Sermon Tone Analysis

We are going to finish our mini-series on Living as a Christian Behind Enemy Lines.

I’ve really enjoyed digging deep into this classic text on spiritual warfare.

I’ve never preached through the entirety of this text with this kind of depth.

In a lot of ways it was challenging to study.

We will have done 5 sermons on 11 verses.

There was a lot in these verses.

Congratulations, if you were here for all 5, you’ve almost survived.

But, what has been harder is embracing the reality of its truth.

You might ask, “What is hard about learning about the weapons that God has given us in Christ to fight the devil?”

That’s not hard.

That’s encouraging.

I think what is difficult is the realization of just how poorly I’m using them.

Has anybody been on the struggle bus with me in that?

A.W. Tozer once wrote,

“Many Christians view this world as a playground rather than a battleground.”

-A.W. Tozer

We don’t like to face the reality that we are at war with the devil and with our own depravity.

A lot of time the devil doesn’t have to do anything.

Our own fallen flesh is so corrupt that it just leads us into sin without any prompting.

It is not hard to sin.

It is not hard to disobey God.

We our born fallen.

Our default is to sin.

I can hear you know though, “Wait a minute, Bradley.

I thought that you taught us over the last 4 sermons about our new nature in Christ?

We have been born again.

In our new birth and our new identity, we have the spiritual weapons of the attributes of Christ.”

Sure we do.

And thank goodness that we do.

We still struggle with the residue of our old flesh.

That residue keeps us from naturally using those weapons.

Or we might say, “Living out who we are in Christ.”

A.W. Tozer once wrote,

“Many Christians view this world as a playground rather than a battleground.”

-A.W. Tozer

Most people that I know would rather play than fight.

So, we have got to set ourselves every morning to the reality of the spiritual fight ahead of us and employ the weapons that we have to fight with: truth, righteousness, readiness, faith, salvation, and the sword of the Spirit.

Last week we had an interesting discovery about “the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God.” (v.17)

Of course, we know that the sword is an offensive weapon.

We are told in Hebrews that that sword is sharp and effective for battle.

But the question that I asked that I got the most comments about after the message is “What gives the sword of the Word it’s edge?”

The answer given by the text is the, God does.

It is the Sword of the Spirit.

It is the Spirit of God that gives God’s word it’s power.

The Word of God has immense power, because God is all powerful.

Several of you mentioned that you approached your Bibles differently this week.

This brings us the issue of where we find the power to where the armor and fight the war.

Paul says that we find the power to fight with the attributes of Christ that we are clothed with through prayer.

We pray because we are at war, and most of the time we don’t really want to fight.

We’d rather play, and that is a very dangerous place to be.

When we do pray we often use it for the wrong reason.

John Piper once described the problem like this:

One of the reasons our prayer malfunction is that we try to treat it like a domestic intercom for calling the butler for another pillow in the den rather than treating it like a wartime walkie-talkie for calling down the power of the Holy Spirit in the battle for souls.

Notice that he says, “We are to pray at all times, ‘in the Spirit.”

That speaks to where the power of prayer comes from.

If there is power in the Word of God because of who God is (the word is the sword of the Spirit), then there is also power in the presence of God because of who God is (we pray in the Spirit).

Prayer has power because the person we are talking to has all power.

Think about this, you can’t pray and actually communicate with God without being in the presence of God.

If you did our Sunday night, men’s and women’s Matthew study, you will remember that Jesus said concerning prayer:

When we read the Bible, we see God; we hear God.

When we pray God sees us.

God hears us.

That’s why we combine Bible reading and prayer.

As we pray, we often hear more God more clearly in his word.

*I want to take a few minutes and talk about how to combine the word and prayer.

When I was in seminary I learned to pray and have my prayers directed by the word.

This is very helpful because my prayers can feel very repetitive.

Like I’m having the same conversation with a friend every day.

*Before my grandmother died 11 years ago, see started struggling with demensia.

I would go see her in the nursing home and we would have the same conversation about 4 times in 20 minutes.

I love her and I understood the problem.

I sometimes wonder if God feels the same way about me.

I know he loves me and understands.

But, still most of my prayers feel like a laundry list of the same things that I need from God, over and over day after day.

However, learning to pray through the word allows me to present the same needs in a deer way directed by the concerns of God.

John Piper wrote an article on this back in the 80’s that I read in the late 90’s that help me understand this:

1. Realize that there is a direct connection between the degree to which our minds are shaped by Scripture and the degree to which our prayers are answered.

Jesus said, “If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you will, and it shall be done for you” ().

2. Remember that, as D. M. M’Intyre says, God only answers petitions that his Son has had a hand in formulating.

“If we ask anything according to his will he hears us” ().

3. Note that the early church prayed Scripture.

For example, the prayer of quotes .

Also Old Testament prayers like Ezra’s prayer in are rehearsals of biblical history and biblical texts.

Also Old Testament prayers like Ezra’s prayer in are rehearsals of biblical history and biblical texts.

4. Praying the Word means reading (or reciting) Scripture in a spirit of prayer and letting the meaning of the verses become our prayer and inspire our thoughts.

5.

There are many possible ways to do it, not just one.

It can be done alone or in groups.

You can pause after each phrase, or each sentence, or each paragraph, or each chapter.

6.

I would suggest the following procedure as a starter:

Find a quiet time and place.Begin with a brief prayer like,

“O Lord, I need you, I come seeking you and needing help.

Open my eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of the word” ().

Read a chapter of an epistle quickly to get the gist of it.

The reason for this is that the meaning of the individual sentences is controlled by their context.

We must not make a verse mean anything we like.

If anything has “jumped out” as especially relevant to you, dwell on it and let it inspire and shape your prayer even before you go back to read a sentence at a time.

If you bump into difficulties you can’t understand, make a mental note of it for later thought and research.

Be honest.

But then move on to what does seem clear.

Now go back to the first sentence and read it with the question: If this sentence were to become a prayer about my life, what would it sound like?