Sermon Tone Analysis

NOTE:

This is a manuscript, and not a transcript of this message.

The actual presentation of the message differed from the manuscript through the leading of the Holy Spirit.

Therefore, it is possible, and even likely that there is material in this manuscript that was not included in the live presentation and that there was additional material in the live presentation that is not included in this manuscript.

Engagement

There was once a man who was very faithful in his prayer life.

Every morning when he got up he would kneel by his bed and he would pray, ‘God bless me, God bless my family, God bless this day’.

And before every meal he would say a prayer ‘God bless this food’.

And every night when he went to bed he would pray, ‘God bless me, God bless my family, God bless this night’.

And every time he prayed a prayer, he would take a walnut and place it in a glass jar.

And over the years his house became full of glass jars, that were full of walnuts.

They were on shelves and bookcases and window sills and everywhere.

Walnuts… 1000’s of them!

And the man felt very pleased with himself – ‘just look at all these jars, just look at all these walnuts, just look at all these prayers that I have prayed’ he would say.

Then one night Jesus appeared to him in a dream.

And Jesus took each of the glass jars, opened them, and one by one he took out the walnuts and broke them open.

And inside each one it was empty, nothing but dryness and dust.

And Jesus said to him, you know your prayers are like that, although there have been 1000s of them – they are empty, they are dry, they are meaningless.

Tension

How many of you can relate to that story?

I know I can.

Perhaps, like me, you genuinely believe in the power of prayer, but honestly you know you could pray more consistently and with more depth.

I read a blog post from Cathe Laurie, wife of Pastor Greg Laurie, this week that suggested three reasons people don’t pray more:

We don’t think we have time.

We don’t think it is important.

We don’t believe that it makes any difference.

I think that is probably an accurate assessment, but based on my own prayer life and talking to others about their prayer lives, there are at least a couple other reasons that a lot of us don’t pray like we should:

Some of us might feel like we’re not really good at prayer.

We listen to others pray and think to ourselves, “I wish I could pray like that”.

I think that some of us might actually be bored with prayer.

We’re kind of in a prayer rut in which we find ourselves praying the same things over and over again.

In our new sermon series that starts today, we’re going to address this last barrier to more effective prayer.

We’re calling this series “Dangerous Prayers”.

We’ll begin today by answering the question: What is dangerous prayer?

And then for the next three weeks, we’ll be looking at three specific dangerous prayers that I’m going to challenge all of us to pray.

And the one thing I can promise is that if you’ll actually prayer these prayers from your heart, it is going to get you out of any kind of prayer rut that you’re in right now and it is going to radically transform not only your prayer life, but your walk with Jesus.

Truth

We’ll begin this morning by going back to one of the first dangerous prayers found in the Bible.

So go ahead and turn to Genesis 32 and in just a moment we’ll look at a passage that we’ve studied before.

In fact, I preached on this same passage just about a year ago in our “Never Going Back” series.

The story of Jacob is one of the most interesting in the Bible.

From birth his life is filled with conflict, especially with his brother Esau and later with his father-in-law Laban.

Both of those relationships eventually come to a point where Esau and Laban seek to kill Jacob.

So Jacob is understandably on the run much of his life.

In Genesis 31, God comes to Jacob and tells him to return to the land of his fathers and promises to be with him.

So Jacob gathers his two wives, his two concubines and his children, who range in age from preschoolers to young teens and he flees from his father-in-law Laban.

Laban pursues Jacob and his family and eventually catches up to them and confronts Jacob.

Laban and Jacob come to an agreement not to cross into each other’s land in the future and set up a pillar of rocks as a witness to their agreement.

As Jacob approaches his family’s land and the inevitable confrontation with his brother Esau, he does what he has always done.

He comes up with an elaborate plan to try and appease his brother’s anger and protect himself and his family.

That brings us up to the passage that we’ll look at this morning.

It’s not completely clear here exactly who Jacob is wrestling with.

In verse 24, he is merely identified as “a man”.

The prophet Hosea identifies him as “the angel” (Hosea 12:4).

But Jacob recognizes him as God Himself and names the place Peniel, which mean “the face of God”.

I agree with a number of scholars who believe this is a Christophany - a pre-incarnate appearance of Jesus.

That would certainly be consistent with the fact that Jesus is the only person of the triune God who appears in human form.

But whether this is merely an angel or it is Jesus, the effect is the same - Jacob is literally wrestling with God or one of His representatives here.

And in that encounter, he prays a dangerous prayer.

Can you help me identify that prayer?

I will not let you go until you bless me.

(v.

26)

At first glance that doesn’t appear to be altogether different than the kind of rote prayers we pray where we ask God to bless us.

But when we look at this passage as a whole, it is obvious that this is a different kind of prayer.

And it becomes obvious right away why this kind of prayer is dangerous.

Dangerous prayers ask God to bless us by first breaking us.

We will see this in each of the three dangerous prayers we’ll look at beginning next Sunday.

That is certainly different that the kind of prayers we pray most often isn’t it?

Most of us are pretty comfortable asking God to bless our lives or our food.

We’re comfortable praying for God to heal illness and disease - either our own or that of others.

But how many of us would pray those prayers if we realized that the blessing was only going to come after God first breaks us?

I hope you see now why these kinds of prayers are indeed dangerous.

In verse 29, we read that God did indeed bless Jacob.

But that was not until after He had first broken Jacob.

In fact, He breaks Jacob twice before blessing him.

The first time He breaks Jacob is obvious.

God physically breaks Jacob by touching the hip socket and putting it out of joint.

That left Jacob with a physical reminder of his encounter with God

But there is a second breaking here that is not nearly as obvious.

It occurs in verse 27 when God asks Jacob, ”What is your name?”.

To us that question seems pretty innocuous, but in the culture of that day, names were much more significant than they are today.

Today people pick names for all kinds of reasons - just ask my wife about all the unique names of her students over the years.

But in Jacob’s day, names we an indication of a person’s character and identity.

Jacob’s name means something like “he grasps the heal” or “supplanter”.

He was given that name at birth because he literally grasped the heal of his older twin brother, Esau, as he exited the womb.

But unfortunately, that name proved to be a kind of prophetic picture of the kind of person Jacob would become - one who was always scheming and deceiving others to get what he wanted even when he was not entitled to it.

So when God asks Jacob, “What is your name?”,

He is essentially asking Jacob to reflect on the kind of person that he has been throughout his life.

Jacob had crossed the stream that night thinking that Esau was his problem.

But with that one question, God made it clear that the problem was actually Jacob himself.

Application

We’re going to use this passage to learn about two important aspects of dangerous prayer.

First we’ll talk about some prerequisites for praying these prayers and then we’ll focus on the impact these prayers can have on our lives.

THREE PREREQUISITES FOR PRAYING DANGEROUS PRAYERS

Solitude

I don’t have to tell you that we live in a time when people are more distracted than ever.

We carry around these devices that fit in our pockets that are constantly clamoring for our attention.

Far too often we pay attention to God like we pay attention to the flight attendant who is giving us the pre-flight safety instructions.

We think “I’ve heard this all before” so we engage in some other activity and pay no attention at all.

Jacob had lived his entire life being distracted by the things going on around him, He was too busy thinking up his latest scheme to steal his brother’s birthright or blessing or figuring out how to get Laban to give him the wife he wanted.