Sermon Tone Analysis

*The Prayer Battle*

Matthew 26:36-46

February 3, 2008

 

In Matthew 26:36-46 we read of that very sensitive moment in Gethsemane when the Lord Jesus undertook one of the greatest battles of His life.

He invited His disciples to go with Him to Gethsemane and then He invited three of them to go with Him as He went to pray.

He simply asked them to /"Watch and pray."

/Listen especially to the heart of our Lord as we read verses 36 & 37 of Matthew 26: /"Then Jesus came...to a place called Gethsemane, and said to the disciples, ‘Sit here while I go and pray over there.’

And He took with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and He began to be sorrowful and deeply distressed"/

Have you ever been with Jesus in prayer to that degree?

Has there ever come a moment when you knew what was on the heart of God, you knew what you were facing – not just the pain, but what was eternally at stake, and where your praying would make an eternal difference?

As you began to pray you were full of sorrow and great distress.

There will never be a change in Cut Knife until some of God’s own go with Jesus and experience this kind of praying.

In verse 38, Jesus says to Peter, James, and John/: /“My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death.

Stay here and watch with Me’" (v.

38).

Who carries the weight of the world, you or the Lord Jesus?

The Lord Jesus does.

You’ll never understand prayer with the dimension that it will take to change a community unless you go into that kind of relationship.

There is a moment when you start to pray and you are simply watching while He in you carries the weight of the world.

Look at verse 39:/  /"He went a little farther and fell on His face, and prayed, saying…".

A lot of people want to praise but don’t want to fall on their face in prayer.

There is a time when it is important that you stop all the praising and start doing some praying, especially when God’s people meet together.

Praising can never be a substitute for prayer or for repentance.

I’ve said it before, the single greatest need of God’s people is repentance!

If God’s people don’t repent, there will be no revival.

Yet God’s people are not being taught to repent.

I would say that 85 to 90 percent of all God’s instructions in the Bible to repent are directed toward God’s people, not lost people.

Yet God’s people come to church Sunday after Sunday and never know that God’s directive to them is to repent.

Repentance is prerequisite to experiencing the fullness of God.

What was the message that Jesus delivered to God’s people?

"Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand [right next to you]" (Matt.

4:17).

The whole presence and power and fullness of God are right next to you waiting to be appropriated and received, but first the Godhead – Father, Son, Holy Spirit are waiting on your repentance.

Repentance means you’re going in the wrong direction and you have to turn around and go in God’s direction.

Most of us feel because we are in a worship service we’re going in the right direction.

During most of the worship of God’s people in the Bible they were going in the wrong direction even while they worshiped.

But they never acknowledged their need, and so they perished.

Israel, Judah, Jerusalem, the Temple perished; the walls were torn down, and God’s people were put in seventy years of bondage because they had sinned and never recognized their need to repent.

That’s why the first word out of the mouth of the Son of God to His people was /"Repent!"

/because the full presence and power and kingdom of God are waiting for our repentance.

Can I say that this is the same message He would give to you and me?

If you are not experiencing the full measure of the presence and power and activity of God, it is not because He is not present, but it’s because we have not met the conditions to experience Him through repentance.

/"He went a little farther and fell on His face, and prayed, saying, ‘O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will but as You will’"// /(Matt.

26:39).

Luke’s passage has Jesus praying, /"Father, if it is Your will, take this cup away from Me"/ (22:42).

When Mark records Jesus praying in Gethsemane you hear Jesus crying out, /"Abba, Father, all things are possible for You.

Take this cup away from Me; nevertheless, not what I will, but what You will"// /(14:36).

Thy will be done!

Do you pray, “Thy will Lord.

Not mine?

Or are you asleep like the disciples were as Jesus agonized?

Returning to Matthew 26:40 we read: /"Then He came to the disciples and found them sleeping, and said to Peter, ‘What!

Could you not watch with Me one hour?

Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation.

The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.’

Again, a second time, He went away and prayed, saying, ‘O My Father, if this cup cannot pass from Me unless I drink it, Your will be done.’/

/    "And He came and found them asleep again, for their eyes were heavy.

