Poised for more: The church unleashed in Ephesians (Prayer)

Barbed-wire Hackers

When the phone was introduced in the early 1900s, one of the last places to get phone service were the rural areas. We still have problems communicating in out of the way places. Elon was here this week promising satellites that would blanket the world with cell service and wifi. Cell service anywhere anytime. There have always been places where communication was hard to come by. Ranchers were among the first to figure out how to get phone signals over longer distances. They hacked the miles and miles and miles of barbed wire. They figured out they could connect a phone wire to barbed wire on one end and a phone wire to the other end and have a phone conversation. Overnight, phones were all over the ranches. Phone companies began using similar technology developed by the ranchers to build out their phone systems from coast to coast. Of course, with the ranchers… the moment a bull goes through the fence is the moment the phone goes dead. That’s a good chuckle if it’s two gossips on the phone, but it’s not so funny when safety is at stake. In fact, Elon brought up the fact that a cell signal that is always on can save lives.

When it comes to doing battle with the devil and evil, we cannot afford to be cut off from the Only One who can provide us help. What would happen if we decide to call for help and found that the phone line is dead?

We’re in Ephesians again this morning. That possibility of being hung out to dry is on Paul’s mind. And he will not finish what he is saying to the congregation in Ephesus until he has addressed this. He began the book by telling us that Jesus has conquered the enemy is now using the church to fill all things with himself:

Ephesians: Jesus is filling all corners of our lives with Himself through the church

Ephesians 1:22-23 “God subjected everything under Jesus’s feet and appointed him as head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of the one who fills all things in every way.”

The church was made for more. More Jesus where we live, work, play, and learn.

There is an Enemy trying to stop the church from filling every corner of society with Jesus and His gospel

Ephesians 6:12 “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this darkness, against evil, spiritual forces in the heavens.

Satan wants to stop the church from filling every area of our lives with the gospel. Satan hates the gospel, and he will do what he can to keep us from filling our lives with Jesus. It’s no accident that Paul talks about spiritual warfare with the devil and his followers immediately following instructions for husbands, wives, children, parents, employers, and employees. Where is it that you will face the enemy? Where you live. In your home. In your school. In your workplace. In your free time.

We have the armor of Jesus in the Gospel to stand and resist the Enemy

Ephesians 6:13 “Take up the full armor of God, so that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and having prepared everything, to take your stand.”

God gives us what we need for the battle. This armor used to resist the devil was first worn by Jesus when he conquered the devil at the cross. And this armor is made up of all of the elements of the gospel. Righteousness, salvation, faith, truth, peace, the Word, and the gospel itself. The devil hates the gospel. The church uses the gospel to resist and stand against the devil. The Good News of what Jesus has done for us on the cross and resurrection is our armor. We put on Jesus every day in doing battle with the enemy.

Prayer as a complement to the gospel armor

But putting on armor isn’t the only thing that Paul says we need in our fight against the devil. There’s one more thing. And that’s what we’re going to spend our time talking about this morning. In fact, if there’s any one thing we can be doing in our ongoing battle with evil and the devil, it’s this one thing with which Paul finishes the entire paragraph. He says it three times: Pray. Talking to God. The Christian phone line to God has been promised. We aren’t hung out to dry. There will be no break in communications. We pray.

Ephesians 6:18 “Pray at all times in the Spirit with every prayer and request, and stay alert with all perseverance and intercession for all the saints.

The armor is only as effective as the church is in its prayers. The armor is a gift. It has to be. The gospel is a gift given to us to withstand the onslaught of all the temptations that come our way. The armor is a gift because we have no ability whatsoever to come up with the armor. And prayer is an acknowledgement that we are totally helpless. We can say a lot of things about prayer, but the one thing that is at the root of all prayer is that we cannot save ourselves. We cannot help ourselves. We need someone else to battle Satan for us. We need Someone else to give us His armor. The Righteousness, the faith, the salvation, the peace, the Word, the truth… all of it is outside of our reach. If we need those things to defeat Satan, then we need someone to give them to us because we will not be able to come up with those things, at all. And so we pray: Jesus, give us your armor. Jesus, give all the saints your armor. Jesus help all of us against the schemes of the devil.

