praying will be revolutionized when they are not separated by a thick line, but flow in and out of each other. And I’m going to post some more about this on the blog this week.

Conclusion

But for now, let’s end where we began. Prayer is an act of war. Prayer is a significant way that we partner with God in the work that He’s doing at our place in the story.

That means that prayer warriors are not a special class of Christian. Any time you pray like Jesus taught us to pray, you are making war.

So we’re going to end this morning by singing “O Church, Arise.” And let’s go out of here this week determined to pray big prayers, to pray for the spread of the gospel and the arrival of the kingdom and the glory of God, to pray for all of God’s promises to be fulfilled. Let’s fight the good fight through prayer.

(Unfortunately, audio for this message was not recorded.)

As we continue to explore our place in the big story of the Bible, today we come to the topic of prayer. In some ways, this message is a continuation of last week, where we considered spiritual warfare from Ephesians 6. And you might remember that after describing all of the armour of God, last week’s passage ended by telling us to be “praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints” (Ephesians 6:18).

Prayer is a major part of spiritual warfare and thus a major way we participate in the work of God in the world today. And so today we’re going to be digging in to what prayer is and how prayer works and how the big story of the Bible impacts why and how we pray.

Before we go any further, I just want to say that I know what happens when a pastor gets up into the pulpit and says that he’s preaching about prayer. I know that feeling of guilt that may have already set in for some of you. Because you know that God tells you to pray, and you probably feel guilty for not doing it enough.

And so a message on prayer can feel like a trip to the dentist. “Yes, I know I’m supposed to floss. Yes, I know it’s important. No, I don’t want gingivitis. Yes, I’ll try to do a better job of it this year.”

And after a while, prayer guilt can do one of two things. It can cause you to just tune out anything you hear about prayer. Like when your dentist tells you to floss, you nod your head, but you’re not really listening because you’ve tried doing that and it just doesn’t work for you.

Another dynamic I’ve seen is that prayer guilt can also make you vulnerable to unbiblical teaching on prayer. I’ve been in settings where someone who obviously prays a lot is saying or teaching something about prayer which is totally unbiblical. 

And nobody says anything. They just nod, taking it all in. Because if that guy prays for five hours before I even get out of bed, who am I to criticize his theology of prayer? At least, that’s the thought.

And it’s a vicious cycle. Because now you’ve picked up some bad theology of prayer on top of your prayer guilt, and now you’re going to be even less likely to pray the way that God intends.

Now maybe none of that is true for you. Maybe you’ve never been exposed to unbiblical teaching on prayer. And maybe you don’t feel tempted to tune out my sermon this morning. But I suspect it is quite likely that many of us in this room today are not fully satisfied with how and how much we pray.

And that’s why I’m so excited to dig in to the big story of the Bible once again today. Because I believe that the big story of the Bible can completely transform how we understand prayer, and more importantly, how and when and how often we pray. And so, let’s dig in together.

“The Day Prayer Began”

We’re going to begin by asking a question: where does prayer begin in the Bible? Where do we find the first example of praying? In the early chapters of Genesis, we read about Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel communicating with God. But none of that is described in the language of prayer, and none of that really fits what we see concerning prayer in the rest of the Bible. 

The first place where we encounter prayer for the first time is in the first passage we read together today. “At that time people began to call upon the name of the LORD” (Genesis 4:26). 

Let’s explore the background of this passage a little bit. We know that in Genesis 3, Adam and Eve fell into sin and experienced God’s curse. And in the middle of those words of curse, God made a promise that an offspring would come from Eve who would crush the head of the serpent who had tempted and deceived them.

And if you put yourself in Adam and Eve’s shoes, it’s not hard to see that they would have been expecting one of their own children to be this serpent-crusher. They would have had little clue that this offspring was a long way off.

And so when Eve bore Cain, she said, “I have gotten a man with the help of the LORD” (Genesis 4:1). She would have been hoping that he or maybe his brother was the One. But then all of their hopes are dashed. Abel is murdered by Cain, who is cursed by God and sent away into exile. And so Adam and Eve would have been asking, “where’s the offspring God promised?”

Keep that question in mind as you read Genesis 4:25. Because they have another son, and Eve says, “God has appointed for me another offspring instead of Abel.”

So maybe Seth is the promised offspring! Maybe he is serpent-crusher. But what does verse 26 tell us about Seth? Nothing really. He has a son of his own, and that’s it.

And we should recognize that if we were reading this story for the first time and were following things closely, then verse 26 would be a major letdown. Seth didn’t turn out to be the serpent-crusher after all. And neither did his son, Enosh. They were just normal people.

And so what would have been the big question on people’s hearts, as they dealt with this disappointment? “God, when are you going to send the promised offspring? When will the serpent-crusher come? God, when are you going to keep your promise?”

And so we read, “At that time people began to call upon the name of the LORD” (Genesis 4:26). Do you get the picture? After being let down by Cain and Abel and Seth, people start to pray. They call on God, asking Him to keep His promises and do what He promised to do.

Gary Williams, in his excellent book entitled “Calling on the Name of the Lord,” describes Genesis 4:26 as “the day prayer began.”

And what we should recognize is that from this point forward, prayer in the Bible follows this pattern. Almost every time without exception, this is what biblical prayer is: asking God to do what He has promised. Calling on the Lord to do something He has already told us He is going to do.

Prayer in the Old Testament

Let me give you some examples. In Genesis 24, Abraham’s servant has travelled to Mesopotamia to find a wife for Isaac, which he needs if God’s promise of making Abraham a great nation are going to be fulfilled. And Genesis 24:12 shows him praying, “O LORD, God of my master Abraham, please grant me success today and show steadfast love to my master Abraham” (Genesis 24:11–12). Isaac needing a wife, steadfast love to Abraham—these are all things God had already promised. And so the servant prays and asks God to do them.

We hear it in 1 Samuel 12, when the people are fearful of God’s judgement, and they ask Samuel to pray for them. And Samuel tells them not to be afraid, “For the LORD will not forsake his people, for his great name’s sake, because it has pleased the LORD to make you a people for himself. Moreover, as for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the LORD by ceasing to pray for you” (1 Samuel 12:22–23). God has promised not to forsake you, and so I’m going to pray.

And we see this same thing over and over in the pages of Scripture. One more example from the Old Testament: Daniel chapter 9. This chapter begins with Daniel in exile, reading the prophet Jeremiah, and discovering that God had promised to bring His people back from exile after 70 years.

And Daniel realizes that this is soon. And so what does he do? He prays, asking God to keep His promises. “Now therefore, O our God, listen to the prayer of your servant and to his pleas for mercy, and for your own sake, O Lord, make your face to shine upon your sanctuary, which is desolate… O Lord, hear; O Lord, forgive. O Lord, pay attention and act. Delay not, for your own sake, O my God, because your city and your people are called by your name”” (Daniel 9:17,19). 

This prayer is moving and dramatic but it’s also profoundly simple. Daniel is doing what Genesis 4:26 described. He is calling on the name of the Lord, asking Him to do what He promised. 

This is just the briefest of surveys. I wish we could spend all morning looking at more and more examples. But if we did that, we’d just see more of the wonderful same. People asking God to unfold His plan of redemption and keep His covenant promises.

The Lord’s Prayer

We are going to look at one more Biblical prayer today, and this is the prayer we read together earlier (Matthew 6:9-13), what we often call the Lord’s prayer. Given to us by the Serpent-Crusher Himself, the One that people had been praying for since Genesis 4. In this passage, Jesus tells us how to pray and what to pray for. And what He tells us to pray for is that God would continue to unfold His plan of redemption and continue to keep all of His covenant promises.

And to see this more clearly, we’re going to walk through this prayer, line by line, and consider what Jesus is telling us to pray for, and how this prayer connects up to God’s promises and big plan of redemption.

“Hallowed Be Your Name”

Let’s begin by considering the first thing Jesus tells us to pray for. “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.”

Jesus tells us to pray that God’s name would be esteemed and honoured and kept holy.

God’s name is an expression of Himself. When Genesis 4:26 speaks about “calling on the name of the Lord,” it means calling on the Lord Himself. So here, Jesus tells us to pray for God Himself to be publicly honoured and glorified.

This request is based on a promise from Ezekiel 36. Ezekiel 36 is one of the central passages where God promised the New Covenant.

In that chapter, God told His people that He was going to redeem them and forgive their sin, and He said this in verses 22-23:

“Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord GOD: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came. And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, and which you have profaned among them. And the nations will know that I am the LORD, declares the Lord GOD, when through you I vindicate my holiness before their eyes” (Ezekiel 36:22–23).

This is what the New Covenant is all about: God upholding the holiness of His name. God’s glory. 

And God’s glory isn’t just what the New Covenant is about. It’s what everything is about. We saw this back in September: the whole plan of redemption, this biggest story ever told, is all about God bringing glory to Himself through His son Jesus (John 17:24).

And that’s the first thing Jesus tells us to pray for. For God’s name to be kept holy. For God to be glorified. For this great purpose and great promise to be fulfilled.

“Your Kingdom Come”

Next, Jesus tells us to pray for God’s kingdom to come. God’s kingdom is another idea we’ve seen a lot in this series. From Adam and Eve onwards, God’s plan has been to rule over planet earth as king. And this idea came to the forefront in God’s covenant with David, where He promised he would have a son who would reign over the world as God’s representative forever. 

And that’s why when Jesus came, He said, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 4:17). Jesus was the Son of David. And His kingdom didn’t come all at once, like people expected. His kingdom came wherever people believed in Him and bowed their knees to Him. If you know Jesus as your Lord, then you are a part of the kingdom. It has come to you.

So this prayer—“your kingdom come”—is a prayer for the spread of the gospel. It’s a prayer for more and more people to bend their knees to the Son of David. And yet is it not also a prayer for the fullness of the kingdom to come—when Jesus returns, and all of His enemies are put under His feet, and He reigns forever and ever with no contest?

So Jesus tells us to pray for the spread of the gospel and for His return.

“Your Will Be Done, on Earth as It Is in Heaven”

In the third request of this prayer, Jesus tells us to pray that God’s will would be done on earth as it is in heaven.

This is a request I misunderstood for many years. Because doesn’t Ephesians 1:11 say that God is the one “who works all things according to the counsel of his will”? Isn’t there a sense in which God’s will is always done?

Yes. God always does what He has decided to do. But the phrase “God’s will” can apply in another sense as well. It can refer to the things that God has told us He wants us to do. We sometimes call this God’s revealed will. The things He’s revealed to us that He wants us to do.

And just think about how this will of God, this revealed will of God, is done in heaven. It’s done perfectly. The angels obey God from the heart. Nobody complains or disobeys. Everyone cheerfully does exactly what God wants them to do.

And Jesus tells us to pray for this to happen here on earth. That people would obey God with the same delight that the angels in heaven do.

And once again, this was one of the great promises of the New Covenant. God promised in Ezekiel 36, “And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules” (Ezekiel 36:26–27).

That’s another way of saying that we will do God’s will on earth the same way it is done in heaven. From changed hearts that delight to honour Him.

And so once again, when we pray this prayer, we’re praying for God to do what He promised by spreading the gospel and causing people to be born again.

And yet this prayer also points us towards the day when Christ returns and makes all His people perfect, and there will be no difference between heaven and earth.

“Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread”

Next, Jesus tells us to ask for our daily bread. And we don’t have to look far to see the promise attached to this, because just a little bit down in Matthew 6, Jesus tells us not to be anxious for what we will eat, because God knows what we need and will provide for us. And He promises, “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (Matthew 6:33). 

God has promised to provide for what we really need. So pray for it.

“Forgive Us Our Debts”

The next request is that God would “forgive us our debts.” Isn’t this one of God’s most precious promises to us—that He will forgive our sin? This is again one of the central promises of the New Covenant. In Jeremiah 31:34, God promised the New Covenant and said, “For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” And doesn’t this promise come to us again in 1 John 1:9? “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

And so once again, Jesus tells us to pray for God to fulfill His great big New Covenant promises.

“Lead Us Not Into Temptation”

Finally, Jesus tells us to pray, “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil” (Matthew 6:13). And there are wonderful promises attending these requests. “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it” (1 Corinthians 10:13). “But the Lord is faithful. He will establish you and guard you against the evil one” (2 Thessalonians 3:3).

These are things God has promised to do for us here and now. And they are also things that He will do for us finally and perfectly when Jesus returns. We read in Revelation 21 & 22 how there will be nothing sinful or evil in the New Creation whatsoever. So we pray for God to keep His promises today and ultimately in the New Creation.

Two Questions

Now for the sake of time this morning, we need to stop there. There is so much more we could see. We could trace out prayer across the rest of the New Testament but we’d just see more of the same. Prayer mainly consists in asking God to fulfill His great big covenant promises. Asking God to keep unfolding the great story of redemption. Asking God to do what He’s already told us He’ll do.

Now there’s a question that’s very tempting to ask at this point as we survey all of this truth. And it’s an important question for us to deal with as we figure out how to wrap our heads and hearts around this truth.

The question is: why pray? If prayer is just about asking God to do what He’s already going to do, then what’s the point? Why ask for it if He’s already going to do it?

This question is easy to ask if you have generally assumed that prayer is about telling God what we’d like Him to do. If that’s what prayer is, then we need to pray, because how else is God going to find out what we want Him to do?

But when we discover that  Biblical prayer has its centre of gravity in a totally different place—that it’s mostly about asking God for what He’s already promised—then we can be tempted to ask: “Why pray?”