So He left them, went away again, and prayed the third time, saying the same words.

Then He came to His disciples and said to them, ‘Are you still sleeping and resting?

Behold, the hour is at hand, and the Son of Man is being betrayed into the hands of sinners.

Rise, let us be going.

See, My betrayer is at hand’"// /(vv.

40-46).

Jesus invited His disciples to go with Him to this very sacred moment, when the eternal purpose of God was hanging in the balance.

We do not know why He sometimes chose three out of the disciples to take with Him.

When He went up on the mountain of transfiguration, Scripture says He met with Moses and Elijah and the Father, and they /"spoke of His decease which He was about to accomplish in Jerusalem" /(Luke 9:30-31).

He was going to set free a whole world by His death in Jerusalem, and they talked together about that deliverance that God would accomplish through Him.

Jesus invited Peter, James and John to go with Him so they could experience something of the intensity of the hour and something of the significance of prayer and something of how, when a child of God prays, heaven and earth are bound closely together and history is bound with that moment.

I believe this is a most sacred moment in the purposes of God.

I sense there is a God-initiated cry for Cut Knife.

Could this town become a "town of God," where God came to His own, and His own recognized that it was God, recognized what He was intending to do and released their lives to Him so significantly that suddenly God has a people through whom He could work?

Could it be that a great and sweeping revival could come to Cut Knife and out from us to the province and out from us to the rest of the nation?

God can do that, can’t He?

Henry Blackaby relates the following about God’s work in Saskatoon back in the early seventies.

He says, “God permitted me to be in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan two years before the presence and power of God rested on that city.

I met with fellow pastors and others to pray, and I found that as we prayed, God dealt with my heart.

He so identified sin in my heart and so drew me to release that sin to Him for cleansing that the experiences in the prayer time week after week were so real and so significant that I literally ran back to the church I was pastoring and shared it with the congregation.

The congregation began to be cleansed and restored, and they all began to hear and to sense the mind and heart of God.

Then there came that moment when Bill McLeod called me and said, "Henry, that for which we’ve been praying seems to have happened!"

In his church were two deacons who had not spoken to each other for a couple of years.

The previous night one of them under great conviction, head down, began to make his way to the front of the church to meet God.

Little did he know that on the other side of the auditorium, his brother had come under the same conviction and he was making his way to the front.

When they got there, they realized they were there together, and in front of the whole congregation, who knew of their being at odds with one another, they fell on each other’s neck and wept and repented and restored their relationship.

Bill told me that as that happened, suddenly a teenage girl on one side stood up and her mother stood up on the other side.

The mother cried out to the daughter, "Oh, forgive me; I’ve not been the mother I ought to be toward you," and the daughter replied, "Oh, I haven’t been the daughter I ought to have been to you."

They ran across the auditorium and fell on each other’s neck.

That service lasted for several hours as God touched that congregation.”

God touched the entire city of Saskatoon.

For seven and one-half weeks, the Spirit of God was incredibly powerful over the entire city.

Churches suddenly began to repent and return to God.

For years, the presence and power of God rested on the people whose lives God had touched.

Henry Blackaby says, “I was ministering to a little congregation of ten people, all so discouraged when I had gone there, that they wanted to disband.

When the presence and power of God touched their lives, they started 38 new congregations while I was there.

Never in their history, dating back into the late 20’s, had they started another congregation in another community.

We began to pray for laborers.

They had never reached university students, and yet I baptized 180 university students.

They had never had people called into ministry, but over 100 felt called into the ministry.

We started a theological college in our church to train those whom God was calling into ministry.

We had over 480 people come through that school, and to this day they are impacting lives in the nation of Canada and around the world.

In the midst of all of that huge touch of God, my four sons felt called into the ministry.”

There is a fullness of time in the economy of God.

Jesus knew in Gethsemane when that was, and He didn’t want His disciples to miss that incredible moment.

It seems as you read through history, God’s moment for great and mighty revival is always preceded by and accompanied by an unusual measure of prayer.

We  call it a prayer battle.