What Provoked Paul's Prayer?

Introduction to Paul's Prayer in Ephesians 1:15-23

0:03 The seasons almost demand in our meditation of the scriptures. We return this morning to Paul's letter to the church at Ephesus and begin today our study in the second major paragraph in the letter, a paragraph which begins in verse 15 and continues down through to the end of the chapter, verse 23. Like the first paragraph, which was one long, complex sentence, so the second paragraph is one lengthy, complex sentence.

0:48 It's a statement growing out of the apostles' burden of prayer, which has again, like the first paragraph, some of the most lofty, some of the most profound, some of the most mind-stretching, concepts to be found anywhere in the Word of God. And naturally, I would be reluctant to go through, as we have done with the first paragraph, phrase by phrase, verse by verse, if it were not for this deep-seated conviction that if the Holy Ghost saw fit to give these profound and lofty concepts to that first-century church comprised of slaves and people of the artisan class, congregations made up of primaries, just plain folks like us, why, there is no reason whatsoever but that of spiritual indolence and laziness to keep us from coming to this passage with the deepest of convictions that it will be greatly profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness. I shall read the entire paragraph, give a brief overview of its content, and then we shall focus our attention upon verse 15, for our study this morning. For this cause I also, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus which is among you,

2:15 and the love which ye show towards all the saints, cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, having the eyes of your heart enlightened, that ye may know what is the hope of His calling, what the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what the exceeding greatness of His power to us were to believe, according to that working of the strength of His might, which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead, and made Him to sit at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule, and authority, and power, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come. And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in. The first paragraph found the Apostle engaged in praise. It begins with the words,

The Structure and Nature of Paul's Prayer

3:44 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And then as we saw week by week, the Apostle opens up before us those facts of redemptive realities, those things which God has done for guilty sinners in His own gracious purpose, and the purposes of sovereign mercy, which formed the focus and created the fuel of the Apostle's praise.

4:15 His praise was not the mere pouring forth of a white hot heart. We saw week by week that His praise was a white hot heart funneled through a clear head. And the great concepts of election, and predestination, and redemption, and divine wisdom, and inheritance, and the sealing of the Spirit, profound doctrinal concepts were poured through the Apostle's head by the pressure of a warm heart as he engaged in praise to God. So likewise, when we come to this paragraph of prayer, we do not find the Apostle simply pouring out his heart any old way in prayer for the people of God. There is the intensest spiritual desire in his praying. He indicates this by saying that he remembers them without ceasing. He ceases not to give thanks for them.

5:16 He ceases not to mention them in his prayers. But just as his praise was governed by his Christian understanding, so his prayers were governed by his understanding. And in this great prayer, he gives to us the three main divisions of thought. Look at them.

5:36 First of all, an account of what moved him to pray. For this cause, I also having heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus, and the love which ye show to all the saints. Verse 15 is a statement of what moved him to pray. Verse 16 is a reference to the two dominant characteristics of his prayer.

6:01 There was thanksgiving. Cease not to give thanks for you. There was condemnation. Constancy.

6:07 Making mention of you in my prayers. So then we have the reasons that moved him to pray. Verse 15. The dominant characteristics of his prayer.

6:20 Verse 16. Thanksgiving and constancy. And then we have an explanation of the focus and the substance of his prayer, beginning with verse 17 and going through to the end of the chapter. And the prayer, when you summarize it, when you boil it down, is essentially a prayer for spiritual illumination concerning three great issues.

6:44 He prays that they may have spiritual illumination concerning their hope, which springs out of their calling. The hope of their calling. That they may have some understanding of the glory of the inheritance that is theirs in Christ. And thirdly, that they may have some spiritual understanding as to the present power of Christ, a power revealed in his own resurrection and subsequent exaltation to the right hand of God the Father.

7:18 This then, I submit, is the basic structure of the paragraph, indicating once more that though the apostle is caught up in the spirit of prayer, he is not only praying in the spirit, he is praying with the understanding. And may I say, by way of a little aside, when people come and try to tantalize you with the great benefit of praying in tongues and saying, well, if you only knew what it's like to pray in tongues. One man said to me, I used to labor in prayer, but now I can pray for hours and though I don't know what I'm praying, I know that the Holy Spirit is praying through me. May I suggest that that perspective, if it dominates a man's thinking, is entirely contrary to the apostle's perspective, on prayer. His head is clear, while his heart is constrained to plead with God. And therefore, this becomes a very helpful pattern for the kind of prayer that is pleasing to God. The kind of concepts that should enter into our prayer if we are praying as mature Christians.