I see three answers to this question. The first is that we can’t help it. The people in Genesis 4 didn’t need to be told to pray. They just knew what God had promised and they wanted to see it happen and so they called on Him to do it. It’s like when kids ask their parents about supper. They know it’s coming, and so they ask. It’s just what we do.

The second answer is this: God has decided that very often He will keep His promises when we pray for them. God does what He’s promised to do as His people pray.

Jesus taught us this in the parable of the persistent widow, a story he told about a lady who pestered a judge until he heard her case. And Jesus finished that parable up by saying, “And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily” (Luke 18:7–8).

Many times in Scripture God has promised to give justice to His people. And so Jesus tells us to pray for this—to cry out to Him for this justice day and night. And as Luke wrote, the point of that parable is that we “ought always to pray and not lose heart” (Luke 18:1). 

So God has decided that much of the time, He will keep His promises in response to our prayers. And that means that our prayers matter. Our praying plays a part in the biggest story ever told. We play a part in the promises being fulfilled.

There’s a third answer to the question, "why pray?" When we pray for what God has promised, it changes us. It rescues us from selfish and shallow praying. It reshapes our desires and trains us to think and to feel like God. You’ve heard the phrase “prayer changes things,” and one of the main things that prayer changes is the one praying.

Now there’s one more question I want to ask this morning: is it ever okay to ask God for things that we want? Is it ever okay to tell God what’s on our hearts and ask Him to do something about it?

The answer is “yes.” 1 Peter 5:7 tells us to cast all of our anxieties on Him, because He cares for us. So when there are things burdening you, cast them on the Lord. Tell God what’s on your heart and mind. There is a place for this kind of praying.

But we also need to acknowledge that most of the time, according to the Bible, our praying should be bigger than this. Most of the time we should be praying the way Jesus taught us to pray—for the purposes and glory and covenant promises of God.

D.A. Carson said it well: “A great deal of contemporary Christian praying is centred on individual anxieties, needs and preferences, and not on the purposes and promises of God. This is not so much wicked… as horribly imbalanced.”

So yes, tell God what’s on your heart. But be biblically balanced. Spend more time learning from God what’s on His heart, and then asking Him for that. And I think you know how we learn what’s on God’s heart. He’s told us in the pages of His word.

And that’s one of the best ways to put this all into practice. Just do what Daniel did. Read the Bible to find out what God has promised to do, and then pray it back to him. Your Bible reading and your praying will be revolutionized when they are not separated by a thick line, but flow in and out of each other. And I’m going to post some more about this on the blog this week.

Conclusion

But for now, let’s end where we began. Prayer is an act of war. Prayer is a significant way that we partner with God in the work that He’s doing at our place in the story.

That means that prayer warriors are not a special class of Christian. Any time you pray like Jesus taught us to pray, you are making war.

So we’re going to end this morning by singing “O Church, Arise.” And let’s go out of here this week determined to pray big prayers, to pray for the spread of the gospel and the arrival of the kingdom and the glory of God, to pray for all of God’s promises to be fulfilled. Let’s fight the good fight through prayer.

As you may know, we are now getting to the end of a series which has been exploring that the Bible is one story, and Jesus Christ is the main character of that story, and we are in that story today. After today, we have about four or five weeks left in this series. And at our spot in the series, we’re considering how the big story of the Bible brings clarity to different elements of the Christian life which are often confusing or difficult to understand.

And so today we come to spiritual warfare.

I don’t know what comes to your mind when you hear that phrase, “spiritual warfare.” For me, it makes me think of some key moments in my childhood when my mom told me that we were engaged in spiritual warfare—a thought that seemed terrifying and yet very exciting all at once. It seemed to bring the Bible to life. These weren’t just stories; Satan and his demons were real, and we were fighting against them just like we read about in these pages.

And that’s actually a big part of what I want us to grasp this morning. Spiritual warfare may be one of the best ways for us to really understand that this story we read about in Scripture is true and we’re a part of it today.

Unfortunately, “spiritual warfare” is something that’s been so often misunderstood and misrepresented. I’m sure we’ve all met someone whom we felt took spiritual warfare way too seriously. The kind of person who, as the phrase goes, sees a demon hiding behind every bush. If they order a meal at a restaurant and it arrives cold, they think it’s a spiritual attack. That kind of thing.

But on the other extreme, there are Christians who barely think about spiritual warfare at all. If the Devil wasn’t real, it wouldn’t make much of a difference in how they thought and acted. Spiritual warfare is not even on their radar.

So what does it look like to be balanced? What does it look like to be biblical? I believe, when we look at what the whole Bible has to say about spiritual warfare, we’ll discover that spiritual warfare is, on the one hand, a much bigger deal than many Christians think. Spiritual warfare is much more pervasive and important than maybe even you give it credit for.

And yet on the other hand, Scripture shows us that spiritual warfare is far less of a deal than some Christians might think it is. Spiritual warfare is far more normal and accessible and than we might expect.

So how does that work? What do I even mean? Well, let’s dig into the story together and see what the big story of the Bible tells us about this important topic.

Spiritual Warfare in the Garden

We’re going to begin in the book of Genesis, in the garden of Eden. This is where we’ve typically begun, because this is where most things begin, including spiritual warfare.

We get the first whiff of the battle in chapter 3 verse 1 which tells us that “…the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made” (Genesis 3:1). And we go on to read about this serpent engaging in casual conversation with Eve about the tree they weren’t supposed to eat from.

It’s not until later on in Scripture we find out what’s really going on here—that this serpent is actually Satan, the Devil. From the best we can gather, he was one of God’s angels who, at some point, had chosen to rebel and do what he wanted instead of what God wanted.

And what he does in Genesis 3 is recruit Adam and Eve to his team. He makes them doubt the trustworthiness of God and His word, and he sells them on the alluring benefits of charting their own course instead of obeying God.

That is where the battle began. And by the way, the battle lines themselves haven’t moved an inch. The battle is raging today along these exact same issues: the trustworthiness of God’s word and the question of whether we’ll trust and obey Him or follow our own desires.

So Satan won that first round. Adam and Eve believed him instead of God and fell into sin. But God responded to the serpent with a declaration of war: “The Lord God said to the serpent, ‘Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel’” (Genesis 3:14–15). 

He’s coming for you, Satan. There is an offspring coming from this woman whom you just tempted, and he is coming for you. You’ll strike out and wound his heel, but that bruised heel is going to come down on your head and you will be finished.

Spiritual Warfare in the Old Testament

One of the most important things for us to recognize this morning is that from Genesis 3 onwards, everything in the story of the Bible, and therefore everything in the history of planet earth, has been a part of this great spiritual war.

Every man and woman from Cain and Abel onwards has been born onto a battlefield. Every covenant that God made with his people was an act of war, one more step in His long campaign against the serpent.

In other words, from Genesis 3 onwards, spiritual warfare isn’t just one element in the story. It is the story. The Bible is a story about a war.

And it’s true most of the time, as we read through the Bible, we see just one half of this war. We just see people, making their decisions, carrying on in their activities, following God or not following God. And we know it’s all a part of this big plan leading up to Jesus who will crush the serpent.

But every once and a while the curtain gets pulled back and we see the other side of the conflict. Because there is another side. There is an unseen realm which is real and which is a part of this same battle.

Think of Daniel chapter 10, for example. God’s people were in exile, and Daniel was in mourning and fasting for three weeks. And it doesn’t really say why. But then he gets a vision of a terrifying and majestic angel who tells Daniel the for the past three weeks, he was trying to get through to him to communicate a message to him.

Just listen to these words from the angel: “Fear not, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your heart to understand and humbled yourself before your God, your words have been heard, and I have come because of your words. The prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days, but Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, for I was left there with the kings of Persia, and came to make you understand what is to happen to your people in the latter days. For the vision is for days yet to come” (Daniel 10:12–14). 

And then a few verses later he says “Do you know why I have come to you? But now I will return to fight against the prince of Persia; and when I go out, behold, the prince of Greece will come. But I will tell you what is inscribed in the book of truth: there is none who contends by my side against these except Michael, your prince” (Daniel 10:20–21). 

Mind-blowing, right? With our eyes, we see human nations in conflict with each other, and the fate of God’s people caught up in the middle of that. But there is a whole other side to history, a cosmic battle going on behind the scenes.

Daniel 10 reminds us that “spiritual warfare” is not just a metaphor. There is a real war going on, and God’s people are really a part of it.

Christ, the Man of War

And then Jesus came. Back on November 25 I preached one of my favourite messages in this whole series, on Jesus the Offspring of Eve. And in that message we saw how the life and death and resurrection of Jesus are the central events in this great war.

We considered the angel armies at the birth of Christ, cheering in celebration that the invasion was finally happening. We saw Jesus facing off against Satan in the wilderness and emerging victorious, standing strong where all others before Him had fallen. We saw demons crying out in terror before Jesus the serpent-crusher, and obeying his voice as he commanded them with absolute authority (Luke 8:26-33).

We heard Jesus describing Himself as the stronger man who had overpowered Satan and tied him up and was in the very act of plundering his house (Luke 11:14-21). That’s what Jesus did and is still doing today. Every person who believes in Jesus is someone whom Jesus has stolen out of Satan’s house. And Satan is powerless to stop any of it from happening, completely overwhelmed by the power of Jesus. 

And then we saw the decisive victory won by Jesus on the cross. As Satan reached out to strike at Jesus, in that very act he found himself crushed. Because as Jesus died, He died for all of those sins Satan had tempted us into and then accused us for (Revelation 12:10). He took on himself the judgement of death that Satan had been using enslave people in lives of fear.

And so Colossians 2 tells us that when Jesus died, he cancelled “the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him” (Colossians 2:14–15).

Satan and his cohorts were put to open shame by the cross of Jesus Christ. They haven’t just been defeated, they’ve been humiliated.

And Hebrews 2 tells us that “Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery” (Hebrews 2:14–15). 

So in His death and burial and resurrection, Jesus won the decisive victory against Satan. Satan has nothing left to accuse us for. He has nothing to make us fearful of. We are free from his power. And we know how the story ends: after Jesus returns a second time, and right before God creates the New Heavens and the New Earth, Satan will be thrown into the lake of fire and he will be locked up and tormented forever, full stop.

That’s how this war ends.

Spiritual Warfare Today

But what about today? Because the war hasn’t ended yet. Satan has already been defeated, but he has not yet been destroyed.

And what we learn when we read the New Testament is that even though Satan can no longer destroy or even defeat us, even though he can’t snatch us out of God’s hand, he can still cause us a measure of harm. He is still a threat.

And I see Scripture describe at least three ways he can still do this.

The first way is that he can interfere with our lives and bring us a measure of harm. We hear Paul talk about this in 1 Thessalonians 2:18 when he writes “we wanted to come to you—I, Paul, again and again—but Satan hindered us” (1 Thessalonians 2:18). Elsewhere he talks about Satan’s “designs” against the church (2 Corinthians 2:11). In Revelation 2:10 we hear about the devil throwing some of God’s people into prison.

We know that God is sovereign over all of this, just like in Job’s story. The devil can’t do anything without permission. But just like with Job, sometimes God does allow him to interfere with us and cause us a measure of harm.

Second, Satan works through false teaching. This comes up several times in the New Testament, where false teachers are referred to as Satan’s servants (2 Corinthians 11:12), and false teaching is something Satan uses to ensnare people and make them do his will (2 Timothy 2:23-26). Satan works hard to keep us from knowing and believing the truth.

Third, and probably the most significant, Satan still tempts us to sin. It’s his old game from the garden, and it still works. He knows that this sin won’t condemn us to judgement anymore, but it still does affect our witness and quench our joy and slow our progress and make God look bad.

1 Peter 5:8 brings several of these ideas together when it says “Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world” (1 Peter 5:8–9). 

These Christians were being persecuted, and Satan was going to try to terrify them and likely tempt them with the sin of despair or faithlessness. And so Peter warns them to watch out.

But did you notice what he told us to do there? Did you notice what he didn’t say? “Your adversary the devil prowls around, seeking someone to devour, so be afraid, be very afraid.” He also didn’t tell us to engage directly with Satan with their words by “rebuking him” or “binding him” or “renouncing him” or “praying against him.” All we are told to do is “Resist him, firm in your faith.”

Believe God—be firm in your faith. And resist the Devil. Don’t believe the things he wants you to believe. Don’t do the things he wants you to do. Resist him. We see this exact same idea in James 4:7: “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”

You want the devil to run from you? Just don’t give in to him. Don’t do what he wants us to do. Stand your ground and trust and obey God instead.

Ephesians 6

And this is the truth that is unpacked for us in wonderful detail in Ephesians chapter 6, which we read together earlier.

This passage is noteworthy in that it contains some of the most vivid descriptions of spiritual warfare in the whole Bible. It opens by telling us that we wrestle “against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12).

You want a sobering-wake up call to take things seriously? You just got it. You are in a battle of cosmic proportions. You are wrestling against the very forces of darkness themselves.

But what do we need to do? We just need to stand our ground. We’re told that three times in verses 11 and 13 and 14. Stand. Stand firm.

In other words, we are already holding a good position. We are united to Jesus who has been exalted “far above all rule and authority and power and dominion,” as Ephesians 1:21 says. We already have the high ground. And as the forces of darkness assail us, and they will assail us, we stand our ground and we fight.

And so how do we fight?

Ephesians 6 tells us that we fight by living the normal Christian life. Listen to what it says. Verse 14: “Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness.”

Truth in this context is best understood as truthfulness or integrity, and righteousness likewise is best understood as our practical righteousness. That sounds pretty basic, doesn’t it? God’s people should be people of integrity and righteous living. And Paul says that these things are our “basic equipment in the spiritual battle."