Prayer poises us to fill all things with Jesus

In talking about prayer, Paul brings us the main theme of Ephesians, that Jesus will use his people to fill all areas of life with Himself. Note the superlative language again.

Pray at ALL times

Pray with EVERY prayer

Stay alert with ALL perseverance

Stay alert with intercession for ALL the saints

All, every, all, all. This is Paul reaching into the theme of Ephesians again. Jesus filling all things. And the church, in order to fill all things with Jesus, against an enemy trying to stop the church from doing so, must fill every area of life with prayer. The FULL armor is bolstered by ALL prayer in ALL of life for ALL of the saints… ALL of us.

The enemy is met in prayer. This is what led Luther to quip that the devil is only beaten through prayer. In fact, someone asked him just how it was that the Good News of Jesus was able to rock Europe in just a short period of time and Luther said it was prayer. The Reformation’s success lies in the fact that people prayed for it to happen.

Prayer take the danger of the enemy head-on. This is the danger with the enemy: the danger with the enemy isn’t that I would break any of God’s commands. We often think about spiritual warfare in those terms. We are sinners. We’re already lawbreakers. No…

This is why Paul prays for boldness. Boldness that is an expression of faith. Listen to what Paul says:

Ephesians 6:19 Pray also for me, that the message may be given to me when I open my mouth to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel.

Paul already has the message. And one would think Paul already has boldness. But the boldness here is one that is fueled by faith. Paul knows that doubt is his enemy. Paul knows that the enemy is trying to strip him of his faith. So he prays for boldness, so that he can make known, so that he can fill all things with the gospel.

Paul knows this:

The primary danger at any given moment of my life in any given area of my life is that I begin to doubt Jesus and his love for me in the gospel.

That I lose faith and confidence and hope in the gospel. That I don’t believe.

Recently, I saw a prominent Christian leader make the comment that the Christian life can be summed up with “obey vs. disobey”. That’s not the sum of the Christian life. That’s law. In fact, that’s an attempt to find identity in the commands of God. There can be no identity there. No, the Christian life can be summed up this way: faith vs. unfaith. Trust vs. not trusting. Belief vs. not believing. Every single sin we ever commit at its core is unbelief. Not trusting Jesus and his promises. This is as true for believers as it is for those who are not believers. All of life is about faith in Jesus and operating out of faith in Jesus.

Satan will do anything to keep us from having faith in Jesus.

Satan tempts us with doubt. Satan attacks our faith. The struggle for faith isn’t before the Christian life, it is within the Christian life. And so we pray and we stay alert, not only for ourselves but for all of our Christian brothers and sisters.

At this point, it’s probably good for us to quickly mention what prayer is not:

Prayer is not magic or an incantation.

It’s not saying the right words in order to get a genie out of the bottle in order to get what we want or make something go away. This includes the entire “name it, claim it” or “word of faith” hocus pocus that has no basis in the Bible. God is not a vending machine.

Prayer is not psychological self-help.

It’s not helping myself to feel better. It’s not a calming mechanism meant to bring myself into alignment with energy fields or forces.

Prayer does not merit brownie points with God.

We do not merit anything with God by praying, and God does not answer prayer based on how good we are or what we do. While sincerity is a good thing when it comes to our prayers, our sincerity doesn’t merit access to God. Sincerity is not a posture through which we achieve God’s help.

Prayer is a cry for help.

Prayer acknowledges I could never be sincere enough to get God to hear me or give me anything. It’s a cry for help. It’s an acknowledgement of helplessness. It’s an expression of our faith and confidence, not in ourselves or our sincerity, but in Jesus who can and will act on our behalf.

Prayer is trusting God’s promises to hear us.

God commands us to pray. In numerous places throughout the Bible, God flat out says, you must pray. But the amazing thing about this, as you begin to read the pages, these are not brute commands from an arbitrary God. This isn’t some God on some power trip who narcissistically craves the sound of our voice. No, God commands us to pray because he longs to hear from us. He loves us. He desires our prayer. He wants to hear what’s on our hearts. Jesus is always moving toward us and he wants to be known and he wants us to talk to him about stuff he already knows. because he’s after our hearts. God promises to hear us and we know he promises to hear us because he commands us to pray. It’s that simple. So when we pray, we are committing ourselves to that Promise that God will hear us because he wants to hear us pray.