8:30 So much then, for the general relationship between the first and the second paragraph, praise at what God has already done provokes him to pray that God will do more. And every Christian knows that this is true. If you find the wheels of prayer grinding slowly, begin to praise God for what He has done. And the contemplation of past mercies will provide incentive to lay hold of God for present and for future mercies.

The Report that Provoked Prayer: Faith in the Lord Jesus

9:01 Then we've looked briefly at the basic structure of the entire paragraph. Now let's go back and focus our attention upon verse 15. And if I were giving a title to our study this morning, it would be the report that provokes prayer. For this cause I also, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus which is among you, and the love which ye show towards all the saints, cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you, in my prayers.

9:40 Approximately five years had transpired from Paul's last visit to the Ephesian church. Here was a body of believers which was formed as the fruit of his own labors, his tears, as he says in Acts 20, his preaching, his faithful pronouncements of divine truth publicly and in private. He's invested three years of his life in the formation of that assembly and in preaching the gospel in that geographical area. And if a man is a true servant of Christ who has preached with tears, who has labored with compassion, he cannot simply cut people out of his heart because God cuts them out of his life geographically. You can't do that. And so he is solicitous, he is concerned, he is earnestly desirous to know the spiritual well-being of these people, and so in the ensuing course of five years, no doubt many new believers have been added. Some have perhaps gone on to glory, some perhaps have turned aside from the faith, but the report which has been brought to Paul, for he says, having heard, the report indicates that the great body of believers there at Ephesus are continuing to go on in greatness.

11:08 And it's interesting that the two things which the apostle singles out of the report, for I'm sure much more was contained in the report, and Paul had all kinds of questions, how's brother so-and-so doing, and how's sister so-and-so doing, and how's so-and-so doing in this one, he says after the report was given, the two things that stood out supremely in his mind, which convinced him that the grace of God was still operative there in the body of believers, are faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and love to all the saints. And it was these two things which in the apostles' thinking were the indispensable evidences that grace had been conferred and that grace was continuing. And so as we approach the text this morning, this report that provoked prayer, it is a report which teaches us that the two indispensable evidences that grace has been conferred upon any individual and any group, the two indispensable evidences that grace is continuing in any individual and in any group are these, faith in the Lord Jesus and love to all the saints.

12:36 And so we're going to approach our study this morning with the two indispensable evidences within that framework. Of all the things that I as a pastor could report to a fellow pastor of this assembly, the two that I should be able to report above all others that should indicate the presence and continuance of grace would be these, faith and love. To make it personal and individual, if you profess to be a Christian, if you profess to know the grace of God in truth, if you profess to be growing in grace, these are the two characteristics that should dominate above all others faith and love. Now then, let's look at them in that order. For this cause I also, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus, which is among you. Whenever you find the phrase faith in the Lord Jesus, faith in the Lord Jesus, faith in the Lord Jesus, or the Lord Jesus Christ, you must understand that you're being brought to the very heart of the biblical message.

13:50 You're being brought right into the central nerve of Christian truth. For you'll remember when the Apostle Paul was reviewing the substance of his preaching at the Ephesian church in the presence of the Ephesian elders, he says in Acts 20, and verse 21, testifying both to Jews and Greeks two great pivots of truth, repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. So then, faith toward the Lord Jesus Christ is the proclamation of a central pivot of the biblical message. Now notice what the object of their faith was. He said the object of their faith was the Lord Jesus. And whenever you find those titles, you are being brought into a remembrance of the central doctrines of the Christian faith.

14:57 The Lord Jesus means nothing less than that unique person who as the Lord of glory was manifested amongst men as Jesus to be a Savior from sin, who in the process of being a Savior lived a perfect life, died the sinner's death, was raised from the dead, and was exalted back to the place of Lord. And you must not ever regard those words Lord Jesus as a mere legal handle by which to identify the Savior of men. They are packed full of theological and biblical significance and so the Apostle says I rejoice. I was confident that the grace conferred was grace continuing because the object of your faith continued to be the Christ whom God had revealed as His own Lord, as the One who would be the Savior of sinners. The term the Lord Jesus is a reference to the uniqueness of the Lord Jesus. The uniqueness of His person and the sufficiency of His work.