We go on to read that our readiness for the battle comes through the gospel of peace (verse 15). And our main defensive weapon against the lies and schemes of the devil? Faith (verse 16). We believe God’s truth and promises instead of believing the lies.

We are further protected by salvation itself, which serves as our helmet. When we compare this to other scriptures (Isaiah 59:17, 1 Thessalonians 5:8), we see that this points to our hope and confidence in Jesus who has saved us and who will save us to the end.

And then we pick up our sword—“The sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” (Ephesians 6:17). God’s word. The thing we’re supposed to be setting our minds on as we walk according to the Spirit. That’s our weapon.

And finally, Paul points to prayer (Ephesians 6:18-20)—prayer for each other and prayer for those who, like Paul, are giving their lives to advance the gospel.

So do you see the picture here? The armour of God is not some mystical spiritual thing that we somehow have to “pray on” each day or else we might be unprotected. The armour of God is just what it says. The shield of faith just means faith. The breastplate of righteousness just means righteousness.

And what this all tells us us that the way we fight the spiritual battle is by engaging in the wonderfully normal Christian life, full of faith and obedience, trusting in God’s promises and relishing in His gospel and setting our minds on His word.

And this all makes sense to us when we remember that from Genesis 3 onwards, everything is spiritual war. In other words, spiritual warfare is not some extra thing that a few Christians might encounter every once and a while. The Christian life itself is spiritual war. And so it shouldn’t surprise us that our armour and weapons are just these basics of the Christian life: integrity, righteous living, a deep understanding of the gospel, faith, hope in our salvation, God’s word, and prayer.

War is Everything, and War is Normal

Now as we step back and take this all in, there’s two possible ways that we could react to this teaching. One is to say: “Oh, that’s all there is to spiritual warfare? Well then I guess it’s not that big of a deal and I don’t really have to think about it.”

That would be the wrong way to take things. Instead we should say, “The normal Christian life is spiritual warfare? As I trust and obey and read and pray and believe and live, I am engaged in a deep and real cosmic spiritual battle? Wow. That means the stakes are high. That means that my spiritual disciplines of spending time in Scripture and prayer are really important. This means that knowing the gospel and being grounded in it’s message is mega-important. This means that what I do during my days is mega-important. This means that being a Sunday Christian is not even a possibility. This means that everything matters. This means that I’m a solider in the army and I need to get fighting.”

Please hear that this morning. When God’s word tells us that spiritual warfare means living the normal Christian life, it’s not telling us that spiritual warfare is no big deal. It’s telling us that the normal Christian life is a really big deal. It’s telling us that every single person in this room who is a believer in Jesus Christ is a spiritual warrior. It’s telling us that we have been fighting against the devil with every decision to honour God, every minute spent reading and thinking about God’s word, every word spoken in prayer, every act of obedience that submits to God’s will.

I also want us to notice that this teaching does correct some imbalances in the way that some people think about spiritual warfare. I remember reading about a Christian author who wouldn’t sleep in a hotel room before he went through this process of “cleansing” the room spiritually. And he would address the demons who might be in that room and he used a verbal formula to supposedly “bind” them and make them leave that room so that there wouldn’t be any “spiritual warfare” while he slept there that night.

And maybe you think, “wow, that guy thinks way too much about spiritual warfare. I’ve never thought to do that before sleeping in a hotel room.”

Well, for starters, I don’t see anywhere in the Bible that demons can attach themselves to rooms or objects and that we should try and use these verbal formulas to renounce them or bind them. That’s not how it works. Jesus already bound the strong man and disarmed the spiritual forces. This whole idea of renouncing or binding or even praying against the Devil is just not in the Bible.

But more importantly, I want to suggest that this guy actually didn’t think enough about spiritual warfare. His understanding was just way too small. He thought spiritual warfare meant demons lurking in a hotel room waiting to pounce on him in the night.  He didn’t understand that spiritual warfare means waking up in the morning and picking up our Bible and praying and believing and obeying. As he went through that day walking in truth and integrity and trusting in Jesus and resting in the hope of salvation, he was—by those very actions—standing up to the forces of darkness.

The Christian life is war.

Conclusion

And as we try to sum this all up, do you know what one of the best passages in Scripture is for us to conclude with? It’s a passage that so many of us know off by heart because we’ve sang it at camp and in youth meetings for the past three decades.

I’m talking about Romans 16:19-20. Which begins: “For your obedience is known to all, so that I rejoice over you, but I want you to be wise as to what is good and innocent as to what is evil. The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you” (Romans 16:19–20). 

God is going to crush Satan under our feet. Do you hear that echo from Genesis 3? We are the body of Christ, and we play a part in Christ’s serpent-crushing work. God is using us to destroy the Devil.

And how do we do that? By being wise to what is good and innocent of evil. By living the wonderfully supernaturally normal Christian life.

So be encouraged. If you are someone who has been attempting to do that, trying your best to trust and obey Jesus and believe the truth and rest in the gospel and do what you know you should do, then be encouraged. Whether you know it or not, you’ve been fighting and you’ve been fighting well. The forces of darkness have reason to fear you. So keep it up. Don’t give them an inch of ground. Resist the devil and trust the promise that time and time again, he will flee from you.

And if you are not that person, if you haven’t been taking your Christian life very seriously, if you’ve been just taking it easy and thinking that as long as you show up on Sunday everything will be okay, then please hear the call this morning to wake up. 

Jump into the fray. If you’re a believer in Jesus than you are a part of an army, and this church is full of soldiers in the heat of battle who could really use your sword and shield right there beside them.

And finally, if you’re here this morning and none of this makes a lot of sense to you because you’re not sure about Jesus or whether you really believe that He died for your sins, please don’t leave without making that yours today. The battle is real and you are in far more danger than you know. Come to Jesus this morning and find spiritual safety in Him.

As you may know, we are now getting to the end of a series which has been exploring that the Bible is one story, and Jesus Christ is the main character of that story, and we are in that story today. After today, we have about four or five weeks left in this series. And at our spot in the series, we’re considering how the big story of the Bible brings clarity to different elements of the Christian life which are often confusing or difficult to understand.

And so today we come to spiritual warfare.

I don’t know what comes to your mind when you hear that phrase, “spiritual warfare.” For me, it makes me think of some key moments in my childhood when my mom told me that we were engaged in spiritual warfare—a thought that seemed terrifying and yet very exciting all at once. It seemed to bring the Bible to life. These weren’t just stories; Satan and his demons were real, and we were fighting against them just like we read about in these pages.

And that’s actually a big part of what I want us to grasp this morning. Spiritual warfare may be one of the best ways for us to really understand that this story we read about in Scripture is true and we’re a part of it today.

Unfortunately, “spiritual warfare” is something that’s been so often misunderstood and misrepresented. I’m sure we’ve all met someone whom we felt took spiritual warfare way too seriously. The kind of person who, as the phrase goes, sees a demon hiding behind every bush. If they order a meal at a restaurant and it arrives cold, they think it’s a spiritual attack. That kind of thing.

But on the other extreme, there are Christians who barely think about spiritual warfare at all. If the Devil wasn’t real, it wouldn’t make much of a difference in how they thought and acted. Spiritual warfare is not even on their radar.

So what does it look like to be balanced? What does it look like to be biblical? I believe, when we look at what the whole Bible has to say about spiritual warfare, we’ll discover that spiritual warfare is, on the one hand, a much bigger deal than many Christians think. Spiritual warfare is much more pervasive and important than maybe even you give it credit for.

And yet on the other hand, Scripture shows us that spiritual warfare is far less of a deal than some Christians might think it is. Spiritual warfare is far more normal and accessible and than we might expect.

So how does that work? What do I even mean? Well, let’s dig into the story together and see what the big story of the Bible tells us about this important topic.

Spiritual Warfare in the Garden

We’re going to begin in the book of Genesis, in the garden of Eden. This is where we’ve typically begun, because this is where most things begin, including spiritual warfare.

We get the first whiff of the battle in chapter 3 verse 1 which tells us that “…the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made” (Genesis 3:1). And we go on to read about this serpent engaging in casual conversation with Eve about the tree they weren’t supposed to eat from.

It’s not until later on in Scripture we find out what’s really going on here—that this serpent is actually Satan, the Devil. From the best we can gather, he was one of God’s angels who, at some point, had chosen to rebel and do what he wanted instead of what God wanted.

And what he does in Genesis 3 is recruit Adam and Eve to his team. He makes them doubt the trustworthiness of God and His word, and he sells them on the alluring benefits of charting their own course instead of obeying God.

That is where the battle began. And by the way, the battle lines themselves haven’t moved an inch. The battle is raging today along these exact same issues: the trustworthiness of God’s word and the question of whether we’ll trust and obey Him or follow our own desires.

So Satan won that first round. Adam and Eve believed him instead of God and fell into sin. But God responded to the serpent with a declaration of war: “The LORD God said to the serpent, ‘Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel’” (Genesis 3:14–15). 

He’s coming for you, Satan. There is an offspring coming from this woman whom you just tempted, and he is coming for you. You’ll strike out and wound his heel, but that bruised heel is going to come down on your head and you will be finished.

Spiritual Warfare in the Old Testament

One of the most important things for us to recognize this morning is that from Genesis 3 onwards, everything in the story of the Bible, and therefore everything in the history of planet earth, has been a part of this great spiritual war.

Every man and woman from Cain and Abel onwards has been born onto a battlefield. Every covenant that God made with his people was an act of war, one more step in His long campaign against the serpent.

In other words, from Genesis 3 onwards, spiritual warfare isn’t just one element in the story. It is the story. The Bible is a story about a war.

And it’s true most of the time, as we read through the Bible, we see just one half of this war. We just see people, making their decisions, carrying on in their activities, following God or not following God. And we know it’s all a part of this big plan leading up to Jesus who will crush the serpent.

But every once and a while the curtain gets pulled back and we see the other side of the conflict. Because there is another side. There is an unseen realm which is real and which is a part of this same battle.

Think of Daniel chapter 10, for example. God’s people were in exile, and Daniel was in mourning and fasting for three weeks. And it doesn’t really say why. But then he gets a vision of a terrifying and majestic angel who tells Daniel the for the past three weeks, he was trying to get through to him to communicate a message to him.

Just listen to these words from the angel: “Fear not, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your heart to understand and humbled yourself before your God, your words have been heard, and I have come because of your words. The prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days, but Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, for I was left there with the kings of Persia, and came to make you understand what is to happen to your people in the latter days. For the vision is for days yet to come” (Daniel 10:12–14). 

And then a few verses later he says “Do you know why I have come to you? But now I will return to fight against the prince of Persia; and when I go out, behold, the prince of Greece will come. But I will tell you what is inscribed in the book of truth: there is none who contends by my side against these except Michael, your prince” (Daniel 10:20–21). 

Mind-blowing, right? With our eyes, we see human nations in conflict with each other, and the fate of God’s people caught up in the middle of that. But there is a whole other side to history, a cosmic battle going on behind the scenes.

Daniel 10 reminds us that “spiritual warfare” is not just a metaphor. There is a real war going on, and God’s people are really a part of it.

Christ, the Man of War

And then Jesus came. Back on November 25 I preached one of my favourite messages in this whole series, on Jesus the Offspring of Eve. And in that message we saw how the life and death and resurrection of Jesus are the central events in this great war.

We considered the angel armies at the birth of Christ, cheering in celebration that the invasion was finally happening. We saw Jesus facing off against Satan in the wilderness and emerging victorious, standing strong where all others before Him had fallen. We saw demons crying out in terror before Jesus the serpent-crusher, and obeying his voice as he commanded them with absolute authority (Luke 8:26-33).

We heard Jesus describing Himself as the stronger man who had overpowered Satan and tied him up and was in the very act of plundering his house (Luke 11:14-21). That’s what Jesus did and is still doing today. Every person who believes in Jesus is someone whom Jesus has stolen out of Satan’s house. And Satan is powerless to stop any of it from happening, completely overwhelmed by the power of Jesus. 

And then we saw the decisive victory won by Jesus on the cross. As Satan reached out to strike at Jesus, in that very act he found himself crushed. Because as Jesus died, He died for all of those sins Satan had tempted us into and then accused us for (Revelation 12:10). He took on himself the judgement of death that Satan had been using enslave people in lives of fear.

And so Colossians 2 tells us that when Jesus died, he cancelled “the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him” (Colossians 2:14–15).

Satan and his cohorts were put to open shame by the cross of Jesus Christ. They haven’t just been defeated, they’ve been humiliated.

And Hebrews 2 tells us that “Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery” (Hebrews 2:14–15). 

So in His death and burial and resurrection, Jesus won the decisive victory against Satan. Satan has nothing left to accuse us for. He has nothing to make us fearful of. We are free from his power. And we know how the story ends: after Jesus returns a second time, and right before God creates the New Heavens and the New Earth, Satan will be thrown into the lake of fire and he will be locked up and tormented forever, full stop.

That’s how this war ends.

Spiritual Warfare Today

But what about today? Because the war hasn’t ended yet. Satan has already been defeated, but he has not yet been destroyed.

And what we learn when we read the New Testament is that even though Satan can no longer destroy or even defeat us, even though he can’t snatch us out of God’s hand, he can still cause us a measure of harm. He is still a threat.

And I see Scripture describe at least three ways he can still do this.

The first way is that he can interfere with our lives and bring us a measure of harm. We hear Paul talk about this in 1 Thessalonians 2:18 when he writes “we wanted to come to you—I, Paul, again and again—but Satan hindered us” (1 Thessalonians 2:18). Elsewhere he talks about Satan’s “designs” against the church (2 Corinthians 2:11). In Revelation 2:10 we hear about the devil throwing some of God’s people into prison.

