Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

According to a poll by Pew research, 55% of Americans pray daily.

This study included people of all religious backgrounds (buddhist, hindu, muslim, jew and Christian as well as even atheists) - yet over half of Americans polled stated that they pray at least once a day.

16% said that they pray at least weekly.

That means that nearly 3/4 Americans pray at least on a weekly basis.

There is certainly something interesting about that statistic considering the fact that we live in a very secular culture that seems to push things like “God” away more times than not.

People recognize that there is something unique and special when it comes to prayer, though.

We know this firsthand, do we not?

As Christians we have the ability to pray to the Creator of the Universe whenever we want to!

We don’t have to go through a pastor or priest in order to do this, we can do this from our own homes and with our families.

We are able to come before the Father with our concerns and praise Him for who He is.

This is a special thing and even non-Christians seem to recognize that prayer is something “worth” doing even if they don’t completely believe the same way about God that we do.

As we began our study of Ephesians two weeks ago, we mentioned that this was a church that was going through a bit of an identity crisis.

They had many great teachers and leaders who had given them instruction throughout the years, yet we know in Revelation that they had “lost their first love”.

In we see Paul introduce himself and give a very powerful argument to them about why we should praise God (because we are chosen, redeemed and assured).

This message is extremely relevant to us today because we need to be reminded of why we praise God as well.

What we see Paul do in the next portion of this wonderful letter is transition to prayer and talk about the importance thanking God, of growing in our knowledge of God and continuing to praise God for the gift of salvation that we have in the person of Jesus Christ.

Let’s dive into this “Prayer for Wisdom” in

We see the apostle Paul talk about three key things in these verses regarding prayer: thanksgiving, intercession and praise.

Thanksgiving (15-16)

Paul begins verse 15 by saying “for this reason” and this is kind of an awkward place for us to begin in order to understand what he is talking about.

In order to understand, we must backtrack to the previous section in which Paul talked about giving praise to God.

At the end of the day, we give praise to God because of what He has done for us!

We are chosen, redeemed and assured - the only logical thing for us to do as Christians is to praise our Lord and Savior!

We see Paul remembers this church in his prayers - even though he hasn’t been to this church in nearly a decade, he continues to pray for this church.

Have you ever been in a similar situation in your own spiritual life?

You are sharing the Gospel with an individual and you pray for them to come to know Jesus Christ as Lord and you continue to do so for years and years?

What a wonderful blessing it is to be prayed for!

On the other side, how many of you have had a mentor or a close friend that you have prayed for for years and years?

We know that there is great power in prayer and we are called to pray without ceasing in .

It is a blessing to pray for one another and as we see Paul do, we are to give thanks to God for these individuals in our lives.

We see that Paul is thankful for two specific things in these opening verses: their faith in Jesus and their love for others.

These are very common things that we see throughout Scripture, do we not?

We know that we are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ - we know that this is certainly important for a Christian.

What a blessing for the believers of this church to hear from Paul that he has heard of their faith in Jesus Christ.

This would bring about a dose of encouragement, would it not?

How would we feel if JD Grear (President of the Southern Baptist Convention) wrote us a letter that said, “I have heard of the outstanding faith that Morgan Baptist Church has in our Lord Jesus Christ.”

That would be pretty cool!

We know that faith is at the foundation of Christianity.

If someone were to ask you “What is a Christian?”

how would you respond?

Probably something along the lines of, “someone who believes in Jesus Christ, loves others and has hope.”

The second part of verse 15 is that these believers had love towards all the saints.

What a tremendous testimony that this church had going for it!

Not only did they have faith in Christ (a great vertical faith) but they matched that with love for all the saints (a great horizontal faith).

We see Jesus say in that

We know that states that faith without works is dead.

The converse is true, as well.

Works without faith is also dead!

We must see to it that we have both as Christians and as Paul does in verses 15-16, he illustrates that this church was doing both of these things and that he was continuing to pray for them.

He is giving thanks to God for the Christians in Ephesus.

This is the legacy that we want to leave behind about our church today in Morgan, is it not?

We want people to look at our church and say that Christians over there believe in Jesus Christ and they love other people.

If the church became known for what we are for rather than what we are against then our impact on those around us would be far greater than what it currently is!

There is certainly something for us to learn from Paul’s prayer in these verses.

A good prayer life is both ongoing and planned.

As mentioned before, Paul states that we are to “pray without ceasing”.

We can pray as we drive to work.

We can pray at work.

We can pray at school.

One of the things that many people say in the Bible belt is that we want “prayer back in our schools”.

Guess what?

Prayer never left the school!

Pray at school.

Pray with your friends before you eat and before your recital or sporting event.

Pray without ceasing!

We also know that Jesus had specific times where He would get away from His disciples and His followers in order to spend time with God.

He would get away from the distractions in order to fixate His mind on the things of the Father.

This is a great reminder for us today as well.

Sure, we are to pray without ceasing and there are always opportunities for us to pray, however we also need times to get away from our phones, tv’s and even family members in order to spend time with our Creator in an undistracted manner.

The Ephesian church had problems.

We talked about some of those problems two weeks ago in that they became very legalistic, they lost their first love and they were trying to add things to Jesus (namely magic).

Yet, Paul does not address all of those negative things in these verses.

He focuses on the good things.

This is certainly a good principle for us to strive to emulate whenever we pray for others.

We need to focus on the good things that other people do, not be self-righteous.

This doesn’t mean that we are naive to the weaknesses of others, but we are to recognize the grace in other believers.

This takes a great amount of maturity, does it not?

Our tendency is to often tear others down and point out the weaknesses of others!

We can spend hours talking about things that we don’t like about individuals but it can be difficult to talk about the things that other people do well.

Paul focuses on the grace that this church makes evident.

We should also try and encourage other believers whenever we see evidence of grace in their lives!

Intercession (17-20)

Whenever we pray, we often times are quick to make our request known to God.

We are great about asking God to do something that we want Him to do.

“God just help me to pass this test”, “God please help this appointment to go well”, “God please let my team win!” just to name a few.

What we see in verses 17-20, though, is a significantly different prayer from the apostle Paul.

Paul prays that these believers would have wisdom and knowledge.

It is absolutely necessary to seek the Spirit’s help in understanding Scripture!

In Scripture we see the heart of God time and time again.

As Charles Spurgeon put it, “It is easier to teach a tiger vegetarianism than to teach a non-Christian the gospel apart from the Holy Spirit.”

The Spirit helps to open our eyes and to know Scripture deeply.

We see an example of this in as Jesus opened the eyes of the lost to see His Word.

Here in Ephesians we see Paul ask God to give these Christians eyes to see who they are.

We see this in as the Psalmist writes “Open my eyes that I may contemplate wonderful things from your instruction.”

It can be difficult to see our need for God sometimes.

Whenever life is going good or whenever we feel good about ourselves after a great day at work or after acing a test.

We can have a very high view of ourselves.

In these moments, it can be very easy to lose sight of the fact that we need God desperately.

Many people today have a very low view of God as well.