16:15 And He says when I heard that you had not changed the object of your faith one iota, that you were clinging to the same object that I set before you, the One whom I proclaimed as God's incarnate Son, the One whom I proclaimed as dying the criminal's death upon the cross, the One whom I proclaimed as buried and risen and exalted to the right hand of the Father. When I heard that you hadn't changed the object of your faith one bit, He said, my heart was encouraged to believe that all the blessings of the first paragraph were indeed yours and that all of the blessings I long for you to know will be yours as the people of God. So the object of their faith was the Lord Jesus. It was not Jesus, the man Jesus. It was not Jesus, the projection of their own desire for some kind of superhero which is the curse of the deflection from Scripture in so much of the so-called Jesus movement in our day.

17:25 It was not simply the Lord thinking of an exalted God upon a throne divorced from His saving work in death and resurrection. It was the Lord Jesus fusing together the uniqueness of His person and the sufficiency of His work. This then was the object of their faith and what was the essence of that faith? It was that wholehearted reliance upon and confidence in the Lord Jesus as their only ground of acceptance before God.

18:02 I have little sympathy for acrostics. An acrostic is a thing in which you take a word, I don't know if Mr. Gerglis used an acrostic last, he talked to me about the possibility of using one, but I like the little acrostic with regard to faith. I find it one of the most helpful definitions of faith.

18:20 What is faith in the Lord Jesus? Forsaking all,

18:28 trust Him. That's faith. Forsaking, F-O-A-I-T, take H, Him. That's faith.

18:39 And the Apostle Paul who when he was amongst them preached not only repentance toward God, but faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. And when he hears five years later that they are continuing to forsake all other ground of acceptance and continuing to cling to Christ as He is revealed in the Gospel, he rejoices because he knows that grace and grace alone can bring a man to that point and grace and grace alone can keep him at that point. For you remember the whole problem at Galatia? People had been brought to that point, but now we're moving in another direction.

19:24 Their confession was forsaking all, I trust Him, and the Judaizers came along and said, yes, and let's put something else there as the object of your trust. And so, they began to cling to circumcision and ceremonial law and Paul had to write to them and said, are you so foolish having begun in the Spirit? You are now made perfect in the flesh. Receive ye the Spirit by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith.

19:51 And he says, you've moved from the posture of faith and when you move from faith, you move from grace. Grace and faith are joined together. So the Apostle then, receiving this report that they were continuing to have as the object of their faith the Lord Jesus and that they clung to Him in the essence of that faith which is wholeheartedness, wholehearted reliance upon Him. He rejoices.

The Two Leading Principles of the Gospel

20:18 Now do you see why I say this phrase brings us to the heart of the Gospel? John Brown in his commentary on Galatians 3 says something again and again and apparently he's quoting someone else because he puts it in quotation marks but he never says who said it. So I can only pass it on by way of John Brown's commentary and unidentified quotation marks. And he says, the two leading principles of the Gospel of Christ are these.

20:44 And I hope that you will listen carefully. Your salvation depends upon grasping these principles. Principle one is that guilty men are restored to the divine favor entirely on the basis of the doings and the sufferings of Christ. When you ask the question how shall guilty sinful sons of Adam once again have the divine favor, the answer of the Gospel, is that guilty men are restored to the divine favor and here's the key word, entirely, underline it, circle it, put little red stars around it, entirely on the basis of the doings and the sufferings of Christ. That's the first leading doctrine of the Gospel. The second is this, that sinful men become partakers of the gospel. The benefits of the doings and the sufferings of Christ entirely by believing.

21:57 And the word entirely is again the key word. Now those are the two fundamental leading principles of the gospel. Let me give them to you again. And I'm not doing this for filler.

22:11 I long that these principles be burnt into the tables of your heart and down to the very furrows of the mind and the very core of your heart. And I'm not doing this for filler. And I'm not doing this for the spirit. If someone were to ask you what makes Christianity entirely unique, what is its utterly unique principles, here they are.