We know that God is sovereign over all of this, just like in Job’s story. The devil can’t do anything without permission. But just like with Job, sometimes God does allow him to interfere with us and cause us a measure of harm.

Second, Satan works through false teaching. This comes up several times in the New Testament, where false teachers are referred to as Satan’s servants (2 Corinthians 11:12), and false teaching is something Satan uses to ensnare people and make them do his will (2 Timothy 2:23-26). Satan works hard to keep us from knowing and believing the truth.

Third, and probably the most significant, Satan still tempts us to sin. It’s his old game from the garden, and it still works. He knows that this sin won’t condemn us to judgement anymore, but it still does affect our witness and quench our joy and slow our progress and make God look bad.

1 Peter 5:8 brings several of these ideas together when it says “Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world” (1 Peter 5:8–9). 

These Christians were being persecuted, and Satan was going to try to terrify them and likely tempt them with the sin of despair or faithlessness. And so Peter warns them to watch out.

But did you notice what he told us to do there? Did you notice what he didn’t say? “Your adversary the devil prowls around, seeking someone to devour, so be afraid, be very afraid.” He also didn’t tell us to engage directly with Satan with their words by “rebuking him” or “binding him” or “renouncing him” or “praying against him.” All we are told to do is “Resist him, firm in your faith.”

Believe God—be firm in your faith. And resist the Devil. Don’t believe the things he wants you to believe. Don’t do the things he wants you to do. Resist him. We see this exact same idea in James 4:7: “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”

You want the devil to run from you? Just don’t give in to him. Don’t do what he wants us to do. Stand your ground and trust and obey God instead.

Ephesians 6

And this is the truth that is unpacked for us in wonderful detail in Ephesians chapter 6, which we read together earlier.

This passage is noteworthy in that it contains some of the most vivid descriptions of spiritual warfare in the whole Bible. It opens by telling us that we wrestle “against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12).

You want a sobering-wake up call to take things seriously? You just got it. You are in a battle of cosmic proportions. You are wrestling against the very forces of darkness themselves.

But what do we need to do? We just need to stand our ground. We’re told that three times in verses 11 and 13 and 14. Stand. Stand firm.

In other words, we are already holding a good position. We are united to Jesus who has been exalted “far above all rule and authority and power and dominion,” as Ephesians 1:21 says. We already have the high ground. And as the forces of darkness assail us, and they will assail us, we stand our ground and we fight.

And so how do we fight?

Ephesians 6 tells us that we fight by living the normal Christian life. Listen to what it says. Verse 14: “Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness.”

Truth in this context is best understood as truthfulness or integrity, and righteousness likewise is best understood as our practical righteousness. That sounds pretty basic, doesn’t it? God’s people should be people of integrity and righteous living. And Paul says that these things are our “basic equipment in the spiritual battle."

We go on to read that our readiness for the battle comes through the gospel of peace (verse 15). And our main defensive weapon against the lies and schemes of the devil? Faith (verse 16). We believe God’s truth and promises instead of believing the lies.

We are further protected by salvation itself, which serves as our helmet. When we compare this to other scriptures (Isaiah 59:17, 1 Thessalonians 5:8), we see that this points to our hope and confidence in Jesus who has saved us and who will save us to the end.

And then we pick up our sword—“The sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” (Ephesians 6:17). God’s word. The thing we’re supposed to be setting our minds on as we walk according to the Spirit. That’s our weapon.

And finally, Paul points to prayer (Ephesians 6:18-20)—prayer for each other and prayer for those who, like Paul, are giving their lives to advance the gospel.

So do you see the picture here? The armour of God is not some mystical spiritual thing that we somehow have to “pray on” each day or else we might be unprotected. The armour of God is just what it says. The shield of faith just means faith. The breastplate of righteousness just means righteousness.

And what this all tells us us that the way we fight the spiritual battle is by engaging in the wonderfully normal Christian life, full of faith and obedience, trusting in God’s promises and relishing in His gospel and setting our minds on His word.

And this all makes sense to us when we remember that from Genesis 3 onwards, everything is spiritual war. In other words, spiritual warfare is not some extra thing that a few Christians might encounter every once and a while. The Christian life itself is spiritual war. And so it shouldn’t surprise us that our armour and weapons are just these basics of the Christian life: integrity, righteous living, a deep understanding of the gospel, faith, hope in our salvation, God’s word, and prayer.

War is Everything, and War is Normal

Now as we step back and take this all in, there’s two possible ways that we could react to this teaching. One is to say: “Oh, that’s all there is to spiritual warfare? Well then I guess it’s not that big of a deal and I don’t really have to think about it.”

That would be the wrong way to take things. Instead we should say, “The normal Christian life is spiritual warfare? As I trust and obey and read and pray and believe and live, I am engaged in a deep and real cosmic spiritual battle? Wow. That means the stakes are high. That means that my spiritual disciplines of spending time in Scripture and prayer are really important. This means that knowing the gospel and being grounded in it’s message is mega-important. This means that what I do during my days is mega-important. This means that being a Sunday Christian is not even a possibility. This means that everything matters. This means that I’m a solider in the army and I need to get fighting.”

Please hear that this morning. When God’s word tells us that spiritual warfare means living the normal Christian life, it’s not telling us that spiritual warfare is no big deal. It’s telling us that the normal Christian life is a really big deal. It’s telling us that every single person in this room who is a believer in Jesus Christ is a spiritual warrior. It’s telling us that we have been fighting against the devil with every decision to honour God, every minute spent reading and thinking about God’s word, every word spoken in prayer, every act of obedience that submits to God’s will.

I also want us to notice that this teaching does correct some imbalances in the way that some people think about spiritual warfare. I remember reading about a Christian author who wouldn’t sleep in a hotel room before he went through this process of “cleansing” the room spiritually. And he would address the demons who might be in that room and he used a verbal formula to supposedly “bind” them and make them leave that room so that there wouldn’t be any “spiritual warfare” while he slept there that night.

And maybe you think, “wow, that guy thinks way too much about spiritual warfare. I’ve never thought to do that before sleeping in a hotel room.”

Well, for starters, I don’t see anywhere in the Bible that demons can attach themselves to rooms or objects and that we should try and use these verbal formulas to renounce them or bind them. That’s not how it works. Jesus already bound the strong man and disarmed the spiritual forces. This whole idea of renouncing or binding or even praying against the Devil is just not in the Bible.

But more importantly, I want to suggest that this guy actually didn’t think enough about spiritual warfare. His understanding was just way too small. He thought spiritual warfare meant demons lurking in a hotel room waiting to pounce on him in the night.  He didn’t understand that spiritual warfare means waking up in the morning and picking up our Bible and praying and believing and obeying. As he went through that day walking in truth and integrity and trusting in Jesus and resting in the hope of salvation, he was—by those very actions—standing up to the forces of darkness.

The Christian life is war.

Conclusion

And as we try to sum this all up, do you know what one of the best passages in Scripture is for us to conclude with? It’s a passage that so many of us know off by heart because we’ve sang it at camp and in youth meetings for the past three decades.

I’m talking about Romans 16:19-20. Which begins: “For your obedience is known to all, so that I rejoice over you, but I want you to be wise as to what is good and innocent as to what is evil. The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you” (Romans 16:19–20). 

God is going to crush Satan under our feet. Do you hear that echo from Genesis 3? We are the body of Christ, and we play a part in Christ’s serpent-crushing work. God is using us to destroy the Devil.

And how do we do that? By being wise to what is good and innocent of evil. By living the wonderfully supernaturally normal Christian life.

So be encouraged. If you are someone who has been attempting to do that, trying your best to trust and obey Jesus and believe the truth and rest in the gospel and do what you know you should do, then be encouraged. Whether you know it or not, you’ve been fighting and you’ve been fighting well. The forces of darkness have reason to fear you. So keep it up. Don’t give them an inch of ground. Resist the devil and trust the promise that time and time again, he will flee from you.

And if you are not that person, if you haven’t been taking your Christian life very seriously, if you’ve been just taking it easy and thinking that as long as you show up on Sunday everything will be okay, then please hear the call this morning to wake up. 

Jump into the fray. If you’re a believer in Jesus than you are a part of an army, and this church is full of soldiers in the heat of battle who could really use your sword and shield right there beside them.

And finally, if you’re here this morning and none of this makes a lot of sense to you because you’re not sure about Jesus or whether you really believe that He died for your sins, please don’t leave without making that yours today. The battle is real and you are in far more danger than you know. Come to Jesus this morning and find spiritual safety in Him.

April 6th, 2018. We all know what happened that day just 20 minutes down the highway from here. 16 people died because one truck driver didn’t stop at the intersection.

That number—16—is shocking and has a deserved place on the news headlines. 16 lives, full of promise, ended. 16 people never coming back.

I’ll admit, though, that there’s a second number I didn’t pay that much attention to. It’s the number 13. 13 people were injured in that crash. For many months that number was a positive number to me, because it was 13 people who didn’t die.

But then back in January I was reading through a document from the trial which described each of those 13 people and the injuries they sustained and the debilitating challenges that many of them are still facing.

I was moved to tears again and again as I read about these young men who are suffering in such profound and painful ways and thought how for some of them, it might not ever get better.

We’re talking about suffering this morning. Suffering and healing. And I bring up the Broncos crash to remind us that these are not just theories or ideas we’re talking about this morning. This is real life, and real life is hard.

Many of you know some of my experiences with suffering, much of it in connection to my mom whom I stood beside as she died after five years of battling cancer. I also know that so many of you know what suffering is like. You know all about pain and disease and bodies that don’t work the way they are supposed to. We’ve all been touched by suffering in one form or another, and if we haven’t, we will.

Suffering causes us to ask some big questions. Like, if God is so good, then why are things so bad? Can’t God stop healthy cells from mutating into cancer cells?

And if so, why doesn’t He? Can’t God stop semi trucks from barreling through intersections? Why is there so much suffering in the world?

And then there’s the added questions surrounding God’s power to heal. Didn’t Jesus heal a lot of people while He was here on earth? And if He is the same today, then when why are so many sick people in the world? Why are there so many sick Christians? Does God want all of His children to be healthy or not?

Those are the very important questions we’re going to do our best at answering today. 

Now please understand that suffering is a very broad topic and we’re not going to be able to address every single angle today. We’re mainly going to be speaking about physical suffering, the kind that affects our bodies, although the principles we’ll uncover certainly apply to other kinds of suffering as well.

One more word here in terms of introduction: please don’t think that if you are not suffering today, then you don’t need to pay attention to this morning’s sermon. I can say with absolute certainty that each of you will suffer in one form or another in your life. And the time to build the foundation is before the storm comes. The time to patch the roof is when it’s not raining outside. And so if you are not suffering this morning, that’s all the more reason for you to lean in and here what God’s word says about it. 

And that’s what we’re going to do together now: explore what the big story of the Bible says about suffering and healing. And I think we’re going to see that this is a topic we can’t properly understand apart from really grasping the storyline of Scripture. 

Suffering in Creation and the Fall

So let’s go back and begin where we need to begin: in creation. When God first created the world, there was no suffering. “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31).

God created things and they were good. There was no suffering in the beginning. This, by the way, is why evolution doesn’t work fit with the Bible. Evolution requires there to be death and suffering all the way along. But Scripture says that there was no suffering and death until Adam and Eve bit the fruit.

But bite the fruit they did. And in response, we know that God cursed the earth. Romans 8:20 in our passage today speaks about that: “For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it…” (Romans 8:20). And then verse 21 speaks about the “bondage to corruption.”

These are different ways of describing what we saw in Genesis 3 back on September 30: God cursed the whole earth with futility and corruption as a way to show Adam and Eve the horror and the severity of their sin. The curse took the ugliness within their own hearts and displayed it all around them in living, breathing, painful reality.

You might think that God was overreacting to bring the whole universe crashing down over one little sin. But that’s the whole problem: we under-react to sin. We don’t think our sin is a big deal and we feel like God really owes us a pain-free life in spite of everything we’ve done.

And the whole point of the curse, the whole point of suffering and pain, is to show us that our sin is a big deal and therefore God is a very big deal. And so, like we saw back on September 30, pain and suffering are actually acts of God’s grace. God is giving us an opportunity to wake up and repent before it’s too late.

Suffering in the Old Covenant

So suffering is connected to sin. And so as we move through the story of the Bible, we shouldn’t be surprised to see that when God steps in to redeem His people from their sin, that often involves a removal of their suffering.

We see this in His covenant with Israel and all of the blessings and the curses. If Israel sinned against God, they would suffer and experience pain in more and greater ways. But if they obeyed Him, He would bless them and alleviate their suffering.

For example, in Deuteronomy 7:15, He promised that if they obeyed Him, He would take sickness and disease away from them. And this is reflected in Jabez’ now-famous prayer that God would keep him from harm and pain (1 Chronicles 4:10).

Through the blessings of that covenant, God was turning back the curse and bringing His people just a little bit closer to the garden of Eden.

Suffering in the New Creation

And we see this idea of God removing the curse, removing suffering, making everything whole again when we turn to the book of Isaiah and read about God’s promise to come and save His people once and for all.

Listen to Isaiah 35:3–6: “Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who have an anxious heart, ‘Be strong; fear not! Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God. He will come and save you.’ Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then shall the lame man leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy.” 

When God comes to save His people, the curse will be turned back. Blind people will be able to see, lame people will be able to leap like a deer.