There’s much more we could say about what prayer is and isn’t… but this will have to do for now. What we need to see is that prayer is necessary in our ongoing battle with the devil. We cry out for help as we put on the armor of the gospel because we know Jesus has already defeated the enemy. And it is Jesus who will come to our aid.

But there’s one last thing we can say about prayer based on what Paul is saying to the church here in Ephesians.

Paul says, in the spiritual war against the devil:

Pray for all the saints

Pray for boldness in filling all things with the gospel

God commands us to pray. God promises to hear us when we pray. And God gives us the words to pray. And that’s happening right here in Ephesians. Paul has a prayer list for the Ephesian church. The letter is full of prayer requests, but we’ll stick to the two right here that are supporting the armor of God. First,

Pray for all the saints. We need each other. One of the reasons why we spend time praying when we gather together on Sundays is because we all need each other and we all need to be praying for each other. Living out the gospel in each area of our lives requires faith. And hope. That kind of faith needed when life is at its worst doesn’t come from inside of us. Jesus gives it to us in His Word through His Spirit. The armor is also a corporate armor. We use the gospel to fend off the attacks of Satan. And we do it together. We pray together and we pray for each other. We pray that each of us will continue to grow in our faith and be sustained in our faith and not waver in our faith. We pray that we will have strength and grace and help from Jesus for each day.

The devil cannot bear to have anyone believing rightly or teaching rightly about Jesus. His goal is to get our eyes off of Jesus, by any means necessary. Politics, sports, business, relationships, even family… the devil will do anything to get our focus and our eyes off of Jesus and our need for him and His importance in our lives. The devil wants to kill our faith in Jesus. And so we pray for each other that our faith will be sustained when doubts arise and distractions come.

Second,

Pray for boldness. And then Paul says, pray that I will be filled with boldness for the Good News of Jesus.

Boldness. Never doubt that God will say yes, I hear you. Never doubt that God will make good on His promise to outfit us with His armor. Never doubt that Jesus is enough for us in every area of our lives. That’s boldness. Boldness is a confident faith that God will make good on His promises to do what he says he will do.

Be honest with God. Tell him everything. Never presume on the fact that God already knows. When it comes to pray, God wants to hear us say it. God promises to act on what we ask.

Prayer poises us to fill every area of life with Jesus.

Prayer sets the agenda. Prayer sets us up to be able to listen to God and through His spirit, hear from Him in His Word. Prayer aligns our hearts with God’s mission to fill all things with Jesus. Prayer keeps the enemy at bay, asking God to fight our fight for us. Prayer keeps our focus on Jesus and the gospel, our armor, quenching those darts of doubt and unbelief.

What would you do if you knew Jesus wanted to hear from you?

Directly? Right now? What if Jesus sent you a text message? What would you want Jesus to know? That’s prayer. Don’t laugh. Jesus has already texted to us. It’s the cross. When Jesus died, the veil in the temple was torn in two, top to bottom. We now have access. In fact, we always have access. The phone line is never down. There’s never a satellite outage. He’s always listening. He wants to hear us. And so what is it that you want Jesus to know?

Paul says, what we need, what we pray for ourselves and for each of us is boldness. Faith. We need to be sustained in our faith. Help our unbelief as we face life’s difficulties. Help our unbelief as Satan again tries to get us to doubt. Give us the strength to keep our eyes focused on Jesus as we do his work and his mission, filling every area of our lives with Jesus. Where we live, work, play, and learn.

Let’s pray.

Jesus taught us to pray, Deliver us from the evil one. That deliverance is provided here. Regardless of all the noise and saber-rattling, the enemy cannot touch your soul. You are safe. Christ’s broken body and his shed blood crushed the head of the serpent. And that deliverance is given to us every time we eat of his body and drink of his blood here at the Table.