22:30 Guilty men restored to the divine favor entirely by the doings and the sufferings of Christ. Guilty men partake of the benefits of the doings and the sufferings of Christ entirely by faith. Now let me press those two things home to your conscience. Do you claim to be a Christian?

22:55 Do you claim to be a believer in Jesus Christ? Well then let me press this upon your conscience this morning. Is it your glad and intelligent confession that your only hope of having divine favor rests squarely upon the obedience and the sufferings of the Lord Jesus? No equivocation, no hidden phrases, no print, no asterisk saying look at the bottom and see the exception clauses.

23:32 Is that the full-hearted unreserved confession that you make this morning?

23:40 Can you follow it up with the second confession? I believe I am a partaker of the benefits of Christ's doings, that is His obedience and His sacrifice entirely by faith. I'm not mixing my evidences. My obedience.

24:04 My verse. Nothing in my hands.

24:11 Simply to thy cross I cling.

24:21 You see no man can make those two confessions without a supernatural work of the Spirit being wrought in his heart. For the last place a guilty sinner ever flees is to the doings and the sufferings of Christ. He'll flee to his own resolutions. He'll flee to his own resolutions.

24:41 He'll flee to his own determination to make himself better. And it's the work of the Spirit to beat a man off from every refuge until he sees my only refuge is Jesus Christ, His doings, His sufferings. And then the Spirit must beat a man off from every other way of approach to Christ but the approach of the naked hand of faith that forsaking all trust in Him. In Him and in Him alone.

25:13 Even when the Spirit has brought a man to that place, the remaining of his corruption and the influence of the devil will continually try to move him to some other pivotal resting point, some other way of laying hold of Christ. So when the apostle, after five years of absence from this church, hears in a report that the object of their faith has not been changed, it hasn't been expanded to include something else, it hasn't been shriveled to exclude something that it was formerly, it is still the Lord Jesus in the glory of His person, in the perfection of His work, and that faith has not been mixed with self-help and self-effort and any other kind of apparent way to lay hold of the virtue of Christ. He rejoices. Why? Because the evidence of grace, grace conferred and grace continuing is that men believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.

26:24 This is the offense of the gospel. This is why it's for people to talk about, well, faith in Christ, that's just sort of the starting point. Now we go on to something else. No, you don't.

26:36 You go on in that, not from it.

26:42 No matter how spiritual it may appear, and that was the deceptiveness of the Galatian heretics, it seems spiritual to say, look, Christ was enough to get in. Faith was enough to get in. But now if you were to go on, you need Christ plus. And Paul says the minute you start putting your plus signs, you're in the realm of the flesh.

27:02 You've moved from the principle of grace.

27:07 Oh, how desperately we need to understand that particularly when we have, and rightly so, reacted against a cheap kind of believism in which people profess to believe in Christ. But it's not the faith of God's elect. It's not a faith, as we'll see in the next phrase, which works by love. We need to beware, lest in reacting against an easy believism, we have faith plus something else.

27:36 No, no. You don't correct one error by spawning another. You just end up with two errors. And we need to hold tenaciously to this fundamental principle, the evidence of grace conferred and verified, grace continuing faith in the Lord Jesus.

27:56 Now, this has tremendous implications. I've indicated some of them. The most obvious one should be that the biblical doctrine of the perseverance of the saints is that, first of all, they persevere in faith and in obedience and holiness. They persevere in faith, for faith is the mother of all other graces, and you and I must beware of anything that will either change the object of faith or change the simple attachment to Christ in that relationship of trust and reliance.

The Second Indispensable Evidence: Love to All the Saints

28:37 Well then, look at the second indispensable evidence of grace conferred and grace continuing. And the apostle describes it in these words, And the love which ye show toward all the saints, Ah, you young men in your Greek classes, when you come to exegete Ephesians, you will find out that there is a textual problem concerning whether or not Paul actually put the word love there. And I am satisfied in my own mind that it should be there by comparing parallel passages, hence most of the translations included, but don't get thrown when you come to it, and don't think that I've been dishonest in not making you aware of the problem, but that would put the people of God to sleep to give them a lecture in textual criticism. That's not preaching the word. So we shall assume that the proper rendering is the love which ye show to all the saints. Now we've got to define some of these words.