And these promises of God’s salvation connect up to God’s big promise to fix everything that’s broken and make a whole new creation. Isaiah 65 tells us,  “For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in that which I create; for behold, I create Jerusalem to be a joy, and her people to be a gladness. I will rejoice in Jerusalem and be glad in my people; no more shall be heard in it the sound of weeping and the cry of distress” (Isaiah 65:17–19).

This is what God’s people were waiting for the Messiah to bring as they waited in the darkness of exile for all those hundreds of years: a coming age of salvation in which suffering and the curse would be nothing more than a memory. A whole new creation. 

The Ministry of Christ

I hope you know the next stop in the story. It’s Jesus. Jesus, the healer. Jesus, the one who could remove suffering and reverse the curse with a touch—or even just a word.

And I hope that you can see how Jesus’ healing ministry makes so much sense when we connect it up with the storyline of Scripture. As Jesus healed people, He was proving that He was God, coming to visit His people. And He was declaring that the Age to Come had already begun. 

And this is where our passage from Luke chapter 7 fits in. The backstory is that Jesus had just raised a young man from the dead, and verse 16 says that when the people saw this, they said “God has visited his people!” And so this is what the disciples of John saw and reported back to John. And this is where John’s question came from: “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?” (Luke 7:20).

Are you the promised Messiah, or not? And what does Jesus say? Verse 22: “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who is not offended by me’” (Luke 7:22–23).

Yes, He is the one they were expecting. The miracles and the healings of Jesus proved that He was the promised one, and that the Age to Come had begun. Isaiah’s prophecies were being fulfilled right before their very eyes.

So why did Jesus finish up his statement by saying, “blessed is the one who is not offended by me”? How could you be offended by someone who was doing all of this?

Well, do you remember where John the Baptist was as he asked this question? He was locked up in Herod’s prison. And didn’t Isaiah also say that the Messiah would “proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound” (Isaiah 61:1)? 

And that’s where John’s question came from in the first place. Why were the prophecies coming true for some people but not others? How is it possible for Jesus to be up there raising people from the dead while John sits there languishing in Herod’s prison? John could have been really offended by Jesus if he wanted to be.

John, like Jesus’ disciples, probably expected that the kingdom of God was going to arrive all at once. If the Messiah was here, then the Age to Come was going to begin, and this present age of suffering and pain was over, and it was all going to happen at once.

But we know that it didn’t happen this way. It didn’t happen all at once. There’s this period of already-but-not-yet that we live in today. The kingdom of God is here alongside of the kingdoms of man. The Age to Come has begun and yet this present age of suffering and death continues on for a time.

And so Jesus healed and resurrected people to prove that He was God, to prove that He was the Messiah, and to show that the Age to Come had arrived. But He didn’t heal and resurrect everybody. As far as we can tell, that young man was one of only three people whom Jesus raised from the dead.

And then we see stories like John 5 where Jesus walks into the pool of Bethesda where there “lay a multitude of invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed” (John 5:3). And He picks out one guy, heals just him, and then leaves.

Or think about the lame beggar that Peter and John heal in Acts 3. It said that he had been taken daily and laid at the entrance to the temple (Acts 3:2). That means Jesus would have walked past him countless times and didn’t heal him.

The same is true of the Apostles. They healed in Jesus’ name to prove that He was alive and that they spoke for Him. That’s why they told that lame beggar “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk!” (Acts 3:6). 

But the Apostles didn’t heal everybody. We know that Paul told Timothy, “No longer drink only water, but use a little wine for the sake of your stomach and your frequent ailments” (1 Timothy 5:23). Why don’t you just heal him, Paul? Or what about 2 Timothy 4:20, where Paul said “…I left Trophimus, who was ill, at Miletus” (2 Timothy 4:20). Healing was not for everybody.

Here’s an illustration to help us understand all of this. There’s this really nice restaurant in Regina that Aimee and I used to go to on our anniversary. And while we’d be waiting for the meal, the server would come out and give us a taste of something the chef had been working on. It was usually delicious but it was always really small. Barely a mouthful. Just enough to taste.

And that little taste could be so frustrating because it left you hungry for more. You wanted the whole meal right then and there. And that was the point. The appetizer told you that the chef was good and the meal was going to be amazing, and it made you long for that meal with intensity.

And that’s what the healing ministry of Jesus and the Apostles was like. When Jesus walked in to the pool of Bethesda and healed one guy, He proved that He’s the Messiah. When He raised three people from the dead, He showed us what the Age to Come is like and how wonderful it’s going to be.

But it’s not here in its fullness yet. This present age, full of pain and suffering, is still sticking around for a while. The curse has not been erased just yet.

And so some people get healed. And some people don’t. That young man gets raised from the dead. And John the Baptist sits in jail until his head gets chopped off by Herod and his disciples bury him in tears. We taste enough to know that the meal will be good, but we still wait for it to arrive with growling stomachs.

Suffering and Healing Today

And that’s where you and I are in the story. We’re still waiting for the meal to arrive.

Now as we wait for the meal to arrive, does God still give us a taste from time to time? I think He does. We know that God can still heal, and I have no doubt that He still does that for some people.

But we see right there in the Bible that it’s not for everybody. It wasn’t for John the Baptist. It wasn’t for Timothy. It wasn’t for Trophimus.

And when we read the rest of the New Testament, what we discover is that God’s people should expect to suffer as we wait for the New Creation to come in all of its fullness. And that’s where our passage from Romans 8 comes in this morning. 

Verse 17 tells us that we will be glorified with Him, “provided we suffer with Him.” That’s the Christian life. Suffering now as we wait for glory later. 

Verse 23 reminds us that we continue to suffer along with the rest of this world. “And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies” (Romans 8:23).

Our bodies have not been redeemed yet. And so this verse once again tells us that we should expect to suffer in our bodies here and now.

And don’t miss that the thing we’re waiting eagerly for is so much better than just temporary healing. We were saved in the hope of something better: the redemption of our bodies. New, resurrected bodies living on a New Earth with no suffering forever.

But until then, we wait. And we groan.

And yet, don’t miss that our groaning is hopeful groaning. It is expectant groaning. Did you catch verse 22? “For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies” (Romans 8:22–23).

The groaning that creation experiences, and the groaning that we experience, is the groaning of a woman in labour. It is the groaning that knows there is new life coming.

Before Jesus, our groaning was a hopeless groaning that had nothing more than judgement to look forward to. But Jesus’s death and resurrection and promised return have given us hope and transformed our groaning.

John Piper gives the illustration of a palliative ward and a maternity ward. In the palliative ward, people groan in pain because they are waiting to die. In the maternity ward, people groan in pain because new life is coming. 

And some of you, like me, have spent time in both of those wards. I’ve held my mom’s hand in the palliative ward as she groaned in pain awaiting her death.  And I’ve held my wife’s hand as she groaned in pain and each push brought us closer to meeting our newborn child.

Both of those women were in incredible pain, but their experiences could not have been more different.

And because Jesus has saved us, we’re in the maternity ward. All of our suffering is the suffering that produces new life. Which means that even my mom’s palliative ward groaning was really maternity ward groaning. Because she’s with Jesus right now and there’s a new body waiting for her in the resurrection.

So no, we should not expect God to remove all suffering from our life, here and now. That’s still coming. But Jesus has transformed our experience of suffering. Instead of being a painful reminder of coming judgment, it becomes a painful reminder of the resurrection hope that’s in front of us. 

God’s Work in Suffering

But there’s even more than that. Because God doesn’t let suffering be wasted in our life. Not only does He use suffering to remind us of what’s in store, He also uses suffering to accomplish His good work in our lives. Just listen to these words:

Romans 5:3–5: “Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”

2 Corinthians 4:16–17: “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison…” 

James 1:2–4: “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” 

When God allows suffering into our lives, He does so on purpose for a good reason. He’s doing something in our life that He couldn’t do any other way.

Isn’t it easy to forget passages like these? When we suffer, or the people around us suffer, what’s our knee-jerk reaction? What do we pray for right away? “God, please take this suffering away! Fix it! Heal it!”

But what if God has something better in mind? What if God wants to produce some endurance and character and hope in you? What if God wants to prepare more eternal glory for you? What if God wants you to become more steadfast and complete and lacking in nothing?

And how does He do all of that? Through suffering.

So we should be thankful that God doesn’t say “yes” to every prayer for healing. Because He so often uses pain and suffering and sickness to work in our life to do things He couldn’t do any other way.

Application

Now please understand—this doesn’t mean that we should never ask God to heal. This doesn’t mean we should never ask God to remove suffering. But it means that as we ask for those things, we say, with Jesus, “if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will” (Matthew 26:39). Because we understand God may have higher plans. He may choose to use our suffering and sickness for our good and His glory.

So while we pray for God to remove our suffering if that’s His will, let’s also pray for Him to help us rejoice in our trials, to give us strength in our inner man, for His power to be made perfect in our weakness, for His grace to be sufficient for us, for our faith to be strong and our perspective to be His and our relationship with Him to grow.

Philippians 3:10 talks about knowing Jesus as we “share His sufferings,” and so we should be asking Jesus to draw us ever nearer to Him as we suffer with Him.

All of this is pointing to us needing to be active sufferers. We don’t just passively wait for God to take it away, and if He doesn’t, then oh well, we grin and bear it.

No, we suffer with eyes wide open to what God is up to. And we’re seeking to participate with Him in all the ways His sovereign love is using the suffering in our lives, working all things for our good, building our character and strengthening our inner man and fixing our hope more and more on the things we can’t see.

And so we’re going to draw things to a close here. There’s so much more I could say. I’m going to hang around the front here this morning if you want to come and talk to me or pray with me ask me anything. But first we’re going to sing together “It Is Well With My Soul.”

This song reminds us that everything we’ve talked about this morning depends on the cross of Jesus Christ. None of this good and hopeful news is true for us until we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, who suffered to pay for our sins and rose from the dead to give us the hope of eternity with Him.

If you have not trusted in Jesus for your salvation, please say yes to Him now. And if you have, then let’s rejoice at how Jesus has changed everything for us, and because of what He has done, it really can be well with our souls.

April 6th, 2018. We all know what happened that day just 20 minutes down the highway from here. 16 people died because one truck driver didn’t stop at the intersection.

That number—16—is shocking and has a deserved place on the news headlines. 16 lives, full of promise, ended. 16 people never coming back.

I’ll admit, though, that there’s a second number I didn’t pay that much attention to. It’s the number 13. 13 people were injured in that crash. For many months that number was a positive number to me, because it was 13 people who didn’t die.

But then back in January I was reading through a document from the trial which described each of those 13 people and the injuries they sustained and the debilitating challenges that many of them are still facing.

I was moved to tears again and again as I read about these young men who are suffering in such profound and painful ways and thought how for some of them, it might not ever get better.

We’re talking about suffering this morning. Suffering and healing. And I bring up the Broncos crash to remind us that these are not just theories or ideas we’re talking about this morning. This is real life, and real life is hard.

Many of you know some of my experiences with suffering, much of it in connection to my mom whom I stood beside as she died after five years of battling cancer. I also know that so many of you know what suffering is like. You know all about pain and disease and bodies that don’t work the way they are supposed to. We’ve all been touched by suffering in one form or another, and if we haven’t, we will.

Suffering causes us to ask some big questions. Like, if God is so good, then why are things so bad? Can’t God stop healthy cells from mutating into cancer cells?

And if so, why doesn’t He? Can’t God stop semi trucks from barreling through intersections? Why is there so much suffering in the world?

And then there’s the added questions surrounding God’s power to heal. Didn’t Jesus heal a lot of people while He was here on earth? And if He is the same today, then when why are so many sick people in the world? Why are there so many sick Christians? Does God want all of His children to be healthy or not?

Those are the very important questions we’re going to do our best at answering today. 

Now please understand that suffering is a very broad topic and we’re not going to be able to address every single angle today. We’re mainly going to be speaking about physical suffering, the kind that affects our bodies, although the principles we’ll uncover certainly apply to other kinds of suffering as well.

One more word here in terms of introduction: please don’t think that if you are not suffering today, then you don’t need to pay attention to this morning’s sermon. I can say with absolute certainty that each of you will suffer in one form or another in your life. And the time to build the foundation is before the storm comes. The time to patch the roof is when it’s not raining outside. And so if you are not suffering this morning, that’s all the more reason for you to lean in and here what God’s word says about it. 

And that’s what we’re going to do together now: explore what the big story of the Bible says about suffering and healing. And I think we’re going to see that this is a topic we can’t properly understand apart from really grasping the storyline of Scripture. 

Suffering in Creation and the Fall

So let’s go back and begin where we need to begin: in creation. When God first created the world, there was no suffering. “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31).

God created things and they were good. There was no suffering in the beginning. This, by the way, is why evolution doesn’t work fit with the Bible. Evolution requires there to be death and suffering all the way along. But Scripture says that there was no suffering and death until Adam and Eve bit the fruit.

But bite the fruit they did. And in response, we know that God cursed the earth. Romans 8:20 in our passage today speaks about that: “For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it…” (Romans 8:20). And then verse 21 speaks about the “bondage to corruption.”

These are different ways of describing what we saw in Genesis 3 back on September 30: God cursed the whole earth with futility and corruption as a way to show Adam and Eve the horror and the severity of their sin. The curse took the ugliness within their own hearts and displayed it all around them in living, breathing, painful reality.

You might think that God was overreacting to bring the whole universe crashing down over one little sin. But that’s the whole problem: we under-react to sin. We don’t think our sin is a big deal and we feel like God really owes us a pain-free life in spite of everything we’ve done.

And the whole point of the curse, the whole point of suffering and pain, is to show us that our sin is a big deal and therefore God is a very big deal. And so, like we saw back on September 30, pain and suffering are actually acts of God’s grace. God is giving us an opportunity to wake up and repent before it’s too late.