29:36 What word is more perverted, more prostituted, more misunderstood in our day than the word love?

29:47 All of us have heard whether we wanted to or not. We were sitting in a dentist office or on an airplane or something. We've heard, we've heard that stupid, inane song, what the world needs is love, sweet love. And you giggle because you've heard it.

30:01 I hope you don't hear it when you've got a choice not to, but some of us have had it imposed upon us. We've had no choice. What the world needs is love, sweet love. Well, isn't that something?

30:13 What is that sweet love they're talking about? Is that what Paul's saying? Is he talking about what the world needs is love, sweet love? What is the love that, being present in that assembly at Ephesus, convinced Paul that grace was not only conferred, but continuing to be operative?

30:33 Well, I'll give you that little definition I work with continually. Love is that principled, divine affection which seeks the good of its object even at personal cost. Love is that principled, divine affection it doesn't rise up out of Adam. It comes down from Christ.

31:00 And it is principled. It acts intelligently, volitionally. It is not just a general ooze that pushes me in certain directions. It's a principled and a divine affection.

31:14 And the outstanding characteristic of it is this, it seeks the good of its objects even at personal cost. It's 1 Corinthians 13, love that seeketh not her own. With its passive graces it beareth all things. Love shows itself by its passiveness, its ability to take.

31:37 It beareth all things by its active graces. It hopeth all things. It believeth all things. Passive, it beareth all things.

31:49 This is what I'm talking about. And it was the presence of love that privileged, principled, divine affection operative in that assembly amongst the saints so that they were seeking one another's well-being volitionally and intelligently even at personal cost. And who was the object of that love? He says, the love which He showed toward all the saints, the holy ones, those who were set apart unto God by virtue of their union with Christ, the people whom He addressed in the letter, Paul, an apostle of Jesus, to the saints at Ephesus, that word which becomes the dominant descriptive word of the people of God, the holy ones, the sanctified ones, not the happy ones, not the wealthy ones, not the prestigious ones, but the holy ones. They had some wealthy, they had some poor, they had some intelligent, some not so intelligent, they had some important people, they had some inconsequential people, but one thing that dominated the whole assembly is they were the holy ones, the sanctified ones, those in whom the fruit of Christ's death was beginning to be manifested, for He gave Himself for the church that He might what? That He might sanctify it, same root word, that He might make it holy. And so the object of this love,

33:17 this principle divine affection, was those in whom the image and the likeness of Christ was in some, some measure manifested, and then notice the universality of it, the love which He showed toward all the saints. All those that they could in the judgment of charity believe were the children of God, they loved them. Now let's not be romantic about this. The first century didn't change temperamental differences.

33:47 You had some people here who no doubt were kind of difficult. You had some people who were lovable, some others not so lovable. Some people, some that were temperamental, some that were thoughtless, some that were thoughtful. You see, we get a romantic idea about the early church.

34:03 They were made up of the same things that our churches are made up. People with your problems and my problems, and the things in you that grade on me, and the things in me that grade on you. And yet Paul says, the report has come to me that there is being manifested a universal love to all the saints of God. So much for the meaning of the words.

Implications of Love as Evidence of Saving Faith

34:27 Now what are the implications?

34:30 Well, the implications are these. Love to the people of God as the people of God is an indispensable and fundamental attendant of saving faith.

34:44 Wherever there is faith in the Lord Jesus, there will of necessity be love to all the saints. Listen, as Jesus said this, By this shall all men know that you are my disciples. By this shall men know that I am the object of your faith, your trust, your submission, that you are lovingly attached to me, that I am your Master, your Savior, your Lord, and that you are my disciples, my subjects, my followers, if ye have love one to another. 1 John 3, verses 14 and following.

35:22 By this we know that we've passed from death unto life because we love the brethren. He that is loved, he that saith he knows God, and hateth his brother, is in darkness. And then John goes on to say in chapter 4, verses 7 through 13, God is love, and he that loveth is begotten of God, and he that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love. So you see, we don't need to intrude upon faith being the way of attachment to Christ.

35:56 Faith exclusively but we need to insist that if that is a genuine faith it will work by love and it will be productive of love and of every other grace. Pink in his commentary on 1 John has a paragraph that was most helpful to me and I pass it on to you for your help and blessing. It is no mere verbal claim which is here made about love being the fruit of faith but something that speaks louder than words. It is far more than the use of endearing expressions by the lips being seen and felt in deeds.

36:40 It is a real, active, benevolent affection which suffers nothing in its object to quench it. See? It is an active, benevolent affection which suffers nothing in its object to quench it. Your love to all the brethren, the brethren who don't show their love to you perhaps, the brethren who don't manifest it, you have love to all the brethren.

37:07 As hatred is a malignant disposition which fills with ill will against another, so love is a frame of mind that produces respect and esteem for another. As hatred is a murderous lust which seeks to injure, love is a principle which aims at the good of its object. That which is here in view is not a natural trait but a spiritual grace, yea, the queen of all Christian graces. Thus love supplies an external evidence of the inward reality of real Christian profession for such outgoings of goodwill fall more or less under the notice and observation of our fellow saints. What convinced Paul that grace was truly operative in the world? In the newcomers at the church at Ephesus? What convinced him that the initial appearances of grace were genuine, that they were continuing to walk in love to all the saints?

Faith and Love are Inseparable

38:13 Now, having expounded these two indispensable evidences of grace conferred and grace continuing, I wish to bring three concluding observations and exhortations. The first is this. These two things, faith in the Lord Jesus, and love to all the brethren, are inseparable. As the root is inseparable from the fruit, as the effect is inseparable from the cause.

38:40 Now notice this in two ways. The order and the fusion of these two things. Where there is no faith in the Lord Jesus, there can be no genuine love. And here's the fallacy of going around giving a little peace sign or a love sign and saying, what the world needs is love, sweet love, when men stop their ears to the one source of that love.

39:09 And the one source of that love is faith in the Lord Jesus. Accepting God's indictment about me as a guilty sinner. Embracing God's declaration of my helplessness and my hopelessness. Embracing God's humbling declaration that in His Son, incarnate, crucified, buried and risen is the only grounds of my finding favor with God.

39:40 And when there is faith in the Lord Jesus as the fruit of that union with Him, then and only then can there be love.

39:51 So you and I have an obligation to bear witness against the sentimental slosh of our day that says peace, that says love, and would not allow any rootage of the only tree that can produce those delectable fruits. Not only must we note the order, faith producing love, but note the fusion. On the one hand, you have the worldling that says, I want love, but rejects the faith of Christ. And then on the other hand, you have the confessing Christian who says, oh yes, I have faith in the Lord Jesus, but there is no love, there is no love to all the saints.

40:35 Impossible. Impossible. Such faith is a dead faith and nothing more. If it doesn't produce love for the people of God because they are the people of God, then the faith is not true faith.

Grace in Others Intensifies Prayer

40:51 Then in the second place, I want to assert on the basis of our exposition this morning that the evidence of grace in others should not cause the cessation of our prayers for them, but intensify it. Here's an unconverted person. We're exercised about their salvation and we plead with God to deal with them. Then we make every effort we can to get the message to them, to entreat them, to plead with them, give them literature, try to get them under the sound of the word, and then they give evidence that the Lord has driven them from every refuge and that they have laid hold of Christ as their only hope, of obtaining the divine favor.

41:36 They gladly confess with Paul, I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ. And we say, thank you Lord for what you've done. We see the evidence of faith in the Lord Jesus. Then we see them wanting to be with His people.

41:52 Good sign in the new convert. Can't be around His people enough. Sometimes even irresponsible about other duties. But they've got to be with God's people.

42:01 Every time the doors are open, every time they've got to be with God, every time they've got to be with God, they've got a free evening, they've got to be with the people of God. Good sign. But then what happens? Well, so often when we see those signs and they go on for a little while, being confident that the Lord has done the work, then we stop praying for them.

42:18 But you see the exact opposite happen with Paul. He says, the report of the presence of grace intensified his longing to pray for more increase of grace. For this cause, having heard of your faith and your love, I cease not to give thanks, making mention of you in my prayers. Why did he do this?

42:45 Because he understood that the God who has ordained the growth and perseverance of His people has ordained that the prayers of His people should be part of that perseverance. That's why. Is the growth and perseverance of a true believer certain? Yes.