Suffering in the Old Covenant

So suffering is connected to sin. And so as we move through the story of the Bible, we shouldn’t be surprised to see that when God steps in to redeem His people from their sin, that often involves a removal of their suffering.

We see this in His covenant with Israel and all of the blessings and the curses. If Israel sinned against God, they would suffer and experience pain in more and greater ways. But if they obeyed Him, He would bless them and alleviate their suffering.

For example, in Deuteronomy 7:15, He promised that if they obeyed Him, He would take sickness and disease away from them. And this is reflected in Jabez’ now-famous prayer that God would keep him from harm and pain (1 Chronicles 4:10).

Through the blessings of that covenant, God was turning back the curse and bringing His people just a little bit closer to the garden of Eden.

Suffering in the New Creation

And we see this idea of God removing the curse, removing suffering, making everything whole again when we turn to the book of Isaiah and read about God’s promise to come and save His people once and for all.

Listen to Isaiah 35:3–6: “Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who have an anxious heart, ‘Be strong; fear not! Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God. He will come and save you.’ Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then shall the lame man leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy.” 

When God comes to save His people, the curse will be turned back. Blind people will be able to see, lame people will be able to leap like a deer.

And these promises of God’s salvation connect up to God’s big promise to fix everything that’s broken and make a whole new creation. Isaiah 65 tells us,  “For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in that which I create; for behold, I create Jerusalem to be a joy, and her people to be a gladness. I will rejoice in Jerusalem and be glad in my people; no more shall be heard in it the sound of weeping and the cry of distress” (Isaiah 65:17–19).

This is what God’s people were waiting for the Messiah to bring as they waited in the darkness of exile for all those hundreds of years: a coming age of salvation in which suffering and the curse would be nothing more than a memory. A whole new creation. 

The Ministry of Christ

I hope you know the next stop in the story. It’s Jesus. Jesus, the healer. Jesus, the one who could remove suffering and reverse the curse with a touch—or even just a word.

And I hope that you can see how Jesus’ healing ministry makes so much sense when we connect it up with the storyline of Scripture. As Jesus healed people, He was proving that He was God, coming to visit His people. And He was declaring that the Age to Come had already begun. 

And this is where our passage from Luke chapter 7 fits in. The backstory is that Jesus had just raised a young man from the dead, and verse 16 says that when the people saw this, they said “God has visited his people!” And so this is what the disciples of John saw and reported back to John. And this is where John’s question came from: “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?” (Luke 7:20).

Are you the promised Messiah, or not? And what does Jesus say? Verse 22: “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who is not offended by me’” (Luke 7:22–23).

Yes, He is the one they were expecting. The miracles and the healings of Jesus proved that He was the promised one, and that the Age to Come had begun. Isaiah’s prophecies were being fulfilled right before their very eyes.

So why did Jesus finish up his statement by saying, “blessed is the one who is not offended by me”? How could you be offended by someone who was doing all of this?

Well, do you remember where John the Baptist was as he asked this question? He was locked up in Herod’s prison. And didn’t Isaiah also say that the Messiah would “proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound” (Isaiah 61:1)? 

And that’s where John’s question came from in the first place. Why were the prophecies coming true for some people but not others? How is it possible for Jesus to be up there raising people from the dead while John sits there languishing in Herod’s prison? John could have been really offended by Jesus if he wanted to be.

John, like Jesus’ disciples, probably expected that the kingdom of God was going to arrive all at once. If the Messiah was here, then the Age to Come was going to begin, and this present age of suffering and pain was over, and it was all going to happen at once.

But we know that it didn’t happen this way. It didn’t happen all at once. There’s this period of already-but-not-yet that we live in today. The kingdom of God is here alongside of the kingdoms of man. The Age to Come has begun and yet this present age of suffering and death continues on for a time.

And so Jesus healed and resurrected people to prove that He was God, to prove that He was the Messiah, and to show that the Age to Come had arrived. But He didn’t heal and resurrect everybody. As far as we can tell, that young man was one of only three people whom Jesus raised from the dead.

And then we see stories like John 5 where Jesus walks into the pool of Bethesda where there “lay a multitude of invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed” (John 5:3). And He picks out one guy, heals just him, and then leaves.

Or think about the lame beggar that Peter and John heal in Acts 3. It said that he had been taken daily and laid at the entrance to the temple (Acts 3:2). That means Jesus would have walked past him countless times and didn’t heal him.

The same is true of the Apostles. They healed in Jesus’ name to prove that He was alive and that they spoke for Him. That’s why they told that lame beggar “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk!” (Acts 3:6). 

But the Apostles didn’t heal everybody. We know that Paul told Timothy, “No longer drink only water, but use a little wine for the sake of your stomach and your frequent ailments” (1 Timothy 5:23). Why don’t you just heal him, Paul? Or what about 2 Timothy 4:20, where Paul said “…I left Trophimus, who was ill, at Miletus” (2 Timothy 4:20). Healing was not for everybody.

Here’s an illustration to help us understand all of this. There’s this really nice restaurant in Regina that Aimee and I used to go to on our anniversary. And while we’d be waiting for the meal, the server would come out and give us a taste of something the chef had been working on. It was usually delicious but it was always really small. Barely a mouthful. Just enough to taste.

And that little taste could be so frustrating because it left you hungry for more. You wanted the whole meal right then and there. And that was the point. The appetizer told you that the chef was good and the meal was going to be amazing, and it made you long for that meal with intensity.

And that’s what the healing ministry of Jesus and the Apostles was like. When Jesus walked in to the pool of Bethesda and healed one guy, He proved that He’s the Messiah. When He raised three people from the dead, He showed us what the Age to Come is like and how wonderful it’s going to be.

But it’s not here in its fullness yet. This present age, full of pain and suffering, is still sticking around for a while. The curse has not been erased just yet.

And so some people get healed. And some people don’t. That young man gets raised from the dead. And John the Baptist sits in jail until his head gets chopped off by Herod and his disciples bury him in tears. We taste enough to know that the meal will be good, but we still wait for it to arrive with growling stomachs.

Suffering and Healing Today

And that’s where you and I are in the story. We’re still waiting for the meal to arrive.

Now as we wait for the meal to arrive, does God still give us a taste from time to time? I think He does. We know that God can still heal, and I have no doubt that He still does that for some people.

But we see right there in the Bible that it’s not for everybody. It wasn’t for John the Baptist. It wasn’t for Timothy. It wasn’t for Trophimus.

And when we read the rest of the New Testament, what we discover is that God’s people should expect to suffer as we wait for the New Creation to come in all of its fullness. And that’s where our passage from Romans 8 comes in this morning. 

Verse 17 tells us that we will be glorified with Him, “provided we suffer with Him.” That’s the Christian life. Suffering now as we wait for glory later. 

Verse 23 reminds us that we continue to suffer along with the rest of this world. “And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies” (Romans 8:23).

Our bodies have not been redeemed yet. And so this verse once again tells us that we should expect to suffer in our bodies here and now.

And don’t miss that the thing we’re waiting eagerly for is so much better than just temporary healing. We were saved in the hope of something better: the redemption of our bodies. New, resurrected bodies living on a New Earth with no suffering forever.

But until then, we wait. And we groan.

And yet, don’t miss that our groaning is hopeful groaning. It is expectant groaning. Did you catch verse 22? “For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies” (Romans 8:22–23).

The groaning that creation experiences, and the groaning that we experience, is the groaning of a woman in labour. It is the groaning that knows there is new life coming.

Before Jesus, our groaning was a hopeless groaning that had nothing more than judgement to look forward to. But Jesus’s death and resurrection and promised return have given us hope and transformed our groaning.

John Piper gives the illustration of a palliative ward and a maternity ward. In the palliative ward, people groan in pain because they are waiting to die. In the maternity ward, people groan in pain because new life is coming. 

And some of you, like me, have spent time in both of those wards. I’ve held my mom’s hand in the palliative ward as she groaned in pain awaiting her death.  And I’ve held my wife’s hand as she groaned in pain and each push brought us closer to meeting our newborn child.

Both of those women were in incredible pain, but their experiences could not have been more different.

And because Jesus has saved us, we’re in the maternity ward. All of our suffering is the suffering that produces new life. Which means that even my mom’s palliative ward groaning was really maternity ward groaning. Because she’s with Jesus right now and there’s a new body waiting for her in the resurrection.

So no, we should not expect God to remove all suffering from our life, here and now. That’s still coming. But Jesus has transformed our experience of suffering. Instead of being a painful reminder of coming judgment, it becomes a painful reminder of the resurrection hope that’s in front of us. 

God’s Work in Suffering

But there’s even more than that. Because God doesn’t let suffering be wasted in our life. Not only does He use suffering to remind us of what’s in store, He also uses suffering to accomplish His good work in our lives. Just listen to these words:

Romans 5:3–5: “Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”

2 Corinthians 4:16–17: “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison…” 

James 1:2–4: “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” 

When God allows suffering into our lives, He does so on purpose for a good reason. He’s doing something in our life that He couldn’t do any other way.

Isn’t it easy to forget passages like these? When we suffer, or the people around us suffer, what’s our knee-jerk reaction? What do we pray for right away? “God, please take this suffering away! Fix it! Heal it!”

But what if God has something better in mind? What if God wants to produce some endurance and character and hope in you? What if God wants to prepare more eternal glory for you? What if God wants you to become more steadfast and complete and lacking in nothing?

And how does He do all of that? Through suffering.

So we should be thankful that God doesn’t say “yes” to every prayer for healing. Because He so often uses pain and suffering and sickness to work in our life to do things He couldn’t do any other way.

Application

Now please understand—this doesn’t mean that we should never ask God to heal. This doesn’t mean we should never ask God to remove suffering. But it means that as we ask for those things, we say, with Jesus, “if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will” (Matthew 26:39). Because we understand God may have higher plans. He may choose to use our suffering and sickness for our good and His glory.

So while we pray for God to remove our suffering if that’s His will, let’s also pray for Him to help us rejoice in our trials, to give us strength in our inner man, for His power to be made perfect in our weakness, for His grace to be sufficient for us, for our faith to be strong and our perspective to be His and our relationship with Him to grow.

Philippians 3:10 talks about knowing Jesus as we “share His sufferings,” and so we should be asking Jesus to draw us ever nearer to Him as we suffer with Him.

All of this is pointing to us needing to be active sufferers. We don’t just passively wait for God to take it away, and if He doesn’t, then oh well, we grin and bear it.

No, we suffer with eyes wide open to what God is up to. And we’re seeking to participate with Him in all the ways His sovereign love is using the suffering in our lives, working all things for our good, building our character and strengthening our inner man and fixing our hope more and more on the things we can’t see.

And so we’re going to draw things to a close here. There’s so much more I could say. I’m going to hang around the front here this morning if you want to come and talk to me or pray with me ask me anything. But first we’re going to sing together “It Is Well With My Soul.”

This song reminds us that everything we’ve talked about this morning depends on the cross of Jesus Christ. None of this good and hopeful news is true for us until we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, who suffered to pay for our sins and rose from the dead to give us the hope of eternity with Him.

If you have not trusted in Jesus for your salvation, please say yes to Him now. And if you have, then let’s rejoice at how Jesus has changed everything for us, and because of what He has done, it really can be well with our souls.

This morning is part two of a message we began last week, in which we considered the law of Moses and what that law means for us Christians who now live in the New Covenant.

We discovered last week that we have been set free from the law. Totally and completely. Romans 7:6 speaks about the law of Moses when it says, “But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive.”

And we saw that this includes the whole law, not just 2/3 of it. Through the death of Christ for us, we are literally dead to the law, including the Ten Commandments.

And yet we also saw clearly that we have not been released from the law so that we can do whatever we want. We’ve been set free so that we can serve God.

Romans 7:6, in its entirety, says this: “But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.”

Galatians 3:13, which we just read, said the same thing. “For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.”

Our freedom from the law is not a freedom to sin. We are not free to murder and lie and steal and do all the things the Ten Commandments prohibited. God expects us to be righteous and holy. 

And yet we don’t become righteous and holy by obeying the law, but rather through this new way of the Spirit. And so this morning we’re going to answer questions like: “What is this ‘new way of the Spirit?’ How do we become holy in the New Covenant apart from the law?”

But before we’re fully ready to answer those questions, there’s a bit more review from last week that we need to do. For those of you who weren’t here last week, and even for those of you who were, we’ve got some material we need to make sure to keep in mind before we go much further.

The Law Was Always About Love

We’ve already reviewed that we’ve been set free from the law, and that we’ve been set free to serve God. But the next point from last week that we need to remember is that the law was always about love. That was the whole point of the law. Loving God and loving each other.

Galatians 5:14 tells us this directly: “For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Galatians 5:14). That’s what the law was after all along. All of the commandments in the law of Moses were showing Israel how to love God and love others in their particular setting in history and in the big story.

That’s why the law included commands that told you what to do when your neighbour lent you his donkey and it died under your care (Exodus 22:10). At that point in history, in the kind of culture they lived in, those kinds of issues were very relevant for knowing how to love each other.

And so the law was about love. That’s what it required from us. We just read Romans 8:4, which speaks about the “righteous requirement of the law.” What was the righteous requirement of the law? What did the law require of us? The answer is love.

The Law Could Not Produce Love

But what we also saw last week is that while the law required that we be loving, it couldn’t actually make us be loving. The law could command love but it could not produce love.

And in fact, because of our sinful hearts, the law ended up creating the opposite of love. The law stirred up our sin. 