43:05 But it's certain that it shall come to pass in answer to the prayers of the people of God. And so we add to God's foreordained purpose our foreordained prayers, that the work would go on in them. And then the third observation derived from our exposition this morning. I've already hinted at it in the introduction.

Sound Theology is Essential for Prayer and Praise

43:28 Just as sound theology is inseparable to praise, so is it to prayer. You look at the concepts in this prayer. There's a right concept of the Godhead, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of Glory. Now is that just religious jargon?

43:50 No, every one of those words has a profound significance of Paul's concept of God. He just didn't come swaggering into the presence of God and say, Dear God. He didn't do that. He had a right concept of the God whom he was approaching in prayer.

44:09 And he's not embarrassed to let us know what that concept was. Then he goes on to talk about that he would give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation, the whole doctrine of divine illumination by the Spirit, the whole doctrine of hope, the whole doctrine of calling, the doctrines of the resurrection, the exaltation and the session of Christ, the doctrine of Christ's exaltation, the doctrine of Christ's present reign of power, over all things, the doctrine of the church, the doctrine of the body of Christ. It's all here. Where?

44:42 In a prayer. In a prayer. It's all here in a prayer. What does that tell us?

44:50 It tells us as we saw again and again in our study of the first paragraph, just as God does not want ignorant praise, God does not delight in ignorant prayer. God wants prayer and praise that are according to the truth, for as prayer and praise are integral parts of worship, and God seeks worship in spirit and in truth, so then we must be concerned about the profound concepts of Scripture that are dubbed theology if our prayer and devotional life is to be pleasing unto God. I'm convinced if God's people would simply live in the Scriptures, they would never come to this division between devotion and doctrine, between worship and theology, for that division is nowhere recognized in Scripture. It is a division brought about by the perversity of man's own nature. And so I urge you as God's people, as we study this passage, pray that these concepts will become such a part and parcel of your whole inner being that when you pray, you'll find yourself addressing God as He is, the Father of glory, the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you'll be asking for things that are fitting the great place

46:18 that God has afforded His Son, the place of exaltation, the place of power. I plead with you as I plead with myself that I shall learn what it is to be done with the kind of prayer that is just the mouthings of the lazy mind and the lazy spirit, and just playing games with God in our praying. May the Lord deliver us from such and enable us as we seek His face to pray scripturally. Well then, as we close this morning, I cannot help but ask this question.

Concluding Exhortation: Self-Examination and Growth in Grace

46:53 If someone who was an impartial observer of this body of believers were to come in from the outside having heard nothing about us, and then not being fed any information by any of us, but simply take his place amongst us in our public meetings, in our homes, observing, listening, would he be able after three or four weeks to go on back to where he came and say words of this nature? Upon being asked, well, what were the things that characterized that church? And he thinks, well, I could think of this, this, this, this, this. Two things stand out above all else.

47:32 It is obvious that the Lord Jesus, the Christ revealed in Scripture, is the object of their loving and constant trust, and that they are a people who look to Him and to Him alone for grace and acceptance and pardon and the smile of God. And it is obvious that the fruit of their faith is their genuine, demonstrated affection one for another. Oh, dear ones, would to God that that would be true of us, for those are the two indispensable marks of grace conferred and grace continuing. We discussed in the adult class this morning how can one evaluate his growth in grace. I think this is part of the answer, isn't it? The extent to which I am increasingly driven to see my only refuge is Christ.

48:36 That's Paul in Philippians 3, about to die, and he says, I want one thing to be found in Christ. Growth in the awareness that my most noble deeds, my most sanctified moments are tainted with sin, and if I'm not in Christ, I've had it. And then, growth in that love to one another that though like a husband and wife who increasingly discover the best and the worst of one another, their love deepens, expands, and becomes richer in the midst of that self-discovery. So then, in this church of Jesus Christ, we don't just look at one another with rose-colored glasses. We see each other for what we are. But thank God there's been implanted in our hearts and sustained by the Spirit an affection that bears with one another, seeks one another's good, even at personal cost. This, my dear brothers and sisters, is the mark of our growth in grace.

49:44 May God make it true of us for His glory and for His praise. Let us pray.