Paul mentioned this in Romans 7:5: “For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death.” And He describes that in more detail in verses 7-8: “What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, ‘You shall not covet.’ But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness.”

So just think about that: the law commands us to love. But instead, it ends up stirring up our sinful passions. We hear one of the Ten Commandments telling us to love our neighbour by not coveting his stuff, and instead, the command itself stirs up in our flesh the sinful passion of covetousness. Because nothing makes us want to do something more than being told not to do it.

The Spirit Empowers Us to Love

So we’ve got two problems we need dealing with: we have the problem of not loving. And we have the problem of having all these sinful passions. And the law didn’t help with these problems. In fact, the law’s purpose was to show us we had these problems in the first place.

So what is the solution to these problems? It’s the death of Christ on the cross paying for our sin. And it’s Jesus, ascended to the right hand of the Father, pouring out the Holy Spirit upon His redeemed people. 

All the way back in Ezekiel 36 God had promised to send the Holy Spirit to do in His people what the law by itself could not do. He said, “And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules” (Ezekiel 36:26–27). The solution to pleasing God would come through His very Spirit transforming us and dwelling within us.

And if you know Jesus, you have this Holy Spirit. Ephesians 1:13 says “In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit.” We have the Spirit.

And unlike the law, the Holy Spirit does not just tell us to love. He produces love itself within us. What does Galatians 5:22-23 tell us? “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law” (Galatians 5:22–23).

The law could tell us to be loving and kind and good, but the Holy Spirit actually makes us become loving and kind and good. He produces in us the things which the law required.

Romans 8:4 points us in the same direction when it says that Christ died for us “in order that the righteous requirement of the law [which is love] might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit” (Romans 8:4). 

Notice that the righteous requirement of the law is fulfilled in us. Not by us. The Holy Spirit fulfills the requirement of the law in us.

The Holy Spirit Helps Us Put Our Sin to Death

So the Holy Spirit resolves this first big problem by producing the fruit of love in us. He gives what the law could only ask for. If you have ever felt a scratch of genuine love for God or your brothers and sisters in Christ, you have the Holy Spirit to thank.

But what about that second problem we talked about? What about all of our sinful passions and desires? We shouldn’t be surprised to hear that the Spirit helps us here as well.

Galatians 5:16 says, “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” If we walk by the Spirit, we won’t give in and do what our sinful desires want us to do. Romans 8:13 puts it a little more strikingly: “For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.”

Do you hear these words “flesh” and “body” being used to describe our sinful desires and actions? What those words are pointing to is who we are apart from the Holy Spirit. They remind us that a part of us is still stuck in the Old Creation. On the inside we are New Creations in Christ, but our bodies—which includes our brains—are still a part of this Old Creation, and so sin can still use our bodies and our brains and our desires as a beachhead to launch attacks and try to gain mastery over us.

But the Holy Spirit can do what the law could never do. He can put those desires and behaviours and thoughts to death. He can kill our sin.

What Does This Looks Like?

So now we need to ask the really, really important question. How does this actually happen? How does the Holy Spirit do this work in us?

Does He just do it automatically? He sort of takes the wheel and we chill out? That would be nice, but how long would it be until we forgot about Him?

Instead, God has told us in these passages to “walk…according to the Spirit” (Romans 8:4) or “walk by the Spirit” (Galatians 5:16). And Romans 8:13 says that we are the ones who put our sin to death “by the Spirit” (Romans 8:13).

So what does that look like? What does it mean for us to walk by the Spirit?

Walking by the Spirit Means Setting Our Minds on the Things of the Spirit

The first thing we can say is that walking by the Spirit means setting our minds on the things of the Spirit. That comes right out of Romans 8:5: “For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit” (Romans 8:5). 

“Live according to the Spirit” means basically the same thing as “walk according to the spirit.” And so walking (or living) according to the spirit means setting our minds on the things of the Spirit.

We’ve encountered this idea already in recent weeks. That we should not just let our thoughts float around all the time, but that we must intentionally set our minds on one thing. And walking by the Spirit means doing that. Setting our minds on the things of the Spirit.

Walking by the Spirit Means Setting Our Minds on the Word of God

So what are the things of the Spirit? If we’re supposed to set our mind on them, what are they?

We could probably find that answer by chewing on it long enough, but thankfully there’s one other place in the New Testament where this phrase is used. And that’s in 1 Corinthians 2:14. And I wish we had time to go dig into that passage and see what’s there, and if we did, what we’d find is that “the things of the Spirit” refers to the truth that God had revealed to His apostles, and more than that, the very words that He inspired those Apostles to use.

As we read Romans and Galatians and 1 Corinthians and the rest of the New Testament, we should recognize that this is Holy-Spirit inspired truth, down to the very words. And this is what Paul points to when he says “the things of the Spirit.” God’s truth expressed in God’s very words.

We should be reminded again that the Bible is a supernatural book. Open it and read, and you are reading the things of the Spirit.

Walking by the Spirit Means Receiving God’s Word With Faith

But maybe you could say “Wait a second, what about all of the people who know a lot of Scripture but don’t believe any of it? Aren’t there even scholars who study the Bible for their jobs and yet don’t believe it’s God’s word? Surely those people aren’t ‘walking by the Spirit’ just because they’ve got a bunch of Bible verses in their heads, right?”

It’s true: just having your head full of Bible verses won’t automatically make you a loving and a holy person. Walking by the Spirit requires that we believe the words that we are setting our minds on.

Galatians 3:5 is a very important verse in this regard. It’s written as a question, and it says this: “Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith…?” (Galatians 3:5,6). 

Paul is trying to show them that God does not give us His Spirit by works of the law. He continually supplies His Spirit to us as we hear His word and receive it with faith.

So yes: walking by the Spirit means more than just packing your head with Bible verses. But it also doesn’t happen apart from the word of God. It happens as we set our minds on His word with faith, believing every promise and standing on every truth. And as we do that, we will produce the fruits of the Spirit and be empowered to put our sin to death.

How This Works in Real Life

So. What does this actually look like? What does “walking by the Spirit” actually look like in your day-in-and-day-out?

Well, hopefully it’s happening right now. As I read and explain Scripture to you, and as you believe what God has said, God is supplying His spirit to you! Preaching is a supernatural event in more ways than one.

But let me give you a couple of more examples to help us get our heads and our hearts wrapped around this a little bit more.

Example #1. It’s Wednesday morning. Instead of sleeping in as possibly late as you can, you got up 20 minutes early to read the Bible and pray. And let’s say you’re reading through the book of Romans, and you’re in chapter 12, and you read verses 9 & 10:

“Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor” (Romans 12:9–10). 

And instead of just blasting on through, you stop and think. You notice that even though we’re not under the law of Moses, that doesn’t mean God never commands us to do anything anymore. Right here in the New Testament, we’re commanded to love one another with brotherly affection.

And so you pause. You recognize that these are the very words of the Holy Spirit, and that this New Covenant command is for you, and you believe it.

And so then you think, “How will I obey this today? What does love for my brothers and sisters look like today?” Maybe you’ll be seeing someone today, or maybe you think back to a prayer request that someone shared on Sunday, and you realize there’s a practical way you can help.

And so then you ask for the Holy Spirit’s help, and you obey. You pray for that person, maybe sending them a text to say you’ve done that. Maybe you make plans to make a meal for them that night. If you start to make excuses, you choose to remember how much love Christ has shown to you. You pray for strength and you obey.

What I’ve just described is not some super-spiritual, unrealistic exercise. It is a supernatural process, but it should be be normal for us. Reading the Bible, thinking about it, believing it, and acting on it. That’s what walking by the Spirit looks like. 

Let me give a second example. It’s Thursday evening. You’re tired from a long day of working. It’s 9:30 and you sit down with your phone or computer to check email. You click on a link, which leads you to another link, and all of a sudden there’s something in front of you that is tempting you. Appealing to your desires.

Maybe it’s another person you’re tempted to lust after. Maybe it’s stuff on sale somewhere, tempting you to spend money on something you don’t need. Maybe it’s an Facebook post tempting you to feel envy or superiority towards someone.

In that moment of temptation, you have some choices. You can give in, of course. You can try just saying no in your own strength. Or, you can put your sin to death by the Spirit of God.

And so you do that. You remember what God’s word says about that sin that you’re struggling with. Maybe you’re battling lust, and so you’ve memorized Matthew 5:8, which says “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” Maybe it’s materialism or envy, and so you’ve memorized Matthew 6:33: “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”

And you believe that promise. And you say, “I want to see God more than I want to see this other person right now.” Or, “I believe that God will provide for all of my real needs as I seek Him first.” And you close the window.

Do you know what you just did? You put sin to death by the Spirit of God. You set your mind on the things of the Spirit instead of the things of the flesh, and you used the sword of the Spirit to kill your sinful passion.

These are just two examples out of literally thousands we could share today. But these examples help show us how holiness happens. We read the living, supernatural word of God. We set our minds on it throughout the day. We believe it. We obey it. And we use it to fight in the midst of the battle.

Application: Read the Bible

So you probably know where this is going in terms of application. If any of this is going to work, we need to know God’s word and understand it so we can set our minds on it and walk by the Spirit.

Now I know that when I, or someone in my position, starts talking to you about knowing and reading the Bible, it’s so easy to tune it out. “Blah, blah, blah. I should read the Bible more. Of course you’d say that, pastor guy.”

Like a good friend once said to me, “This is all easy for you to say, Chris, but I don’t get paid to study the Bible for a job.”

And what I told him is what I’ll tell you: most of my most important encounters with God’s word have not happened while preparing for a sermon. They have happened on my own when I’m spending time with God’s word before my work day starts. And it has been those encounters with the living God in His living word that has given me the passion to proclaim that word to others.

So please, let me plead with you today: the living God wrote a book. And you get to hold it in your hands. You get to read it. Please make that a priority in your life.

It’s a sad truth that many, many Christians in North America know so very little about what’s actually inside this book. And according to our passages today, this probably explains why there’s such a lack of holiness among so many of us.

We all say that we believe this is God’s word. But our actions so often reveal that the Bible isn’t very important to us, or that we think the Bible isn’t enough for us, and we need something more, something better and more fresh than the Bible to really meet our needs.

2 Timothy 3 that “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” (2 Timothy 3:16–17).

If you ever find yourself hungry for more than the Bible, that’s a sure-fire sign that what you actually need is more of the Bible.

But maybe you’ve struggled with this. And you’re tired of just hearing “read the Bible more.” So I’m going to end by giving some practical suggestions for how to set your mind on the things of the Spirit from Monday to Saturday. 

Start by making the Bible a part of your routine. Get a habit going. If you’re starting from zero, it might not be helpful to jump right into a once-a-day habit right away. That will be to tough and giving up will be easy. Try a goal like 15 minutes in the word, three times a week. That’s not much, but that’s the point. Start there, lock it in, and build from there.

As you read, focus on understanding. Don’t try to read chapters and chapters each day. I’ve done the Bible-in-a-year thing, but I struggle to understand what I’m reading when I have to take in three chapters each day. Even if you are doing that, try taking a verse or two or three and camp out there for a few minutes. Ask questions. Use a pen and a paper to jot stuff down. Don’t move on until you’ve figured out what those few verses are saying and how they actually apply to your life today.

You also know I’m also a big believer in a good study Bible that actually helps you understand what the text of Scripture means. We’ve learned in this series that we need to be careful in the way we apply Scripture from previous covenants to our lives today. And a good study Bible is a good way to help us do that well. I’m actually going to put a post up on the blog this week where I will mention a few good options and show you where you can buy them.

Memorization is also so important. I touched on that earlier today. If you’re struggling in a particular area, pick a verse that applies, and write it out on your phone background and in your car and where you work and commit it to memory, so that you can pull it out to fight when you’re battling your sin.

If you’re listening to me this morning and you don’t have a good Bible, or you know of someone who needs one, we just bought a caseload of fantastic giveaway Bibles. They’re in my office, and you can ask me for one for yourself or someone else anytime.

Whatever you bring to this today, and wherever you go from this today, let’s all make sure that we don’t miss the big idea: this book is the words of the Holy Spirit. As we set our minds on these things and receive them with faith, we will walk by the Spirit and produce the fruit of the Spirit and be able to put our sin to death by the Spirit.

And we need this. We can’t be holy on our own. We’re going to sing the song “Lord, I Need You” in just a moment. And it’s so true. We need Him.

And as we sing these words, let’s not forget where we meet this Lord whom we need and how we hear from Him. In His supernatural word.

This morning is part two of a message we began last week, in which we considered the law of Moses and what that law means for us Christians who now live in the New Covenant.

We discovered last week that we have been set free from the law. Totally and completely. Romans 7:6 speaks about the law of Moses when it says, “But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive.”

And we saw that this includes the whole law, not just 2/3 of it. Through the death of Christ for us, we are literally dead to the law, including the Ten Commandments.

And yet we also saw clearly that we have not been released from the law so that we can do whatever we want. We’ve been set free so that we can serve God.

Romans 7:6, in its entirety, says this: “But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.”

Galatians 3:13, which we just read, said the same thing. “For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.”

Our freedom from the law is not a freedom to sin. We are not free to murder and lie and steal and do all the things the Ten Commandments prohibited. God expects us to be righteous and holy. 

And yet we don’t become righteous and holy by obeying the law, but rather through this new way of the Spirit. And so this morning we’re going to answer questions like: “What is this ‘new way of the Spirit?’ How do we become holy in the New Covenant apart from the law?”

But before we’re fully ready to answer those questions, there’s a bit more review from last week that we need to do. For those of you who weren’t here last week, and even for those of you who were, we’ve got some material we need to make sure to keep in mind before we go much further.

The Law Was Always About Love

We’ve already reviewed that we’ve been set free from the law, and that we’ve been set free to serve God. But the next point from last week that we need to remember is that the law was always about love. That was the whole point of the law. Loving God and loving each other.

Galatians 5:14 tells us this directly: “For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Galatians 5:14). That’s what the law was after all along. All of the commandments in the law of Moses were showing Israel how to love God and love others in their particular setting in history and in the big story.

That’s why the law included commands that told you what to do when your neighbour lent you his donkey and it died under your care (Exodus 22:10). At that point in history, in the kind of culture they lived in, those kinds of issues were very relevant for knowing how to love each other.

And so the law was about love. That’s what it required from us. We just read Romans 8:4, which speaks about the “righteous requirement of the law.” What was the righteous requirement of the law? What did the law require of us? The answer is love.

The Law Could Not Produce Love

But what we also saw last week is that while the law required that we be loving, it couldn’t actually make us be loving. The law could command love but it could not produce love.

And in fact, because of our sinful hearts, the law ended up creating the opposite of love. The law stirred up our sin. 

Paul mentioned this in Romans 7:5: “For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death.” And He describes that in more detail in verses 7-8: “What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, ‘You shall not covet.’ But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness.”

So just think about that: the law commands us to love. But instead, it ends up stirring up our sinful passions. We hear one of the Ten Commandments telling us to love our neighbour by not coveting his stuff, and instead, the command itself stirs up in our flesh the sinful passion of covetousness. Because nothing makes us want to do something more than being told not to do it.

The Spirit Empowers Us to Love

So we’ve got two problems we need dealing with: we have the problem of not loving. And we have the problem of having all these sinful passions. And the law didn’t help with these problems. In fact, the law’s purpose was to show us we had these problems in the first place.

So what is the solution to these problems? It’s the death of Christ on the cross paying for our sin. And it’s Jesus, ascended to the right hand of the Father, pouring out the Holy Spirit upon His redeemed people. 

All the way back in Ezekiel 36 God had promised to send the Holy Spirit to do in His people what the law by itself could not do. He said, “And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules” (Ezekiel 36:26–27). The solution to pleasing God would come through His very Spirit transforming us and dwelling within us.

And if you know Jesus, you have this Holy Spirit. Ephesians 1:13 says “In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit.” We have the Spirit.

And unlike the law, the Holy Spirit does not just tell us to love. He produces love itself within us. What does Galatians 5:22-23 tell us? “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law” (Galatians 5:22–23).

The law could tell us to be loving and kind and good, but the Holy Spirit actually makes us become loving and kind and good. He produces in us the things which the law required.

Romans 8:4 points us in the same direction when it says that Christ died for us “in order that the righteous requirement of the law [which is love] might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit” (Romans 8:4). 

Notice that the righteous requirement of the law is fulfilled in us. Not by us. The Holy Spirit fulfills the requirement of the law in us.

The Holy Spirit Helps Us Put Our Sin to Death

So the Holy Spirit resolves this first big problem by producing the fruit of love in us. He gives what the law could only ask for. If you have ever felt a scratch of genuine love for God or your brothers and sisters in Christ, you have the Holy Spirit to thank.

But what about that second problem we talked about? What about all of our sinful passions and desires? We shouldn’t be surprised to hear that the Spirit helps us here as well.

Galatians 5:16 says, “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” If we walk by the Spirit, we won’t give in and do what our sinful desires want us to do. Romans 8:13 puts it a little more strikingly: “For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.”

Do you hear these words “flesh” and “body” being used to describe our sinful desires and actions? What those words are pointing to is who we are apart from the Holy Spirit. They remind us that a part of us is still stuck in the Old Creation. On the inside we are New Creations in Christ, but our bodies—which includes our brains—are still a part of this Old Creation, and so sin can still use our bodies and our brains and our desires as a beachhead to launch attacks and try to gain mastery over us.

But the Holy Spirit can do what the law could never do. He can put those desires and behaviours and thoughts to death. He can kill our sin.

What Does This Looks Like?

So now we need to ask the really, really important question. How does this actually happen? How does the Holy Spirit do this work in us?

Does He just do it automatically? He sort of takes the wheel and we chill out? That would be nice, but how long would it be until we forgot about Him?

Instead, God has told us in these passages to “walk…according to the Spirit” (Romans 8:4) or “walk by the Spirit” (Galatians 5:16). And Romans 8:13 says that we are the ones who put our sin to death “by the Spirit” (Romans 8:13).

So what does that look like? What does it mean for us to walk by the Spirit?

Walking by the Spirit Means Setting Our Minds on the Things of the Spirit

The first thing we can say is that walking by the Spirit means setting our minds on the things of the Spirit. That comes right out of Romans 8:5: “For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit” (Romans 8:5). 

“Live according to the Spirit” means basically the same thing as “walk according to the spirit.” And so walking (or living) according to the spirit means setting our minds on the things of the Spirit.

We’ve encountered this idea already in recent weeks. That we should not just let our thoughts float around all the time, but that we must intentionally set our minds on one thing. And walking by the Spirit means doing that. Setting our minds on the things of the Spirit.

Walking by the Spirit Means Setting Our Minds on the Word of God

So what are the things of the Spirit? If we’re supposed to set our mind on them, what are they?

We could probably find that answer by chewing on it long enough, but thankfully there’s one other place in the New Testament where this phrase is used. And that’s in 1 Corinthians 2:14. And I wish we had time to go dig into that passage and see what’s there, and if we did, what we’d find is that “the things of the Spirit” refers to the truth that God had revealed to His apostles, and more than that, the very words that He inspired those Apostles to use.

As we read Romans and Galatians and 1 Corinthians and the rest of the New Testament, we should recognize that this is Holy-Spirit inspired truth, down to the very words. And this is what Paul points to when he says “the things of the Spirit.” God’s truth expressed in God’s very words.

We should be reminded again that the Bible is a supernatural book. Open it and read, and you are reading the things of the Spirit.

Walking by the Spirit Means Receiving God’s Word With Faith

But maybe you could say “Wait a second, what about all of the people who know a lot of Scripture but don’t believe any of it? Aren’t there even scholars who study the Bible for their jobs and yet don’t believe it’s God’s word? Surely those people aren’t ‘walking by the Spirit’ just because they’ve got a bunch of Bible verses in their heads, right?”

It’s true: just having your head full of Bible verses won’t automatically make you a loving and a holy person. Walking by the Spirit requires that we believe the words that we are setting our minds on.

Galatians 3:5 is a very important verse in this regard. It’s written as a question, and it says this: “Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith…?” (Galatians 3:5,6). 

Paul is trying to show them that God does not give us His Spirit by works of the law. He continually supplies His Spirit to us as we hear His word and receive it with faith.

So yes: walking by the Spirit means more than just packing your head with Bible verses. But it also doesn’t happen apart from the word of God. It happens as we set our minds on His word with faith, believing every promise and standing on every truth. And as we do that, we will produce the fruits of the Spirit and be empowered to put our sin to death.

How This Works in Real Life

So. What does this actually look like? What does “walking by the Spirit” actually look like in your day-in-and-day-out?

Well, hopefully it’s happening right now. As I read and explain Scripture to you, and as you believe what God has said, God is supplying His spirit to you! Preaching is a supernatural event in more ways than one.

But let me give you a couple of more examples to help us get our heads and our hearts wrapped around this a little bit more.

Example #1. It’s Wednesday morning. Instead of sleeping in as possibly late as you can, you got up 20 minutes early to read the Bible and pray. And let’s say you’re reading through the book of Romans, and you’re in chapter 12, and you read verses 9 & 10:

“Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor” (Romans 12:9–10). 

And instead of just blasting on through, you stop and think. You notice that even though we’re not under the law of Moses, that doesn’t mean God never commands us to do anything anymore. Right here in the New Testament, we’re commanded to love one another with brotherly affection.

And so you pause. You recognize that these are the very words of the Holy Spirit, and that this New Covenant command is for you, and you believe it.

And so then you think, “How will I obey this today? What does love for my brothers and sisters look like today?” Maybe you’ll be seeing someone today, or maybe you think back to a prayer request that someone shared on Sunday, and you realize there’s a practical way you can help.

And so then you ask for the Holy Spirit’s help, and you obey. You pray for that person, maybe sending them a text to say you’ve done that. Maybe you make plans to make a meal for them that night. If you start to make excuses, you choose to remember how much love Christ has shown to you. You pray for strength and you obey.

What I’ve just described is not some super-spiritual, unrealistic exercise. It is a supernatural process, but it should be be normal for us. Reading the Bible, thinking about it, believing it, and acting on it. That’s what walking by the Spirit looks like. 

Let me give a second example. It’s Thursday evening. You’re tired from a long day of working. It’s 9:30 and you sit down with your phone or computer to check email. You click on a link, which leads you to another link, and all of a sudden there’s something in front of you that is tempting you. Appealing to your desires.

Maybe it’s another person you’re tempted to lust after. Maybe it’s stuff on sale somewhere, tempting you to spend money on something you don’t need. Maybe it’s an Facebook post tempting you to feel envy or superiority towards someone.

In that moment of temptation, you have some choices. You can give in, of course. You can try just saying no in your own strength. Or, you can put your sin to death by the Spirit of God.

And so you do that. You remember what God’s word says about that sin that you’re struggling with. Maybe you’re battling lust, and so you’ve memorized Matthew 5:8, which says “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” Maybe it’s materialism or envy, and so you’ve memorized Matthew 6:33: “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”

And you believe that promise. And you say, “I want to see God more than I want to see this other person right now.” Or, “I believe that God will provide for all of my real needs as I seek Him first.” And you close the window.

Do you know what you just did? You put sin to death by the Spirit of God. You set your mind on the things of the Spirit instead of the things of the flesh, and you used the sword of the Spirit to kill your sinful passion.

These are just two examples out of literally thousands we could share today. But these examples help show us how holiness happens. We read the living, supernatural word of God. We set our minds on it throughout the day. We believe it. We obey it. And we use it to fight in the midst of the battle.

Application: Read the Bible

So you probably know where this is going in terms of application. If any of this is going to work, we need to know God’s word and understand it so we can set our minds on it and walk by the Spirit.

Now I know that when I, or someone in my position, starts talking to you about knowing and reading the Bible, it’s so easy to tune it out. “Blah, blah, blah. I should read the Bible more. Of course you’d say that, pastor guy.”

Like a good friend once said to me, “This is all easy for you to say, Chris, but I don’t get paid to study the Bible for a job.”

And what I told him is what I’ll tell you: most of my most important encounters with God’s word have not happened while preparing for a sermon. They have happened on my own when I’m spending time with God’s word before my work day starts. And it has been those encounters with the living God in His living word that has given me the passion to proclaim that word to others.

So please, let me plead with you today: the living God wrote a book. And you get to hold it in your hands. You get to read it. Please make that a priority in your life.

It’s a sad truth that many, many Christians in North America know so very little about what’s actually inside this book. And according to our passages today, this probably explains why there’s such a lack of holiness among so many of us.

We all say that we believe this is God’s word. But our actions so often reveal that the Bible isn’t very important to us, or that we think the Bible isn’t enough for us, and we need something more, something better and more fresh than the Bible to really meet our needs.

2 Timothy 3 that “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” (2 Timothy 3:16–17).

If you ever find yourself hungry for more than the Bible, that’s a sure-fire sign that what you actually need is more of the Bible.

But maybe you’ve struggled with this. And you’re tired of just hearing “read the Bible more.” So I’m going to end by giving some practical suggestions for how to set your mind on the things of the Spirit from Monday to Saturday. 

Start by making the Bible a part of your routine. Get a habit going. If you’re starting from zero, it might not be helpful to jump right into a once-a-day habit right away. That will be to tough and giving up will be easy. Try a goal like 15 minutes in the word, three times a week. That’s not much, but that’s the point. Start there, lock it in, and build from there.

As you read, focus on understanding. Don’t try to read chapters and chapters each day. I’ve done the Bible-in-a-year thing, but I struggle to understand what I’m reading when I have to take in three chapters each day. Even if you are doing that, try taking a verse or two or three and camp out there for a few minutes. Ask questions. Use a pen and a paper to jot stuff down. Don’t move on until you’ve figured out what those few verses are saying and how they actually apply to your life today.

You also know I’m also a big believer in a good study Bible that actually helps you understand what the text of Scripture means. We’ve learned in this series that we need to be careful in the way we apply Scripture from previous covenants to our lives today. And a good study Bible is a good way to help us do that well. I’m actually going to put a post up on the blog this week where I will mention a few good options and show you where you can buy them.

Memorization is also so important. I touched on that earlier today. If you’re struggling in a particular area, pick a verse that applies, and write it out on your phone background and in your car and where you work and commit it to memory, so that you can pull it out to fight when you’re battling your sin.

If you’re listening to me this morning and you don’t have a good Bible, or you know of someone who needs one, we just bought a caseload of fantastic giveaway Bibles. They’re in my office, and you can ask me for one for yourself or someone else anytime.

Whatever you bring to this today, and wherever you go from this today, let’s all make sure that we don’t miss the big idea: this book is the words of the Holy Spirit. As we set our minds on these things and receive them with faith, we will walk by the Spirit and produce the fruit of the Spirit and be able to put our sin to death by the Spirit.

And we need this. We can’t be holy on our own. We’re going to sing the song “Lord, I Need You” in just a moment. And it’s so true. We need Him.

And as we sing these words, let’s not forget where we meet this Lord whom we need and how we hear from Him. In His supernatural word.